Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. I was just sitting in my office looking out my window. I create time in my day, and it feels weird to say this, and I'll explain that too, but I create time in my day just to sit and think and ponder. Sometimes I meditate, sometimes I journal, sometimes I write, sometimes I stack. And I encourage my clients to do this because as you elevate your consciousness in business, as you create success, as things start working, it's not the doing that needs more of, if that makes sense. It's not doing more that'll get you where you want to go.
There's a time and place for that, for sure. I know when I was newer in business, it felt like the only way to create more was to do more. As I started to study and honestly also get a lot of reps in. It's not like there is never a time or a season where you're taking a lot of action, but a lot of my clients start working with me when they've taken a lot of action and it's not working anymore. Whether that's a high level of burnout, whether that's a spiritual misalignment, whether that's I feel like I'm doing everything right in my business but it's not working, or I am doing everything in my business and it is working and something is off with my soul.
Like I'm making money and something doesn't feel right on the inside. That's a lot of times people find me and work with me one-on-one. And so one of the things, the principles that I know is powerful is creating space and time to be. And it's really uncomfortable because we're not taught to create this way. We are taught to create through doing, but one of the things, this conscious creation, this creating from the level of being is different. And so we're going to talk about that today. As I was sitting here looking at my window, I had this thought pop into my head, which was like, P-M-A, present moment abundance.
And then shortly after, P-M-A, present moment awareness. And I was thinking about those things because that's just what I was practicing. I was looking at my window, looking at the birds flying. I was remembering those birds flying actually reminded me just a few days ago, I took my girls out to go bowling, which was a shit show, if I'm being really honest. So I had this awful time bowling. It was really hard because I like bowling, but I have a different approach to bowling.
I just do it for fun. Fun fact, I was actually in a bowling team when I was little.
So I thought it would be fun to take my girls bowling because I don't know, I think it's fun. I think it's fun to try and I'm not good at bowling, but for me, it's just the experience of bowling that I like. And so I thought the same would be true, but I found out all of my girls are very competitive. And so they were really ticked that they couldn't bowl a strike every time. Anyway, we have this whole thing. Eventually they get around to liking it. They figure out that it doesn't matter if you get a strike every time. The point is just to enjoy trying.
And there's so many lessons in and that itself. But what happened after is what I'm more interested in because I do see this experience of opposition in all things. The law of opposites, like Neal Donald Walsh teaches, has been happier than God. And so there's this idea that we have to go through hard things to experience good things and good things don't last because bad things have to happen. It's not cause and effect, but it is what we signed up for as a soul when we came into the world of relativity.
We chose to come into the world of relativity so that we could experience good things and joy, happiness, success, fulfillment, progress, all of it. But that means we had to be able to experience its opposite or we wouldn't know we were experiencing the things that we wanted. Law of the universe, right? So here I am bowling having this dramatically intense, sad experience. There were tears. There was frustration. I'm trying to laugh about it. The people next to me who are also bowling were laughing at me because I'm trying to like coach my daughters, you know, until I have a positive attitude and all this happening.
So we leave bowling and I'm trying to process on the inside, right? I'm like repeating to myself, like, I am patience. I am love. And my girls are just screaming and crying. It's really funny. Okay. So then we get in the car and we're driving home and I look at the mountains where I live and I could see the lake. I don't live by the lake, but I can see the lake from where I live and we're driving home and it's like evening time. So the sun is going down. The mountains are like this beautiful purple. The sun is like that golden yellow, right? Like shining on the fields.
And we look up and there was like thousands and thousands and thousands of geese. They were migrating. So there was like, the sun is going down and these giant V's, right? Of geese. If you can imagine like, you know, how birds fly in a V, just thousands of them migrating overhead. And I'm just like in awe. I'm like, girls, like, look at the geese. And for whatever reason, like the way that my voice sounded, the presence that I'd brought into the conversation, everyone stopped crying. Everyone stopped fidgeting.
And there was like a deep peace in the car as we watched these geese just like flying all over the valley. And when we got to our house, like we stopped and sat outside for a little bit, we could hear them honking, right? The geese were honking in the distance. And it was just like a complete transformation of experience based on what I was experiencing in the bowling alley, which was chaos and overwhelm and crying and all of that. And then like deep gratitude, deep appreciation, like a sense of awe, right? And magic and wonder and like, truly like God is, what did I say? I said something like, God is so cool, right? Like, look at this.
And I even like stopped a picture in my car, not because the picture even looks that cool, but it was like a moment in time that I wanted to capture because of the depth of my experience, like the pendulum swung so fast, right? Like one minute I was frustrated, overwhelmed, overstimulated, sad, disappointed. And then like the next minute here I am in the car almost in tears because like the scene that I was witnessing was so great. And the key to me, I was like thinking about this today while I was watching these birds from my window, right?
To tie it all back to where we are and where we started this podcast, is like I had deep present moment abundance in that moment where like I was appreciating something, I felt the overflow, I felt the awe of my life. And it wasn't even about me, right? Like I was watching the mountains and the lake and the geese and the sun and was just like overwhelmed with the beauty of the earth. And if you've had a moment like this, you know, it's not about you. And so present moment abundance to me is an art, it's a practice. The reason that I could tune into that moment was because I've been practicing this for a long time.
I read the book, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, let's see in 2018. And for the first time in like that book changed my life. Like I remember reading that book, walking through Old Navy. I was on like a Amber Date. So like I do these things called Amber Dates where I go hang out with myself, away from the kids, away from the house. And it was one of my first Amber Dates and I was reading A New Earth and like I couldn't put the book down, but I had committed to buying these clothes and I was just like walking in Old Navy, spiritually awakened.
That's like the best way I can explain it, right? Like just awake to my life, to myself, to my thoughts, to my spirit, to the world around me. And I've had many, many, many moments like that since then, that this time with the car and the geese and the fields and the sun was no different. But the reason that I could slip into that even after being frustrated is because I've practiced and cultivated this awareness that I'm going to refer to today as like present moment abundance.
The term that you've probably heard me use before is like quiet wealth. This idea of like appreciating your life, living in the miracle, being with what is. I think this is a new way to understand it where it's like present moment abundance. You're tuned into the abundance of this moment. So what fills your soul, what fills your body, what opens your heart is gratitude and appreciation and awe of what's current. This is what's crazy. You have abundance that you are not tuning into. And so what's interesting about this type of work, this like inner work, and it is work to do this because it takes discipline in your mind, right? It takes focus and attention.
It's not something that just happens. Gratitude doesn't just happen. It's not how we're wired. It's not how our society is set up. It's not how most people live, which is sad. So what's interesting is like I've worked with pretty high level clients who have great financial success. They have the kids, they have the business, and they're missing this piece. They are on the hamster wheel of success, always striving for more, always on to the next thing, and they miss the beauty of what's now, right? So present moment abundance is looking at what is and blessing it and being with it and appreciating it.
And you train your mind to see what's good, and you train your mind to be where your feet are. And what's interesting about this state is like there aren't a lot of thoughts. There is just this witnessing. You're just appreciating. And so I actually wanted to read a chapter from an incredible book. It's called The Creative Act, A Way of Being by Rick Rubin, and it's from the chapter Awareness because I think this kind of like points to what I was experiencing when I was watching the geese. And he says, In most of our daily activities, we choose the agenda and develop a strategy to achieve the goal at hand. We create the program.
Awareness moves differently. The program is happening around us. The world is the doer, and we are the witness. We have little or no control over the content. And that's like how I felt about the geese, right? I wasn't controlling the geese or the mountains or the sun or the lake, but I was just witnessing. He continues, The gift of awareness allows us to notice what's going on around and inside ourselves in the present moment, and to do so without attachment or involvement. We may observe bodily sensations, passing thoughts and feelings, sounds or visual cues, smells, and tastes. Through detached noticing, and I love that phrase, detached noticing, awareness allows an observed flower to reveal more of itself without our intervention.
This is true of all things. Awareness is not a state-tube force. There is little effort involved, though persistence is key. It's something you actively allow to happen. It is a presence with and acceptance of what is happening in the eternal now. As soon as you label an aspect of source, you're no longer noticing, you're studying. This holds true of any thought that takes you out of presence with the object of your awareness, whether analysis or simply becoming aware that you're aware. Analysis is a secondary function. The awareness happens for us as a pure connection with the object of your attention.
If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first, I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it. Though we can't change what it is that we are noticing, we can change our ability to notice. We can expand our awareness and narrow it, experience it with our eyes open or closed. We can quiet our inside so we can perceive more on the outside or quiet the outside so we can notice more of what's happening inside. We can zoom in on something so closely it loses the features that make it what it appears to be or zoom so far out it seems like something entirely new. The universe is only as large as our perception of it.
When we cultivate our awareness, we are expanding the universe. This expands the scope, not just of the material at our disposal to create form, but of the life we get to live. And so I'm going to go back to something he said that like I have been experiencing with my own life. He says we can quiet our inside so we can perceive more on the outside or quiet the outside so we can notice more of what's happening on the inside. And that is the inner work. So I've done this both ways. You probably have too. I have quieted the outside, right?
And I usually do this in a meditation or I do something called the prayer stack where like I turn on quiet binaural beats so like it tunes out the noise of the gym or the noise of my kids or even like the hum of my air conditioner, right? Like I don't want any noise. I choose something on purpose to like let me pay attention to what's happening on the inside. And what's interesting about that is there is present moment abundance on the inside. I can be grateful for my heart beating. I can be grateful for the joy that I feel.
I can be grateful for my working mind. I can become aware that I'm aware. I can be in awe that I'm even here, that I have like a beating heart and lungs that work and functioning eyes and ears and hair and like then it's my attachments, right? Like the fact that I'm married, the fact that I have beautiful children, the fact that I live in this beautiful home in this beautiful state in this beautiful country, that I have a world to experience. Like I can keep getting bigger, but it starts on the inside. But to do that, I have to tune out the outside.
And then he talks about the reverse, which is what I was talking about with the geese, right? We can tune out the inside to more fully experience the outside. So this mostly refers to the mind, right? We quiet our mind to appreciate the life that's happening. We become the witness, the observer. We're not analyzing. And this is hard, so hard, because one of our greatest tools as a human being is our intellectual mind, right? We can analyze, we can look at numbers, we can think, we can plan, we can strategize.
But when we get sucked into the intellectual mind, we miss the witnessing soul, the soul that is experiencing life through you, the wind on your face, the geese honking in the sky, the sunset that was setting so perfectly that night that I wanted to take a picture so I could remember how I felt. I had to quiet the inside of my mind, which is hard to do. So I think meditation is challenging for these two reasons, because when you first start meditating, there's an increase in volume of the mind chatter, right? Your mind starts getting louder.
Your thoughts become maybe darker or more intense because you've stopped buffering with TV, music, podcasts, working out, conversations, reading, whatever. And this is why meditation is so useful, is because it forces you to get in the practice of present moment abundance. At first, when you sit down and you tune out the world and you make your environment quiet so that you can observe the inside, like all of a sudden you notice your mind chatter. And the reason that I could stand, you know, outside the bowling alley and witness these geese and the sunset and like my whole car changed, right?
Like my girls were chirping and chatting and barking and yelling and crying and all this chaos, right? But I felt my energy change in that moment when I started appreciating and I said, girls, look, God is so cool. And the car changed. You can probably even feel it as you're listening to this podcast, like almost immediately because I moved the awareness from the inside of my body to the outside and I quieted my mind. And I think this is what is useful in coaching as well, is like my mind is quiet. When I'm deep in a coaching session and it's like a powerful coaching session, my mind is quiet.
I am not having my own thoughts. I am not, you know, preparing what to say. I am in super present awareness. And that is something that I've had to teach myself. And so building on the conversation that me and Denita had last week on the podcast about, you know, somatic work, I think this is like to a new level. And I love how Rick Rubin talks about the inside and the outside, because I think both are useful. It's like, how often are we making time to be still, not just going through our days, going through the motions? Like, I know I go through the motions a lot.
And that's like been some of my work is like to wake up. I don't want to go through the motions of life. I don't want to go through the motions of business. I'm not trying to get somewhere. Not really. Now, my ego mind will speak. I should be getting somewhere like my ego wants to go faster. My ego wants to get to where I'm going. My ego wants, you know, my success to come faster, my next level to them faster. But that's not what my soul is up to. My soul is up to experiencing life. And so if I miss out on present moment awareness and present moment abundance, I miss the whole point.
Even like right now, recording this podcast, I can just try to go through the motions. And I almost did. I caught myself. I sat down and I almost started just hitting record. I'm like, I'm going to bust through this. Right. And that's when I was like, no, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to look out my window and I'm going to think and going to be and I'm going to breathe and I'm going to listen on the inside and I'm going to be soulfully exposing myself. Right. Not in a bad way. Like, what is my soul trying to let me know? And I saw those birds fly outside of my window.
And it was like, remember the geese? And I was like, like, I remember the geese. And I was like, I want to teach about present moment abundance. Like, even right now, I'm looking out my window and I see like the leaves on the trees, like, you know, they're rustling with the breeze. They're kind of brownish because it's fall. And I could just sit here and like be with the tree. I really like how Byron Katie teaches this. I'm not going to label it. I'm not going to name it. I'm just being with it. And it takes practice.
But what it does is it enhances your ability to feel the day, because this is what's interesting as I've coached people at different levels of success. At the end of the day, this is what people want. They want to feel alive. They want to feel meaning. They want to feel expansion and oneness with life, with God, with family, with themselves, with the earth, however you want to think about it. But they want to feel oneness. And you can't feel oneness through your mind, through thinking, through analyzing, through looking at the data, through trying to label something.
And I think with all of our stuff, you know, podcasts, and like, I appreciate you listening to this podcast, but I also know I'm probably not the only podcast you listen to, and that we are inundated with data and ideas. And I think many of us have forgotten how to slow down and receive the gift of life. And we do that through present moment awareness so that you can feel present moment abundance. Because this is what's interesting as you increase your capacity to feel present moment abundance, money starts to make more sense because money will give you more options and freedom.
But if you don't learn present moment abundance, no amount of money will help solve that, right? You're just going to miss it anyway. You're going to be on to the next thing. You're going to get back on the hamster wheel. You're going to miss all the opportunities and relationships and moments that make life worth living. And so what I have learned and what I've really come to see and come to terms with with my clients is present moment abundance is an important part of growing your wealth. It's like a form of wealth consciousness, right? It's like when I sit down to dinner with my kids and I'm present moment aware, I feel present moment abundance.
I start to see my kids and their smiles and like, she got new freckles, you know? Or like, oh, her hair's getting longer. Like, I appreciate it. I look around and I'm like, I feel blessed for like the food and my husband who came home and I know he's tired, but he's trying to be present for our family. Like, sitting down to watch Wings of Power because I'm a freaking huge nerd with my husband. Like, we love watching Wings of Power. I remember like some nights we would sit down and just click play and the episode would be over. And I remember like having almost like a pang of like, oh, I need to enjoy it more.
Like, this is going too fast. And then other moments, like we'd sit down to watch the show and I'd like remind myself, like, check in, slow this down. You're never going to see this episode for the time again. And now I think about that when I start a new TV show, I watch a movie for the first time. That's my cue to tune in on the inside. I'm never going to see this for the first time again. Am I awake or am I asleep? And that moment, that feeling, that idea, I try to wake myself up throughout the day with that question. Am I awake or am I asleep? When I go driving to pick my girls up from school, am I awake or am I asleep?
Am I going through the motions of my life and missing the point entirely? Or am I awake? Because the more awake I am, the more money gets more fun. The more it makes sense that I want my business to take off. It'll give me more freedom, more options to serve other people. This is what's interesting is when we get the order right, money is a great amplifier and it is useful. But if we don't get the order right, it actually like highlights all the problems.
And so one of the things that I became very aware of in my studies and my work is, yes, I wanted more money and business success, but I wanted to do it in a way that enhanced my life. Which means enhancing my life starts on the inside right now. It doesn't start when I make more money. And so when we practice present moment abundance, we see our family different. We see the opportunity to show up in business different. We are in the miracle of creation, content, coaching, service, lighthouse marketing, podcasting, email marketing, whatever you're doing, there's an enhanced quality to it because you're awake.
And I bet I could go through my episodes and like I could probably listen to myself talk and know if I was asleep or awake, this kind of asleep versus this kind of awake. But I was recording it. And so my intention going forward is like I'm awake when I create these podcasts. I am consciously aware of this moment and I am not going through the motions. And it is challenging because our brain wants to turn off. Our brain wants to go into going through the motions, right? It saves energy. It's more natural. It's what our body does. But the soul, if we come back to what the soul is up to, the soul is here to experience.
And so we use the mind and the body as a tool. We use the mind to wake up so the soul can experience through the body. And when I think about it that way, it's like having practices in your life to wake you to the present moment, practicing meditation, turning on certain music to put you in this awareness is so, so important. And so many times we don't do it because it's simple, right? It's simple to sit and meditate for five minutes. But do you do it? Do you turn your phone off? Do you find people who wake this up inside of you?
Or do you turn off because it's easier just to turn off and go through the motions? Because the other thing we haven't even talked about is like the other side of this, which is like when you wake up, that means you also wake up to emotions and duality and things not going according to plan. And you're not tuning out. You're not sedating to the things that don't go well. It means that you are exposing yourself to real and raw emotions because you're waking up. You've chosen to take those on.
And so I went through a period once I learned thought work, I learned that I can just kind of like change my experience. But what that did is actually lulled me to sleep because I didn't want to experience sadness or disappointment or pain or frustration or despair or the void. And so I turned it off and I just got busy and I took a lot of action and I launched stuff and I made money and I took courses and listened to podcasts and I like turned off the experience because I could.
And so that's the dark side of this work is like we can really easily slip into a void because we don't want to feel anything uncomfortable. So we just turn it all off and we go numb and we go dark. We go through the motions and then we wonder why our life isn't working. We wonder why life feels heavy. We wonder why we feel out of alignment. We wonder how we can be happy again. And this is like where that dopamine detox comes into it.
Like then we start searching for solutions to our void and they are not solutions that actually make a difference because the real solution is present moment awareness, which means you submit to feeling disappointed sometimes and you be with it. But that also means you get to feel joy and expansion and love and freedom and happiness and bliss. You actually get to feel that because you're not tuning out to sleep. Both become possible, but that's the human experience. And so even that can have its own sense of like wonder and awe. Even the hard stuff, even the dark stuff, right? We're just witnessing it.
And so instead of turning it off, instead of trying to push through, instead of trying to not feel what we're feeling, we feel it. We feel all of it and we're awake to our life experience. And so that's what I have for you. Present moment abundance, present moment awareness. So this is what's fascinating is like because I've learned to do this, and I'm not saying I'm perfect, but let's go a long way. Like even doing the dishes, when I bring this quality of my presence to doing the dishes, I enjoy it more. I enjoy laundry more. I enjoy going on walks more.
I enjoy watching rings of power more. I enjoy putting my kids to bed, right? Like we can make this really real. Like if I'm trying to go through the motions of getting my girls to sleep, I'm frustrated, I'm tired, I'm rushing. But when I have present moment abundance, I'm putting my girls to bed and I'm sealing all the feels. I'm tuned into gratitude and I look at their little eyelashes as they're falling asleep and like I'm more calm when they ask me questions and I'm more creative and I have more energy to give to them and I want to read a book and I want to tickle their back, right?
Like it creates a different experience when I'm awake to it, even if it's hard. So if I can go back to that bowling alley, I stopped being present. I started getting frustrated. I started going through the motions almost like something just clicked where I was like, you know what I mean? Like I missed the opportunity to be present. It came later. So this is always a practice because I think if we can be truly present, even in the hard times, I think the quality of our responses are more conscious and calm and ordered and loving. I think the fruit of present moment abundance is love. Let me say that again because that was for me, not for you. For me, let me say it.
The fruit of present moment abundance is love. And so whenever I'm not feeling love flow through me to other people, it's because I stopped being present moment aware, right? And I stopped looking for present moment abundance. And so that's a really powerful takeaway for everything, right? Like if you're trying to post on Instagram and talk about your offer and you're feeling tense and you're feeling scared and you're feeling nervous and you're feeling frustrated and stuck, get present moment aware so that you can feel the love flowing through you to your potential clients, to the people that you can serve and just notice the quality of action that arises from that place. It's going to be completely different.
I know this podcast is different because I slowed down to get present moment aware, present moment abundance, and this podcast wouldn't have been possible if I had just forced it. I would have probably was going to just talk about something completely different. And so slowing down enough to feel that, to be a conduit for love, to be something more than just your mind and your body, right? To be a spiritual awareness, that's something else entirely. Okay. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
