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Profit With Purpose by Anna Goldstein

Anna Goldstein is an NYU certified coach, entrepreneur, Huffington Post contributor, former nationally ranked tennis player and author. The Profit With Purpose show is an informative and uplifting podcast where Anna dives into lives of entrepreneurs, healers, and change-makers who are making money through living their purpose. The goal is to provide practical tips to inspire you to be profitable living your life’s purpose. As a student of psychology, new age thinking, meditation, mindfulness techniques and yoga, Anna weaves these spiritual principles into her show. Guests on the podcast have been Mastin Kipp, Kate Northrup, Jairek Robbins, and more. Find out more at: annagoldstein.com
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Now displaying: October, 2019
Oct 31, 2019

Jenna Irvin became a business owner straight after college. In her senior year of college, she made the decision to use all the money she had to open a Pure Barre franchise after falling in love with the technique. By the age of 23 she had opened, sold and bought a business. Opening a business is never easy, no matter your age or experience. Jenna talks about the franchise process, deciding to sell and leading with your heart.

How do you start a franchise?

In her senior year of college, Jenna decided she wanted to open a franchise through Pure Barre. She sent in an application for the market she was interested in. The first step was to prove that there was viability for a studio by looking at the area, the demographics and the real estate available. Interviews then progressed to ensure Jenna had the funding and then the third round looked at Jenna’s ability to run a business. The following day after a 4 hour in-person interview, Jenna found out that she was approved to be an owner. She signed the agreement and paid the franchise fee.

How much is it?

For Jenna, it was $46K

How did you have the money? You hadn’t even graduated from college yet.

Jenna had invested money in stocks. The franchise fee was almost exactly what she had in her investment account. She decided she wanted to take a leap and invest in herself. Even though she was young, it felt like the right time because she was only responsible for herself.

How did you know you wanted to take that risk? To dive right in and have your own business right away?

She has the kind of personality where she dives right into things. She gives everything her all - her friends, her relationships, her career. Jenna believes that when our strengths are turned up, they become weaknesses, so she has learned to temper it. She spent her childhood watching her parents run their own business together, and this also influenced her.

What business do they own?

Her parents own a cabinet and mill-working company. She grew up listening to her Dad have business conversations. She saw him bring a positive impact to someone’s live through cabinets. In college, she discovered Barre, a ballet based strength workout. She fell in love with it. Jenna couldn’t touch her toes when she started and had also struggled with an eating disorder. She had a lot of insecurities with her body, and Barre turned that around for her. It was the first time that she wasn’t in competition with others or even herself. 

I want to ask you again about your Dad and how he held people's hearts.

He has a way of holding people's hearts while he holds them in the professional space. Jenna believes that we have to connect first as people and then connect professionally. When anybody walks through her studio doors, she wants to know who they are. 

I want to ask you about the first Pure Barre class you attended

Jenna was horrible at it. She has been 6’1 since 6th grade and for a long time was so much taller than everyone else. In sports, her height was an asset but it also meant she didn’t have to learn how to be agile and quick on her feet as she could use her height. Her coordination and flexibility were always things she struggled with. Although She wasn’t good at her first Barre class, there was something about it that made her want to figure it out. The more she did it, the more she felt the connection to her body and how to learn to be graceful in her own way.

Sometimes we say - ‘oh I’m not flexible. I’m not agile’. But we can learn to love the thing that we didn’t think was for us. Is that your experience?

A lot of the stories that we tell ourselves don’t have to be our story. She told herself that she was the tall girl and wouldn’t be flexible or be able to do things that smaller people could do. Telling that story was easier than doing the work it would take to get there. 

How old were you when you took your first class?

Jenna was in her 2nd year at college.

Was there a moment when you decided you wanted to be a Pure Barre studio owner?

Jenna was at home for the summer before her senior year. She wasn’t someone who like to work out at home and there wasn’t a Barre studio in her home town. But if she stuck with the workout, her Dad said he would look into owning one. She did Barre in her attic over the 3 months she was at home. Then Jenna talked to many studio owners as she could in order to understand what she was getting herself into.

Did you have any conversations where you were like ‘maybe I shouldn’t do this’?

Jenna was conscious that she was young and investing every penny she had into the business. She was constantly questioning her decision. She knew she needed to separate herself from the good and the bad experiences other people were having. She was gathering data but didn’t want to let it influence how she felt about the decision. 

How do you work on your mindset?

Jenna has learned to hear herself first but it has taken a long time to get there. She has realized that she is not her business. Her mindset is terrible when she is evaluating herself based on how her business is doing. She did this exercise, where she had to have coffee with her business. To have a conversation with her business meant it was separated from her. She found the exercise eye-opening.

What was something that came out of that conversation with your business?

She realized that she puts a lot of pressure on herself. Sometimes a goal is unrealistic, and sometimes it is just not right for that time. If she sets a goal and something happens, it’s not a failure, it’s an opportunity to adjust and an opportunity to grow.

You built this business without any connections. How did you start? When you opened the doors?

When Jenna opened the studio in Frederick, Maryland and she didn’t know a soul. She was terrified because she had always lived in places where she was very connected. From the beginning, in her marketing, she told her story. She talked about what the technique had done for her and what she hoped to create in Frederick. She was there from open to close, and although it wasn’t part of the plan, she ended up teaching 37 out of 42 classes every week for the first 3 months. But this meant that her clients knew her and she knew them. 

Did you go to local business and introduce yourself?

She did. She researched local businesses that had been open the longest and did her first pop-up at one of them. This connected her with someone who turned out to be important in helping her form other connections. You don’t need to connect with everybody, just the right people.

What do you think is a mistake you made with hiring?

Jenna googled ‘How to hire’, found a guide and followed it. She didn’t listen to her intuition at all. She hired based on people's background and experience and not on whether they showed traits that were in alignment with her. Form her first batch of hires, she only had 1 person pass the certification.

What happened when you followed your intuition?

She had a client who had been taking classes from the day the studio opened. She was always just there to work. One day after a class she talked to Jenna and showed an interest in being a teacher because she wanted to show her girls that when you work hard, you can do anything. She hired her on the spot. This hire reminded Jena that she knew what she needed and the factors that were important for the hire.

I want to ask you about selling the business. You sold the business in Frederick, although you still have the one in Hilton Head Island. Tell us a little about how you sold the business in Frederick.

Selling the business was not part of Jenna’s plan. She moved to Frederick thinking she was going to live there forever. She had lived in Hilton Head Island to gain more teaching experience while her studio was being built and fell in love with the place. Her studio in Maryland did in the first month what she had predicted in the first year in terms of membership numbers. The studio in Hilton Head Island came up for sale 3 months after Jenna had opened her Frederick studio. Her accountant told her that she would be able to sell her studio for twice what she put into it. Jenna had to make a decision about what would be most fulfilling for her. The sales process took about 5 months. 

What are your failures? I know you’ve had some heartbreak?

When she took over her new studio, she thought that purchasing an existing studio would be more easier than starting one from scratch. It was actually harder because she had to try rewrite that existing business. It was a challenging process. 

Jenna was terrible at balance and couldn’t keep balance with her friendships. Her relationship ended when her business opened. She threw herself into the business in the first 3 months to the extent of everything else. With her new business she is trying to keep a better balance with her life. Don’t let moments pass you by because you fell that your business needs all of you all of the time.

You played Basketball. How long did you play that for?

Jenna played basketball from 3 years old to when she graduated from high school.

How do feel sports has impacted you?

Sport has given Jenna the work ethic and discipline that she has. Sport required responsibility discipline and dedication so when her business requires those things, she doesn’t bat an eye. Sports taught her to be a team player and take ownership of the things she could’ve done better. 

Do you still attend Barre classes? Do you do anything else for fitness?

Jenna does Barre 4 times a week and has gotten into lifting weights and running. But Barre is where she grounds herself mentally and physically. 

How do you fell Pure Barre has helped you mentally?

Pure Barre has transformed her mentally. It has transformed her insecurity. She had to overcome an eating disorder and a place where the scale had power. She was concerned about calories and did exercise to burn off what she had eaten instead of moving her body because it felt good. Jenna pushed her body on days it needed to rest. It was all out of tune with her own needs, and it is impossible to be out of tune in a Pure Barre class. In a Pure Barre class, you have to be connected to your muscles so your mind doesn’t have time to go anywhere else. It has been the biggest part of her healing from the eating disorder. 

In Jenna’s studio she tries to keep the energy about being welcoming and accepting. It is not about changing anything about yourself. It is about celebrating that your chose to be there and you are choosing to get stronger. It is a celebration about all that you are and all that you will become. 

Can you give a quick example of a movement you would do?

There is a movement called chair. You pull off the bar with straight arms. Your seat is at the level of your knees. The back is flat and the chest is proud. And you hold that. The work is isometric, you want to focus on the contraction. The movement is secondary and a mental distraction. The isometric work is where the magic happens.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

This comes from her Dad. Before every basketball game she would take her hand to her heart, tap her heart and point at him. It was a reminder to lead from her heart. He also tells his kids to never look back. Which is her reminder that she can dream as big and as passionately as she wants to.

Tell us how we can get in touch with you

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennairvin

Website: https://www.jstandingtall.com/ 

Oct 24, 2019

Julie Renee mentors ambitious women leaders who refuse to play small but are being held back by exhaustion and fuzzy brain to regenerate their brain and play full out again. After launching her first business from her tiny San Francisco studio apartment in 1993, she has prevailed over the worst of human health challenges from multiple cancers, life in a wheelchair, and literally surviving death. She is the author of the groundbreaking book ‘Your Divine Human Blueprint.’ Her unique gift of healing defines the energy-science of Cellular Quantum Mechanics. What that means in laymen’s terms is she has defined the way to regenerate the body from the cells on up and does it with ease. The unique process of brain regeneration is done through a technique that she developed over the last seven years working with the individual stem cells and the quantum field. 

Can you take us back to when you were living in an environment that wasn’t so healthy?

Julie Renee survived the Atomic Bomb testing in the Nevada desert when she was on vacation as a child. She had 17 surgeries, multiple cancers, and even died twice. The first time she died, she was 24. She felt like she was on earth for a reason and pushed to get back into her body and survive.

What do you mean when you say ‘the first time you died’?

She was 24 and in her living room when her body fell to the floor. Her spirit was up above, looking down at her body. She was in the middle of being treated for cancer and only weighed 95lbs.

She looked at her body on the floor and decided she was not ready to die. She saw her life flashing before her and decided to shove herself back into her body and fight to live. 

She tries to remember why she is here and activate her miraculous healing system. She has had 2 death experiences and 5 that were very close. Each one has taught her something and she has gained strength and power. Most people don’t realize that you don’t have to leave when your body shuts down. You have to help your body heal.

It seems like you gained a lot from those experiences. Can you talk about what you’ve learn about our bodies ability to heal?

There is an ancient part of us that is part of the Field of Perception. It is pre spirit from when we were one being. It provides very powerful life energy. There are a couple of ways that we can access this power than we don’t realize that we have. 

Towards the end of her long period of being ill, Julie went into her garden and told God to either take her or make her well. After 2 hours of meditation and chanting, she saw in her mind's eye a master cell go from being very sick cell to being a healthy cell. She realized that everything is divine and of light. Although it might feel like our bodies are made of clay, we are part of a beautiful field of oneness and light. Every cell is equipped with light and this causes the body to rejuvenate. She has defined how this works as The Miraculous System and has taught this as a training program to doctors and scientists who were interested in the changes in her. Understanding what happened in her body, Julie Renee has been able to recreate this in others. She helped a woman regrow her colon using The Miraculous System. It is possible to use this process to regenerate the body to good health. 

What are some practical strategies that you would use to regenerate a cell?

There are two types of physics – Newtonian physics and Quantum physics. Newtonian physics is gravity. Quantum physics is about vibrating particles. Depending on how the particles are vibrating, you get a good or less good result. In spirituality, this is thought of as the field of oneness. We are in a lower frequency but through unconditional love and mastery, we can go into a higher frequency and this is known as the field of transformation.

Julie Renee starts the process with a prayer and then an affirmation that anything and everything is possible. The next step a song that elevates spirit and energy. The cell regeneration process starts with a clearing to clear all obstacles to having a healthy heart. They can clear about a thousand things. They set an intention with the mind, look at a chart, and do a hand movement. What the mind can conceive and believe it can accomplish. After the clearing and prayer, they go into an active process of regeneration. The aim is to bring the master or stem cells in any area up to 100%. This also involves a hand movement. Once that is achieved, they do an activation to all the surrounding cells that are operating at a lower level. This causes a flood of light to go through the body. Then they activate the mitochondria to spark the growth of new cells. 

When they do cell regeneration in the brain, it can bring 180 days of new cell growth. There is a 15-35% increase in brain function. They have tested 200 students over a period of 6months. Julie Renee did a study last year looking at regeneration in the brain.

I want to ask you about the hand movements. Where did that come from and what is the purpose behind that?

The first movement came to her in that first experience in the garden. As Julie Renee has progressed with this method, she has sensed that she needs to move her hand in a certain way and developed a new hand movement. There are now 12 hand movements. The hand movements really help people whose frequency is below 1000. Julie Renee's frequency is usually around 4000.

So is this something you discovered through doing your own research and healing?

On a very simple level it is a yes. Julie Renee is also aware that she has been on the planet 6 times. Each time her purpose was to remind people of The Miraculous System. The reason her life has been so difficult was so she could understand what humanity is facing right now. And that people would appreciate what she was saying in the context of her history. If Julie Renee could do it, so could they. 

You mentioned earlier the studies that you have done. How do you measure the progress?

Julie had 200 of her students agree to go through brain regeneration and periodically fill out a questionnaire. They asked the students about memory, vibrancy vs. depression, relaxed brain vs. headaches, sleep challenges, and speech issues. Memory improved by 26% with one 3hr regeneration session. They didn’t think they had a depressed group, but that had a 37% improvement. There was a 19% improvement in sleep and a16% improvement in speech.

I want to ask you more about The Field. Can you explain it?

Julie wrote Your Divine Human Blueprint, and in it, she describes 4 fields.

1. Genesis – this is the field of creation

2. The Field of Embodiment – what supports the spirit to be able to maintain living in a body

3. Quantum Field – The field of vibrating particles

4. The Field of Amplification – this is the law of attraction field and can attract negatives as well as positives

Technology has changed so much of our world and the way that we live. In some ways we’ve become more disconnected from nature because of technology. What do you think the impact that is hving on humanity?

There was a study that in children who had an iPad or iPhones, their brains were not developing the ability to hear sounds in nature. Julie goes on a walk with her daughter every morning between 5:30am and 6:30am. She can identify owl sounds and different birds. Teenagers send 4000 texts every month, which is one every 6 minutes. They are living a life interrupted by bells and buzzes all the time. 

Check you email twice a day, say 9am and 4pm and that is it. If you use social media to connect with your family, set aside time to do that, such as lunchtime so that you are not constantly looking at it.

The less I check things, my email, social media channels, the more my happiness and contentment increases.

Something like 73% of people check their phone as soon as they wake up. Only 10% hug their partner. 54% of people take their cell phone to the bathroom. It’s addictive. It releases a little hit of dopamine in your brain. Social media companies have mastered the art of pinging that part of your brain. People stop being connected with each other physically to get these pings. 

Is there something you can offer us in how to interrupt those habits and patterns around checking and our compulsion to technology?

It’s not about willpower, it’s about discipline. Make a plan and follow through on it. Plan out the times you will access certain things. And when you catch yourself doing it anyway, forgive yourself and get back on track. 

Then look at the balance in your life. Are you getting the social interactions that you need? If technology is giving you something, it’s probably because something else is missing.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

If you seek to love and you seek the goodness in life, and you seek the goodness in others, you will have a beautiful and blessed life. 

Tell us how we can get in touch with you and find out about your work

Website: http://julierenee.com/ 

A gift of meditation: http://julierenee.com/quiet-mind/ 

Oct 17, 2019

Amanda Robbins is the Co-founder and CMO of Performance Coach University. She is also a business growth coach and marketing strategist. In this episode, she talks about why she has so much positive energy, the idea of stacking to conquer overwhelm and why eating healthy requires simplicity.

You have this positive energy. Is positivity something that is easy for you or something that has been a challenge for you?

Amanda has a simple of phrase that she has been using for a while – moment by moment. When something happens during the day that upsets her she just focuses on that phrase and she can reset to what is great about the present moment. It allows her to come back to a more positive place. And she genuinely wakes up feeling grateful and happy to be alive.

When she was a child, about elementary age, her mom tried to take her own life and her Dad tried to cover it up. She had always seen her mom as the happiest person, full of love and fun. When she asked her Dad why her mom did that he told her that she was really sad.  Amanda kept asking why. He told her that her mom had voices in her head and sometimes they didn’t say nice things to her. We all have voices in our heads and Amanda could relate to this. She immediately associated negative internal thoughts with the ability to put someone in a hospital bed. She was scared to be sad and wouldn’t let herself go to that place. She decided to focus on goodness and love and was scared of sadness. She is now at a place where she can share her emotions and deal with the negative emotions while still having a positive outlook.

I want to ask you about stacking as it relates to not wanting something.

Amanda and her partner are in the middle of fertility treatments, buying a home and moving out of a rental. There is a lot going on. She could stack that list very high. Having so much on our plate makes us feel sluggish and heavy. It’s hard to feel energized and easy to feel overwhelmed when we stack things so high. She will write down everything she has to do as one big list. Then she will unstack that list by crossing off things that are not crucial. She will delegate, automate and eliminate as much as she can. Then she’ll ask herself – What’s the one thing she wants to get done today? When you tackle one things at a time it makes you feel like you’re progressing.

You can also stack pain and pleasure. Most people trend towards pain. They will be called to action when the pain of doing or not doing something is so high that they have to take action. But if you keep stacking pain too high it can cause issues. On the pleasurable side you can create loving memories and feel the love for life.

You get to choose your emotion. Moment by moment. If you are someone who just reacts, you need to learn to slow down. Meditation is a really great way to do this. But just learning to pause can be really beneficial, so that you can pause before you are triggered. You have to practice the skill of pausing. When someone asks you a question, take a pause before you speak. Train you brain not to immediately react and respond, but take a little space before you speak.

Slowing down is so helpful because we are so go, go, go. The funny thing about slowing down is you actually speed up results.

There is so much research that shows how incredibly powerful meditation is. In recent years people from all walks of life, including the military and executives, are taking it seriously. Meditation is a game changer. To get people into meditation, Amanda likes to use Muse. It’s a headband and app that is really great for people who like to track things and see visual progress. Apps like Headspace and Insight Timer are also terrific for making meditation a practice.

Meditation is like training a muscle. You just have to keep at it. Even staring with two minutes a day can be a great way of getting started.

When did you start meditating?

Amanda met her husband in 2012. They were both at a point in their lives where they were they comfortable being who they are. Her husband is big into meditation. He encouraged her to meditate. Although she struggle with the chanting meditation they did together.

So how come you kept going back for more?

She did feel really great afterwards. It was a unique way to connect with her husband. They actually have a lot of practices they now do together. They do a gratitude walk, a Sunday ritual where they share love lessons, they mediate together and they do yoga together.

I know you are into health and wellness. I follow you on Instagram and see that you drink a lot of smoothies. What’s your favorite smoothie?

Amanda uses a chocolate vegan protein powder from Thorne. Then she’ll add a berry like blueberries or cherries. She adds spinach. Sometimes she throws in an avocado or some Udo oil. She blends it with water. She wants to make it simple so that it is easier to do.

And no milk? Just water?

Water. We have to stay hydrated and so Amanda tries to add water to things as much as she can. Whenever something calls for milk she’ll use water.

So much of it comes down to habits. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be expensive. But there are so many habits people have around food.

Amanda tries to keep things super simple. They pretty much eat the same thing every day. If it’s simple it’s easier to eat healthier. Every day they have salmon and broccoli for lunch. They throw it on the steamer, add ghee, salt and pepper. Dinner is normally a salad with some protein on it.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

She was in a taxi recently after being picked up at an airport. The driver looked like he was in his 50’s but turned out to be 69. She was amazed and asked him what his secret was. He said his Grandfather told him - “Don’t worry about things that you have no control over. If you can’t control it, it’s out of your control. Don’t worry about it.”

A big root of our suffering is trying to constantly control. It creates a lot of worry.

Amanda thinks we should have more faith that life is rigged in our favor. That things are happening for us and not to us.

What drives you?

Love for people overall. There is a lot of bad news out there that can make it feel like the world is ending but there is actually a lot of goodness in the world. What really drives her is the human spirit and its resilience, love and compassion. She inspired by people.

Tell us how we can get in touch with you:

https://www.performancecoachuniversity.com/

Links

Thorne Protein Powder

https://www.thorne.com

 

 

Oct 3, 2019

Martin Rutte is the co-author of The New York Times Business Bestseller, Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work, translated into over 20 languages, with sales over 1.1 million copies.

Martin has worked with many corporations such as Sony Pictures, Virgin Records, Apple Computer, and more — assisting them to expand their outlook and position themselves for the future. 

For over 15 years he has been exploring peoples’ visions for the kind of world they deeply long for – His new book on this subject: Project Heaven on Earth: The 2 Simple Questions That Will Help You Change The World...Easily,has just been published. 

There is a desire, a longing in each of us, for the unnecessary, immoral, and recurring problems of the planet- war, hunger, poverty, disease, hatred, addictions, abuse, crime, pollution, and more. Not just to get better, but too once and for all end!

We’ve suppressed these yearning that arises from our soul, yearnings for a world that inspires hope, creativity, and engagement. What keeps this self-censoring in place is a culture that believes having the kind of world we yearn for is simply not possible. 

Fundamentally, it calls for re-envisioning who we are as humans and as Humanity. From our most profound cores, we continue to know the kind of world we want. Let’s discover and create our new, collective story – Heaven on Earth. 

How did you get started with bringing spirituality into business?

Martin has a traditional background as a management consultant and speaker. About 25 years ago, he came back from consulting in Hong Kong and found himself in a bit of a funk. He ended up at an Augustinian Monastery and realized what was missing was God. At the time, everybody advised him not to talk about spirituality. He realized that his fear was holding him back and decided to explore the intersection of spirituality and work. 

What did you see as some of the results of bringing spirituality into the workplace? Were people happier?

People realized that they could bring into work this part of themselves that they didn’t think they could. They were happier, calmer and excited about being able to talk about spirituality at work. 

What does spirituality mean to you? How would you define it?

Martin purposefully doesn’t have a definition. It means different things to different people and he didn’t want to lose his audience by trying to force them to agree to his definition. He wants people to feel they can bring more of their soul into work. 

Project Heaven on Earth is very ambitious. So many people are wandering around and wondering what their purpose is. But you ask a much bigger question – what is Humanity's purpose? 

Many years ago, Martin read a paper that asked the question – What is the common purpose of Humanity? The idea of Heaven on Earth came just before he was making a keynote speech at a conference. He was meditating and asked himself, ‘If every business is spiritual, is that what you want?’ He realized that if we can transform business, we can transform the world. This formed itself as the idea of Heaven on Earth. 

What were your next steps following that thought?

He was in Toronto in the late 80s, running a management consulting company, the first time he heard the word vision. He knew he wanted to talk about it, but everybody told him he was crazy and that no-one would take him seriously. So when he had the concept of Heaven on Earth it concerned him that people might find it controversial. 

So project Heaven on Earth lets talk a little about what that is.

He many people and distilled down these 3 questions:

  • Recall a time when you experienced Heaven on Earth
  • Imagine you have a magic wand and with this wand you can have Heaven on Earth. What is heaven on earth for you?
  • What simple easy concrete step will you take in the next 24hours to move that forward?

When he asks these questions, no one ask him -what do you mean by Heaven on Earth. He believes this is because we all have within us a knowledge of what Heaven on Earth is. 

If one person believes from their soul that something is right and someone else believes that something else is right, how do you work through that? To create more Heaven on Earth?

For many years Martin led dialogues with opposing parties. They would come in ready for a fight and then through good dialogue processes they started to find some overlap. One of the roadblocks that comes up in a highly polarised time is ‘they are not with me.’ 

You talk a lot about belief

People think ‘In order to do something you have to believe that you can do it. In order for someone to do X, they need to believe they can do X.’ They can either wait for the belief to come or they can set the goal lower so the belief is not needed. Martin thinks that belief is not necessary to accomplish something. He asks the question – Have you or anybody you know done something that they didn’t believe was possible for them to do? Everybody says yes because belief isn’t necessary. 

What you’re saying is take action even if you don’t believe it’s possible?

You also have to make a commitment. For example, someone wants to end hunger in the world but doesn’t believe it is possible. The commitment is the end of hunger and the belief is that it’s not possible. The belief could stop them which would be justifiable. Or they could say I’m working on ending hunger and I have a belief that it’s not possible. The belief is there in both cases but in one there is stoppage and in the other there is action. 

You tell a story about running a marathon. You’d only run 5 miles and you signed up for a marathon. It sounds like you didn’t really train for it?

His friends encouraged him to sign up for a marathon and the most he’d ever run was 5 miles. To this day he doesn’t believe that he did it. But he did.

There’s this messaging in the personal development world that you have to believe it to see it. But you’re saying that’s not always true. Somebody didn’t run the 4minute mile until they did.

Shortly after Roger Bannister ran the 4-minute mile, other people achieved this too. He broke the belief that it couldn’t be done.

What are some conversational tools you can use to bridge gaps?

When Martin has a fight with his wife the essence of it is always – you’re right and I’m wrong. They’ve been together long enough that they can recognize what is happening and go into separate rooms for a moment. When they come back together, everything is fine. The key is to break the pattern. 

How long did it take you to write the book?

25 years. He needed to get clear about certain things before he could write it. It was tough. Martin doesn’t like writing. He likes the results but he doesn’t like the actual writing. 

How would you describe your younger self?

Martin was a kid who loved to play. He still has a playfulness about him. As a child, he knew he was here to change the world. It was very clear to him.

How do you play?

He does a form of printmaking called monotype. He loves playing with children and making jokes with his wife. He’s become fascinated by comedy and has been watching a lot of Martin Short and Jerry Lewis.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Follow your passion. Follow what is true for you. And when people say you can’t do that, it forces you to look and see if your truth is still your truth.

Links

Project Heaven on Earth

HTTP://PROJECTHEAVENONEARTH.COM 

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