Christian show host Marnie Swedberg interviews me as we discuss the Laws of Success from the perspective of faith. I reveal the craziest goal I’ve ever set and achieved using these principles.
To set and achieve hard goals starts with a decision to do it. You’ve got to take a leap of faith. Contrary to popular belief, it’s even okay to fail. Have you ever wondered what’s your part, what’s God’s part? God can make something out of your best effort.
This audio program demonstrates the finer points that separate my philosophy on life from other gurus. The fact is, we’re not superhuman, but the good news is, we don’t have to be.
Resources mentioned on the call:
Jackrabbit Factor ebook – http://www.jackrabbitfactor.com
Leslie’s Mindset Mastery program – http://www.prosperthefamily.com
More about the laws:
Learn more about Marnie Swedberg and her amazing resources! http://www.marnie.com
TRANSCRIPT:
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Rare Faith Podcast, where the solution to every problem is only an idea away, and where the same activity with just a little more awareness, always yields better results. Award-winning, best-selling author Leslie Householder brings some of her best information to this inspiring series of life-changing episodes that you won’t want to miss. Show notes for this episode can be found at www.ARareKindofFaith.com.
MARNIE: Our guest today is Leslie Householder, and I just have to tell you how excited I am to have her on the show with us today. First of all, because she is an amazing person. She is the author of The Jackrabbit Factor, among other things. By the way, if you haven’t already done so, you can get a free copy of that e-book, and this is an amazing little book. It was the way I was introduced to Leslie, actually. I read the book and was kind of taken aback by what I read in it. It took me a while to incubate it and think about it. I got involved with her membership program (you can learn more about that as you read the book), but it was so much awesome information. A lot of things I already knew, somethings I thought I knew but I knew wrong, somethings that were brand new information about God, goals, and getting things done in this life, and really, especially, cool perspectives about money. We are going to talk about that today as well as goals and a lot of other things. Leslie is, among other things, an awesome writer. She has written The Jackrabbit Factor and Hidden Treasures. She is a contributing author to several Chicken Soup for the Soul publications, and also just participated in a recent best-selling book. She is such a great writer. She is able to communicate what is in her heart on the paper very well, and to bring us along with her thoughts. Everybody can benefit from them, and I am so grateful to her for what she has done there. She is the Founder and President of ThoughtsAlive, which is an organization dedicated to helping families achieve prosperity against all odds. Again, we’re going to talk about that a little bit today. She is also a popular keynote speaker and educator. She is the wife of Trevan, and she is the mother of seven children. I’m going to bring her on right now. Welcome, Leslie.
LESLIE: Thanks, Marnie. It’s great to be here.
MARNIE: I’m so, so glad you could join us today. I know you’ve got busy times coming up. You are planning some kind of a mentorship program right now, aren’t you?
LESLIE: We’ve been running a mentor training program since 2008. Those who want to be a part of that need to be an Honors Graduate of our home-study program, and so that’s why right now is the time a lot of people are thinking about it, a lot of people are talking about it, because it takes about three months to go through that. So, we’re excited about helping people who have a message to share or want to help people figure out how to do it in the most effective way. And helping people shortcut the process so they don’t have to soak as many pillows as I did trying to get their message to a global audience without breaking the bank.
MARNIE: Super. You guys can learn all about that if you go over to jackrabbitfactor.com, get that book, and then you’ll be in touch with Leslie that way, and you can learn all about that stuff. We are going to dive right in because there is so much material I want to cover. As you know, we work with a lot of people who have their own businesses, they are working, maybe managing other people’s businesses, CEOs, or different positions within other people’s businesses. But what we’re finding right now in our economy is that prices are skyrocketing. Of course, we are all feeling that personally at the gas pump, at the grocery store, you know – everywhere we go we are feeling that. But as business owners, as people who are actually selling things to other people, I want to just address, first of all, with you, the abundance mentality and how it applies right now in this particular time in our economy, because if this is happening to everybody…
I am going to give you a couple of examples. We had a meeting at our retail store this morning, and one of the gals was saying that there was a lady who obviously hadn’t purchased fabric for a while. So, our retail store is a variety store; we have 12 departments, and one department is fabrics for quilting and things like that. Well, anyway, this lady came in, and she was looking at the clearance fabric, and she said, “Well, if this fabric is $1.35 a yard, how much is it regular?” She was expecting that to be the regular price. Of course, that price now is closer to $4.99 – $5.99. You know, so you blink, and these prices change. Same thing with our restaurant. People come in, and they say, “Well, I want the two for $5.00 lunch special.” And we say, “I’m sorry, that’s a 2 for $7.00 lunch special now.” And they’re like, “When did that happen?” And it’s like, “Well, it’s gradually been happening.” But it’s happening fast enough now that people have sticker shock every day, it seems like, when people see the prices on things that we’re offering as businesses.
And I’m wondering if you’d just address that for me: How, as a business owner, how can you smile and remain in an abundance mentality when people are giving you feedback like that – like “It’s too much. I can’t afford this anymore.”
LESLIE: It’s a dilemma. And what I’ve found is, at least in our business, there have been a lot of things we have created over the last ten years that we don’t have time to talk about anymore. It’s created, it’s on file, but we’re talking about what we’re doing right now. So, we’ve found that we can make use of all the other things we’ve created in the past, and make it, kind of like the discount outlet of all this great information that, if you’re a business owner and you’ve got something to offer that are your regular bread-and-butter items, and people are balking at the price – you know, give them some options of other things that don’t cost you anything to offer, where you can still be profitable, but create other options and help them fell like, “Oh, I do have choices.”
MARNIE: Well, that’s a great idea there. In a brick-and-mortar, it’s maybe a little different because there is really nothing that you do have that doesn’t cost you anything. Everything is a tangible product. But I can think of one thing that we’re doing that is something that we could do. It’s a very small percentage off compared to other things. There’s a little “Buy 12, get one free” program that gives you something, which is a stamp on a little card, every time you buy a product or buy (Transcriptionist’s Note: She probably meant “spend”) a certain amount of money. That’s something that you can do for free. So, that’s a great idea, and that can be used online or off line to do that. Well, let’s come back. Let’s swing back around to this one later in our conversation.
Right now, Leslie, talk about abundance. Let’s go ahead and just start, for those who aren’t familiar with it – let’s start with a quick rundown of the Laws of Success. There are too many to spend a lot of time here on it, but guys, when you’re listening to this, I hope that this is going to peak your curiosity, and that you will go over and get The Jackrabbit Factor because I wasn’t even – honestly, Leslie – before I came upon your material, I honestly wasn’t even aware of some of these and how they were affecting me. You know, we have this peripheral thought of them, maybe, every once in a while, that they are out there, but we really don’t think that they are affecting “me.” And I love that about your training.
LESLIE: What I realized before I learned them, or as I began to learn them, is, you know, I had kind of reduced my philosophy of life down to “Be good and you’ll prosper. Obey the commandments of God, and things will go okay.” You know? That’s kind of what it boiled down to. I would get so frustrated because I felt like God had things in mind for me to do, and I didn’t have the means to do them. It was just a stuck, frustrating point. It was when I began to realize that there is more to know that it dawned on me that the Laws of Nature – for example, gravity – affect us all day long our entire life, and we can go through life aware of it or not aware of it, but if we understand it, we can avoid pain. Do you know what I’m saying? So, the knowledge is what really gives you the freedom and the power to live or abide by them, by your choice, and benefit from that. So, the Laws of Success are always present, and they’re always affecting us, and we can either live by them or not. We can do it consciously or unconsciously. But, you know, it’s when we understand them that we can abide them on purpose and avoid pain. People, you could say, “Well, I don’t believe in gravity.” You know, you’re still going to fall off the building if you get too close to the edge. It’s just there.
So, there are seven laws that I like to bring up; sometimes I will throw in the eighth one that is kind of a bonus law. And, it just kind of sums it all up. It has become my toolbox for when something happens, and I just don’t know what to think about it, I kind of run down my list of laws and, “All right, which one, if I think on right now, is going to help me respond to this in the best way?”
The first one is called The Law of Perpetual Transmutation. It’s a big word, and it just means that all circumstances and things are perpetually coming into form or going out of form according to your thoughts. So, as you believe in your goal, the goal is developing. As you doubt it, it’s undeveloping. And all of this goes on without us seeing it. And really, it’s not until the last stages of accomplishing the goal that we see the evidence of the effects of our thoughts. And that’s why just thinking on this one helps me believe longer – trusting that things are happening even though I can’t see them.
The second one is called The Law of Relativity. The Law of Relativity is a lot of think on when you’re trying to stay positive, you know, because you’ve always heard, oh, “Think positive,” you know, “You’ve got to stay believing,” and all these good things. But sometimes you just don’t know how to think positive about something that is evidently horrendous. So, the Law of Relativity says that your situation is not fundamentally good or bad until you compare it to something else; it’s all relative. So, if something bad has happened, by default we look at that, and we get all upset, and we put ourselves into this negative place, and then the goals we’ve set start to pull away from us. But instead, when something bad happens, you look at it and say, “Okay, well, you know what? How could this be worse?” And put it in a good light. No matter how ugly it is, it can always be placed in a good light. Have you experienced that? Have you seen a need to turn the way you view things around? The circumstances don’t change, but the way you view them can be changed.
MARNIE: Yeah, I think there are two things that come right to mind for me on this one. First of all is the practice of taking things to the worst possible scenario. And I love that practice. I do that. Whenever I’m scared, I do that because I always want to know, “Okay, if this is the worst that it possibly could be, can we still live through this?” And that really helps to put it into perspective. It could be a lot worse than it is usually.
The other thing that comes to my mind is I really hate the saying, “Well, you’ve got it better than a lot of people. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and just get on with life.” You know, sometimes the situation you’re in is so painful, in whatever way – physical, emotional, relational, that I believe somebody has it worse than me, but I don’t see how that helps me right now. And what I really like is that the Law of Relativity isn’t saying that. It isn’t saying “Because it’s worse for somebody else, it should be better for you.” That’s not what it’s saying. It’s saying, “Put this into perspective so you can get a little perspective on it.”
LESLIE: The way I like to look at it is when I’m having a really bad day and I can kind of step outside of myself – usually I have to have my pity party first for a while – but when I’m done with that, I’ll look at it and I’ll say, “You know what?” I’ll thank God for that day as it is because without it, I won’t really even know how good the next day is. You know – the good day; I won’t appreciate the good day. So, I thank Him for the bad one because, like, “Man, this is going to really help me appreciate the good ones.” And, you know, it’s a small little shift, but it really keeps those goals moving towards you.
MARNIE: That’s such a great way to think about it. There’s another phrase that I have I started about two years ago. I had to think about it for a full year before it became a practice for me, but now it’s a habit whenever I’m going through something really, really hard, and painful.
You guys, you’re listening to us, and you’re listening to people who have experienced a lot of success in their lives, but we still have painful things all the time, just like you. The painful things don’t go away. What you do with them maybe changes, but they don’t go away.
One of the things I love to do now, Leslie, is I just envision myself seeing Jesus face-to-face on that day when I’m in Heaven with him, and when I get to finally see Him face-to-face like that in person in the flesh (our flesh that we’ll have then). I like to imagine Him just looking back at this particular situation I’m in with me. In that moment, I know that what I’m going to realize is that He was protecting, He was providing, He was doing everything He could and still keep the world spinning in the way He knows it needs to be until all things work out. He’s got a bigger job than we do. I know that I’m going to, in that day, be horrified at my childish behavior if I look back and say, “Oh, you know, I was such a complainer/whiner/ungrateful person then.” You know, so, like you, you experience the pain, but then you tell your brain, “Okay, come on. There is more to life than this.” Relativity – I love it. What’s the next one?
LESLIE: And there’s a purpose for it. Can I just interject a quick story really quickly? It came to mind, and I feel like sharing it.
That is, I was facing something that just felt like it was tearing my world apart, and it was devastating me, and I was angry at God, and I was angry at everyone around me, and I just wasn’t handling it very well. Inside, I knew, “Oh, Leslie, you need to stop acting this way. It’s not the right thing to do. Blah-blah-blah.” But I was just mad. It caused me to do certain things that I would not have done otherwise that were uncomfortable, that I didn’t like. But, on the other side of that, I finally could see things clearly, and I realized, “You know what? He allowed me to go through that because He knew that’s what needed to happen to cause me to do that.” And I realized He was there all along. He was lovingly holding me through it, knowing that if it got bad enough, I would move, and I did. It was only after I moved that I realized, “Ah. It was all part of the plan. And it’s okay.”
So, next one. The next one is called the Law of Vibration. Now, the Law of Vibration refers to the fact that everything in the world, on a molecular level, is buzzing around, moving, vibrating. You know, it’s an ocean of motion when you boil it right down to the cellular and the molecular level. Have you ever walked into a room where somebody’s angry and you can feel it and they didn’t even have to say anything?
MARNIE: I have to tell you… I’m going to just say something right here because I didn’t even know that was possible until we had our third child. He was the baby that would do that. I would walk into a room, sit down, and pretty soon, he’d be squirming around, and then he’d be screaming because his stomach was upset. He could feel tension in the air that I was completely oblivious to. It’s the craziest thing.
LESLIE: Yeah, they’re sensitive to that.
MARNIE: You taught me this. I knew that this was there, Leslie, but until you explained it… I hope you’re going to give us your illustrations here, how you help people see this… I never really got this until I heard you explain it.
LESLIE: It’s kind of revealing because I have a son who, no matter what I say, he knows what I’m feeling, and it comes down to words are noise, vibrations never lie. It’s true. You know, if you’re really sensitive to that — and I think that’s one of our goals in this life is to become sensitive to those spiritual things and the less obvious physical input, data, whatever that our five senses give us. Here’s the thing: Our thoughts control our vibrations. Our body is a tool we were given to go about and do things. We are not a body. We live in a body. And our body vibrates just like every other object in the room. By our vibration, people pick up senses. They pick up on things from us, emotions from us. So, if you’re going in for a job interview, and you’re saying all the right things, and you’ve got all the right body language, but deep in your heart, you have disbelief, or you have negative feelings or whatever, that person who is interviewing you is going to pick up on something that isn’t quite right, and they may not be conscious to it. But the results that you get are going to be more according to your vibration than the words you choose and the things you do.
So, here’s what you need to know: your thoughts, the thoughts you choose, control that vibration. When you change your thoughts and you allow the emotions to match those thoughts, you’re going to change the kinds of results you get and the kinds of blessings that show up in your life.
That’s why gratitude is so important. Living in gratitude, you can live in a place that allows more good things to come to you. When you’re angry and bitter and ungrateful—you know, those of you listening who are parents, when your child receives something from you and receives it with ingratitude or negativity, how quickly are you ready to give them something else? Life is no different. I really believe that.
So, that’s the Law of Vibration. Are we ready for the next one?
MARNIE: No, not at all!
LESLIE: I’m ready to run. I love these!
MARNIE: Yeah, you are. You’re way ahead of me. No, I’m thinking on this one. First of all, I was thinking about gratitude. You were taking about parents. That brought to my mind the child who keeps looking at the presents under the tree coming up to Christmas time and is so disgusted, impatient, ungrateful that you almost want to take that present out from under the tree. You’re planning on giving the kid that present, but, because of their stinking attitude, it’s like, “Wow, this isn’t even fun anymore for me!” Again, remember that God is managing the entire universe. It’s not an easy job. And He’s got a lot of people to think about other than just you, other than just me. It’s amazing because I’m always thinking about me, but He’s got a few other people on His mind. So, He wants us to just be grateful and to wait for His timing on things, and a lot of times, that’s when we get icky.
Leslie, before we move off of this, tell us about radio waves because that’s the one that just blew me away.
LESLIE: It’s interesting because if you have a radio in your room, and you turn it on, and you hear what’s being broadcast—let’s say it’s country music, and you listen to that for a while, and you think, “Oh, it’s nice, but you know what? I’m ready for classical.” You’re not going to call the radio station up and say, “Okay, I’m ready for classical now. Could you change that, your programming?” They’re going to be like, “No. You change your dial. The classical music is already in the room with you. The country music is in the room with you.” People talk about the Law of Attraction and that if you just think right, you’ll attract everything you need into your life. Well, in reality, it’s like a radio and radio waves. Everything you already want and need is already right there near you, close enough to you that you could claim it at any time. But until you are in the right vibration, vibrating at the right frequency, to recognize it, it’s going to stay invisible. It’s like the radio did not attract the music; the music was already there.
I like to also make the point that the solution to every problem, and the next step for every goal, is only an idea away. And that idea is in the room with you, just as classical music is. It’s just inspired ideas. They’re already there. They’re already waiting for you. You tune into it by changing your vibration, which is changed by your thoughts. It’s so simple. It’s so simple.
MARNIE: This is revolutionary for me. You know what? I’ve always been a very positive thinker, a very grateful person, always trying to… you know, if I catch myself doing self-talk that is demeaning to me or somebody else or a situation, as you run that right to Jesus and talk to Him about it, and it’s amazing how fast He can turn that around and show me a little perspective on it, and it’s always good. He has a great perspective. But when you explain vibration, you explain it in such an interesting way that it makes me realize how many times I was still leaving blessings on the table because I was allowing myself to just be a negative ick. How fun is that for you? How fun is it for the people around you? How effective is that being, really? Just ask yourself. Maybe it would be more effective to change the vibration and have fun.
LESLIE: I have to say, too, I mean, think about it. Maybe I’m the only one, but how often – ask yourself this: How often have you knelt in prayer to ask for something you really, really need, all the while picturing the disaster you’re trying to avoid and feeling anxiety about the consequences if that blessing doesn’t come. So, what you’re doing is you’re speaking the words to ask – we’ve been promised, “Ask and ye shall receive.” – but ask in faith, nothing wavering. That means, picture it done. Feel it as though it has already happened. And if you are feeling it as though it’s already happened, you’re going to be in a state of gratitude for it before it’s even yours. Then ask for it. That’s asking with faith. But most of the time, we say, “Oh, please, send me money before my mortgage comes due, because otherwise I’ll be on the streets.” And you’re picturing yourself on the streets. You’ve got to get lined up so that God can answer the prayer. He wants to.
MARNIE: It goes back to what you just said a little while ago: Words are noise. Vibrations never lie. Really, it says God sees the heart of a person. He’s not looking to your words if your words aren’t matching what your heart is saying. He understands what your heart is saying. It’s just so powerful. Let’s keep going because the time is going by. This is so much fun. I could talk about this forever. In fact, I think I will!
LESLIE: The next one is called the Law of Polarity. I love this one; it’s one of my favorites. Everything has an opposite. A bad situation is equally good. In other words, if something happens that you think is horrible in your life, by the Law of Polarity, you know that contained within it, as Napoleon Hill says, is the seed of equal or greater benefit. The seed of equal or greater benefit. But most of the time, we see this horrible thing that’s happened to us, and that’s all we can see. But this law tells me, “Ooo, there’s a package inside this somewhere. I’m going to go find it.”
It reminds me of a story of these two little boys who woke up Christmas morning to go to the tree, and all there was, was all this horse manure everywhere. The one little boy was crying and crying, “Oh, this is horrible. At Christmas, there’s horse manure everywhere, everywhere.” The other little boy, his brother, started jumping through it and digging in it. The mom was like, “What are you doing?” He said, “Well, with this much manure here, there’s got to be a pony somewhere.” So, you know, it’s a law that you can depend on. When there is something horrible, it does contain something of benefit to you. All it takes is an intention to find it, and you find it. You turn it around, and you can be so grateful for that horrible experience because of the gifts that it contains.
MARNIE: I have to play Devil’s Advocate for just a moment here. Because, if it’s true that if in everything bad there has to be something good, is it also true that whenever something good is happening to you, that means something equally or more bad will happen to you?
LESLIE: No. It means there is a seed of equal or greater bad. It’s the seed in both sides. It comes down to, “You will find what you’re looking for.”
MARNIE: There’s a great way – A friend of mine taught me this saying, and I say it all the time: “Everything that comes into my life, God wants to use for my good. But everything that comes into my life, Satan wants to use to destroy me.” Leslie, I don’t know how many times I say that every week. A battle will come up, and I’m like, “Okay, God, you want to use this for good and Satan wants to use this for bad. Who am I going to partner with here?” It’s a choice. In that moment, you have a choice.
LESLIE: It is a choice.
MARNIE: I love that clarity. Thank you. Okay, number five.
LESLIE: Number five is the Law of Rhythm. I rely on this one so much. When you feel down, by the Law of Rhythm, you can be assured that an upswing is coming. So, in other words, when you’re having a down day, a lot of people fall into the trap of saying “Oh, my life is headed for doom because of this bad day. It’s going in a direction that’s unacceptable.” I look at a bad day as, “Oh, okay. Law of Rhythm.” I have to have this up-and-down rhythm in order for me to appreciate the good. If it was a straight shot to the top, all the way easy going, I wouldn’t know joy.
Think about going to an amusement park, and you go get on a rollercoaster. Imagine this rollercoaster: You get on at the bottom, and you’re in this cart, and it cranks its way, and so it’s pulling you all the way to the top, and once you get to the top, you get off and you climb down because the ride is over. Or, there’s the regular rollercoaster right, which, you get to the top and it sends you on this journey: there’s ups and downs and twists and turns. Which rollercoaster ride would have the longest line? We want to feel. It’s the ups and downs that cause us to feel. If you go at the same pace at the same rate, imagine getting in a car and being driven somewhere with your eyes blindfolded. If you never turned, if you never sped up or slow down, you might as well just be sitting there still – you wouldn’t even know the difference. You have to feel. When people stop feeling things, sometimes they turn to substance abuse or other things just to get them to feel something because something is better than nothing.
That’s why we need to embrace the ups and downs, recognize that everything in nature is rhythmic. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. Nobody goes and stands on the beach mourning the loss of the water as it goes out; they know it will come back. You know?
MARNIE: It’s interesting. In my book called Feeling Love: Connecting with God in the Minutes You Have, I talk about when you’re just devastated. Something just horrible has happened. At that moment, then I say, “Well, good, because now I know I’m still alive and I’ve got a few more days here left on earth to accomplish something before I go to Heaven where everything is not going to die.” You know, while we’re here, if you’re experiencing grief or something horrible, just remember you have a couple more days on earth, or maybe another hour or whatever, to do something for the glory of God. And what you can do in that very moment is thank him for that moment that you still have that you can express your gratitude to God in the body you are currently in. Because you are not going to always have this opportunity. At some point, you will leave this body behind, and you’ll be expressing your gratitude in a different way. But while we’re here, this is the only moment we have to do this. Doing it, it calls it in the Bible, to sacrifice the praise. That’s when it hurts, you know — now I’m going to praise you anyway. And that is of great value to God. He loves those. He loves those.
LESLIE: We only live in lack when we’re thinking ahead at some future event where we’re afraid we don’t have what we need for that moment. In any given moment, we have all that we need right now, and we have to remember to stop and recognize that. You know, it’s when people start thinking, “Oh, well, I don’t have what I need for next Thursday” that they fall into this fear and doubt, and then the Law of Perpetual Transmutation starts to kick in, and they’re not even aware of it, and it can fulfill itself.
MARNIE: If listeners got nothing else out of the whole program except what you just said, that would be worth it right there. Okay, let’s go onto number six.
LESLIE: Okay, the next one is called the Law of Cause & Effect. It tells us that action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions. So, in other words, if you are trying to get something, you need to turn that around and just focus on what you can give. As you strive to serve and do God’s will, you can trust that all that you need will continue to come to you as you need it. He loves to test our faith. He loves to see how long we will remain faithful when all appearances show that we are running out. Oh, so many of the verses have promised us to “take no thought of what ye shall wear” or “what ye shall eat.” Do what you’re put here to do, trust God, and it’s all going to work out.
I’ve had to test that over and over and over again, and I keep thinking I’ve learned it, and then he tests me again to make sure I still know it. I’m grateful for those tests because it reminds me of my dependence on him.
MARNIE: Yeah. I just think, Leslie, too, that going into Christ and into Christ’s likeness, I compare it to a screw going into a piece of wood. You learn that lesson with that first screw, and then as that screwdriver takes it another twist around, you feel that. You actually feel that. But every other twist around, Christ is becoming more of your centrality, more of who you are, more of what you are, more of what you are breathing, what you are doing. And every turn—remember, it may be painful, but it’s wonderful because it’s making you more Christlike. Well, it’s not. It has the potential to make you more Christlike. You have to choose whether that’s how you’re going to think about it or not.
I love Cause & Effect. This is the one where I feel like is the closest to sowing and reaping.
LESLIE: Yeah, it’s the Law of the Harvest.
MARNIE: Yeah, I love that.
LESLIE: Good. The next one is called the Law of Gender or Gestation (I’ve heard it kind of both ways), and I’ve thought a lot on this and what the meaning is behind it. A couple of directions I like it to take it is the Law of Gestation just says that every idea seed has a gestation period just like we know exactly how many days or weeks it takes for an elephant to go from conception to birth, we know approximately it is 40 weeks for a human to go from conception to birth, and the thing about our ideas – they are just like those kinds of seeds that take time to mature and develop. We don’t know how long it takes for that particular idea to develop. We just have to hang on to the trust that we plant the seed, and we don’t pull it out every day to see if it’s sprouting roots. We have to let it gestate. And, in fact, you think about it—how often have you set a goal, and you’ve set a date for that goal, and the date comes, and it didn’t happen, and then a lot of people say, “Well, I guess this goal setting thing doesn’t work.” Well, how many women who have borne children got to 41 weeks and say, “Oh, I guess this baby thing isn’t going to work.” Every day that the baby has not come, they’re going to spend their time getting more ready. “Oh, I have another day to prepare the nursery a little bit more. Oh, I have another day to get some food frozen for my family for meals for that first week – or whatever.”
So, most of these laws are to help us think counterintuitively when things don’t go the way we think they should. So, when you get to the date that you set for your goal, and it doesn’t happen, rather than getting disappointed and saying, “Oh, man, I don’t know what I did wrong.” Remember the Law of Perpetual Transmutation. You don’t want to halt its progress by thinking and doubting in that way. Instead, you say, “Man! Boy, I’m so glad it didn’t come yet, because it must be better for the wait. I want the baby—I don’t want the embryo. I want it to come fully formed.” We just don’t know how long these things take.
There were some goals that I’ve set that I thought would take two months, and they took five years. Looking back, I can see how, if it had showed up in two months, it would not have been good. There were things that had to take place first, you know, situations that had to be in line, and stuff, so that I could be prepared to receive it in the right way at the right time with the right maturity and preparations. So, allow that process to take place.
MARNIE: There are two things I want to say here because I think this huge. First of all, I always say that when we get to Heaven, I believe that the things that will surprise us the most about anything in life is all going to be related to timing, where we really couldn’t see what God was doing, but He had a perfect plan, and we were on track with it, but because we couldn’t see the timing – again, like the Christmas tree – and the younger you are, the less you can understand wait. The smaller faith we have, the less we can understand wait. Wait is a horrible place. We hate wait. We really like, you know, our instant societies. But we look at the people in the Bible who were willing to live with an open hand, which was, let’s look at Abraham, for example. He was with an open hand, waited until he was what, almost 100 years old, to have that child. Then, living with an open hand, God says, “No, go sacrifice the child.” So, he is even willing to do that – to completely die to the dream once he has it. He lives with such an open hand. And God just loves that man.
And we can see other people in the Bible that were like that along the way, too. Joseph along the way: In the pit, okay, then sold into slavery, then he does his best he gets Potiphar and all the way to the bottom – all the way to the dungeon now. He goes to the top of that and gets the top finally and gets to sit on the throne. But, you know what, he couldn’t see that all the way along the way – he had no hope except that he had a vision. You know, he had to just wait-wait-wait. So, the people in the Bible really demonstrate this for us. This gestation thing. It’s a blind shoot.
When you set a goal, that is an absolutely, but hold it with an open hand. One of the things I think, Leslie – I think that sometimes the goals we have to wait the longest for, the ones that have the biggest effect on us and on the people around us in our sphere of influence, and even possibly on future generations – are often times the ones that cost us the most in the face. You know, the ones that we think are really, really tough.
LESLIE: Yeah, I can attest to that. It’s true.
MARNIE: Are you going to give us an eighth bonus Law today?
LESLIE: Yeah, I’ll give you the bonus. This is one of my favorites. It’s called the Vacuum Law of Prosperity. This is the one that says nature abhors a vacuum. In other words, if you want something in your life that does not currently exist, you need to make a place for it. I was talking to a woman who was wanting to be married, was hoping to find that special person that she could share her life with, and when she learned about the Vacuum Law, she realized, “You know what? I’ve been living alone for so long, I haven’t made a place for a husband.” So, she cleared out her closet and emptied half of the closet so there would be room for a man’s clothing. She created a place. Nature abhors a vacuum.
I like to tell this story if we have time – it’s a quick one. Bob Proctor was my mentor for many years, and he shared a story that taught me this in a very, very profound way. He said he was visiting his aunt who lived in a trailer home. When he got there, the aunt was just mortified and apologizing about her horrible curtains. She hated her curtains. And she just wouldn’t stop talking about how embarrassed she was about them. And he said, “You know, dear Aunt, you love those curtains.” She said, “What are you talking about? I hate them.” He said, “No, you love them.” She was like, “I do not love them.” He said, “If you hated them, they would be gone. You love them – that’s why they’re here.” And she said, “But I don’t have money to replace them.” He said, “You don’t need new curtains because you don’t have a place for new curtains.” So, he convinced her to take them down, clean them up, and give them away – not sell them, give them away. (God pays better than yard sale shoppers, by the way.) So, she did this, and the next time he came to visit her, and, you know, she was really concerned about that because she didn’t have the money to replace them, and she didn’t like living in a fishbowl, so the next time he came to visit her, she had new, beautiful curtains, and her furniture was all gone. She had learned that it works.
This is one of my favorite Laws because it is something that you can put to the test immediately. You don’t have to wait to understand anything. You can just put it to the test. I came home from learning about this one at an event, and we had been complaining and apologizing for our carpet for three years. We didn’t have the money to replace it. We were barely making ends meet as it was, but we were just so fed up with this nasty carpet. We had bought the home as a repossessed home, and it had nasty stuff on there when we moved in. We washed it as best we could, but we knew that it had always been that way – you know? So, we came home, and we pulled out the carpet. We let the kids go to town with it with markers and food, and they finger painted with ketchup and syrup and just had a good time. Because it wasn’t worth giving away. You know? We just thought we’d make some fun out of it. Pulled it out, threw it away, and we lived on tack strips for about three weeks. But, I tell ya, we got creative. When the need was big enough, and it was – we had babies on those floors with tack strips around the edges and concrete. We found a way, and we ended up buying new carpet without going into debt. I don’t know where the money came from, but we created a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum.
So, it’s a powerful, powerful lesson: If there is something you’ve been complaining about, let it go. Make room for something better. It’s the Sea of Galilee principle. You think about the River Jordan and how it goes from the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea, and all the water flows through the Sea of Galilee, and it’s a place of great industry, and there’s lots of growth there, lots of fish. Then it travels down through, into the Dead Sea, where it has no outlet – it just keeps everything that comes to it. And the water ends up evaporating anyway, and it leaves it with such toxic minerals that nothing can grow there. So, people who hang onto everything out of fear that they’ll lose whatever, they’re going to lose it anyway, and they’re going to be left with this decay and non-growth kind of a life. You’ve got to let things go – just let things flow through your life if you’re not using it. Things were created to be used. If you’re not using it, let somebody use it who can appreciate it. So, that’s my plug on that.
MARNIE: Leslie, I know your story, but there’s somebody listening right now who has never heard of you until they stopped into this show. They might be saying, “Well, that’s fine for her. She’s a best-selling author. She’s doing well.” Why don’t you just, very quickly, Leslie, tell them where you came from.
LESLIE: Okay. Well, my husband and I, we married young, and we had dreams of me being a stay-at-home mom. That was the plan. After a year of being married, I had our first baby, and I stayed home with him for a year without being financially prepared to do so. We were operating on faith that this is what we believed God wanted for our family, so we were just going to do it as though it was going to work out and trust. What happened was that it didn’t work out. We went into debt pretty deeply. I ended up having to go back to work after my husband lost his job, and I remember dropping my baby off at daycare in the morning when it was still dark and picking him up again after work when it was dark again. I didn’t see him during the light of day during the week, and it put me into a depression. A few kids later, it got to a point where, I mean, this was the first time I started questioning whether or not there really was a God. I felt like I was saying goodbye to someone I had leaned on for so many years, because “Where was He now?” Here, I had put my faith in Him, and it didn’t work out. I had a lot of questions about – “Really, what’s going on?” We attended seminars and we read books for seven years trying to make sense out of all of this. It stretched us like nothing has ever stretched me to the point where —I mean we’re talking about mentality and how you respond to challenges.
There was one day I came outside of our little two-bedroom apartment, and I walked outside, and I saw my broom had been broken in half by a neighbor kid. You know, there’s a hundred ways to solve that problem, but where I was at, in my depression, in my frustration, in my sense of being lost, I ended up calling the police on the kid who broke my broom. A year later, I called the police on a little five-year-old boy who stole cookie dough from my fridge. Nobody can tell me I haven’t been in a place of desperation. I’ve lived there a long time. It was only in that place that I was finally prepared and open enough to seek deeper answers than what I had been taught that far.
Come to find out, there is a law in Heaven that says there are laws that are connected to the blessings we seek, and if you want that blessing, you have to obey the law that is connected to that blessing. I was like, “What are these laws? Just be good.” Well, be good and you’ll prosper is like saying, “As long as I obey the speed limit, I can shoplift without consequence.” They’re not even related to each other. So, there are these Laws of Prosperity that are connected to the amount of abundances in your life. It all works together – it’s all related. But I just needed somebody to kind of point it out a little more clearly because I wasn’t getting it on my own.
MARNIE: That’s where you came around to ThoughtsAlive International; that’s where you help families to really understand these principles. I guess, for listeners, I’ve been through this training. It is so excellent, guys, if you haven’t done it, be sure to check that out.
Leslie, what is the craziest goal you’ve ever set, and how did it work out for you?
LESLIE: I have to rack my brain to find which one is the craziest, because we’ve seen a lot of crazy goals. But the one that I want to share – you know, they range, anywhere from getting a big chunky wooden headboard that I wanted and finding it out for the trash one day or moving into the house of our dreams – whatever – anything in between. The one that I want to share the most, though, relates with the thing that drives me and all the goals I’ve ever set. And that is family time. There is nothing more important to me than my family. So, all the goals I set are “How can I accomplish this or that so that I can have more time with my family?” It all comes back to that. So, there was one summer that I thought, “I want to take my children (there are seven of them) with my husband. We want to take a trip back east (we live in Arizona). We want to take a trip back east to participate in this big theatrical production – it’s a volunteer thing; it’s a ministry kind of thing – where it depicts sections of scripture. And, I thought, “What an amazing experience to go spend two weeks learning all the parts and putting on this big pageant with, like, 700 cast members, in an outdoor theater.” An amazing experience. I’d had a dream for about ten years to take my family to participate in that. But when I counted up the cost, it was going to amount to about $10,000 at a time when we didn’t have discretionary money to work with. I mean, we were trying to make ends meet, trying to keep our house paid, trying to keep food on the table. How were we going to come up with $10,000 to take this trip and create this memory with the family? It was at a time when all of my children were at home, you know, because once the older ones get older, you start seeing them leave the home, and I wanted to create that memory. So, here’s the thing, though, to participate in it, we had to apply ten months ahead. So, ten months ahead, I had to sign up my family, or at least apply. I thought, “Well, it doesn’t hurt anything to apply. Even though we don’t have the money to do this, I’m going to apply and just see if we get in.” So then, that was in September of the year before. Well, come November, we were notified that we were accepted. I’m like, “Oh, dang! This means now I’ve got to figure out how we’re going to do this.”
So, the hardest part of this whole process was making the decision to do it. Because if you wait until the way is there, you’re never going to get things done. These hard, hard goals have to start with a decision to do it in spite of the lack of resources. That was something we counseled about as a family. Okay, “are we ready to put our heart and soul behind this?” We felt like it was something God wanted for us, so we felt like He was on our side, but we couldn’t see how it was going to happen. So, we responded to the letter and said, “Yes, we’ll be there.”
And, week after week, I just started really just trying to find ways to start setting aside the money, start getting the plane tickets. Imagine buying plane tickets for nine people to cross the country without assurance that you’re going to have the money for the rest of what you need once you get there. Every step of the way was a leap of faith. It got to the point where we had to leave on Thursday or Friday, and the last of the money that we needed showed up Wednesday. We’d been working on it all year long. But, see, by the time you’re deep into it, there’s no turning back. You’ve burned your bridges. You’re going for it. And you’re going to do everything you can. The Lord rewards that kind of faith. He really does. But it’s an exercise.
MARNIE: I want to talk about this next with you anyway, so this is a great segue. I always think about when they were building the one bridge—I think it was the Golden Gate Bridge— and the guys were falling to their deaths because they’d just be doing their work, and they just couldn’t hang on and do their work. So, these guys were falling and dying. The work was just progressing at a snail’s pace. What they did is they invested thousands and tens of thousands of dollars into this huge net that went under the construction project. It was above the water, so if you fell, you would still have a shocking experience, and you’d have a long walk back, but at least you wouldn’t die. So, what happened is they ended up finishing the bridge in record time – faster than they had imagined – so they saved back all the money they spent on the net simply by having people know that they were okay. Even if they fell, they were okay.
And I think that’s the difference between people who are willing to really go for a goal and those who aren’t. they understand that God’s got their back. It’s “Even if I fail here, it’s okay for me to try. It’s okay for me to go for it.” You have such a unique way of thinking about this, Leslie, about what’s your part and what’s God’s part. For instance, you, until the day before you left, you didn’t have the rest of that money, and you didn’t know how to get it, I assume. You didn’t have a brilliant plan to come up with the rest of this money. You were trusting. You were doing the things that come to your mind to do, but you were trusting for the rest. Tell us about how you manage that balance: What your part is and what is God’s part.
LESLIE: You have to keep those seven laws in mind. You know, that exercise was a test of the Perpetual Transmutation principle: That as long as I take a step towards it, it’s taking a step towards me. And I don’t always know how to go about what needs to be done, but I’ve learned to trust that it’s my job just to keep rolling, to stay in forward motion, and it’s God’s job to steer me. You can’t steer a parked car, right? And you’re going to fall, so just be sure to keep falling forward. My dad taught me to work like it depends on me and pray like it depends on God, and then the two of us together can move mountains. That’s really what it comes down to. You’ve just got to stay in motion. Do something. People keep thinking, “Oh, I’ve got to do some big miraculous thing to make progress.” No, it’s one phone call. It’s filing that paper. It’s just doing something that keeps you in forward motion. Every act in the right direction sets the Law of Cause & Effect. It says that if you put that ripple out in that direction, something’s going to ripple back towards you, and the things you need will show up when you get there.
Oh, man, if we had time, I’d tell you the story about the box fan. If we have time, I’ll throw that in – remind me.
MARNIE: Okay, sounds good. I just want to – we are coming to the end of the hour here. I just want you to know, if you’re listening and this is vibrating with you, and you’re saying, “This is what I’ve been looking for. This is what I haven’t understood. I need more of this information.” First of all, the way to get started with Leslie is to go over to jackrabbitfactor.com, request that free book. That gets you onto the mailing list, and the autoresponder there will help you understand how to proceed if you want to get more information about their training program, about their mentorship training – anything and everything is over there. All I can say is I highly, highly, highly recommend it. There are no red flags here, guys. There’s just such great information. So, I highly recommend it.
I want, though, Leslie, before we let you tell your story here to end up – we’ve got about five minutes left – I want you to just tell us how did you get into the coaching side of it? You’ve kind of shared with us how you kind of came to understand the principles, but how did you begin this side of it, where you’re helping other people understand it?
LESLIE: You suffer long enough that when you finally have your breakthrough, and, in our case, when we finally understood what was missing in our thinking, in three months we tripled our income after those seven years of just “Argh!” It was such a profound breakthrough that it was kind of like, “Alright, yeah, I could just go on with my life and enjoy the breakthrough,” but it had been so painful before that there was something inside of me that had to help others experience the same thing. You know, someone asked a famous Rockstar once, “Well, so why do you write music?” And he just kind of laughed, and he said, “So I can sleep!” It was like something inside that just has to be done, and that’s what I feel like has happened to me over the years. I still remember how painful it is to live there, and I want people to feel the breakthrough that I had. I want them to experience that.
MARNIE: Thank you. And thank you also, just for that. Again, a lot of what we do here on this show is we talk about life paradigms, and one of mine, for sure, is the way that you know that it’s something that God’s putting in your heart is: First of all, that it lines up with His laws, which are Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and Love your neighbor as yourself. If your goal lines up with those two things, those two rules, AND it simply will not go away, it will NOT go away – even when you’re sure it’s dead, buried, and gone.
LESLIE: I have to say, I have to say that my whole desire was just to be Mom. I didn’t want a career. I wasn’t looking for a career. In fact, the things that I’ve done the last ten years to put this together, honestly, I’ve done kicking and screaming. It’s been this internal wrestle, like, “Oh, I want to, but I don’t want to. I want to, but I don’t want to.” I found that every time I tried to abandon it, the Lord’s like, “Nope, I’ve got something for you to do here. Finish the job. Finish the job.” So, things always go smoother when I obey that. So, it is.
MARNIE: I just encourage you to know that all of us are your little kids too, you know. We’re all just learning from you just like your own kids are. So, just envision yourself as the Isaiah-53 woman who extended her tent pegs, and there’s room for all of us!
Okay, we have two minutes. Do you have time to tell us your story?
LESLIE: Well, you know what? I wanted to tell you this box sand story, but I feel like there’s something else I need to say instead. And that is, when I first got started teaching these things and I was doing seminars – you know, when I’m pregnant, my hormones and my moods are just, it’s impossible for me to think positive when I’m pregnant. (I know it’s probably a chemical imbalance or something.) So, early on, I was expecting, and I was frustrated with the world, nothing was right, I was angry at everybody. It was just one of those moods. I felt the Lord saying, “Okay, you need to do another class.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? I can’t do a seminar thinking this way. I can’t teach people how to think positive when I’m thinking this way. Nobody will come. Nobody will want to be there. I’m the worst example in the world.” So, all these negative thoughts. But, like you said, it wouldn’t leave me alone. It wouldn’t leave me alone. It finally got the point where I’m like, “Okay, fine. I’ll do it, but, you know, I don’t promise that I’m going to do it good. I’m just going to go through the motions. If you can make something good of it, great. Go for it.” I’ve got this little attitude going on. So, I didn’t think positive about it. I was thinking extremely negative about it, but I was still willing to do what I felt like the Lord wanted me to do.
By turning the rest of it over to him, knowing that I’ll do the best I can, but he’s going to have to finish the job, that ended up being the most well-attended seminar I had ever put on. And here I didn’t believe anybody would come. So, that’s one thing that I think separates my philosophy from other gurus out there that teach the Law of Attraction and everything, is that Yes, there are laws. But you don’t have to live them perfectly as long as you rely on your Creator to help make up the difference because we are not superhuman; we don’t have to be. We are just who we are, and the Lord can do so much through us if we are just willing to move our feet and trust that however pathetic we are, and however meager our effort is, He can still make something out of it. Search the scriptures: He does it all the time. And it’s the people who say, “Oh, I’m not good enough” that don’t get anything done, and what can He do with that?
MARNIE: I really think those are the ones he loves to work with, Leslie. The little girl who is kicking and screaming but doing exactly what he says.
LESLIE: Yeah.
MARNIE: You guys, this hour has flown by. Thanks to Leslie for joining us. I hope you guys have a great day. See you next time. Bye-bye.
ANNOUNCER: This concludes today’s episode of the Rare Faith Podcast. You’ve been listening to Leslie Householder, author of The Jackrabbit Factor, Portal to Genius, and Hidden Treasures: Heaven’s Astonishing Help with Your Money Matters. All three books can be downloaded free at www.ARareKindofFaith.com. So, tell your friends, and join Leslie again next time as she goes even deeper into the principles that will help you change your life.
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