This is part 2 in a 3-part series, where I am a special guest on the “A New Day Show” with Dr. Daphne Clarke-Hudson of the greater New York area. This multi-part show offers thought provoking, empowering, and inspirational dialogue as I relate my message to a new audience.
Related resources:
More about Daphne Clarke-Hudson
Jackrabbit Factor FREE download
The 12-week Mindset Mastery Home Study Program
TRANSCRIPT:
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Rare Faith Podcast where the solution to every problem is only an idea away, where the same activity with just a little more awareness always yields better results. Award-winning bestselling 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 ARareKindofFaith.com.
DR DAPHNE: Good morning and welcome to the “A New Day Show”. I’m Daphne Clarke-Hudson, I’m your host. I’m also referred to as the “queen of the empowered soul” and I’m so excited to be joining you this morning. I am broadcasting out of New Milford this morning and we are experiencing an amazing, beautiful Wednesday morning. And regardless of where you are today, whether you are in another country, in another time zone, I just pray that you will take the time to appreciate the fact that you are able to recognize today.
We have a guest who has returned to us and a few weeks ago, we had her on and the technology was less than generous to us, and I know a lot of the listeners had sent email in about having her back because they weren’t able to ask their questions. So I’m praying that you all will join in this morning with your questions and to just let her know how much we, here at “The New Day Show” love her. And without any further delay, let me welcome our esteemed, honored guest, Mrs Leslie Householder. Leslie, good morning.
LESLIE: Good morning, Daphne. How are you?
DR DAPHNE: I am wonderful. I pray it is as beautiful where you are as it is here in Connecticut this morning. It’s an amazing summer day.
LESLIE: It’s probably a little warmer here than in Connecticut but it is beautiful.
DR DAPHNE: It is still beautiful. At least, we are alive to experience whatever weather it is. You know, a couple of days ago when we were having lots of rain here, a lady was complaining about the rain and I said to her “every day is a beautiful day so long as we are alive. We have beautiful rainy days, sunny days, cloudy days but so long as we are alive to acknowledge that there are all beautiful days.” So welcome back Leslie to the “A New Day Show”. I greatly appreciate it for you being so generous with your knowledge and your time to share with us.
LESLIE: It’s a pleasure to be here and thank you for having me back.
DR DAPHNE: It’s a pleasure. Would you please take a little time to, once again, introduce yourself to the listeners? I know we have some new listeners and we have some returning ones but would you please take this time to do so?
LESLIE: Yeah, sure. Just a little bit of background, again, my name is Leslie Householder. I am a wife and I have seven children, and I love my life and it wasn’t always that way. I remember when we first married, we very much both of us wanted me to be able to stay home with the children when they started to come along, and that was our agreement and that was our expectation. And we believed that even though we were struggling financially at that time, that when the babies came, that God would provide a way for us to be able to have that, that we felt so strongly about but it didn’t quite happen the way we hoped.
And things were more difficult than I ever expected they could be and with the job losses and with not enough education, and with difficulties and debts and everything else, it just prevented that from being my reality. I did stay home for the first year with my first baby but not because we could afford it but because we were trying to act on faith that somehow it would work out. And at the end of that, we were deep in debt and my husband lost his job at that time, and it forced me back to work.
I remember working at a temp agency and dropping off my baby in the morning at daycare when it was dark and picking him up again at the end of the day when it was still dark, and I felt dark inside. And you know, and I struggled with depression and we began a search for understanding and for knowledge. I felt like if we were just obeying all of God’s laws, that everything would work out and we were doing the best we could with what we knew but what I learned was that the blessings that we seek are always connected to a law and a universal true principle kind of a law.
And I had erroneously assumed that it could be reduced to “be good and you’ll prosper” and it wasn’t quite that simple, and I know that we were doing the best we could with the understanding we had. We were keeping the commandments as much as we knew how and, but I realized after we started attending seminars and we became seminar junkies. I like to call it that because it was an addiction for me, not in a bad way but to realize that every time I went to something that empowered me, I came away with new hope.
And they say that hope is the poor man’s bread and that is what we lived on was hope, and that’s about all we had. And so at one point, and I think I shared this last time, that I was so discouraged and so in this frustrated mindset, that when I came outside and found that my broom had been broken in half by a neighbor kid, I snapped and I called the police on him because I couldn’t think of any other civilized way to solve that problem. You know, duct tape never crossed my mind. It’s ‘call the police!’
And um, you know, and later, I don’t know if it was just a habit or what but another time, I had a five-year-old break into my (not break-in, okay my door was unlocked) but while I was gone, a five-year-old wandered into my house and took cookie dough from my fridge, and I called the police on him too. So you know, I don’t know if anybody can relate to but we behave differently when we’re under stress.
DR DAPHNE: Oh yes, we do, yes.
LESLIE: And they say that money cannot buy happiness and that is true. You can be happy without money but without money, it’s easy to go to stress and when you’re stressed, you do weird things.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right.
LESLIE: You do things you regret and relationships suffer, and families can be broken up over money stresses and so I think it’s important that we get past the fear that it’s wrong to seek prosperity because it’s just a means to an end. It’s not about increasing the dollar figure in our bank account for status or for impressing anyone. It’s always for a bigger purpose.
DR DAPHNE: Yes, yes.
LESLIE: And they say money isn’t good or evil. It just makes you more of whatever you already are.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly, exactly.
LESLIE: And I don’t know, have you seen that yourself Daphne?
DR DAPHNE: Of course. Just to piggyback Leslie on the money factor. When you talk to people who are going through divorces, a lot of times money is a greater part of that breaking up than any other component of the relationship.
LESLIE: And it’s not usually because of too much.
DR DAPHNE: It’s never, it’s never about too much; at least, to the people I’m talking to. It’s not about too much, it’s about the mismanagement or not having enough. You know, I grew up in an area when I always hear people say “money is the root of all evil” but as I mature, I have my own definition of that.
Not having that money could end up the root of all evil because you’re not able to send your children to the schools that they deserve to go. You’re not able to pay your bills on time, you’re not able to contribute to the charities that you think is worthwhile having. So our early programming in life around money is what hinders us from accepting the fact that money is a great substance and to have a lot of it is a worthy thing.
And not because you are a Christian or a spiritual person, you’re a child of God, you’re thinking that ‘no, I need to live a life of poverty’. No! If you are walking spiritually, if you are contributing to other people’s lives, you need to be flourishing. You need to be prosperous. So I just pray, Leslie that the listeners this morning and the people who will join us will leave this show today with a feeling of gratitude and appreciation around money.
LESLIE: I agree, I agree and that is one of the laws that I’m talking about. You know, I had reduced it to “be good and you’ll prosper” and what I found out was that all along the Lord wanted me to have abundance and I know that for a fact, and He wants us to have all that we need for our complete spiritual, mental, physical unfoldment. We’re here to become all that we can become and we can’t do that without plenty of resources to do that.
And so that is one of the keys is to recognize that yes, the Lord does want us to prosper because think about it. If the only people who have abundance of money are those who are unscrupulous, then who is going to run the media? Who are going to create the television programs? Who will create the fashions of the day? Who will be the politicians? I think it is one of Satan’s greatest tools is to keep faithful, God-fearing people in fear of money because it keeps us in bondage and it doesn’t allow us to win the battle.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right, that’s right. I think it’s a friend of mine, Dr Higginbotham, Gerald from out in St Louis, Missouri. Dr G. says “he that has the money makes the rules.”
LESLIE: True.
DR DAPHNE: If you want to have a say in what’s happening around you and the things that will affect you, you better got some dough so you can have a say. You are not even invited to be around the tables. So money is not a bad thing, money is not a dirty thing. If you are bad and if you are dirty, and you get more money then you become more of those things like Leslie mentioned before. Leslie, you mentioned earlier on about when you had your first baby and you were staying home with the baby, and you were standing on faith.
LESLIE: Yes.
DR DAPHNE: I want to piggyback on that a little and I want the listeners to understand that you were not just standing on faith and sitting on faith, you and your husband were diligently seeking and searching for ways to invest in yourself.
LESLIE: Yes.
DR DAPHNE: And I know you attended a large number, both your husband and yourself, large numbers of personal development seminars, workshops, conferences. Would you please talk a little bit about that?
LESLIE: Yeah, and I feel like it was what kept us hopeful. We would attend an event and we would come away feeling like ‘you know what, we can accomplish anything! We can become all that we were meant to become. We can achieve prosperity!’ And I like to say it like this, our life and our pursuit of happiness is like a large combination lock; the kind that has the dials that you have to turn and make the right numbers in the right order. And if you can imagine one that has maybe, I don’t know, fifty dials on it, fifty of those rotating discs and each have a number on it, and each one was like a seminar for us or a book. It wasn’t always investing monetarily but it was always investing time.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly.
LESLIE: One way or another. You don’t have to have money to invest in yourself.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right.
LESLIE: You can go to the library and pick up books, and books are really nothing more than seminars in print.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly.
LESLIE: And so you don’t have to be able to attend expensive seminars. But each one, I remember the epiphanies that I would receive. I would read something and something would strike me as important and powerful, and I would make a note of it in my journal and say ‘wow, I just learned this! This is amazing, I guess this is how life works. It’s important to think positive.’
You know, or something little that sounds cliche but at some point, it really struck me deeply and to me, that was like turning one of those dials and putting it in the right place. Was it enough to unlock the lock? No, but it was one step and each time, I invested in myself, each time we did this, another one of those dials would be put into place and for us, it took more than 100 seminars. For other people, it takes one.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right.
LESLIE: For some people, it takes one book.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly.
LESLIE: Or one conversation with the right person and it unlocks the door, and just to fast-forward. After about seven years of going through this and not seeing a lot of change, and being really frustrated that there wasn’t more change that seemed to match the personal inside growth that I was feeling, I decided I would go to just one more and if that one didn’t unlock the gate for me, I was done. I couldn’t justify investing the money that we were investing any longer and thankfully, that was the one that turned that final dial. And of course, there is no final because this is a continual growth forever.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly.
LESLIE: But for us at that point, it was enough for the lock to spring open and in three months, we were able to apply that final piece of information we gathered to achieve, triple our income in three months, triple.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right.
LESLIE: It was the breakthrough that we’d been looking for and as I think back, there was all of these different sub-laws of the commandments that we had to apply. I can picture the Lord with His arms full of everything that we need in this life, waiting for us to think right.
DR DAPHNE: Right.
LESLIE: ‘It’s yours if you just think right. Okay, I’m sending you a challenge’.
DR DAPHNE: Right.
LESLIE: ‘If you can perceive this challenge with the right mindset, the abundance is yours’ and so that’s what it’s all about, is learning how to think.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right.
LESLIE: Learning how to think because He wants us to be in gratitude, no matter what.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right.
LESLIE: He wants us to think solution-minded instead of hopeless-minded, no matter what. He wants us to pray with a vision, a picture on the screen of our mind of what we’re praying for, instead of praying with a vision or a picture on the screen of your mind of the disaster you’re trying to avoid. That is one very small, little tweak in thinking properly but that right there can make all the difference.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly, exactly. You know, Leslie, I know you had mentioned earlier on what it took for you to get to where you are but I wanted the listeners to really get it clear. Because I know one of my greatest challenges in what I do is working with Christian people because they sit down with their arms folded and their legs crossed because they are waiting on God.
And I say “God already give you the idea, you need to begin to take action” because unless we take action and we start, He is not revealing the entire picture to us. And people sit down and they want the whole picture, and I’m saying “can you imagine if God gives you the whole picture of what you’re supposed to be doing? You are scared now and you just got a little peep!”
LESLIE: I could not handle what He has in store for me. I know that if He were to show me everything that He has for me to do or the things that He has for me to conquer, I would go to bed and I’d put the covers over my head, and I would stay there.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right and you drink some camomile tea so you get extra rest because you are afraid to get up. The picture, when we are walking in our calling and our purpose, it is larger than you Leslie, it’s larger than Daphne, it’s larger than the listeners because we are here as a vessel that God is working through. So He knows the end from the beginning and so long as we are obedient and follow His instruction and take action, we will conquer everything that He created us for.
LESLIE: Yes.
DR DAPHNE: So I just want to tell the listeners, get up. I mean, rise out of your cocoon. Don’t sit there for safety. You need to become a butterfly. You know, you need to become a butterfly. You have been a caterpillar way too long and it is time for your manifestation because you are created for greatness. And that’s the reason we are here this morning, to let you know that there is a lot of light at the end of the tunnel but if you do not venture to the entrance, you are not going to be able to see that.
Leslie mentioned that you don’t have to go to expensive seminars. You can get books. I know that’s another challenge for a lot of adult people, they do not even have a library card. And I just want to encourage if you’re one of those people this morning, wherever you are, whatever country you are listening to us from this morning, get a library
card and make a commitment how many books you want to read a month. And if you think you’ll be able to listen versus reading, go ahead and get the books because they have all the books that you can borrow too, and you can still invest and develop in yourself.
LESLIE: You know, and everybody listening to the call right now is investing in their self.
DR DAPHNE: Yes, this is the beginning because you’re not listening by accident. You were destined to be on this call this morning and you know, people say sometimes Leslie “oh well, where do I begin? I don’t know where to begin.” And there’s only one place to begin and it’s where you are.
Wherever you are today, by you being on this show, it is your new beginning and please do not allow anyone to tell you otherwise. It is your beginning today because life today is the first day of the rest of your life. This will be the day that you will put in history that made a difference for you. Leslie, let us talk about your first book a little.
LESLIE: Okay. Are you talking about the first, first one or the real first one?
DR DAPHNE: The first, first one. Not Jackrabbit Factor, the first, first one and then we’ll go move into Jackrabbit Factor.
LESLIE: Okay, well the first, first one is Hidden Treasures – Heaven’s Astonishing Help With Your Money Matters and the reason there’s a question of whether it was first or not is because Jackrabbit Factor was put in print first.
DR DAPHNE: Oh.
LESLIE: Simultaneously but Hidden Treasures was written first and circulated as an e-book for many years before it was published.
DR DAPHNE: Published, yes.
LESLIE: And actually the background on that was I have a friend, I don’t often tell this story but I feel like I should.
DR DAPHNE: Okay.
LESLIE: We lived in another location several years back about ten years ago, and I was facing a very, very difficult personal situation where I was feeling required to forgive somebody that I was having a very hard time forgiving. And I had exhausted all of my resources, all of the scripture study, all of my counseling with my religious leaders. Friends, family they’d all pretty much got, I’m sure, tired of hearing me try to work this through. You know, you can’t talk enough about it until it’s purged. It’s just hard to overcome some of these things but because I had come to the end of all resources that I knew of, I overcame a fear and decided to go search the Internet. I was afraid of the Internet because I was afraid of finding things that I would not want to see or find.
DR DAPHNE: Right.
LESLIE: But I was so desperate for help and guidance on how to release this bitterness.
DR DAPHNE: Yes.
LESLIE: That I went to the Internet and SheLovesGod.com was the first place I found, and I discovered that it was a very safe place and I enjoyed reading and I joined their newsletter. And at one point, the owner, her name is Marnie, she sent an article about forgiveness and I thought ‘oh, this is why I’m supposed to be here’ and I read the article, and it was a wonderful article but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t already heard.
DR DAPHNE: Yeah.
LESLIE: And so I responded to the article and I said “you know, I’m sure you’re busy but I am looking for additional help on this topic. If you have time, I’d love to get your input on it.”
DR DAPHNE: Right.
LESLIE: And she responded and I was amazed because she was one of the first people on the Internet to create a database of articles.
DR DAPHNE: Yes.
LESLIE: She’s a pioneer in the industry and she has a lot of subscribers, and so I was surprised that she replied but we got talking through email.
DR DAPHNE: Yes.
LESLIE: And she said “well, I’m sure you can understand that the reason I wrote the article is because I was struggling with forgiving someone myself.”
DR DAPHNE: Wow.
LESLIE: And of course, that would never have crossed my mind because I was too self-absorbed with my own problem.
DR DAPHNE: Wow.
LESLIE But I said “really… what happened?” And it had to do with something that had happened that caused them to go from being out of debt to back in debt, and she was really struggling with those feelings. And I said “well, money, I, I could help you with that” because I had already had our breakthrough and I had learned so many things.
DR DAPHNE: Wow.
LESLIE: And I said “I could help you with the money thing” and so we started conversing through the Internet and on the phone, and I essentially took her through my seminar virtually. And at the time, and this was about ten years ago, at the time she was earning about $2,000 through her website each month and the month after that, she made $4,000 and the month after that, she made $8,000.
DR DAPHNE: Wow.
LESLIE: And she was just so excited about what she had learned that she said “you have got to teach this to my readers!”
Dr DAPHNE: Wow.
LESLIE: Will you write a series of articles on these laws you’re talking about, and I’ll send them to my subscribers?” And so once a week for seven or eight weeks, I wrote an article on each of the seven main primary laws that I had learned and eventually, those articles were compiled and formatted to become the book Hidden Treasures – Heaven’s Astonishing Help With Your Money Matters, and so that’s where that began.
It’s a powerful book but I found that a lot of people weren’t necessarily quite ready for the information that was in it and that’s why I wrote Jackrabbit Factor. It’s a story that prepares people’s minds for the meatier information in Hidden Treasures and again, Jackrabbit Factor is a free read. It doesn’t cost you anything to go to JackrabbitFactor.com and download the free book.
But Hidden Treasures is the one that people say “you know, I love what I’ve learned from Jackrabbit Factor. Hidden Treasures is the one I will go back to over and over and over again.” It helps them through every situation, helping them know ‘okay, in this situation, how do I need to think so that I can stay receptive to the abundance God has for me?’
DR DAPHNE: Thank you so much, Leslie. You know, it’s amazing how God always has the right people that needs to add value to whatever we are doing and vice versa. So you know, with, with the trend and the development of the Internet these days and technology, you never know where around the world that person is but we just have to be open and to be receptive, and to just reach out if we know we need help. A lot of people, they are not reaching out and they’re not asking, and we are not unique in the challenges and the struggles that we go through.
There’s always somebody else going through the identical thing, or something that resembles it closely but you are not alone so there is no reason to be ashamed. I had a guest on last week, she was pointing out that people are afraid of asking for help because they think that it shows weakness but instead, it shows that you know you’re strong and people who ask for help, it’s people who want to remain strong in whatever they’re doing.
LESLIE: Right, and I’ve also learned that when we begin asking the right questions, when we begin setting goals properly in alignment with the principles, with God’s universal principles, when we start doing that and we ask for more money, what happens is He sends you a challenge. He doesn’t just send you the money. He sends you a challenge and as you overcome the challenge with the right thought processes, on the other side of it is the money you asked for.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly, and that’s why we are all problem solvers and the only thing that we need to do in this whole puzzle of life journey is understanding what problem we were all created to solve. And as long as we have clarity on that, then we are going to be able to make all the money that we need because there’s no shortage of money. There’s enough out there for each and every one of us. We just need to know what problem we need to solve to get it.
You mentioned earlier on about clarity in thinking and all of that. Ask the right questions, surround ourselves with the right mentors and people who have already done it because a lot of people, Leslie, I have found out that they have such competitive spirit and they are so gung-ho on competing against the next person.
So instead of seeing the other small business owner or coach, or mentor or whatever business person it is as someone who they can network with or learn something from, there is no need for them to reinvent the wheel. They see it as a competition and they hold on, and they don’t want to open up to share and I think that in itself is a mistake.
LESLIE: Absolutely. There is no need for competition and that was really good news for me because growing up, I always despised the feelings I’d get when I was competing against someone else for a prize. I always loved the games when my mother would host birthday parties, the games where everybody had an opportunity. This is kind of on a side note but it’s a perfect illustration.
One of the games that I remember her showing me when I was five, it was on my fifth birthday. There was a prize for each child tied to a string and that string was wound all through the room and tangled up in a web, and strapped over the furniture and everything, and on the other end of the string was a pencil. And all we had to do was pick the pencil and then we would roll the string around the pencil.
And you had to roll it up, roll it up, roll it up, get it untangled, go through the problems, overcome the tangles and climb over the kids and everything. And you knew that at the end of that string was your prize, and nobody else was going to be able to take it from you. And that’s how it is with these goal-setting principles is that whatever it is you want is yours and nobody else can get it from you. It’s yours if you do what you need to do.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly. There are certain principles that we need to follow and so long as we follow those principles, no one will take what is yours because yours is there with your name on it, Leslie. Mine is there and all the listeners, their portion is there with a beautiful gold label on it with their name, and it is only going to be left there if you decide you do not want to choose it.
LESLIE: Let me just give you an example of how to think right that is counterintuitive. It’s a little bit against the natural thinking processes but suppose you want a job, and there is one position open and there are 200 people trying to get that position. It looks like there is competition but in reality, all you have to do is see yourself in the kind of work that you want to do. See yourself enjoying yourself. Answer the question: what will it feel like when I am working there?
DR DAPHNE: That’s right.
LESLIE: What will that feel like? And as soon as you can generate those feelings, you have turned it over in a spiritual way to place that order and in fact, it may look like there’s competition but it’s a conscious choice to say there is no competition. If that position goes to somebody else, that means that my position is still in creation and it’s on its way.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly, exactly.
LESLIE: It’s a choice and to realise that if that one doesn’t come through, there is a better one waiting for you and you can be grateful that you did not get it.
DR DAPHNE That’s right because you would just be a hindrance because that position was not for you and you get in there, you were going to be frustrated, you were going to become burnt out. You were going to become stressful and you were going to make that be a very unpleasant environment or surrounding for your co-workers. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we were also connected to why we are, who we are, and all of that thing and know what our calling and true purpose is in life?
If we had clarity, we would not go applying for the wrong jobs because we would look into what their description is and we know ‘okay, Lord this is not for me. This is for the next person’ but because we all do not have clarity, this is why we end up in those dead-end jobs and jobs where we go to work on Monday morning and we, over the watercooler, we asking “when is Friday?”
LESLIE: Yeah, well and sometimes you know, there have been times where I feel like I had absolute clarity on what I wanted and I went for it and I obtained it but I found out that it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. And it wasn’t because it wasn’t the reward I expected it to be but it was the package of challenges that I needed to experience so that I could grow and become more like what God wanted me to become so that I could be able and ready to receive the real blessing that He had on the other side of it.
Everything is a gift; the good, the bad, the in-between. It is all a gift and if we approach every one of them that way then what He sees is a humble servant and an obedient child who deserves all the blessings that are available.
DR DAPHNE: Right.
LESLIE: You know, I think about the story of the farmer who, who stormed around, just complaining that everything was not going well, and he didn’t like his barn and he didn’t like his family. And he didn’t like, you know, all this complaining, complaining, complaining and God upstairs was saying “man, you think you have it bad now? I’ll show you what bad is” and you can imagine what was coming.
Now on the other hand, another farmer going around and no matter how bad things appeared, he was grateful for everything. He was grateful for the barn that it actually covered the animals. He was grateful for his family that he wasn’t alone. He was grateful for his wife. He was grateful for everything even though on the outside, it might not have seemed ideal and upstairs God was saying “wow, you think you have it good now? I’ll show you what good really is.”
DR DAPHNE: Yes, yes.
LESLIE: You see what I’m saying?
DR DAPHNE: Yes because you know something, I make it a habit. It’s part my practice to always give gratitude and people say “oh, you always make such a big thing out of a little thing” and I said “no, to me this is a humongous thing. It’s not a little thing because I know that I need to show appreciation for this little thing, the thing that you think is little. You really don’t know the impact it has on my life so if I don’t take the time to show appreciation then I might not get the opportunity of receiving a greater thing.”
And I think some people just miss the boat on this and they are just waiting for that big opportunity in which to start showing gratitude but you need to start where you are. Because you know, my mother always say, Leslie “if you cannot thank God for the little thing, when you get the big thing, you’re still going to take it for granted too and not thank Him so just get into the habit of thanking for whatever it is that you get.”
LESLIE: And it’s not hard to imagine how this works because I have children and I want, I want them to have everything. I want them to have all the best food, the best clothes, the best toys. I want them to have all of it because it’s fun to enjoy those things. It’s a wonderful experience but I cannot reward their ingratitude. Even if I have the most amazing thing ready to hand them, if they are complaining about the little things I can’t give them a message of “oh, I am rewarding your ingratitude” because they will make that connection that “oh, if I complain, I get nice things”.
DR DAPHNE: Yes, that’s right.
LESLIE: My children have learned, it’s kind of funny, they have learned that they need to be grateful for all things. And when we go out on a family outing and we maybe go to the movies or go to dinner or something, even if they sense that my husband or I are irritable about something that may have happened or something that one of the kids did, and maybe we’ve got that energy that we’re fuming and trying to control our anger or whatever, the car might be quiet but inevitably, someone will remember and say “thank you mom and dad for taking us.” Because they’ve remembered that gratitude is the first step, the first key to transforming the energy in your environment and that opens you up to receiving more wonderful things when you express gratitude.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right and we all learn something from children.
LESLIE: Oh yes.
DR DAPHNE: You know, there’s so much. If we still ourselves enough and listen to those powerful little people, we can learn so much from them. We can learn so much from them. Okay Leslie, I know that I’ve read the Jackrabbit Factor, I, we had you on the show before and I’ve heard about your humble beginning and your family’s humble beginning, and we spoke a lot about the financial struggles that your family encountered during those times. As an entrepreneur/small business owner, in the beginning were there any other challenges other than financial that you encountered?
LESLIE: Well, we had medical situations. My second baby was born with a heart defect that we didn’t know he had ahead of time. We were packing to leave the hospital when the nurse came in from the nursery and told me that there was a problem. He had turned blue and they didn’t know why so they put him under an oxygen hood and put him in a helicopter to the Children’s Hospital, and we found out that he needed to have open-heart surgery.
DR DAPHNE: Wow.
LESLIE: We were having a hard time putting food on the table, alone and so that was a stress and a challenge. He did come out okay on that and he’s well and I’m fine but, but you know, it’s just another one of those challenges that I feel like God sent our way to shape us.
DR DAPHNE: And strengthen you and mold you.
LESLIE: Mold us, yeah and prepare us for greater things. It turned out to be a real great blessing in our life and the kinds of relationships that we developed with people who stepped forward to support us.
And it’s through affliction, that our characters are shaped and we can either become bitter and hardened, and that is a dead end. I’m telling you right now, to become bitter and hardened against God for the things that happen in your life is a dead-end road.
There is nowhere that that goes and I’ve gone down that road and it goes nowhere. You eventually just become more and more miserable forever or you have to at some point, stop the madness, and say “okay I’m going to back up out of this path and I’m going to choose to love the Lord anyway” and then the blessings can start to flow again.
DR DAPHNE: I have personally learned, Leslie that during those challenging times is the time when I grab my journal and my pen, and I start penning on paper the lessons that I’m learning right there because I said “Lord, I know I’m here for a lesson and I’m going to just write everything down because I might not be focusing enough right now to find the lessons here.” But I know as I go back and I reread the pages of my journal, that lesson will pop out at me when it’s time for me to appreciate it.
And because I have found out that my life is a big puzzle and some pieces are so together, nothing is going to shift them from where they are and couple of those pieces, they are my faith and my spiritual health and spiritual knowing. Yet, there are other pieces of the puzzle of my life journey that I still need a lot of work on and this is why I surround myself with the people that I do.
Because each and every one of you, Leslie whether you’re a guest on my show or you’re someone that I listen to your show, you are helping me to become all that God has intended me to be. And for that I am grateful and I pray that each of the listeners this morning will find that out as they re-listen and re-listen to this episode.
LESLIE: I found that as I try to surround myself with people who think in this way, it confirms to me the truth of it, the validity of it because I feel like I discovered these things on my own from learning from others but it was an internal journey and a discovery. And when I finally understood it to the point of seeing results change in my life and I would cling to other people who had had similar experiences, we’re all coming to the same conclusion.
And that tells me that the Spirit is working on people individually and leading them to these truths so that when they find them, they can be of service and so that they can help other people in the world find the freedom. And you know, all freedom stems from operating on these principles, in one form or fashion. It all comes down to living according to the universal laws that govern the universe that were created by God.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right, that’s right and we are not done here preaching about religion and all of that. We are talking about universal laws, that it doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t mess it up because it’s a universal law and you just need to follow them.
LESLIE: Right.
DR DAPHNE: Because nobody, nobody nowhere, no matter how affluent they are or anything like that, they cannot prevent you from claiming your lot.
LESLIE: Right, and that’s one thing I love about these principles is that because they are universal, they operate for people of all cultures, all religious beliefs, all backgrounds. It is one of the most unifying experiences I’ve had to meet people all over the world who have different beliefs than I do, who have different understandings of why we’re here than I do, and all of that but the principles that I’m talking about work for all. It rains on everyone, the sun shines on everyone. It even works for people who do not believe in God and how merciful is that?
DR DAPHNE: Exactly because Leslie, that was my thought. I have certain people that I know who are devoted Christians and believers but when it comes around the fact that there are people who are not saved, who are not practicing religious or spiritual things, however they are so in connection and in touch with universal laws, and they apply them and because of that, they are prosperous. They are wealthy and they are exceeding and surpassing a lot of people who are Christian believers.
And one special woman I love her dearly but she just has no tolerance for that. She said “you know, they’re not serving God and they’re not going to church. Why should they have so much?” And I said “because they are practicing universal things. There is nothing that you can do to prevent them from having what is theirs. There are universal laws that they are applying and taking advantage of.”
So I said to her “instead of getting so ugly about that, why don’t you start practicing those universal laws so you will claim what is yours?” Because it’s not their fault that they are doing what God expects them to do, even though they are not acknowledging Him but they’re putting the universal laws into practice. They’re implementing these things.
LESLIE: And that pleases God whether or not they believe in Him.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right.
LESLIE: And I know that some of my listeners because I will be directing this call to some of my subscribers who are not Christian and again, I love how unifying these principles are.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right, that’s right. I coordinate a French cultural exchange program here in Connecticut where the youngsters visit France for 21 days, and they are part of an immersion program so they get the opportunity of living in the homes of Americans. And this past Sunday, one of the young men asked to visit church with me. After that, we went into Costco, the wholesale place because I had some shopping to do and we were talking with a gentleman in there who was one of the display wholesalers of a product.
So the student asked him “do you believe?” So he said “believe in what?” So he said “do you believe in God?” And he said “yes” and I said to myself ‘this is going to be interesting, let me hear how this conversation is going’ and he was nodding his head in affirmation. And we had a very stimulating conversation about his spirituality in France and what he experienced being at church with me.
As he looked around in the congregation Leslie, he said “I saw so much happiness and I saw that people were joyful.” He said “quite unlike when I go to church in France” he said “sometimes Daphne” he says “oh I look around and people are snoring because they are not experiencing this joy.” And he said to me “what do I think contributes to that?” And I say to him “I can speak for me and I’m sure, if you speak to each other person, they will have a different explanation.”
But I said “when I go to church, even every morning when I wake up, for me it’s a privilege and I just am joyful that I have one more opportunity to give thanks for all the wonderful things that are part of my life.” So I said “when I go to church, it’s extra time for me to worship and praise God, regardless of what anybody else next to me is doing. I, I’m not interested in them. I’m there to give Him my greatest adoration and praise.”
LESLIE: Yeah.
DR DAPHNE: And I was so excited that I was able to bring him in an environment that gave him that other outlook of life. It’s something that I’m sure and I’m praying that he will never forget for the rest of his life.
LESLIE: Oh, I’m sure he won’t because I’m convinced that anytime the spirit touches our hearts, that is something that is written indelibly forever. That no matter where we wander, no matter what choices we make forevermore, that is an experience that we cannot forget and we will be accountable to those things, and we condemn ourselves by our choices. When we understand a certain principle and choose willfully to disobey it, we condemn ourselves. It’s not God saying ‘oh, go to the corner’ like an angry father.
DR DAPHNE: Right.
LESLIE: It’s ‘I’m sorry that you made that choice. I have to withhold this blessing.’
DR DAPHNE: Right, right. We put so much pressure on ourselves and we keep reprimanding ourselves but our Father’s arm is always outstretched to embrace us.
LESLIE: Yeah.
DR DAPHNE: He’s always there to love us, unconditional love.
LESLIE: And whether we grew up with a father who demonstrated that kind of unconditional love. You know, it might be easy for some people to say “oh, I can imagine God being like that because I had a father like that” but on the other hand, if you didn’t have a father like that, you have contrast. Imagine what the perfect father would be like. If you know what an imperfect father looks like, could you imagine God being an imperfect father?
DR DAPHNE: That’s right.
LESLIE: No, He’s perfect. What did you expect out of a father and that’s what God is.
DR DAPHNE: That’s right and my take on that is whether or not you grow up with a father that love you unconditionally, you are now in the presence and have the availability of a father who will give you all those things that you didn’t get from your biological father and more. So step out in faith and do not deprive yourself. Just step out and enjoy every bit of the abundance that He has for you.
LESLIE: So Daphne, I have a question for you.
DR DAPHNE: Yes, Leslie.
LESLIE: If somebody’s listening to this call and they’re thinking ‘yes, I need to do something. I’m going to take action on what I’m learning. I need to step into this life’. You know, the first step for every person might be different. How would you coach someone to say “okay, you’re ready to take a step”. How do you know what the next step is for each individual?
DR DAPHNE: When I fit in what I call an “intake session” with one of my clients, we brainstorm and we have a very energized, stimulating dialogue. And what I’m actually doing at that time is I’m extracting from that person the things that they enjoy doing, what are the things that really keeps them up at night, just thinking about them. What are some of the things that really agitate you every time you see them out of place? So it’s like I’m emptying out everything and then I have them all in a big box and I’m not asking them to discard anything but then all those things that I’ve extracted, Leslie, I then go back and I prioritize them.
Sometimes I find out that they all go into different groups under different headings, and as we identify those things together, my next question to the person would be “as you look on this list as it is right now in front of you, are there anything on here that you have repeatedly heard from people that you are just so exceptional at doing?” And they say “oh, oh yes. It’s this, it’s that, it’s the other.” So as we create this second list then we fit them under different sections. For example, if the person is an excellent listener, we would identify the careers or occupation that requires that strength and then we will discuss those things.
The one thing I always do is not allow them to discard anything. We put things on the back burner. So after we identify those things that people say they are good at doing and they feel good at doing, then we narrow the list down to what are you really excited about? What gets your adrenaline pumping? You know because I can probably say that they make good red velvet cake and they probably don’t want to do that, you know.
So we talk about what you’re excited about now. As we have this discussion, how are you feeling around this thing? So I have this discussion with them and a lot of times Leslie, people say to me “I can’t believe, this thing is right under my nose.” That’s a common description.
LESLIE: Oh yeah.
DR DAPHNE: They always say “I could never think it was this simple.” What I have found out is that people are always looking, that their calling and purpose needs to be something that is complex.
LESLIE: Yeah, yeah and you know, I think what most people will find is that they don’t recognize their own talents and abilities as unique. They think everybody knows what they know or they think everybody can do what they can do. And that’s one of the first things is to recognize your uniqueness because the more unique you are, the more your experiences have shaped you in a unique way, the more value you can bring to others from your perspective. It is unique. You are different. Even if you were to write my book again it would be different. You know, and it would reach people that I can’t reach and so it’s all about finding our path.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly. Finding your path and what triggers you. You mentioned about people looking at things that is easy and all of that. I had, I had an amazing experience last week, Leslie. For the past five weeks, I was taking a class called “Introduction to Film” right?
LESLIE: Introduction to what?
DR DAPHNE: F I L M.
LESLIE: Film.
DR DAPHNE: I hate movies but maybe that is kind of a strong word. I’ll go to them and I sleep halfway through, you know. Really, that’s not my favorite thing to do and I had this class which was a five-week class and the textbook was $137 and I said “I really don’t like this class. I don’t want to spend so much for the textbook. It’s not a book I’m going to be using again.” So a friend of mine from church, I know that was her major and it is also the major of her husband, so I said “I bet they have that book in their collection.”
So I called them up and of course, they had the second edition in their collection which they loaned me and they also loaned me a couple others. Now Leslie, I did not look but I couldn’t look because it didn’t say, just said the name of one of the authors on the book. I had no idea that the seventh edition of the book was now done by two authors versus the one on the second edition. So trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble.
So now it’s time for me to do my final paper and I’m up the creek because a lot of the information I am missing so I emailed my friend. I said “can I have a couple minutes to just brainstorm this topic with you, and everything?” And her husband said something to me which was a real eye-opener. He said to me “we look at this all the time. It is so easy to us, it comes so easy. Now by you really talking with us, we realize that this thing is not as easy as we saw it. It’s just because we are passionate and excited about it.”
LESLIE: Yeah.
DR DAPHNE: And there is so much truth in that, and it’s the same thing with our calling and purpose. It is not difficult to know why we were created because it is the thing that comes easy to us. They are the things that we are excited about. We can just roll it off our tongue without any hitch so it’s easy. If we just still ourself and ask God “please give me clarity to help me really affirm that this is what You created me for”, He will give it to you and this is why Leslie, I am such an advocate for journaling.
LESLIE: Oh yes.
DR DAPHNE: I don’t know what my life would be without journaling.
LESLIE: And I think some people think ‘oh, that’s so boring to just write what happened’ but I tell you, if you have a question, a burning question that you don’t have an answer to, sometimes just putting the question in your journal leads your thoughts to new thoughts you’ve never had before.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly.
LESLIE: And you eventually, by the time you’re done, your answer may have been even composed. That has happened to me so many times!
DR DAPHNE: Oh yes.
LESLIE: Because it makes you think introspectively. It makes you pay attention to your feelings. It makes you pay attention to the little inspirations that God sends your way, and you acknowledge them and the more you do that, the more He sends you.
DR DAPHNE: What I have found out over my years of journaling, Leslie is that for me, the more I journal, the emptier I become. Then the more creative my thoughts become, and as for my critical thinking process, when I’m empty, I can expand more on that but if I don’t journal, there’s so much in me and there is no room for anything else.
LESLIE: I like that.
DR DAPHNE: So I just enjoy just emptying out, emptying out and get more stuff.
LESLIE: I like that and you know something else too, is that when we don’t write down the lessons we’ve learned, we are more likely to forget them and we’ll have to experience the challenges again that will teach us the same lesson.
DR DAPHNE: Right.
LESLIE: If you learn the lesson and you write it down, you can look at it like proving to God ‘I got it. Look, I got it. I wrote it down. Don’t need to go through that one again!’ It can be a way to have rapid progress in your life to bigger and better things.
DR DAPHNE: Exactly, exactly.
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 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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