This is part 2 of 2 – an insider’s look into the Mindset Mastery Program (previously called FTMF). Participants submitted their questions and I addressed each one with tips, thoughts, and perspective that will leave YOU enlightened, comforted, and inspired on this crazy path to achieving your goals.
This segment begins with questions and answers about relationship challenges in goal achievement.
Learn more about the Mindset Mastery program here: www.prosperthefamily.com
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 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 ARareKindofFaith.com.
LESLIE: Hi, this is Leslie Householder and you’re listening to part two of the Mindset Mastery Program Q&A Blitz where I addressed questions that were submitted by participants of that program. To learn more about the Mindset Mastery Home Study Course, visit ProsperTheFamily.com. Here we go!
The next group of questions was about relationships. This first one is what if your goals are different than your spouse’s and they conflict? For example, what if you want a nicer home and your spouse is content where you are? I’ll just say that the one with the desire wins, the one with the passion wins, the one with the dream wins and it’s not a competition.
Just make sure that what you want is something that you’re passionate about and that you are more passionate about what you want than about what you hate because you will gravitate to whatever it is you’re most passionate about, one way or the other.
I know the frustrating thing is, is you want the other person on board with you. You want that help, you want that support, you want that energy to be added to it. Well, in this kind of a situation, part of the reward for achieving the goal is the person that we become through the experience.
For those who struggle with a partner that is not on board with you, that’s part of your gift, that’s your package. That’s part of what you get to learn, and it’s something that my husband and I have both dealt with and we still deal with. Neither one of us are all put together with the right mindset all the time.
We still have ups and downs but we know goals are accomplished anyway and that’s what we go on. And we still get frustrated with each other when, like when I have doubts, my husband gets frustrated with me. When he has doubts, I get frustrated with him and we’re learning to give each other that space, knowing that the Law of Rhythm allows for that.
Now, if you have a spouse that is not interested at all or on board at all with any of this personal development stuff, then give them the space to be who they are. Give them that space, give them that freedom. Love them as they are and what you’re going to learn is personal responsibility. You’re the only one who can choose to be happy yourself and the whole idea is…
Well, let me just throw this in here. This is kind of a funny story but my parents, one of the last times they moved. Basically, my dad, he’s fine with whatever and my mom has certain expectations of how things should be, and she really goes for it and really does what she has to do to have things a certain way, and my dad is a lot more passive that way.
But they were shopping for a home one of these last times they moved and they found a home that my dad liked. You know, I think this is fine and my mom hated it with a passion, and so that’s where they ended up.
And let me just kind of throw that in there that it doesn’t matter what kind of emotion. The emotion, whoever’s the most passionate about something is probably going to trump the other. If there’s going to be any trumping at all going on, that’s how it’s going to happen.
So the next question, how do you stay focused and positive when someone in the home has a large amount of negative energy? Again, I don’t. It’s hard. It’s up and down and it’s okay, it’s okay. If I had no other message to give you as you’re listening to this call, it’s that whatever you’re dealing with, whatever you’re facing, whatever conflict or questions you’re having and wrestling with, and the circumstances aren’t the way you think they’re supposed to be, in order for this to work, relax because it’s exactly, exactly right now how it needs to be for it to work.
It’s not about how the circumstances are, it’s how you are viewing the circumstances. Are you looking at the circumstances and wondering ‘oh, I don’t know if it can work because things are this way.’ Well, yeah, that’s going to create some confusion and you probably are going to have some difficulty.
It’s when you look at your situation and say, “wow, look at what I get to deal with! Wow, look at the opposition that we have to face! Wow, look at how I am totally on my own with this. I don’t have the support that I wanted. I don’t have a supportive spouse who believes in this. I have a spouse who thinks I’m nuts. I have a spouse who hates this stuff. Wow, look at what I get to achieve the goal in spite of!”
And remember, the Law of Polarity is the harder it is, the worse you have it, in many ways the better and you’re probably thinking ‘oh no, I hate that. No, no, no!’ But it’s true, it’s true. The worse it is, the more struggle you have to overcome, using these principles to overcome them, the greater the reward is going to be.
And honestly, you will never enjoy the reward unless there is a struggle, unless there is some kind of conscious decision to think truth in spite of appearances. … M. Catherine Thomas says that, “man trailing glory into a darker sphere… ,” so talking about living here on this earth, and that before we came to earth, we were beings of glory and that we get to come here and experience a sort of ‘schooling’ of life. It is life school to be thrown into situations where we learn and grow, and on the other side of it, we have the potential for tremendous reward, but we were glorious…
And she says that, “man trailing glory into a darker sphere commences a course in deep impact training. The memory of his premortal powers and glories tucked away, he begins to interact with his new surroundings through a veiled consciousness. As he grows in his new world, his consciousness begins to develop anew, influenced now primarily by his fallen environment.”
Woodsworth wrote something years ago, talking about illusions. And this is what Woodsworth says, “shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy.” And she (Thomas) continues, “his mind is shaped by both accurate and inaccurate interpretations of the nature of things. With no memory of who he really is, he fixes on his emotional and physical survival, thus fostering self-absorption and anxiety. Flawed ideas take root in his mind which cause him to react to life in unconscious negative patterns. Conditional love, and even hatred, dog him. His perception is clouded by vain imaginings and faulty interpretations. He relates to the world through the lens of his own self-talk instead of perceiving reality directly. Fear threads its way through his life. His confused mind fashioned his perceptions of a confused world, that is that man suffers from a degree of insanity.”
So in other words, here we are and the illusions that life throws our way, what we perceive with our five senses is an illusion. The truth is life is abundant. The truth is there is enough for everybody. The truth is we are okay. We are supported by a loving God that gives us all that we need.
“Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not” (Matthew 6:28) and yet they have everything they need to be the best they can be. And everything we need is right here all around us but in order for us to experience that, in order for us to realize it in our physical world, we have to see it with our spiritual minds. And the only way to do that is to look at things as they are and choose to believe that what we see is an illusion.
When your spouse isn’t how you think they should be, even that’s an illusion because who they really are is powerful and glorious and amazing, and so we react to the world around us by our perceptions of the illusion. We react to what we see instead of choosing to see with a spiritual mind of how things really are. And this is the test, this is the test of life is to learn to see with our spiritual eyes.
Learn to believe in what we can’t see. Learn to find gratitude and express gratitude, and feel gratitude even when things appear disastrous. It’s just an illusion. Have you ever heard the statement that says “Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered and nobody was there.”?
You’re going to find out that the thing you fear, the thing you’re wondering ‘what if we don’t get the bill paid? What if we lose the house? What if, what if, what if…?’ All these what ifs are so wrapped up in fear because really what happens on the other side of that isn’t necessarily scary, it’s just unknown.
And you have a better chance of not losing everything and you have a better chance of coming up with the money you need, and you have a better chance of finding that life’s purpose you’re looking for, if the fear is rejected.
Look at the room around you right now, it’s an illusion. What you’re looking at is a reflection of light on physical objects and what people say to you, you’re hearing with ears through a filter of your paradigms and you have programs that run in the subconscious mind that interpret things falsely.
And so it comes down to: you can’t wait for the evidence that things are going well before you believe things are going well. You have to believe things are going well and that you’re okay, and that God is with you and that He is still supporting you. And that He knows what’s going on in your life, and that he is leading you towards something that’s going to be amazing, and that you’re going to be grateful for the experience in the long run.
It’s choosing to believe that, that puts you in a place to tune into the answers you need and that you’re looking for. Those answers will come when the fear has been rejected and you choose the faith. It’s when we look for answers in a place of fear that we get answers that only give us the results that we don’t want.
We’re looking for solutions on a different plane than the ideas that got us where we’re at. It’s like the significant problems we face in life cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them, and it’s faith. It’s believing in what you can’t see. It’s believing that you’re going to make it through that traffic jam without getting stuck in it. It’s believing in it.
It’s believing it and being grateful for it and experiencing it before it even happens. It’s being able to answer the question “man, that’s going to feel good! I know what it feels like to sail through a potential traffic jam because I just did it in my head. I know what that feels like now and I believe that it’s there. I believe that’s what it’s going to be for me.”
And the thing that we get so scared of is that we set an intention like that, or we imagine it, and then we immediately go to “what if it doesn’t happen? How am I going to handle the disappointment?” Well, that’s fear of disappointment and again, that’s an illusion. How about asking the question “what if it really happens? What if, what if…?” Instead of asking what if it doesn’t work, start asking “what if it works? What if it works?”
I’m going to move forward. Can having tremendous personal growth when a spouse does not, weaken a relationship? Yeah, it can. When there’s two people in a marriage, and one of them is growing leaps and bounds and the other one is not, it can create a lot of frustration on both sides, on both sides.
The one feels like he is getting left behind or she’s getting left behind, and the other one who’s having tremendous growth is feeling judgmental and critical of the other. And let me just give you an image of what it might look like to have personal growth solo and still have a good relationship, even a strengthened relationship because of it.
Tremendous personal growth, I like to think of Jesus Christ as the one being that I would like to emulate the most. The example that he set that’s the kind of person that I want to be and I know that throughout his life, he experienced tremendous personal growth.
He grew, principle upon principle, just like we all do. He had a greater mission to fulfill and had a lot more tremendous challenges than I’ve ever faced but one thing that I can pretty much guarantee you is that the more he grew, the more compassionate and the more loving he was of the people around him.
So if you’re having tremendous personal growth and it’s taking you to a place of judgment or criticism of the other, then the growth is good but it’s not complete until you’ve learned and experienced charity. The love is what we’re trying to accomplish and it’s hard to do.
My husband and I have both struggled with this at times, where one is having quantum leaps, the other is not and there’s an impatience that comes with that because you want to grow as fast as you can and you want the other one to come along with you.
And so the opportunity, the gift in that challenge is an opportunity to practice love and compassion anyway, and Portal To Genius has a section in the story where the characters have to face this and you’ll get to see what they do to overcome that, or at least get a little closer.
Some things are going to be a lifelong battle and when you are working with a spouse, it’s important to once in a while come together and just at least identify what you do still share in common in terms of long term goals.
How do you see yourselves as 70, 80 year-old people? And if the short term goals are not necessarily common, as long as the long term goals are in place and the short term goals don’t take you off in a direction away from the long term common goals, then the relationship can strengthen over the years.
One thing about this question, having tremendous personal growth when a spouse does not, can it weaken a relationship? Of course, it can weaken a relationship. It can also strengthen a relationship, depending on what you do with it. It’s a choice and it has to do with the illusion.
If you’re looking at your spouse and wondering if anything is changing, if there’s any growth going on at all, you can look at appearances and decide ‘no, I guess there is no growth’. Or you can choose to look at what’s happening as an illusion.
Say “you know what, it appears that there’s nothing going on here but I choose to believe that in those quiet moments where I know nothing about what’s going on, that God’s Spirit is working with my spouse too, in His own way and in His own timing” and it’s believing. It’s just believing in what you can’t see and if you do that, you’re going to end up responding differently to your spouse and you’re going to be more supportive.
This one, my husband is aware of the Laws and has listened to Heaven’s Help a couple of times. He claims he says affirmations but he’s constantly doubting himself and his environment. “I can never find anything, the office is always a mess! I never make enough money, I’m so stupid,” stuff like that. If I say anything to him about talking more positively, he gets upset. I usually just leave the room because I can’t handle the negativity. Since he is the main breadwinner, how can we have financial success?
It’s a hard one. Write this down. Whatever the job is, the job does not pay you or the business does not pay you. I want you to remember that it is God that pays you through the job. If the vehicle for the payment is removed, God can still find a way to pay you. It may be through another opportunity. It may be through some other way and it may not be the money that you need but other resources that the money would have been used for, whatever.
So when you’re talking about financial success, you can set the goals. You can have the vision, you can have the dream and you can do something every day towards the realization of that. And just know that whatever efforts you put in, every action has a reaction. You can’t do good and not receive some kind of reward coming back to you.
How it comes back to you, and when and where, we don’t always know but the most important thing to do in a situation like this, is to get a real clear picture of how you want your family life to be. Remember when all is said and done, the financial success doesn’t come with you to the grave. I believe that it’s your relationships and who you are that will remain beyond the grave.
And so the financial success, if you are so concerned and worried about that at the expense of the relationships then in the long run, you’ll probably be sad for how it all turned out. But just understand that again, it’s an illusion. You have all you need in this moment. God knows your situation and your faith can be the thing that even sparks and inspires your husband. It’s not up to you to decide how this is all going to come about and it’s important for you to look for that personal inspiration.
And during this call, and even as you go about each day, I want you to start thinking about is there anything that nags you on your mind? Is there anything about your life, or about any part of your life that keeps coming to mind as something that wants your attention? Is there somebody that maybe crossed you at some point and you’ve been holding a grudge towards them? Is there somebody that you could make amends with? And it may not be something like that.
Is there anything in your life that every time you think about working towards your goal, it pops up and it says this needs to be addressed first? If so, pay attention to it and do it. You’re going to find that with that kind of baggage removed, you’re going to be able to think and focus more clearly, and you’re going to be more receptive to the thoughts and the ideas that will get you closer to the solutions that you’re looking for. You’ve got to trust that inner voice and that brings me to trusting your intuition.
This was a fun post. This person says “we are selling a business to move into another and it’s fraught with ups and downs so we’re back and forth about this being the right step for us. I, too, have been led to believe that if things do not flow easily and uncomplicated, then it is not the right thing to do or to do what feels good or right. To feel good, my heart is in my throat and remaining calm about it was out of the question.”
She refers to a blog post about a college student who was trying to decide if she should stay in a class. She thought that if things weren’t flowing well and if she wasn’t feeling good about it, then maybe it was the wrong thing to do. You’re going to want to go read that post if you haven’t already but the point is, is that giving birth to a child wasn’t necessarily fun but it doesn’t mean it was the wrong thing to do. So yes, remaining calm about it is important.
She says “now I see that feeling good is within the choice.” She sees a pattern. “We’re always in turmoil. Everything we have ever done, we have been in the same sort of place of turmoil. Am I right that it is only harder and longer and coming because we are not in a hopeful, trusting, optimistic place?” As she goes on, she ends up kind of answering her own questions and I have a point in reading this to you.
She says “now, today we have a buyer but we must wait quite a bit longer for the closing. Immediately, I was upset. Now I think I see another pattern. Normally we would go crazy literally stressing over this and trying to make it happen sooner. Now I see that patience and timing are about that same trusting place and it dawned on me that we will be financially better off a bit if we wait.”
“Oh my gosh, tell me this is so. It is like that “Seinfeld” episode where George does everything the opposite and his life goes better. Have these thoughts that we’ve held prevented us from stepping out, hanging on living a peaceful and normal life while we were attaining new goals? It’s hard not to feel angry if that is the case.”
“On the same line, the new business opportunity is not our end all goal. It will bring us higher, yet we almost passed it up but we just had to do it. Are we stumped because we passed up the next step looking for the end goal?” Okay, she’s got a lot of things going on here. I want to address a couple of them.
Yes, just because things get hard doesn’t mean it’s wrong, alright? So that’s important to know. In fact, sometimes having it be hard, if you’ve already kind of determined that yeah, this is what I need to go for and it gets hard, then sometimes you can look at that as evidence that you are on the right track because that’s part of the growth process.
The challenge is the gift that you’re given, that okay, if you pass this challenge, on the other side of this is the reward. If you don’t pass this challenge, you’re not prepared for the reward. So look at the challenge as the opportunity to prove that you can do it this time.
She says “normally we would go crazy stressing over something, and realizing now that being patient and allowing the timing to work in its own time is to end up being financially better off.” Yes, you’re going to find out that the most important element here is staying at peace, staying at peace.
You have everything you need in this moment. You have a roof over your head, unless you’re on a cellphone out in a parking lot somewhere, but really you have everything in this moment and it’s learning to be grateful for what you have in this moment. We live so much next week in our heads, worrying about what we don’t want to happen. That’s what’s keeping us stuck.
You’ve got to be grateful here and now. Okay, so everything may fall apart tomorrow but it’s not tomorrow. You have what you need right now. Be grateful for it. That puts you in a peaceful place, that puts you in a vibration that tunes you into the ideas and the thoughts that will tell you what you need to do next to avoid the thing you’re worried about for next week. Okay, but you’re not going to get it when you’re worried.
And then she says “are we stumped, are we stuck because we ignore the next step while we’re looking for the end goal?” Yeah, sometimes that’s the case but I’m not going to tell you that’s the case every time. This is why, you know, I can’t tell you jump or bark which way or that way but if you’re at peace, you’re going to be more receptive to that gut instinct that tells you “oh yeah, this is a stepping stone towards the end goal. This is the next thing for the end goal. End goal is still there. This is a tangent but it’s part of what needs to happen on the way.”
Or okay, here’s an opportunity. It looks like a distraction, this is going to take us off course for that goal. Ignore it, alright? So it comes down to learning to trust that instinct, that inner voice. Just in summary, do what you can do, right now, today.
If all you can think of to do is open the book and read one more chapter, read one more lesson, or sign on online and do one more lesson, that’s what you can do. In fact, that’s what I hope you’ll do is when you’re stuck you don’t know what to do, feed your mind. Learn something, get yourself in a vibration that will be receptive to the ideas that you’re looking for.
Second thing I’d like to sum up with is trust that life is an illusion. What you see is not how things really are and it’s people who choose to believe in the abundance that they can’t see that will find it. The third thing is to trust your inner voice. If there’s something nagging you, address it. Take care of it, put it behind you, do it and so often you’re going to find that you answer your own questions just by writing it out.
Put your problem that you have on your mind in writing.
If you put it in your journal, if you write it in your journal saying ‘I am so stuck. This is what I’m feeling, this is what I’m facing, this is what I’m dealing with,’ just getting it out of your head and onto the paper frees your mind of the clutter because you don’t have to store it in your mind anymore. It’s on paper, it’s there. You’ve got it or it’s online. You’ve, you’ve put it somewhere and then as you do that, you’re also formulating a powerful question.
You’re creating a question that if you can put it in question form, then there is an answer to it. It’s the Law of Opposites. If there’s a question, there is an answer and sometimes the answer only comes after you’ve formulated the question coherently. And then again, writing in the journal at the end with a positive optimistic note that you know, you might be feeling awful right now but you expect to feel better soon.
Keep moving, just do something. Do something. Get your goals written. Don’t worry about them being perfect. The course will help you perfect them better and even at the end, they probably won’t be absolutely perfect and that’s okay because they don’t have to be to work.
Just remember how you go through this course, how you play this game is how you probably play life too and so as you practice being tenacious with this program, you’re going to learn the patterns that you need to apply in your life. With this course, do you put it off? Do you get stuck? Do you overanalyze?
Those are probably the way that you’re handling life too. You’re probably putting things off in your life. You’re probably stuck in your life and you probably overanalyze the things in your life too. So let’s just practice doing better with the course and I think you’re going to see it reflected in your life, as well.
So let me get back to this place. I’m going to open the line. I’m going to keep everybody on mute but if you have a question, let me know who you are and we’ll take your question.
MALE CALLER: Yeah, this is Blaine. I’ll give you one.
LESLIE: Okay, Blaine.
BLAINE: I set an intention, a goal some time back that’s rapidly coming upon me here. The date is February 28th to achieve something here and as I understand the concept of belief, at least, I have an intellectual understanding of all of this and I’m getting better at implementing it but it’s becoming more and more difficult for me to believe based on appearances that I’m going to make this goal. It’s coming on me in a hurry and I don’t see the things. In other words, the belief is getting more difficult to hang on to.
LESLIE: Right.
BLAINE: As we approach this. When I look at the vision board and I review all of the other things that I’ve created to help me achieve this goal, it becomes more and more difficult to see this as being completed.
LESLIE: What lesson are you on?
BLAINE: I’m just, I’m in Lesson Two.
LESLIE: Okay, okay. Go ahead, you were going to say something else?
BLAINE: No that’s fine, I think you got it.
LESLIE: Okay, have faith in the process. If I were you in that condition, you’ve set the goal. You’ve got the intention, you’ve even got the pictures of it, right?
BLAINE: Oh absolutely.
LESLIE: So, at this point if it were me, I would put those away. I would put them away and I wouldn’t even put them in front of you. I wouldn’t look at them for a while because if I’m hearing what you’re saying and I’ve been where you’re at because I’ve done that, I’ve experienced that, is every time I looked at it, instead of looking at it and having it create “oh it’s going to be awesome!” I looked at it and I’d think “aaaargh…”.
BLAINE: It creates angst, yes.
LESLIE: It creates angst and so you’d be better off without it.
BLAINE: Alright.
LESLIE: Let this be one of those things where you set it and forget it. The way I would look at it is you’ve written it down. The angels and God know what you’ve asked for. Now you put it away because it’s creating anxiety for you.
BLAINE: Perfect, thanks so much.
LESLIE: Put it away and then just do what you can each day and trust the process. Trust yourself in the moment that you will do the right thing today. You’re so focused on February 28th that it’s just creating too much interference.
BLAINE: Thank you very much.
LESLIE: Okay, anybody else?
FEMALE CALLER: Hi Leslie, this is Catherine.
LESLIE: Hi Catherine.
CATHERINE: I just wanted to say thank you so much. Everything that you have said has just been exactly what I needed to hear right at the right time.
LESLIE: Oh good.
CATHERINE: I don’t have a question, I just wanted to thank you. It’s been, just an answer to my worries and prayers right now.
LESLIE: Thank you, I appreciate it.
CATHERINE: Thank you.
LESLIE: Okay, anybody else? I’m going to stay on for a little longer. I can see on my screen, it shows me how many people are connected. I’m going to stay here until everybody hangs up. So if you’re done, if you’re still hanging out to see what other kinds of questions might come up, that’s fine too. In the meantime, if nobody says anything,
I’m going to be looking for that blog post I was telling you about.
FEMALE CALLER: Leslie, I have a question.
LESLIE: Who’s this?
FEMALE CALLER: Judy Hardy.
LESLIE: Okay.
JUDY: I was on Lesson 13 and it just became confusing to me. I couldn’t figure out what kind of goals to write down and how to do that and so, I’m stuck there. I’ve been stuck there for a couple of months and I don’t know quite how to get beyond it.
LESLIE: Oh, oh okay. You know what, I think you posted that question didn’t you on the blog?
JUDY: I did not but someone else had so I thought I won’t write it down.
LESLIE: Oh, and the reason I didn’t bring that one in is because somebody had asked me the same question in email and we went back and forth in email and handled it, and then I thought that was just old news and nobody needed to hear it. I’m sorry, I should have addressed it. Let me pull that one up so I can have it in front of me. So Lesson 13?
JUDY: Lesson 13.
LESLIE: And I’m sorry, I’m having a hard time finding it. Remind me.
JUDY: It was on writing down goals and then categorizing them but I was just confused on what goals to write down.
LESLIE: Okay, that’s fine. Do you have something that you’re trying to accomplish through the course? One thing? I mean, do you have one goal?
JUDY: I’m trying to learn how to accomplish goals.
LESLIE: Yeah, do you have a goal that you’ve identified?
JUDY: That’s it, how to carry through with a goal. I get goals written down and then they never come to fruition and so that is my goal is to accomplish a goal.
LESLIE: Okay, okay. Alright, so you still have to choose a goal?
JUDY: Yes, and it is around money. It is having enough money to do what I need and what I want.
LESLIE: Okay, do you know what those needs and wants are?
JUDY: Yes, I have them written down, yeah.
LESLIE: Okay, so let’s focus on those needs and wants. How many would you say you have identified? If you were to put them into one word like car or cheeseburger or whatever it is, how many do you think you would have had? Three, ten, twenty, hundred?
JUDY: Ten.
LESLIE: Okay. So what I want you to do is I want you to take those, you’ve written them all down and see if you can extract them and identify them as ten separate identities. It might say “I want to have a cheeseburger on Tuesday.” You know, whatever it is, okay?
[Laughter]
LESLIE: And you’re going to list those and you’re going to use that little section that talks about the categories and see ‘okay, is this goal have to do with my health?’ If it does, I’m going to put it on this side of the paper that is about health.
Does it have to do with relationships? Okay then, I’ll put it on this side of the paper that has to do with relationships and you might just do this on a scrap piece of paper to identify which ones belong where.
JUDY: And so but the goals are then are just simple goals like I need my carpet cleaned? I need a new driveway?
LESLIE: Absolutely.
JUDY: Okay.
LESLIE: Absolutely, keep it simple.
JUDY: Okay.
LESLIE: Don’t complicate it. And if, whatever you write down, whatever you do to fill in those blanks, don’t worry about if it’s right or wrong because it’s yours.
JUDY: Okay.
LESLIE: And once you’ve got something written there then turn the page and do the next page. And even if it’s all a jumble and you’re not loving how it looks, it’ll become more clear as you go because what I’m going to do is I’m going to help you pick one of those things. We’re not going to tackle all of them through the course.
We’re going to pick one thing because I’m going to show you the process. I’m going to walk you through the process of accomplishing that one thing so that you understand the pattern and then you will be able to go back on your own and apply the same pattern to each. Does that make sense?
JUDY: Okay, yes. Okay, yes that helps, that really does help.
LESLIE: Okay and as far as the categories go, it could be that all of them are in one category. Don’t worry about it. It could all be home improvement, fine. Leave it and move on.
JUDY: Okay.
LESLIE: And when you get to the goal statement where you create your life vision thing or whatever, you’ll probably be able to think of a few more things than home improvement that you’d like to reflect upon on the last day of your life but you’ll get to that when you get to it.
JUDY: Okay.
[Laughter]
LESLIE: And if you still get stuck, let’s address this in the forums because you’re not the only person who’s had this problem and we got to make a good discussion around it, okay?
JUDY: Okay, thank you very much and thank you, it’s been wonderful tonight.
LESLIE: Good, thank you. Oh, I found it! Okay, the blog post that you guys are going to want to go see is called “Why the Law of Attraction Stops Working”, and does anybody else have a question before I go here?
If nobody has anything to say then I’m going to go ahead and read this blog post to you because it really helped me at the time that my mentor explained it. Anyone, anyone?
MALE CALLER: Just a quick thank you, Leslie and then by all means, let’s hear the blog post.
LESLIE: Okay, thank you. Who’s this?
BLAINE: Blaine.
LESLIE: Blaine again, thank you. Okay, this was posted in 2009. Did you have a breakthrough after applying a new understanding of the Law of Attraction only to find out that as time went on, it became more and more difficult to duplicate your amazing results?
Believe me, we’ve experienced the same thing and wondered why things stopped working that had worked before. Eventually, it became clear to me, or more accurately God placed in my path, a person who had been there and who had discovered the answer and could share it with me.
Here’s what I learned and I think with the financial turmoil in the world today, now is a good time to share it with you. We’re here to discover the path to true lasting and complete joy. It’s the path to God, to a personal two-way living relationship with our Creator. We find it by discovering and abiding by his laws. The more precepts we learn to live by, the closer we approach that fullness of joy.
It’s like the children’s game of hot and cold. One child hides an object and the other goes to find it. When the second child is headed in the right direction, the first child says “warmer” but when he or she starts heading in the wrong direction, the first child says “colder” until by constant course correction, the object is found.
In life, when we are headed in the right direction, we feel warmth and enlightenment from God in our spirits. When we are headed in the wrong direction, the enlightenment is replaced with darkness and confusion; it says “colder”.
Proximity does not have the same effect on our joy as much as does our direction; meaning, a person who is merely right on top of the object might feel colder for being faced in the wrong direction while someone clear across the room from it might feel warmer for being faced in the right direction, even though there is a much greater distance involved – that’s the paradox.
So here’s why our Law of Attraction experiences can become frustrating. The Law of Attraction is a true principle so the first time we learn about it, it fills our souls with light and understanding and as we apply it, we’re often blessed to see amazing results. Then after a degree of success, God wants us to know that there is something even better to learn, something even more powerful and wonderful to discover.
When our results are not what we think they should be, or when doing the same things do not yield the same results, He is allowing us to grope around a little bit until we face an even better direction, toward even greater joy and success than we have perhaps even conceived thus far.
Sometimes we grope until we feel that “warmer” indication that lets us identify a goal that is perhaps more worthy of our energy and commitment. Sometimes we grope until we recognize that something is amiss in our life and needs to be corrected. Sometimes we grope until we discover the blessing in our hardship and come to peace with it with a heart full of gratitude.
If we have not accomplished the ultimate goal of perfect oneness with God then the game isn’t over, and we need to pay attention to those “warmer” and “colder” spiritual nudgings. There’s something new we’re supposed to find: a deeper understanding, a more perfect process of partnering with “unseen” help to accomplish even greater purposes than we can even comprehend.
It’s easy to get off course and not even realize it. When the drive for success begins to eat away at family relationships for example, it’s time to get back to the basics and re-establish one’s footing on solid ground. When spending has become a little careless, it’s time to demonstrate greater respect for money and show gratitude for simpler things.
When we’ve developed a habit of achieving goals that add to our personal comfort, it may be a time to set goals to improve conditions of mankind at large. Wherever we are, if we don’t fine-tune and continually improve upon our intentions along the way, what once felt warm will ultimately turn cold. We are meant to learn principle upon principle so holding tight to just one and never learning anymore will ultimately lead to some serious coldness.
Consider the following image, my friend pointed this one out to me and the image is on the blog post. It’s a horizontal line across the centre of a box and at the end of the line is the word God and
then there are two diagonal dotted lines that point towards God as well. So it’s like a big arrow towards God with a solid line in the middle and two dotted lines on the outside and around the horizontal line is yellow hue, and as you get farther away from the line, it’s red hue.
This illustration shows the path to a perfect fullness of joy or what you might call a path back to your Creator. When you do things that are within the influence of His power, you enjoy the warmth of His spirit, enlightenment and true success. So at the left side of the image, the dotted lines are way out, away from the solid line in the middle. If you get closer, they gather in all the people who have all kinds of beliefs and as they get closer and closer to the line, they’ll feel warmer and warmer and that line is what leads them to God.
So to begin with, at the left, our behaviors can be in the red zone way out on the edges, in the fringes and as long as we’re within the range of the dotted lines, we will experience these spiritual benefits. As time proceeds and we move toward the right, our underdeveloped red zone behaviors will not yield the same results. They fall out of that dotted line range.
We must fine-tune our understanding and behave accordingly in order to remain within the influence of His power. We must eventually learn to live within the yellow zone to find our way to perfect happiness. Outside of the dotted lines, we feel “colder” while inside the dotted lines, we feel “warmer”. This is how we are led to all truth so don’t be discouraged if you have fallen out of the joy you once felt.
It’s still there for you and as you search for it by getting back to the basics, you will find it. It only takes a step in the right direction for you to finally feel that assurance that you’re getting “warmer”. Even when we feel very far away, the assurance, joy and newfound hope is ours in the moment we discover the right direction.
Need some financial peace of mind? Seek first to find joy in simply being headed in the right direction. With the resolved intention to find the right direction, you will be led to it. From there the joy and peace of mind you seek will certainly follow. So that is the reminder that I wanted to share with you. There’s a lot of good stuff back there.
FEMALE CALLER: How do we find that?
LESLIE: It’s on my blog called “Why The Law of Attraction Stops Working”.
FEMALE CALLER: Okay, thank you.
LESLIE: Any last minute anything before we turn this off?
FEMALE CALLER: This is Linda, the life we’re getting at. It wouldn’t look like it if you looked at our lives but I can tell because there’s that peace and understanding and anytime one of our goals doesn’t come out like we thought, it’s just like ‘well, it wasn’t supposed to be.’
LESLIE: It’s that choice in that moment even is a test because if it doesn’t work and you rant and rave and fret and fume, you’re going to get a chance to try that one again, you know. So if you don’t want to have to keep facing goals not accomplished then be grateful.
LINDA: It’s just funny. We knew we were going to end up losing our house and it’s like today, today, I’m just grateful I have a place to live. We didn’t know where we were going to move to but it’s funny how those things just take care of themselves when it comes time. Things just work out.
LESLIE: Yeah, do you have kids?
LINDA: Yeah, we have six kids.
LESLIE: So you know, when a child comes to you and says “my life stinks” what’s your first response to that?
LINDA: Tough.
LESLIE: You have no idea how good you have it! Let me show you what you really have.
LINDA: Yeah.
LESLIE: And you show them by taking away the things that they enjoy. And I’m like okay, I don’t want that to happen to me. I need to just be grateful no matter what.
LINDA: Just grateful, just so grateful. And it’s so interesting because you just don’t know what path you’re supposed to go on to get where you need to be, to meet the people you’re supposed to meet, to influence people’s lives the way you need to influence them.
LESLIE: Okay.
LINDA: Yeah if you think oh, it’s not working out right but it’s like oh, you have no idea! Who knew that we were supposed to move to where we ended up moving to, to be influenced and to influence?
LESLIE: Yeah, yeah. It’s like the spider, that’s another blog post that’s one of my favorites. My daughter had this spider fall on her and it made her move and that’s what she wanted.
LINDA: You know, and it’s interesting and I just have to say it because it’s the direct result from reading your materials that I’ve been able to face what we’ve been through because it’s allowed me to say ‘oh, this is the mindset to have to get through this’. And so it’s like everything that you’ve said tonight that I’m like ‘yeah, wow! Been there, done that, felt that. Yeah, that’s right’ and you just get to that place where you are at peace.
LESLIE: Start blogging about it. Create a blog, start blogging about what you’re learning.
LINDA: It’s been incredible and wow, it is. I think maybe someday we’ll eventually get there. I’m not ready for that yet!
LESLIE: In this economy and in what’s going on with so many people, it’s assisting, its assisting. People are choosing what to do with all of this. People are making a choice and it’s not going to be bad forever and how everybody chooses right now is going to have a big, huge impact on where they end up when things turn around – as a whole, in whatever way it turns around.
LINDA: Because it’s the kind of person that it’s making you become through the process.
LESLIE: Yep.
LINDA: So it’s that person that we’re becoming that we end up being when the hardship is over.
LESLIE: Exactly.
LINDA: Wow, thank you so much.
LESLIE: Thank you for your comments. I appreciate it.
MARY: Hey Leslie, this is Mary Butler. How you doing?
LESLIE: Hi, how are you?
MARY: Good. I met your sister, Valerie at school. Yeah, it was fun and it was like, oh my gosh, you do look alike.
LESLIE: Okay, so who looks older? I have to ask you that.
MARY: Oh!
LESLIE: That’s a loaded question. You don’t have to answer.
MARY: Well, shoot, I hope I don’t get that wrong!
[Laughter]
LESLIE: I’ll spare you, I’ll just tell you. When we were growing up, people kept thinking I was older than her and she loved that because she’s six years older than me.
MARY: Oh really?? Well, there you go! No, no I thought, hmm
and it was funny because I said ‘you must have thought she was nuts’ and she was just like ‘yeah, we always just worried about them. We just hope that they’d be okay.’ And I thought I bet that’s how my family feels about us!
LESLIE: Oh, and they did. Everybody worried about us.
MARY: I know I am so glad that I came across your Hidden Treasures and the Stickman video because the things that we’ve gone through in the last year and a half, I don’t think that I would have made it with my sanity intact if I had not learned those things.
I just think ‘oh, God is so good. He’ll let me have this.’ Because things got, I thought they were bad but they got so much worse which, of course, is good in a way but I just thought ‘wow, I don’t know how I would have made it without knowing this.’
We’ve needed like major cash for our bills, once in March and figured that out through a tax return which was totally a godsend. And then in September, I’m like ‘well, hey God, here it’s me again and I need more cash again, and I don’t know how you’re going to pull it off this time because we don’t get two tax returns in a year. So good luck with that one!!’
And the next day, my husband came home because he’d been let go and guess what? His severance package paid our bills and I just laughed to myself and I thought ‘well, that’s not exactly what I had in mind but it’ll work!’ I just thought ‘how funny! I am so, so glad that I have learned this because I think that we would have been seriously in a bad way, in our marriage, in our home life, if I hadn’t been able to get this different view.
LESLIE: Sometimes you just go into survival mode and you rely on the principles. Sometimes if you feel like ‘I can’t rely on anything else. Nothing else around me feels like it’s solid, it’s all so fleeting.’ It’s all so unstable but the principles are solid as a rock.
MARY: People in our neighborhood look at us and just go “how are you getting through this?” And I’m like “oh it’s good, it’ll work out!”
LESLIE: Think back ten years ago, if you had been required to go through what you’re going through now ten years ago, what would it have done to you?
MARY: It would have been a complete disaster two years ago. Two years ago honestly, I think that I would have figured that God hated me.
LESLIE: Yeah.
MARY: There was just no way that He could possibly like me and let me go through this and now I just think ‘oh, this is really bad. I can’t wait to see how this ends!’
LESLIE: Even if you had gotten to a place where you thought God hated you and you didn’t believe in Him anymore, I’ve been there.
MARY: That’s what got me to find your material in the first place because I said “fine, I’ll do it on my own. Just leave me alone, I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t want your wrath, I just want you to go away.” And that’s how I ended up finding the Hidden Treasures and the Stickman video, and I was like ‘oh, you’re so nice to me…
LESLIE: He’s so patient.
MARY: After I spat at you and shook my fist at the sky.’
LESLIE: Yeah, yeah. He’s patient and I think He just knows, He just knows. I mean, sometimes I look at my six-year-old throwing a tantrum and I just kind of smile because you know, eventually she’ll get over it and we’ll move on. It doesn’t do her any good.
MARY: None, none.
LESLIE: None whatsoever.
MARY: But I just thought you know, I better tell you again, thank you again.
LESLIE: We probably better wrap this up. Thank you everyone for sticking with me this long. I enjoyed it. Anytime you have questions and you get stuck, just post them in the forums where you can get support from your peers who are at different places in the course.
So one page at a time, one day at a time, one breath at a time, you’re going to get through this. You’re going to come out on the other side, and you’re going to look back and say look what I got through.
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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