[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and today you are in for a treat. My good friend, Cathy Heller, is back on the podcast and she’s talking about her new book, Abundant Ever After: Tools for Creating a Life of Prosperity and Ease. And I’ll tell you, Cathy totally opened my eyes today to what it really means to manifest in a practical, non-woo-woo sense of the word if you will. And I say that as somebody who, you know, I ride the fence, I ride the edge of woo-woo, and highly practical and logical. I’m always open-minded to things I don’t understand. And Cathy is one of the best in the world. Her podcast has over 50 million downloads because she is one of the best in the world at what you’re about to hear her do, teaching you how to create abundance in every area of your life.

And today she reveals that abundance is not something to be chased. It is something to be accessed from within. She has a deep understanding of the universal principles of manifestation. And through Cathy’s teachings, individuals gain practical tools and techniques to attract, create, and sustain abundance in all areas of life, including your health, your wealth, relationships, your personal growth, you name it. And Cathy believes that abundance is not simply about material wealth, but also about aligning with one’s purpose, experiencing joy, and cultivating meaningful connections. If you’ve not heard from Cathy, I think you’re going to be a better person after today’s podcast.

Before we dive into the episode and the conversation with Cathy, I want to take a minute to thank our two sponsors. First and foremost is the Miracle Morning App. It is the easiest way to transform your life one morning at a time by simply pressing play. The Miracle Morning App has built-in journal, affirmations, all sorts of features, and you can try it free for seven days today. You can go to the App Store, the Google Play store, or if you’re online then go to MiracleMorning.com/app and try it free for seven days. It is transformative. And I’ll tell you, if you look in the App Store, I just looked in there, there’s 3.7 thousand reviews, 4.9 out of five stars. And if you read the reviews, people will tell you, “I’ve been doing the Miracle Morning for a month or for 14 years. This app’s exactly what I needed.” So, give it a shot and let me know what you think.

And last but not least, I want to thank our sponsor, our longest sponsor, Organifi. They have a new product. It’s not as new now but it’s their newest product that I’m aware of. It is their Organifi Green Juice Apple Crisp flavor, all the benefits you’ve come to love in the classic Reset Green Juice, which has been their number one product since inception, it was their first product, but it’s got a new twist. Enjoy the same fan-favorite superfood ingredients, ashwagandha, moringa, spirulina, and corella designed to hydrate, energize, and support cortisol balance so that you don’t feel as stressed and it tastes like delicious crisp apples. Head over to Organifi.com/Hal that is spelled O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal and use the discount code ‘HAL’ for 20% off your order as a listener of the podcast.

All right. Without further ado, it is my great pleasure to share this conversation that I had yesterday with the one and only Mrs. Cathy Heller on how to create abundance in every area of your life.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: Cathy, it is so good to see you.

Cathy Heller: It’s so good to see you. I love that you exist in the world. I feel like you bring sunshine on the rainiest days. You bring more sunshine on the brightest days. So, it’s just really such a gift.

Hal Elrod: I’ve been so looking forward to this moment just to see. I haven’t seen you in a while. Of all the people, you’re one of my favorite human beings on the planet. And of all the people that like when I’m with you, I’m like, “Oh, I wish I was Cathy’s neighbor. I wish I saw her all the time.”

Cathy Heller: Same. I feel like if you and Ursula lived here, then we would take walks and get into all of the things, that would be awesome. But I’m so glad you’re out there with the torch that is you just helping so many people.

Hal Elrod: The last time I saw you, I was in your home, right? I was at your house with my dad, and I was just going through our text messages today, our thread, and I saw the picture of me and you in your backyard and, like, yeah, you had me on your…

Cathy Heller: Yeah. That was really sweet. It’s so special how many incredible gifts have come through the courage to start a podcast or write a book. And then you meet like a collection of souls that you just are so grateful that have walked right into your life. It’s amazing. And I remember when you came on my podcast the first time, I was completely just blown away. And I can remember how that feels in my body, how it felt to me, and what you shared and how you share what you share and how much light that is. And so, yeah, so here we are doing it again.

Hal Elrod: I remember that too. Like, I remember I’m like, I don’t know, is this the right way to say it? I’m like I’m in love with you, Cathy. Like, I feel so much love toward you, I can’t even like, yeah. The first time we had our… And it was a video, yeah, a video podcast.

Cathy Heller: Yeah. I think with certain people, and you do this really well too, certain people, we just really have the capacity to make people feel seen. And with you, it’s like it’s so easy to see you because it’s so bright. It’s so bright. It’s so easy to see. But, yeah, I think you and I are extremely generous in that one way where we want people to feel like there’s nothing they have to do to earn being in the space. They can just be there.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. Well, I want to talk about your podcast in a bit because the fact you have 50 million downloads is just a testament to people like your energy. They like to hear you. They like to feel what you’re putting out. So, I want to start there right away. You have a new book. It is titled Abundant Ever After. You’re holding it up there for those watching this on YouTube. And I even said before we started recording, congrats on your new book and this book that is like your heart and soul who you are embodied in the form of a book, right?

Cathy Heller: Yeah. True.

Hal Elrod: Yeah. And so, I want to start here, the title Abundant Ever After about creating a life of abundance. How do you define abundance? Let’s start there.

Cathy Heller: Well, first of all, that is a great place to start because I found out that in Alaska they have like so many words for snow because it’s always snowing. So, what kind of snow? What do you mean? What does snow mean to you? Is it sleet? Sludge? What is it? And I think that’s true about abundance. I think it’s a word that people throw around all the time and they want abundance in their life. But what does it mean? And so, I ask people sometimes that same question and they’ll say, “You know, what I really would like to create in my life that feels abundant is a beautiful home, a lot of money, a great relationship,” like all of these things. And I think those things sound like beautiful dreams.

And I often ask the question, which is, “I believe that you have way bigger dreams than that. And so, my question is, do you think that what you really would want to create that feels abundant is deep inner peace and feeling that you’re connected to God all the time, connected to the divine, walking in a transcendent experience every day, feeling this feeling of creativity running through you and getting these creative downloads, feeling the lightness of your own being, feeling deep gratitude and overflow and deep, deep, deep satisfied feeling of being in love with life?” And then they all say to me, “Oh, yeah. That’s my list.” And so, again, I say, “Okay. So, to me, what’s really exciting about that second list is that it lives in you, that it’s a breath away.”

And then what I discovered in my life, which I share in the book, is that when we access what we really are, which is this abundant soul, we are a masterpiece, a piece of the master. We’re someone because we’re some other one. When we access the mystical and deep equanimity and deep love, deep peace inside ourselves, there’s a real wisdom there. And there’s a wholeness to that. And when we operate from that wholeness, we will create all the forms of abundance that are possible on the 3D experience of our life, because it’s already the experience we’re having. DNA is a code, really. It’s energy, but it’s a software program. It’s a software code. And then each one of us is the three-dimensional printout of that energetic code. So, when we establish what we really are, energetically speaking, the consciousness of that level of frequency creates the 3D life that we live.

Hal Elrod: So, what I’m hearing is that abundance is, it’s an inner game, right? It’s living in a state of abundance. And from that place, the 3D that you mentioned and I want to mention this for anyone that doesn’t know, like I’ve been to your home, my dad agreed, it’s arguably the most beautiful home a.k.a. mansion that we had ever seen, the view in the backyard, the pool. I was like, “This is surreal. Am I on an episode of Cribs?” Right? So, it’s like you’re not just like some like just airy fairy like, “I spout all this abundant stuff.” You’re like, “Hey, I’m experiencing abundance,” both in how you experience every moment of your life and your relationships with other people, and you’re living an extraordinary 3D reality around you.

Cathy Heller: Yeah. I mean, to me, we don’t have to choose between them. You know, to me, the idea is that I think about King David who wrote Hallelujah like every Psalm. This man was both deeply in love with God and so wealthy, like both spiritually but also materially. He had a kingdom like the Kingdom of David, like, I mean, he was a richer man than the Kardashians will ever be, right? And yet he lived to be close to God. And so, I don’t know that that’s something that was ever something you have to choose between. I think about a redwood tree and how its job is to be its fullest thriving self. So, it needs on a 3D level a tremendous amount. It needs space, a lot of it. It takes up a lot of space. It needs a certain amount of rain, a certain amount of water, a certain amount of light, and it’s just doing its job right.

And so, if you’re Michael Jordan and you think you’re doing somebody a service by sitting in a tiny little seat and not wearing a coat that’s big enough for you, you’re just not being humble enough to be what you are, right? Like, just everything that was put in nature that God designed was designed to thrive to its fullest. And I think not only do we lose sight of our spiritual wealth, which is a huge point of suffering, I think, for us as people because I think we deeply have a hole that’s a God-shaped hole inside of us. But I also think that we live in such a scarcity mindset that we forget that abundance creates abundance. When you are walking with joy, there’s a scene in Splash, I’m totally dating myself, where Tom Hanks meets Daryl Hannah and then he’s walking down the street. He’s like, “Zippy-dee-do-da,” and he’s like hugging people in the marketplace.

When you are in an overflow of abundance of love, of an abundance of energy, an abundance of anything, vitality, your health, you create that now for everybody around you. So, too, if you have an abundance of wealth, right, and you paint your own house, your neighbor’s house just went up in value because you made your house so nice. If you put a store on Main Street, you just created the possibility of abundance for everybody else. You can now come to Main Street and now all those other businesses are going to do better because you invested in that same street. So, we have a very false sense of all of this, and it’s because we don’t know who we are. We very much identify with the mind’s version of who we are, which is an ego, which is all about what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is yours, and the ego. It’s all negative, right?

Anything is coming out of the mind unless you are conscious of it and choosing it. It’s just running amok of things that separate you from your divinities, things that separate you from your connectedness to God and to the oneness of all that is. But when you move into the part of you that’s your soul, that part of you has an endless capacity to give and an equal endless capacity to receive. Just like the heart is a muscle that takes in a full amount of blood and then gives it right back to the body, what we’re doing is we’re misunderstanding the mission. Every one of us is like a lightning rod that is meant to transmit the most amount of beauty into the world. And so, the more abundance that you bring into your life, the more love, the more oxygen, the more vitality, the more wealth, the more health, you will become a lightning rod to put more of that into the whole, the one, the ecosystem.

I’ll just end with this. If you had a tree and it was dying in a garden, you will eventually find that it affects everything else in the garden. But if you have something that’s thriving in the garden, it will also give life and pollination and beauty to the entire whole because we are one and it is only one. And that’s where the mind gets it wrong but the heart gets it right.

Hal Elrod: My left brain encapsulates that as the greatest gift we can give to the people we love, humanity is to fulfill our potential. Right? You mentioned like Michael Jordan playing small because he does… It’s interesting that example of Michael Jordan that, to me, the way you describe it like the ego, it actually would be most people think, “Oh, yeah, if you think you’re the best, you have a big ego.” But it’s actually the ego almost in reverse where you’re like, “Well, I’m playing small because I don’t want to be important.” Speak to that. Can you? Like, unpack that ego component.

Cathy Heller: Yeah. No, I mean, it’s really interesting because we have all these historical figures that have kind of walked this walk before us. I think there’s beautiful lessons to be learned. I think about Moses, like Moses, what most people don’t know because you watch the Ten Commandments or you watch The Prince of Egypt, you think that Moses went into the desert and then immediately listened to God and went right back to Egypt. The story goes that he was in his 80s when he finally went back, which means that for 85 years he said to God, “Choose someone else. I don’t want to be this person.” Because they say the Bible says he was the most humble man that lived, right? In fact, nobody knows where he’s buried because he didn’t want people to worship him. So, he didn’t want people to come.

The point is that eventually when he went to do the assignment, he realized that the humility was to realize that anything we do, whether you’re Picasso, you’re Jim Henson, you’re Serena Williams, you’re not doing it anyway. You’re the vehicle for something much bigger than you that moves through you. So, may we all have the humility to raise our hand and say, “I would be willing to get into flow state. And then you’ll write the music. You’ll do it.” It’s the ego that thinks it’s you, right? It’s not you. I mean, the moon reflects the light of the sun. And you and I, as much as we love love, we didn’t create love. We just get to experience it.

When I had my first daughter, and I’m sure you felt this way because I know how deeply you feel things that you feel, I was completely and totally brought to my knees from the power of grace. And my rabbi said to me, “Think about how much love there is for us to receive.” Because think about it. Did you do something to earn that? What? Like, if you think you did, what could you possibly have done that added up to just her eyes? What would you have had to do to earn her eyes? Her face. Her hands? Nothing. The answer is nothing. You can’t earn it. It’s that beautiful. It’s unearnable. That’s what grace is. Right?

So, we get so in our heads that we forget that we’re all just here in awe. We’re all just here in wonder. And if God gave you a talent to speak, for God’s sake, speak. And if God gave you a talent to play ball, play ball. Because when people buy Nikes and little kids lace up their shoes, it’s who he reminds them they can be, which is why they want Nikes. It’s not I want Jordans because I like the color. They might like the color. It’s that there’s an energetic to Michael Jordan that reminds a person that there is a goat that lives in them. They have their own greatest-of-all-time mission and we’re actually all meant to be that powerful. And we’re really that powerful when we know it’s not a power of our own.

Anyone who really ever done anything amazing, anyone, the best cellist in the world, the best painter in the world, the best scientists in the world, they’ll tell you, “It was a download. It was inspiration. I don’t know where it came from.”

Hal Elrod: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Cathy Heller: Correct. It’s not about you, right? Just raise your hand and ultimately, you are here to be a steward of whatever you can possibly tolerate to be blessed with. That’s it.

Hal Elrod: So many good things. That was a motto of mine was, “Oh, it’s not about me.” That was probably 15 years ago I had this realization when I was trying to explore my purpose in life, “Oh, It’s not about me. It’s about me using the gifts that God’s blessed me with to serve as many people as I possibly can to the best of my ability.” And in that, I find fulfillment. In that, I’m like, “Oh, I’m living my purpose. I’m honoring the gifts that I’ve been given.” Right?

Cathy Heller: I mean a gift by definition is meant to be given away. It’s not for you. It’s for everybody else.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, that’s a great point. Yeah. The gift wasn’t given to you to hoard, right? It was given to you to give away. You talk in the book and just in your podcast in general, a big concept is the law of reception. And that’s something that I wasn’t super familiar with until I read Abundant Ever After. And so, I would love for you to unpack that. What is the law of reception?

Cathy Heller: Yeah. I mean, first of all, thank you for being just so genuinely curious about all these things. A lot of people don’t know a lot of anything, me included, right? So, when I was growing up over the last 25 years of my life, of my adult life, I thought that yoga was exercise because I don’t know a lot about Hinduism or Buddhism. I don’t know about the Yoga Sutras. I just knew that there was a place you can go and put on a cute Lululemon outfit.

Hal Elrod: Lululemon, yeah.

Cathy Heller: So, too, most people don’t know a lot about Judaism or Kabbalah. We forget that like Jesus was a Kabbalist. He was a rabbi. He was tapped in. He was super mystical and understood all these elements of Judaism. And so, Kabbalah is a central part of just what Judaism is. It’s the mystical side of the tradition. But people think of it like, “Oh, isn’t that something Madonna did?” It’s like, well, that’s like the equivalent of a yoga studio and not part of the whatever. I can’t speak to it, but I’m sure Deepak would tell us yoga is part of a much bigger wisdom, tradition, and all of that.

Hal Elrod: I’m reading a book called The Yoga of Jesus right now, and it explains what yoga actually is far beyond a series of poses that you do.

Cathy Heller: That sounds amazing. Yeah. And I just interviewed Marianne Williamson about her new book called The Mystical Jesus, which I wonder how those two books can be similar. But the point is that the word ‘Kabbalah,’ for whatever this is worth, the word ‘Kabbalah’ means to receive. That’s the Hebrew word. It means to receive. So, the law of reception, receivership is the point of life. So, that’s where it comes from. Okay. So, this is thousands of years old. And if we could have Jesus speak to this, I’m sure he would do a great job. Moses could speak to this. This is what they studied. So, what does it mean? So, my rabbi, I lived in Israel for several years, and I studied with this beautiful family in the old city of Jerusalem. I lived there for three years.

And he said to me like this. He said, “Let me see if I can explain this to you.” He said, “If you had a radio and you put a radio on a desk.” Another word for a radio is a receiver. Okay. “So, you put the radio on the desk, you turn it on. What would happen?” I’m like, “I don’t know. You’d hear music or you’d hear something, static or music or some channel.” And he said, “Right. Let’s say you heard music.” He said, “Where was the music before you turned on the radio?” And I’m like, I’ve never thought that question, even though my kids don’t know really what a radio is because they stream everything. But I used a radio in the 80s and I remember radios and I had never thought like, where’s the music before I turn it on? That’s such a crazy question. And he said, “And the answer, the only answer to that question is it’s here hidden in plain sight.” And so, he said, “Everything is like that.”

Hal Elrod: Wow.

Cathy Heller: It’s all here. The love is already here. The opportunities are already here. Everything’s hidden in plain sight. So, then the idea of manifestation, so to speak, through like a Jewish mystical lens would be that the music that we think that’s just playing in our life, so to speak, on the radio of our life, we’re choosing it based on where we are set to, where we are tuned to. So, if you are tuned to love, your life feels like a love song. And if you are tuned to lack or shame or doubt, you probably don’t hear any music. You probably just hear a lot of static and you’re in that place where you’re like between the songs and you can’t even hear it clearly. And I think a lot of people live in that place.

And so, I think that that’s just such a powerful concept, which is what does it then mean to be tuned into what would give you the best radio station for your life, right? And when I left Jerusalem, I came to Los Angeles. And through a series of interesting coincidences, I wound up studying meditation at UCLA, which was a beautiful way to learn it because it was just a very secular look at the mindful perspective and what happens in the mind when we’re being mindful.

Hal Elrod: The scientific kind of analysis.

Cathy Heller: Yeah, exactly, and it was really powerful. And I learned that, and you’ve studied aspects of this as well, like, you can literally know when you’re in slow state and when you’re not. Like, we now have enough data to understand how to turn the radio on, so to speak. And the radio is when we’re not in our head, that’s it. Like when you’re in your head, one of my mindfulness teachers explained it like this, that if it was Christmas morning and you’re standing in the living room and if there’s a blizzard, it’s actually beautiful to look at because look, you’re standing in the living room looking out the window and it’s just so pretty. But if you were driving in the street and your car broke down and you were walking in a blizzard and you’re in the blizzard, it’s not pretty. It’s freezing and it’s painful and you can’t see. And so, there’s no clarity and it’s awful.

So, if you are in the mind, unaware that you’re caught in a flurry of thoughts, like, this will never work out and I’m the worst and, oh, my God, and now, your nervous system kicks on and now, your cortisol levels go up and your adrenaline is going or going into fight or flight, then you just turned off the radio completely because you’re stuck in the blizzard of your head. But if you develop a practice which you do in your beautiful work, it’s in your morning magic, but it’s also in other people’s practices, maybe in yoga or maybe when you’re doing any form of meditation, you can literally practice to such an extent that you can watch that blizzard instead of being in it. And then you ask yourself a crazy question, which is, well, if I’m not my thoughts and I’m the me witnessing my thoughts, then what’s the wisdom I really have from this part of me?

And then that part of you, that’s where the compass and the charts are and that’s where the music goes back on. And that’s the part of you, this is actually wild, but you probably are familiar with her, Dr. Lisa Miller, at Columbia?

Hal Elrod: No.

Cathy Heller: I mean, she’s unbelievable. She’s been at Columbia as a scientist for 30 years studying what does the brain look like when it has a connection to God? She’s been published in the most competitive peer-reviewed journal. She’s in Jama. She’s in every one of these well-regarded, and what she says is that they did a study of a monk’s mind, of fMRI study. This is a monk who just his face glows compassion and love. There wasn’t even any activity in the mind, which means love and compassion, it’s not even in the mind, it’s in the heart.

So, when you’re stuck in thought, you’re trying to figure it out and you’re really hard on yourself and you’re feeling anxious and you’re feeling all these feelings of doubt, the radio’s off. And if you want to receive the most incredible blessings in your life, any moment that you have the courage to do it, you can unhook from the blizzard and return to your heart. And you can see for miles, and you close your eyes, you see further than with your eyes open, and the radio kicks back in and you realize there’s everything in escrow for me. And this feeling of wholeness and vitality and love kicks in, turns on, and now you’re walking through the world like a Wi-Fi palm of this radio, and the music plays through you. And then it’s game over because every possible good thing that could happen just hears the music in you and wants to be near you. And then you don’t have to do anything else other than receive it.

Hal Elrod: So, let me ask you, how, getting tactical for someone listening going, this sounds awesome and it sounds I can’t quite grasp, I love the analogy, how do I tune into that radio? How do I, if I’m struggling financially and I’m fighting with my spouse regularly and my kids aren’t listening to me and I’ve been feeling depressed and this all sounds great, but I feel like there’s so much static. I’m in such a blizzard, like, I can’t even imagine to get there. I’m in such a pain state. So, how does someone bridge that gap, Cathy?

Cathy Heller: Yeah, I mean, first of all, it’s not just a good question because it’s a good question. It’s a good question because it’s the question that everybody would be asking if they can actually articulate what they’re feeling. And so, the first thing, I think, that we do is just become conscious that most of the time we’re unconscious. Just starting there is really helpful. Like, most of the time, the brain is just running a screensaver of a program. And here’s what we don’t realize. His knowledge just can be really powerful, right? Knowledge is power, so just starting with a little awareness of understanding.

Most of the time we’re unconscious. And every thought we think, it comes to us with a chemical. So, happy thoughts come with a pharmaceutical drip that just come right in of serotonin or dopamine. And unhappy thoughts and stressful thoughts don’t just stay in the head. They enter my entire bloodstream because they come with cortisol. Cortisol is more addictive than nicotine. So, not only do we feel that way, we’re addicted to feeling that way. It’s just like if you try to get off sugar, you’ll be like, this is a great idea. Let’s get off sugar. And three days in, you’re like, this was the worst idea. I feel terrible. I need to get sugar back. But if you kept going, probably like a week later, you’re going to feel actually better. And then you won’t reach for the Dr Pepper. And that’s probably a good thing.

So, having some understanding, first of all, of what the model is, is really helpful. The fact that we’re unconscious all the time, the fact that our thoughts are not just in our head, they’re actually in our body because they make us feel a certain way chemically. And then our biological life is being run by what we’re choosing to think. So, then it’s not just you trying to get your head out of the gutter, so to speak. You got to pull your mind out of your body because that mind is infiltrating your cells.

A really cool sort of insight into this is that the folks that live in the blue zones, we know that these blue zone folks live into their hundreds, and Dan Buettner wanted to understand why that is. Of course, he found out a bunch of things about them. One of the things that he found out is that because of their prayer/meditation practice, they just have a way of reduced amount of cortisol. And cortisol, it turns out, creates inflammation.

So, the first thing we want to understand is this is the sort of what I’m dealing with. Okay? And now that I kind of know, if you’re a doctor, I have to understand, like, what is it? What’s happening? Let me diagnose it. Now, let’s move forward. So, that’s number one. Let’s just understand it. Now that I understand a little bit more, what can I do? Well, first of all, we want to get you out of your head and into your body as fast as possible when you do mindfulness practices with children, which is when I sort of went through this like facilitator program years ago and worked with children for a while.

So, in order to get them out of their head and into a regulated nervous system, let’s say, which is what we all need, it was step one, you would have them do something that’s very sensory, like I would say to an adult, feel your sit bones on the chair. Which one do you feel more, the right or the left, the left or the right? Now, why I’m doing that is because if you’re having a sensory awareness experience, you immediately disrupt being in your head. You just get out of your head immediately, which is why most of our best memories are memories that involve some version of being in a sensory awareness experience, like walking on the beach. You get out of your head because you feel the ions of the ocean, your feet are in the sand. It’s a full body sensory experience. Okay?

So, I say this because if you’re feeling like you are just your mind is running amok and everything in your life is feeling like another trigger and stress and stress and stress, first of all, put your hand on your heart and just ask your body, is it regulated or dysregulated? How’s your body feeling? Okay, good. Now, the same way that you selected what you want to wear today, take a moment, and I want you to select. How do you choose? How do you want to feel right now? How do you want to feel? Do you want to feel ease? Do you want to feel joy? Do you want to feel alive? What do you want to feel? And then feel it.

And then you realize, you actually have the capacity to feel the feeling that you want to feel right now. And you can feel good. And then when I meditate with people, let’s say for 90 seconds even, I say, why would you wait for something to happen by chance in your day that maybe will make you feel good when you can make yourself feel that good right now? And they go, oh, my God. And then I go, you don’t have 30 seconds, you don’t have 90 seconds to make yourself feel that good. And that’s where we come back to the research, which is, oh, I’m actually addicted to feeling bad. My body feels scared and it perceives it as danger if I’m not feeling self-doubt and shame and cortisol attack, right?

But when you go back and understand what I said three seconds ago about understanding the model, that your body is just addicted to that and it’s just unconsciously addicted, you get to be the mind, you get to decide how you feel. And what starts to happen is you start to get familiar with how to get back to that and you get little stretches, but those little stretches that you think we’re just 90 seconds in the morning changes the way you actually imprint into the rest of your day. People will receive you differently. You will receive things differently because we don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. And the more there’s a little break in the clouds, the more there’s a little bit of a practice of a feeling of more ease, more well-being, more wholeness within ourselves, we start to see the opportunities that were already there to feel better all the time.

Now, ultimately, I would say, read house book or do a 10-minute meditation every single day because it’ll save your life and it will start to turn off the cortisol and it will repair your cells because you’ll give yourself a break from that crazy hormone or drug or chemical, rather. And instead, you will start to go into a place that feels like whole, feels like you, feels like home, and the amount of love will change your life. And I would start there.

Hal Elrod: I love that. That’s my favorite form of meditation, which I think I made it up, but I’m sure I didn’t. It’s my subconscious and everything. It’s picked up. But I call it emotional optimization meditation, which is really what you just described. Instead of just quieting, following your breath to quiet your mind without a real intention, I think, it’s like, no, identify what is the ideal, optimal, most valuable mental and emotional state for me to sit in or be in today to show up at my best for the people I love and the people that I lead, and then set your timer for 5 minutes or 10 minutes or 2 minutes or whatever you have. Get yourself in that state, and then rewire your nervous system, right? Generate those chemicals that you talked about, the serotonin and the dopamine that will then not only make you feel better in the moment immediately, but it will lead to you showing up that way, which, as you said, everyone will receive you differently. You will create differently. I love all of that. I know meditation, you talked in the book like why it’s crucial to practice it daily and not intermittently. Can you speak to that for a minute?

Cathy Heller: Yeah. I mean, I feel like when I first started meditating, I absolutely hated it. And I went to a meditation retreat because that sounded fun. I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought would happen then, but unfortunately, it wasn’t fun. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. And a friend of mine took me and I wanted to leave, but I felt like I couldn’t leave because then, she would see me leaving. So, I had to stick it out. And it was a silent retreat for a few days. And I thought, I’m going to go crazy. I’m not going to make it.

And halfway through the first day, thank God, the teacher, I think, saw me out of the corner of her eye and she said, “I just want to say for anyone who’s sitting here in case it’s supportive, when you meditate, you will never stop thinking. Your mind will always spin, your heart will always be, your mind.” And I thought, oh, my goodness, no wonder. And then she said, “You’re really not supposed to stop thinking. It’s about your relationship to your thoughts. It’s about being non-judgmental.”

So, first of all, that really helped me. And now, I can sit down and it’s funny how my mind will really still not want me to. But once I sit down within like 11 seconds, I realize that God really wants my attention. Like, the wisdom in me really wants me to know. Not to just live my day blindly, but really sit down, and that meeting with yourself is the most important meeting of your day. And I often will say to myself, the part of me that really always knows, I’ll say, “What do you need me to remember today? What do I really need to know?” And it’ll either be like, slow down or it’ll say, trust yourself or it’ll say something that just gives me a tremendous amount that nothing on Instagram can give me.

So, it winds up being great and such a reward. And I also want to say one other thing, to answer your question before, which I realize I want to add, which is when you’re feeling really bad and everything is going on all around you, that it just feels like you’re overwhelmed by the undertow and you’re in the water and you’re drowning with it, what I propose and what I say in this book, because it’s just what I know to be true is that the thing that we forget is that we have this superpower, it’s called love.

And love, by definition, is unconditional, which means it’s not based on a reason. It just is. When you decide to be loving to someone who you just met at the bus stop, it just feels good because you’re just practicing what love is. It’s just a gift. And so, I want to give an example of this. In July, I had a feeling of sadness and heartbreak that I hadn’t yet experienced because my dad died and I was in hospice next to him. And it was so excruciating that I physically hurt, the sadness physically hurt. And it was also so beautiful.

And a few weeks went by of hospice and the funeral and then all the family and friends coming by for several days after the funeral, and then after that it was another week and then it was many days after. And then my kids and my husband said, “Would you like to re-enter the world? Would you like to go out to dinner? Would you like to see a movie? Would you like– they want you.” My kids have been– their whole summer, they didn’t get to do anything because we left where we live and we went into a hospice room and they were very patient and good and kind and also sad. So, I said, “You know what? It’s been weeks. Let’s go out to dinner.”

So, we leave the house, and I realize how fragile I was as soon as I left the house because when you’re in a hospice room and you know, from having been just really looking at your own existential reality in a hospital, looking out the window, going, people are so far from– they might be down the street, but they’re millions of miles away from my experience. When I went back into the world, I said to my husband, “Why is everything so loud? Like, the world is loud. The cars drive fast. Like, don’t people know my dad died? Don’t they know that the moon is no longer in the sky?”

And so, I was crying because it was painful to re-enter a world where people are so in a tune sometimes. And we went to the sushi restaurant. And I was finding myself not able to be present with my kids. And I could see on their faces that they were ready to have me back. They needed to be seen. And so, all of a sudden, I remembered love. And I thought, instead of having yet another moment which I was having, which I was just swept under, I was like, I’m going to give love. I’m going to find this love to give away, actually.

And right away, I hear this couple sitting next to me at the sushi restaurant. And I turned to my husband. I said, I think they’re on a first date. So, I stand up. My kids are like, “Mom, that’s so embarrassing. Don’t talk to them.” So, I go over and I say to this woman, “Are you guys on a first date?” And she said, “Yeah.” And I said, “That is the cutest thing. And I could tell because I can hear you and I want to buy you guys dessert.” And she’s like, “Oh, my God, that’s so cute.”

So, she orders dessert. I pay for it. We leave. She and I exchange Instagram so we can stay in touch. And we talk for, like, 30 seconds. An hour and a half later, she texted me and she said, “Thank you so much for the dessert.” And I said, “You’re so welcome.” I said, “Are you going to go on a second date?” And she said, “I’m not sure, but he’s very sweet. But the truth is,” she said, “you made my whole night because,” she said, “I’m a widow and this is my first date in five years. And it was so hard for me to do it. And the fact that you were so loving to me for no reason, I felt like it was a sign that it’s time to let love into my life and that there’s so much love.” And I told her, “This is my first night out since my dad died. He died on July 3rd.” And she said, “My husband died on July 3rd.”

And the reason I tell that story is because we often think that we’re not in the right place at the right time. And that’s something that’s happening in our life is just the evidence that we are just forsaken, that there’s some future experience, that some future time we should be in, some other circumstance we should be in. And then the thing is that when we find this wholeness, this love, this light that we have, that we can give away, we are immediately transported to these mystical, crazy things that happen because we tapped into who we really are, which is a beacon of light. And so, when we feel really bad, it’s probably because the love that we want to experience from outside of us, we’re not giving it from inside of us. We’re not giving it to ourself, we’re not giving it to others.

And if you just think to yourself that you’re not being asked to change the whole world every day, that you’re being asked to change the world for one person every day, then you could do that every single day. And I guarantee if you start to do that, your whole life will change and you’ll realize that you are right at the right place at the right time because there’s so many people who need you. And when you’re needed like that, you come to life. And then these problems that you thought were problems, things will start to shift. Things will start to shift in incredible ways.

Hal Elrod: Yeah, it’s beautiful. Beautiful story. It reminds me that my marriage and my relationship with my kids had been stressful for a long time. And I thought, well, it’s because they do this and they don’t do this and they did. I mean, I wrote these reasons that were not about me. And then I realized I’m not being the light. Like, I’m not the same because I’m so focused on my problems and my stressors and my fears and my insecurities and my finances and my team and all these things. And I was in my head. And when I finally went, wait, what if I’d just be the most loving, energetic, playful, humorous version of me that I used to be that? And if you’re listening to this right now, I’m sure you can look back, like, pause and think, when were you at your best?

And like you said, Cathy, that’s in all of us. That’s still in all of us, right? So, how can we show up for the rest of this year and set ourselves up for next year as the most loving, playful, humorous, generous, fun version of ourselves? And once I started doing that, all of a sudden, my wife was a reflection of what I put out and my kids. And now our relationships across the board are the best they’ve ever been. So, let’s close with– thank you. What are some small steps that people can take today that will lead to a life of abundance?

Cathy Heller: Well, first of all, as Wayne Dyer said, “We don’t get what we want. We get what we are always and always.” And so, I think step one is just knowing what you are. You’re not the small self or the little S or the big self, you’re the soul. If God was like the sun, you’d be a ray of that light. And really, knowing who you are and returning to that is step one, because when you know your soul, which is an abundant force for good, you will only get back an abundant amount of good. So, that’s number one.

And be gentle with yourself. I just was at an event with Dr. Edith Eger this weekend and she said, “There’s four Ps that you can delete from your life, perfectionism, procrastination, paranoia, and paralysis.” And she said, “And they all come from perfectionism.” So, I think being gentle with yourself allows you to be gentle with the world.

Hal Elrod: Beautiful. Well said. Well, Cathy, our time, as always, is too short. For everybody listening, the book is Abundant Ever After: Tools for Creating a Life of Prosperity and Ease by Cathy Heller. If you’re listening to this on December 4th, the day it came out, the book’s been out for one day, so you can go get it wherever books are sold. And I’m just telling you, the time you spent with Cathy right now, for me, it’s like anything that Cathy puts out, I’m all about it because I want to be more like Cathy. I want to– yeah, I mean, I sincerely mean that. So, I love you, Cathy. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Cathy Heller: Same here about you. I have one book next to my bed, and it’s been the same book I’ve had next to my bed for two years, it’s your book.

Hal Elrod: Stop. Oh, my gosh, you’re amazing.

Cathy Heller: So, thank you.

Hal Elrod: Well, goal achievers, thank you for tuning in today. I hope you are feeling more abundant just from this conversation, realizing that, again, abundance, it’s an inside-out job, right? It begins with you feeling abundant, feeling love, being love, being that light for yourself and others. And you transform your life from the inside out. So, go check out the book. Grab a copy, Abundant Ever After: Tools for Creating a Life of Prosperity and Ease by my good friend Cathy Heller. I love you so much.

Cathy Heller: I love you.

Hal Elrod: I will talk to you next week.

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