461: How Your Thoughts Determine Your Success with Mary Morrisey

[INTRODUCTION]

 

Hal Elrod: Hello and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod, and you are in for a treat. You’re about to hear from the one and only, Mary Morrissey. Now, if you’re not familiar with Mary, she has been at this work for over four decades. That’s right. For 40-plus years, she’s helped people from all around the world, from all walks of life and of all ages to clarify their dreams and bring them to life. So, whether you feel stuck and overwhelmed with no idea where to begin in making things better or if you know exactly what you want to do but you just need help bringing a specific dream to life, with Mary’s help, you can learn how to harness the incredible power that lies within you and radically change your life for the better in far less time and with far less effort than you might believe is possible right now.

 

Mary holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology and an honorary doctorate in humane letters. She’s spoken three times at the United Nations, facilitated three-week-long meetings with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and other world leaders, and met with Nelson Mandela in Cape Town, South Africa, to address the most significant issues our world is facing. She’s also the author of two bestselling books, No Less Than Greatness and Building Your Field of Dreams, which became a PBS special. She’s toured with Wayne Dyer and Marianne Williamson and Jack Canfield and Michael Beckwith. The list just goes on and on. She is a wealth of information, a wealth of wisdom and experience. And it was such an honor to have a conversation with Mary. And I think you’re going to love the time that I spent with her and what she shared.

 

Before we dive into that conversation, I want to take a couple of minutes to thank our two sponsors who bring the show to you every week. First and foremost is Organifi. Last couple of weeks, I talk to you about their classic Green Juice, which is what started the company. Today, I want to talk about their Red Juice. I literally just had a shot of this Red Juice about 30 minutes ago and it is designed to recharge your mind and body with a delicious superfood berry blend of premium organic nutrients that contain potent adaptogens, antioxidants, and a clinical dose of cordyceps mushrooms to increase your energy and boost nitric oxide levels with zero caffeine and only 2 grams of sugar. And I can tell you, you might be able to tell from my energy, this stuff works. When that 2:30 feeling rolls around, just drop a scoop in some cold water, stir with the spoon, and enjoy the antioxidant energy-enhancing benefits. It’s healthier than coffee with no crash. If you’re interested in checking out the Green Juice or the Red Juice or any of their other products, head over to Organifi.com/Hal and then use the discount code “HAL” at checkout for 20% off your entire order. It’s a benefit of being a listener of the podcast.

 

And then last but not least, our newest sponsor, CURED Nutrition, which I combine every day with Organifi. There are three products from CURED Nutrition that I absolutely love. They also make organic whole foods supplement so it meets that standard that I adhere to. And in the morning I take their Rise, which is a nootropic that will help with your focus and clarity. I take it every single day. And then after my smoothie, I take their Aura, which helps with gut health and immunity. And then before bed, maybe my favorite, it’s a tie with Rise, are their Night Caps, which are a combination of CBD and CBN oil. I sleep like a baby. I fall asleep within about 15 minutes, 10 or 15 minutes. I sleep 7 hours a night and I wake up feeling refreshed thanks to Night Caps and of course eating a healthy diet. But for Night Caps or Aura, any of those products, head over to CUREDNutrition.com/Hal and use that same discount code “HAL” at checkout for 20% off your order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals Podcast. That’s my one-two punch, Organifi and CURED Nutrition help round out my supplement regimen each and every single day.

 

All right. Without further ado, it is truly my pleasure to introduce you to the one and only, Mary Morrissey, to talk about how you can create everything that you want with your thoughts, how to think your way to success. Here we go.

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

Hal Elrod: Mary Morrissey, it is so good to be with you today.

 

Mary Morrissey: I’m happy to be here, Hal.

 

Hal Elrod: Well, I don’t know if this will make you blush or you hear it all the time and you’ll just go, “Of course,” but I told my wife this morning, she goes, “Hey, who are you interviewing today?” I said, “I’m interviewing a literal living legend.” I said, “Mary Morrissey.” And you know she’d, “Who’s that?” She’s not in this world so much but I said, “She’s been in personal development for over four decades.” I said, “She shared the stage with Jack Canfield and Marianne Williamson. And she’s worked with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and sat with Nelson Mandela and gone on tour with Michael Beckwith.” I mean, it’s so interesting. This is a field that I am in now, right, of helping people improve their lives and be more successful and so on and so forth. You’ve been doing it for four decades. Let me ask you, first question, have you seen anything change?

 

And before you answer, here’s what I mean. Our society is conditioned to value new, cutting edge, never seen it before. And I think a big mistake that we make now because of that is we dismiss what actually works, what’s worked for decades or centuries, and you go, “Well, I’ve heard of it before, and I haven’t changed my life with it yet. It must not be the thing. I need the new app. I need the new virtual course. I need something.” So, having been in this industry for four decades plus, I’m wondering your take on that. I mean, what works? Is that still what works? Or are there new things that are being discovered in the last few years? We should be finding out the new stuff. What’s your take on that having been in the industry so long?

 

Mary Morrissey: Oh, great question. Here’s what I know for sure. Universal laws about how these are immutable. They don’t change. The only thing that changes is our awareness of them and how to bring them into our life. So, the delivery of this information has changed dramatically, of course, over time with new technologies. The second is the general awareness of possibilities and the way to have them in our lives and how to transform results that are not what we want into results that we want, that system of transformation, none of us invented. All of us had personal development, had different ways of describing that, and bringing that to clients and our audiences. What I know for sure is that universal laws don’t change our awareness of how to apply them. And one thing for sure, when I first got into this, nobody knew that I knew, nobody in my sphere knew that thoughts impacted your health. Thoughts impacted your results. That was voodoo. I went looking. Someone recommended to me after a very life-threatening health situation I went through and I know your story, Hal, amazing, a book called As a Man Thinketh by James…

 

Hal Elrod: James Allen?

 

Mary Morrissey: Yeah. James Allen. It was available at the only place in Portland, Oregon where I lived, it was in an occult bookstore, a tall building down a dark hallway. When I went in and asked for this book, it said it’s under that category called Witchcraft.

 

Hal Elrod: No way.

 

Mary Morrissey: Yes way.

 

Hal Elrod: Wow.

 

Mary Morrissey: There weren’t mind-body clinics at Harvard and UCLA and Stanford, and our world of understanding that we are a whole system. We have a spiritual side to our nature as well as a human side to our nature.

 

Hal Elrod: Could you talk about that for a second? I think you dropped a bomb there or just a knowledge that I want to unpack a little bit. Thoughts impact our health. Can you expand on that from your perspective?

 

Mary Morrissey: Yeah. Best way to do that is to describe and share with you my personal story. And why I particularly felt resonance with you is you had some traumatic things happen in your life that helped you recognize that you were more than those things.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah.

 

Mary Morrissey: You had in you a power that was greater than the circumstances you were facing and how to align with that and produce results that were not predictive by normal medical, bright people.

 

Hal Elrod: “Experts.” Right?

 

Mary Morrissey: Exactly.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. So, talk about that, your story. I know your transformation started, I believe, in senior of high school as I understand it. Maybe you’re willing to, yeah, share what happened.

 

Mary Morrissey: I was a junior in high school and I had high school experience like most young girls dream about. I was class vice president. I had a lead in the junior play. I was on the drill team, the dance team, on all the games, and I was vice president of my class and I was homecoming princess that year. All of that, that’s my life.

 

Hal Elrod: Wow. Okay.

 

Mary Morrissey: High school boyfriend had gone off to college. We had been dating for years. He came home on spring break and I got pregnant.

 

Hal Elrod: Oh, wow.

 

Mary Morrissey: May 1, I tell my mom and dad, “I’m now pregnant.” My mother wept for me as if I had died. In her mind, all her dreams for me were dying. Had a hasty ten-person wedding and two weeks later, the principal of the high school called me to his office and said, “Are these rumors I’m hearing about you true?” And I said, “If the rumors are that I am pregnant and married in that order, then yes, they’re true.” And he said, “Well, you have great honors.” He just put his head in his hand, “You have great honors, you have terrific grades but you will not be allowed to return here for your senior year. It would be totally inappropriate for a pregnant girl to get mixed in with the normal girls.”

 

Hal Elrod: Wow.

 

Mary Morrissey: I want to get a high school diploma which I did because my dream had always been to be a teacher. And he said, “If you want to get a high school diploma, there’s a place for people like you. It’s across the river. It was held not during the daylight. It’s after dark. It’s a regular high school during the day and then it becomes a high school in the evening for pregnant girls and delinquent boys.” So, the next fall, I drove my car to a part of Portland that my parents had let me drive in, parked my car, and I’m going up to this building and I’m going, “Okay. Every girl here is either pregnant or has a baby. Every guy is a delinquent. This is my new student body.” And my best girlfriends that I’d had since fourth grade, there were four of us who hung out all the time, those three mothers got their girls together, and those three mothers decided their girls could not see me anymore. So, I lost my school, my best friends, and now I’m in this group of people, of delinquents and pregnant girls. My son is born in December of 1966. I graduated in May of 1967 and in July of 1967, I’m in an intensive care ward in a Portland hospital, having been diagnosed with fatal kidney disease.

 

Now, this is 1967. No dialysis, no transplants, and it is a death sentence according to medical science. So, they’ve done everything they can do and then they say, “Well, we’re so sorry but if we can get the blood toxin level in your body reduced enough so you can sustain a surgery to remove the right kidney, maybe you’ll have six months to live.” I have a seven-month-old son who’s now his dad and my son are living with my parents so my mother can help while my husband is working. And I’m terrified. And in the God of my upbringing was not a friendly place to go when you felt like you had screwed up. For sure, I screwed up. I got kicked out. My best friends can’t see me. I must be a bad person. And so, I’m being punished. So, I’m going to die. That was the model.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah, sure.

 

Mary Morrissey: And so, finally, my blood has gotten to the point where they say I can sustain a surgery and schedule for the morning. A woman walks in my room the night before about 10:00, and she identified herself as a visiting chaplain who offered prayer for people. She’s like, “I come three or four times a week. I get a list of the surgeries that are happening in the most serious order. Your name is at the top of the list. Would you like someone to pray with you?” And I’m scared. And so, I said, “Okay.” And she pulls her chair next to my bed and doesn’t do anything that I’ve ever thought of as prayer. She talked to me. She said, “Would you be willing to tell me what’s been going on in your life the last year or two?” So, I told her my story at the end of which she looked at me and compassionately she said, “Mary, everything’s created twice.” Today, I would say I had no landing page for that. I go, “What are you talking about?” She says, “You actually know this. In fact, everybody knows it. Almost nobody knows the power of knowing this.” And she said, “The bed you’re laying on, the nightgown you’re wearing, the sheet covering you, the walls, the ceiling, the floors, and all the machinery you’re hooked up to, first, it had to be a thought before it could ever be a thing.”

 

And then she said, “I hear how much you love your little boy but I hear how much you’ve been hating yourself. You feel like you shamed your school, you shamed your family, you shamed yourself. You’re a bad person because you can’t be around people that you used to be around because you’ve done this thing.” And she said, “So, now that you’re considering how everything is created twice, could you consider the possibility that there could be a correlation between all that toxic self-loathing and the toxicity that’s rampaging your body and threatening your very life?” Nobody I knew thought this way and there were no mind-body clinics. And this was just like, “What?” And she said, “And if you could live, what would you do with your life? What would you do?” And I knew immediately. I would raise my little boy and I would become a teacher. And so, she said, “Could you consider the…”

 

She started this way. She says, “Could you think about infinite potential, infinite possibilities in this universe? Could there be a possibility that we would say words and in the morning, when you were going to be taken to surgery, the doctors looked at you and said, ‘Wow, you look better. We better test you.’ They would test you and say, ‘We find no evidence of disease. You can get up and go home.’ Could you believe that’s possible?” And I told her the truth, “No.”

 

Hal Elrod: No, of course not.

 

Mary Morrissey: One part of me that was… She said, “All right. If you can’t believe that, could you believe this, that we could say words, say a prayer, an affirmation,” first time I’d heard that word, affirmation, and a visualization, “and imagine going through your entire body and scooping up everything that is toxic and placing it in the one kidney that’s going to get removed. And when it gets removed, instead of getting worse, you just start to get better and you get better. Could you believe that’s possible?” And this was the first time in my life, Hal, that I wasn’t conscious but it is what I did. It’s like I didn’t really believe it but I could tell she did. And I decided to believe at her belief, like what she believes it’s possible. Well, I don’t know if it’s probable but maybe it’s possible. And then she said, “That’s all we need, one corner of your mind open to the possibility.” Now, this is before Sheldrake and David Bohm on Unified Field Theory before, out of Stanford, Michael Talbot wrote Holographic Universe. It was not the physics to back this up. This is 1967. She said, “That’s all we need, one corner of your mind open to the possibility.”

 

What we know for sure now is if there’s one place of possibility that you can generate from, it changes the entire frequency which dictates the results we’re having or not having, the frequency we’re operating from. So, she said, “So, here’s what I want you to do. You know, when you come back from that surgery tomorrow, you’re going to have some pain. Your mind’s going to get busy with the pain. As that ebbs, your mind is going to want to go down those well-worn thought roads, paths that you’ve been on. So, the moment you notice yourself thinking a self-loathing thought, I want you to interrupt that and just say, ‘Nope. That left with the kidney.’ And then immediately, Mary, imagine you’ve got this little boy’s hand in yours. He’s five years old and you’re walking up some steps into a school and there’s a kindergarten teacher and you give him a big hug and it’s your little boy, and he’s going into kindergarten and you hear the click, click, click of your heels. You go around the corner and there’s your first classroom.”

 

“And fast forward and you’re in a big auditorium or stadium and you’re looking down and there’s a stage and there’s all these caps and gowns, and you hear your son’s name called and he comes across the stage and gets his diploma and switches his tassel and holds it up. And you’re cheering and you’re thinking how proud you are of him and how grateful you are for the moments that you have shared to help him meet this moment of success. And then fast forward and you’re sitting in the front row of a wedding and your son is marrying the love of his life. And you’re the mother of the groom and your teaching career is flourishing.” So, it was the beginning of the teaching career with my son at five. It was the graduation and my teaching career is growing. And then it was in the wedding, my teaching career is flourishing as my son hits that life…

 

Hal Elrod: Milestone.

 

Mary Morrissey: Milestone. And she said, “Just keep doing that.” Now, today, I would say I was an unconscious competent. I must have done that because I knew I just felt a little better when I was thinking that. Now, I’m so sick I can’t lift my head off the bed. And after about two weeks after the surgery, the doctor said, “Well, we don’t know how long this will last or if it’s lasting but your numbers are not increasing at the way we expect them to be downgrading. So, if you want to go home for a week or two or three before you have to come back and have time with your family, we would approve that.” I went home in an ambulance. And I’m continuing to do this. And my numbers, I had to go three times a week to the urologist just to be checked but my numbers leveled out and then they just started improving and improving. And about 5 to 6 months after that surgery, I’m sitting in the conference room at the hospital with all the specialists, and they’re all scratching their heads and they say, “We have no science for what’s happening with you.”

 

And the surgeon said, “Listen, I saw that second kidney. We removed the one. I saw the other one. It was all part marked and shriveled, and now it’s functioning as a fully whole kidney. We don’t know if this is going to last or even if it’s going to last but whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.” I didn’t know what I was doing. Until several years later when I was in my undergraduate work and I got very interested in transformation about how people brought transformation to the light, a series of things occurred, including meeting Ram Dass when he had just come back from India, who was a former college professor who had discovered the idea of what’s going on inside of us has a direct correlation to what’s going on outside of us, and people want to transform what’s going on outside of them by moving parts. It’s a very long, slow way to bring transformation in the same way you’ve got a program on your TV. If you have cable or streaming for God’s sake, you have access to all this different programming. But if you don’t know how to use the remote control and change the frequency, you can get stuck on CNN and all you have is constantly negative news in your life.

 

The thought patterns that we’re thinking from create a trend, create a vibration that we begin to operate on. And it’s absolutely dictative of and predictive of the results we’re going to have. So, if we want to change the results, we’ve got to change what’s going on inside of us. And clearly, that’s what you’ve done in your life and your morning practice and all of this has brought this about for you.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. No, I so resonate with what you’re saying. I mean, in my experience, when the doctor said I would never walk again, I said, “I accept that as a possibility but I’m not going to put my energy into that possibility. I’m at peace with it but all my energies are going to go into walking again.” I thought about it every day. I visualized it. I prayed on it, I meditated on my body healing. So, I resonate with that and when I had cancer, it was the same thing. So, I want to ask you, talk a little bit about the specifics of like the thoughts that you had. I mean, was it basically following the chaplain that you talked about and just what she said is where you’re imagining you’re healing and your son getting married and so on and so forth?

 

Mary Morrissey: I wasn’t visualizing a healing. I was visualizing walking him into kindergarten. It was the result. She said, “You hold the image, the hologram,” she had used that term, “of the result and you resonate with that result. It must and does change everything, including your biology.”

 

Hal Elrod: So, here’s how I explain that in layman’s terms. I am no scientist. In layman’s terms, I always say, “Look, we have trillions of cells and they do what we tell them to through thoughts and feelings,” right? If someone is diagnosed with cancer and said the odds are you’re not going to make it. And if that becomes their reality, their mental and emotional reality, then it becomes their physical reality. Now, that’s my layman’s explanation, right? Or if they go, “I have unwavering faith that I’m going to survive. I’m going to watch my son walk down the aisle,” our body then goes, “Oh, okay, then that’s what we’re doing. It’s time to heal so that what you’re thinking and your feeling and your seeing becomes a reality.” My interview…

 

Mary Morrissey: You said, “If I have unwavering faith.” My experience is nobody has unwavering faith.

 

Hal Elrod: I like that.

 

Mary Morrissey: It’s a more or less game. It’s where the trend of your energy, thinking, feeling. It has to be more on the healing than of the fear of or the preparation that I would do if I really thought something, how would I protect my children, my family but it’s more. Where we’re putting the emphasis of thought and feelings is really the directive.

 

Hal Elrod: I love that. The unwavering faith can sound like a perfect, unreachable, impeccable standard. So, I like that you’re breaking that down. I interviewed a couple of years ago Dr. Bernie Siegel, who wrote Love, Medicine, and Miracles. And he said that over 3,000 cancer patients that he’s treated, the one thing that all of the survivors had in common was their mindset was, “I’m going to beat this.” And he said he saw people die from much less severe cancers than some that survived where they should have been able to beat it, no problem but they gave up mentally and emotionally, and their thoughts were thoughts of fear. For me to make it tangible, when I had cancer, I wrote an affirmation that it was basically my statement of unwavering faith, which is I will beat cancer and live to be 100 plus years old alongside Ursula and the kids no matter what, there is no other option. And whenever I felt fear or doubt in my ability to beat this thing and, for example, when I learned about Wayne Dyer’s battle with leukemia, which he lost, he passed away, I thought, “Well, shoot, I aspire to be as evolved as Wayne Dyer and if he didn’t beat leukemia, what if I don’t beat it?”

 

So, I had those fear thoughts but I never entertained them. I never went down that fear rabbit hole or dwelled. As soon as I went, “Okay. I’m feeling fear. It’s not serving me,” I pulled out that affirmation and I read it with such conviction and such emotion and such energy that it became my reality. There was no room for fear because it was, “No, no, no, no, no. I’m going to beat cancer no matter what. There is no other option.”

 

Mary Morrissey: You asked me about luminaries, Wayne Dyer and I became friends in the 80s and we were friends and did many, many programs together all the way to the end. On his behalf, he felt complete.

 

Hal Elrod: That’s what I thought. Yeah.

 

Mary Morrissey: He felt complete. You know, at some point, we’re all going to find a way out. It’s not a matter of if. So, yours is predictive of being over 100 with your wife, your kids, and a long, healthy, wonderful life.

 

Hal Elrod: Well, and I did struggle with I was conflicted as well because if I didn’t have kids, I feel very complete. I have no fear of death so I’m ready to go. So, that was a real struggle inside, which is like, I’m actually ready to go but I’m not ready to leave my kids without a dad. So, I need to decide one or the other. Either I’m going to drift away or I’m going to fight this and I’m going to stay here for my children and, thankfully, I chose the latter.

 

Mary Morrissey: The power of what you said is that same pattern of aligning with the possibility, being bold to claim it as your reality can be used for anything. So, as for your health and the business you want to build, the impact you want to bring, the charities you want to give to, I mean that we are in conscious and many times unconscious ways, making agreements with possibilities all the time, some of which are empowering and some of which are disempowering.

 

Hal Elrod: So, Mary, what do you say to somebody, so I’m imagining if I’m listening to this, people, when we become very logical. For example, if you look at statistics and you go, “Well, the odds are I’m not going to be able to succeed at the level that I want.” Statistically, I’m not going to beat this. Like, for me, my cancer survival rate was 20% to 30% and so I decided there’s a 100% chance that I’ll be in the 20% to 30% that survive. So, I tried to make, you know, I’m not listening to the doctor’s statistics. I’m making my own statistics, if you will, within the context of what they’re telling me. So, my question is for someone listening right now that’s going, “How do I overcome focusing on what the odds are that I’m going to stay married or be happy or be successful or whatever?” I don’t know if that’s the right term but how do we override logic when logic is staring us in the face?

 

Mary Morrissey: Understand what statistics are. They only apply to groups. They never apply to an individual and the individual is supreme. You made a decision to align with the possibility, vibrate with that possibility. Everything is vibration. It’s the fundamental law of the universe. Everything. And you’re going to have the result. It’s exactly in harmony with the vibration you’re most harmonious with, most in tune with. So, you had emotion, you had a clear vision, and you kept resonating with it way more than the fear, way more than what doctors. You had to override the impact of the experts telling you another. You go, “Here’s the odds. Okay. Here’s where I’m going to land inside that because I’m an individual.” I have two things I’m responsible for, the thoughts I think and the actions I take. The thoughts I think generate the first creation of themselves, which is feeling. If I start to notice that I’m feeling anxious, you can absolutely be sure I’ve been thinking thoughts that have a fear base in them. So, that’s all energy. And the easiest way to shift what’s going to be happening in the outside version or the results of our lives is to shift what’s going on inside of us.

 

Hal Elrod: And where do you stand on written affirmations? Like to me, my memory, I’m so distracted. It changes every second. So, affirmations are my favorite form of personal development because they are my well-articulated, edited as time goes on, but they’re in writing and they’re my anchor to the thoughts that I want to think. And I’m wondering if you kind of subscribe to having those written affirmations to clarify your thinking and then…

 

Mary Morrissey: Even in the Christian Bible, it says, “In the beginning is the word.” The word is with God and the word is God meaning the vibration. And so, the vibration that you’re dictating with the words you’re choosing and like you said, “They evolve as you become more aware.” You’re writing an outcome and the value of writing it and not just thinking it is we have two sides to the brain. We have the literal and we have the creative. So, you use both. And there’s a corpus callosum between those two hemispheres. The thoughts we think, the vibration of that gets amplified with the corpus callosum, goes into the fluid that surrounds the brain and goes up and down the spinal cord. That vibration translates to the entire body, hence self-loathing, I had toxicity first in the thoughts and the emotion but that went on for over a year and my body has a breakdown in it. But remember, it doesn’t just go to the body that we’re in this sea of energy. It translates right through our body and begins to move in the energetic field and draws unto it everything like itself.

 

Hal Elrod: Got it. You said something I was listening to. I listened to a few interviews this morning preparing for our conversation that you’ve done over the years. And in one of them, you said, “Infinite awareness is at the center of everything that you do.” And I was wondering if you could expand on that. What does that mean? What does infinite awareness mean and what does it mean being at the center of everything you do?

 

Mary Morrissey: I probably said infinite intelligence.

 

Hal Elrod: You may have.

 

Mary Morrissey: So, that’s different. So, there’s an infinite intelligence and it is absolute. We have different levels of awareness of it, how it operates in and through us. So, in essence, you can’t think this thought and have this result. The infinite intelligence is that like equals like. So, if I’m feeling bad about myself, I’m going to create less results, the kind of results that people who feel bad about themselves can have versus shifting the pattern of my thinking and being to be in harmony with an outcome. Why you write affirmations? I’m the guy who’s having this outcome regardless of what it looks like right now, regardless of the diagnosis, regardless of even how long it’s been there kind of results in your life and you start to feel like it’s powerful because it’s been there. For years, I’ve struggled having a relationship or years I’ve seen people transform, years, decades of lupus and different things when they change the inner pattern. Because where did it all come from? You know, it’s a result of a relationship with our thinking, our feeling, and what we actually believe as possible.

 

So, somehow, Hal, you either stumbled on to or I didn’t hear in my reading about you that you studied this as much as you had, almost natural knowing of first with the car accident and then you’ve had these three major moments in your life that actually have set you up to be the guy you are now and the good that you can bring. And it’s a beautiful thing.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. No. Thank you. It is. And that’s why I take credit for very little because I also believe in infinite intelligence. And if somebody goes, “Wow. That’s brilliant that thing you said or did or wrote,” I go, “I don’t know where that came from. I don’t get credit for it.” I was just sitting there one day meditating and this idea entered my mind that I had never thought, never read, never heard of, and I’m sharing it with you but I’ll take the credit for sharing it but I don’t get the credit for thinking it.

 

Mary Morrissey: One time, Wayne Dyer, Les Brown, and I, we all got to know each other in the 80s. We became very good friends. We’re having a conversation. And what came up was, “Don’t you at times when you’re teaching just feel like you want to take notes, too?”

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah, totally. That’s so funny. I do that a lot during my speeches. I’m on stage and before I speak, I’m always a little nervous because my memory is real bad. I don’t know what I’m going to say oftentimes. And I just close my eyes, put my hands together, and I go, “God, give me the message that the people in front of me need in this moment. I have faith that it’s coming. I don’t know what it’s going to be.” So, a lot of times I’ll say something that I’ve never said and I’ll go, “Can somebody go to my website and send me that, if you took notes on it? That was brilliant. Not from me. I don’t know where it came from but that was brilliant.” Yeah. So, that’s so funny you say that.

 

Mary Morrissey: You tapped into it. Yeah.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I really believe and Napoleon Hill talked about that, tapping into this infinite intelligence where every idea, every thought, it’s all just in this field that we have access to it.

 

Mary Morrissey: Every answer. You’re dealing with the infinite so you can’t ask a question for which there isn’t an answer. Your ability to discern and allow it is another matter but it’s there.

 

Hal Elrod: And how do you fine-tune that ability?

 

Mary Morrissey: The best way I’ve learned is through study that so coming and listening to your podcast. We give people insight, ideas, things they can practice. So, you stay interested in growing your awareness. And many people get to a certain point of awareness and that’s just how they live the rest of their lives, buffeted by circumstances, situations, and conditions, rather than choosing new ones and designing a pattern that brings them about, you know.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. I wanted to ask you, I was listening to your Genius Network talk this morning, and I believe it was titled What Highly Successful People Do When Bad Things Happen. What a beautiful title of a message and I think that anyone listening right now that is going through what they would consider to be bad things, life is difficult and the last few years have been pretty chaotic for all of us. I heard another interview. You talked about the collective. You said there’s collective. Or what did you say? There’s not just atmosphere but…

 

Mary Morrissey: Thoughtmosphere.

 

Hal Elrod: Thoughtmosphere. Right. And that’s been so true that collectively over the last few years, we all feel it, right? It’s like maybe more than ever in history, where is this collective consciousness that we’re all experiencing that’s kind of stressful and kind of fearful and kind of uncertain. But see, I want to ask you if you could talk on that, what do highly successful people do when bad things happen?

 

Mary Morrissey: Well, first of all, there are things you can change and things you can’t change. When something happens that you think is bad, the first step in that is going, “Okay. It’s here. I can’t change that,” so you accept it as either a fact or reality that this has happened. The business is down 20% or whatever it is.

 

Hal Elrod: The spouse left me, whatever.

 

Mary Morrissey: Yeah. Whatever it is, this has happened. So, I only have the only thing I can control my thoughts and my actions. So, what am I going to think about this? Get curious about what possible good there could be in this so that you can harvest the good. There’s always good. Napoleon Hill spoke about this. He said, “In every adversity, in every heartbreak, there is a seed of equal or greater benefit.” And I’ll repeat that quote but miss the next part of it. But like in seed, it has to be found and planted and nurtured and grown and harvested. That’s a process. I’m not going to have this bad thing, whatever I’ve defined as bad, in my life and not get the good from it. One of the men I knew years ago, he’s passed away now but he was beginning to study this with me and he had a business that he was growing. It was one of those early binaural beat meditation businesses, and he was growing that business with a business partner. And then somebody else said they had that same technology and sued them for $1 million and the partner said, “I’m out of here. I’m not going to invest more money to fight this. I’m out of here. Please release me.”

 

Hal Elrod: I’m done. I’m not taking the risk. Sure.

 

Mary Morrissey: And so, his name was Bill Harris. Bill of Rights. Now, here’s his desk up against a wall, and he feels like he’s facing a wall and he writes every adversity has within the seed of an equal benefit. So, he said, “What possible good there is in this?” So, he spent three days just on that focusing. And it was little things at first and then it was, “Well, somebody thinks his business is worth $1 million. What if it is worth at least a million?” They were just bootstrapping at that time. “I’ll get to know the law better.” I mean, it was just all anything that was a possible good in it. Interestingly, what happened when he was focusing on possible good, he had different ideas. It changed him. It didn’t change anything in the facts that he was being sued but it changed him by putting his focus on what possible good there can be. And within six weeks, it had just dissolved. His energy was at a completely different place. And whatever occurred in the, yes, he got an attorney but there was not this big resistance. This is just a process of me claiming greater good in my life. And it went on and became a multi, multi, multimillion-dollar business.

 

Hal Elrod: Wow. Yeah, right. It’s that an event is neither bad nor good. It just is and we label it and the label that we give it determines how we feel about it and what we do about it but choosing that empowering meaning that silver lining, if you will. You are known for your work with dream building and this is the Achieve Your Goals podcast and often goals and dreams are kind of a synonym, right? Achieving a goal, realizing a dream, that sort of thing. So, what does that mean, dream building?

 

Mary Morrissey: I don’t believe they’re exactly the same.

 

Hal Elrod: Oh, I love this. Let’s go.

 

Mary Morrissey: So, by definition, a dream is something you have no idea how to achieve. You have goals and you can even have worthy goals. Like, pretty much you know what to do. You just haven’t done it. So, you align the goal with your activities and you begin to generate results. By definition, a dream is something you really would love but you have zero idea, the love of your life or healing from a, although you have a very clear plan for people to use to transform what’s going on inside themselves so they can have an alignment with an outcome with a health issue but most people don’t have access to that. So, it’s a dream to be free of lupus or some other autoimmune that plagues people and can for decades, to build a work in the world that has impact, meaning, and purpose when you’re stuck doing a job just for cash to pay your bills, or to have time, money, and freedom while you have the health and aliveness to enjoy it or to contribute in ways that really matter to you. So, when you create and you have four areas of life where you’re having results anyway.

 

All of us right now, if we pause, you have results in four areas of life. You have health results right now. You have relationship results right now. You’re the person who longs to have the love of your life and then you look at how long it’s been there. That’s my relationship result right now. Or have a marriage that’s gotten a little bit on cruise control but what I would love is to reignite that. You look at your results both health, relationships, vocation, whether you’re an income doing it or not, vocation, your vocare is what you do with your time and talent, how fulfilling it is, how impactful it seems, how life-giving it is or not. You have results in your vocation and you have results right now. You can measure in how much time and money, freedom you have, how constricted you are at the end of the month. We look at your calendar. Is it a calendar you’re absolutely in love with? You have time, freedom because spirit in us, we’re not breathing ourselves. We didn’t create ourselves. We can’t even make our heartbeat one time. You’ve used the word God several times today, Hal. So, your reference to a stream of life that pours into and through you that shapes itself in the forms of what you give it to be, with your thoughts and your feelings.

 

So, a dream then is you dream, “If I ask this question…” First of all, the power breathing us that our soul from a universal soul or wherever it all comes from, life itself. Life itself is ever seeking a freer, fuller, expanded version of itself by means of itself. It’s pressing through a blade of grass today to be more of itself. It’s pressing through the edges of a tree, to be more of itself. And that same life energy is moving into and through us seeking to express more life. The difference between a blade of grass, a tree, and you and me is a blade of grass has no will to stop that. Humans can say yes or no. And when we thwart life, it doesn’t stop flowing. It just creates signs and signals of unlived life, which we call problems and difficulties, challenges versus shaping a vision. So, you notice that sends two signals to you that life in you, it sends signals how it is identified in the human is longing and discontent. “I just wish it.” “If I could send my kids to any college they want to go to.” “I am so tired of struggling at the end of the month.” “I’m tired of…” “If we just…” “Oh, I would love to be walking on the beach holding hands with the love of my life.” “I’m frustrated with again crawling into bed at night or feeling jealous when I’m at the grocery store and I’m buying for one and they’re buying for two.” Or, or, or.

 

So, you shape it into a vision that you have no idea. Most people will only allow themselves to have goals if they know how to do. By definition, a dream, you have no idea how. You know that the infinite intelligence does know how but once you set up a possibility, the how downloads in the same way you’re speaking downloads because you have a very clear, obviously, purity of purpose, “God, what do these people need to hear?” Not, “What makes me look good?” What do they need to hear? How can I help them? Give me that and I’ll speak to that and from that. And even you at times want to take notes because it’s a stream of knowing that’s beyond your personal knowing and it’s coming into and through you in the same way it happens. It downloads to you, step by step. Once you’re coming from the vision, even Henry David Thoreau, who did an experiment with life, a two-year, two-month, and two-day experiment after all his studies with Emerson in transcendentalism that there’s a part of us that transcends our circumstances and we can learn to draw from that and shape from that, results that absolutely are what we would love.

 

So, dream building, a lot of people dream, but my focus for the last 50 years of study and 40 years of teaching is what’s the art and science of dream building? And that’s what my work is all about.

 

Hal Elrod: So, then I’d imagine that a lot of people listening to this might be thinking, “Well, what if I don’t know exactly what my dream is?” So, where does somebody start? What can we do to get clear vision?

 

Mary Morrissey: You start with what you know for sure. Most people would know that if you think of a vision three years from now, I’m not a believer in setting a one-year dream. I believe in setting a three-year dream because once you start thinking one year, your subconscious is going, well, it knows everything you’ve produced at a year. It is going to create more constricted vision and yet your subconscious isn’t quite sure just in fact what you might produce in three years. Then you can narrow the time down once you get in harmony with it. It doesn’t have to take three years but you can start there. So, what do you know for sure? You know for sure you want great health. No matter what the conditions are, your vision isn’t. And this is an important thing. Your vision has no reference to what you don’t want and only has reference to what you do want. So, it’s not like, “I no longer have pain in my hips or I no longer have lupus or I…” No. It’s, “I’m dynamically healthy. I have vibrancy. I have stamina, strength. I sleep well. I wake rested.”

 

You design a health vision and you design what you would really love. You’re standing in the result of your life. It’s three years from now and you’re speaking from it first in your mind, then in your writing, and then in your words as you’re describing this life so that you could come up to somebody or I could come up to somebody and say, “It’s 2025. It’s January. Let’s move ourselves to next month. It’s January.” And maybe it won’t be next month. Maybe it’ll be the month when you’re broadcasting this. It’s 2025. Tell me about your life. And you are so connected to it that you can describe it as a living reality. And that’s a dream. And then the physics of that or the art and science of how that gets downloaded to you. You can’t just sit and think about it.

 

Hal Elrod: But the dream is the seed that we have to plant, right? And it can’t grow if we don’t plant it.

 

Mary Morrissey: Yeah. And just like an acorn has an entelechy to it. Every acorn could become an oak tree but not every one will. Some will be on sidewalks or in playgrounds that are paved. So, it has to have conducive environments. That’s what, in essence, your podcast is one of those conducive environments that keeps nurturing awareness, keeps nurturing, “Oh, I could do that. I could think,” just even little shifts. You go down life’s highway, you make a one-degree shift. Six months, you’re in a whole new place.

 

Hal Elrod: What you’re talking about, it really is simple. I mean, you’re covering a lot but it really does boil down to thoughts like that is where everything begins, with our thoughts.

 

Mary Morrissey: Everything created twice.

 

Hal Elrod: Say that again.

 

Mary Morrissey: Everything’s created twice.

 

Hal Elrod: Everything’s created twice, once in our thoughts, once in reality. You know, I’m rereading a book right now, Living Untethered, Michael Singer’s new book. Have you read that one yet?

 

Mary Morrissey: I have.

 

Hal Elrod: The chapter that I was rereading last night, he talks about the human brain and he says the human brain, you know, it is a miraculous, limitless thing. He said Einstein used his human brain to study the theory of relativity and all of these things. And Edison used his human brain to figure out how to create a light bulb. And then he says, “What are you using your human brain for? Are you using it to watch Netflix every night?” Like, we all have the human brain and he’s like, “You have to understand that it is subjectively capable of anything.” But that’s only based on what you use it for. And so, I love what you’re talking about, which is like, yeah, if you use it to dream and then you align your thoughts with what you need to do, the behaviors that will move you in the direction of that dream, I think that your success is inevitable, only it’s a matter of time. And sometimes it takes, you know, I’m sure you’ve experienced that, right, sometimes you think something you can get it done in three years and it takes five or the whole ten years to be an overnight success.

 

One question I really want to close with because I think you’ve given us so much today, with all the people you’ve worked with over four decades now, what do you see that holds people back the most? You’ve given all this brilliant wisdom but what holds people back the most?

 

Mary Morrissey: Well, one of the things for sure is they don’t believe it’s possible for them. There’s this fundamental flaw. It’s really in the human side of our nature that, “There’s something wrong with me. I don’t have what it takes.” It’s a belief at that. It is just a change in belief. And that’s why listening to other people who remind you that you are more than you appear, you actually contain far much more than you know. And then how to generate with that and shifting belief in yourself and for the possibility in your life. What happens when you said? So, when you said what can change all that? And I said I believe in study. You stay close to these teaching, stay close to this podcast, and you keep yourself in a trend of new thinking and the feelings follow. Feelings are the reflection of the state of mind you’re in. They’re not generative. They’re reflections that if I’m feeling anxious, I’ve been thinking a thought of fear. Those two things go together. So, that’s why your affirmations are so powerful because they do change the vibration in you, which we call feeling. Our feelings are our conscious awareness of the vibration we’re in. The vibration we’re in dictates the results we’re going to have.

 

Hal Elrod: And you said something earlier that so resonates with me, which is that sometimes you have to believe in the belief that someone else has in you until your belief catches up. And for me, it was a mentor. He believed that I could do something that had never been done before, break this all-time record in my company that I was working for. I didn’t believe it. You know, I had no evidence of it. I had never done what I was trying to do but I borrowed his belief. And I think to your point, every time I read a book, I study something from someone like yourself or a Wayne Dyer or a Zig Ziglar. It’s like, oh, they believe it’s possible because they have not only done it themselves, they have taught it to countless people, and they’ve seen that if those people follow what is proven to work, they get the same results. So, I hope that people will take this episode, relisten to it, take your wisdom, and apply it.

 

And if you’re listening to this right now, realize that anything another human being has done is evidence of what’s possible for you. And if you don’t believe it yourself right now, if you’re struggling with that self-belief, borrow the belief from Mary Morrissey over the last four decades has helped and seen countless people and millions of people to tap into the untapped belief to create their dreams, live the life that you love. Mary, you are a gem. Thank you so much for all that you’ve done for so many people and that you’ve done today for me and for our audience.

 

Mary Morrissey: Thank you. And you, too, Hal. You’re a gem. Thank you.

 

Hal Elrod: I appreciate that. Well, goal achievers, members of the Miracle Morning community, I love you. You know I love you. And I hope this was as insightful and inspiring of a conversation for you as it was for me. Check out Mary Morrissey’s work. Mary, what’s the best place to find you?

 

Mary Morrissey: Well, I think we have a gift. Didn’t we have a gift?

 

Hal Elrod: Yes. Oh, thank you so much. I almost forgot.

 

Mary Morrissey: I’m looking here at Building the Vision of Your Dreams Meditation. Yeah.

 

Hal Elrod: Building the Vision of Your Dreams Meditation. And where can people find that?

 

Mary Morrissey: I designed it for exactly this moment. So, go to BTI, which is Brave Thinking Institute, but BTI.com/HalElrod.

 

Hal Elrod: Hal Elrod? So, BTI for Brave Thinking Institute, BTI.com/HalElrod and you will get Mary’s meditation. What’s it called again?

 

Mary Morrissey: It’s Building the Vision of Your Dreams.

 

Hal Elrod: Building the Vision of Your Dreams Meditation. And that way you can take what Mary shared with you today and then really integrate it into your life. Listen to that meditation during your Miracle Morning and come back and leave me a comment and let me know how it impacts you. All right. Goal achievers, again, members of the Miracle Morning community, I love you. Mary, thank you so much.

 

Mary Morrissey: Thank you.

 

Hal Elrod: And I will talk to you all next week.

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