People magazine – Pam Grout

You can never say “I love you” too often

November 17, 2018 83 Comments

“In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert
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Every time I took off on a flight, I texted Tasman to tell her I loved her. You know, just in case.

Since she’s not currently taking texts, I decided to send this email out to all of you to let you know: I LOVE YOU!

Because, well, I’m about to take off for Mumbai.

Many months ago, I was invited to join Tribes for Good on their initial Social Impact Journey. It’s a weeklong trip for those of us with a heart to make a difference in the world, those of us who want to use our talents and energy to rewrite the dominant paradigm. We’ll be learning skills to bring people together, to get us all in the same vicinity so we can all finally get it that we really DO love each other. That we really DO want to take care of each other.

Because the mission aligns so closely with The 222 Foundation (and because my best friend from college agreed to join me), I decided to carry on. I decided to take Taz’s message to me (“Mom, you’ve got to take all that love you gave to me and give it to everyone else.”) and focus on the love. Focus on what I still have.

And you’ll be happy to hear I’m even practicing what I preach, being grateful that:

1. I got 25 years with the most loving, most amazing daughter on the planet.

2. That she changed her plans and decided to stay in my hometown for the last year of her life. Initially, after her year of European and African wandering, Tasman planned to teach in China. She landed a job in Beijing, jumped through all the hoops, got all the background checks and, right before she was scheduled to start, changed her mind and stayed here working with the Spanish-speaking families of the Douglas County Big Brothers/Big Sisters. So I am so blessed that I got an extra year!!!!!!

3. We’re starting a foundation to radically change consensus reality. I’ve got people all over the world holding the vision that Taz started. Love fiercely and do kind things for the underdog.

The Foundation will give its first $10,000 grant on February 22 of the coming year.

We’ll be looking for people like Hal Taussig, the CEO I once wrote about for People magazine. He passed a few years ago (I’m guessing he’s probably busy sharing ideas with Taz), but, just to give you a sample of the types of folks (and ideas) we’re looking to fund, I’m re-posting this story about the amazing CEO who gave 100 percent of his profits to projects that address inequality.

Enjoy!

Hal Taussig will never make the Forbes list of highest paid CEO’s. It’s not that his Pennsylvania travel company isn’t profitable. Untours, the company he started in 1971 with a $5000 loan, pulls down annual profits of a million dollars, sending thousands of customers a year on shoestring cultural immersions to 24 destinations around the world.

It’s just that Hal donates every penny (yes, 100 percent) of the company’s profits to innovative projects that address poverty. He lives in a tiny two-room house with his wife Norma (she owns the century-old wood frame house that was built for mill workers), rides a bike to work (he gave his car away to a hitchhiker nearly 40 years ago), shops at thrift stores (his one suit cost $12 — “It’s a Brooks Brothers. I’m very proud of that suit,” Hal says) and refuses to take a salary. He has one pair of shoes that he resoles when they get worn and he reads newspapers and magazines at the library.

“I decided a long time ago I didn’t want to accumulate wealth,” Taussig says. “Things do not make people happy. Living simply is how I get joy out of life. I live a very rich life on very little money.”

In 1999, when John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Paul Newman awarded Taussig with a “Most Generous Business in America” award, he went to New York to accept it, but rather than staying in a hotel, he stayed in a $10-a-night youth hostel.

“I don’t feel right about staying in a five-star hotel when there are people who don’t even have a roof over their head,” he says.

As for the $250,000 award, he used the entire amount to help home health-care workers start their own business. His wife Norma had just had a stroke.

“The woman who was taking care of her was only making $8 an hour while the agency was making $18,” Taussig says.

“We give loans and provide a hand up, not a handout,” Taussig says. “I’m trying to make the poor into capitalists, to help them become self-sustaining, to give them a way to make a living.”

Since 1992, when he started the Untours Foundation, he has provided more than $6 million, in loans to support such ventures as NativeEnergy, which sells “green tags” to fund wind, solar, and methane power; strawbale housing on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation and Bionatur, an heirloom seed company born out of the efforts of the Landless Workers Movement.

“We look for really innovative things that have the potential to change the world,” says Elizabeth Killough, who works for Hal at the Foundation. “Hal is off the charts. I tell him I should pay HIM for the opportunity to work here. I used to be his consultant and when he asked me to work for him, I hesitated. Everybody needs heroes and I didn’t want to find out there was a dark side. But I’ve been here seven years now and he’s the real deal.

“Five years ago, he came to me and said, ‘Let’s make Media (Pennsylvannia where they’re headquartered) the first Fair Trade town in America. I laughed and couldn’t imagine what that would look like. I googled it just to humor him. And sure enough, there were fair trade towns in Europe. And we managed to get Media as the first Fair Trade Town in the U.S.or as they say in Europe, the first Fair Trade Town in the Americas.”

“He really walks the talk,” says his daughter, Marilee Taussig, who left corporate America to work for her dad’s company. “It’s an admirable way to live your life, but sometimes it’s hard to be a family member of someone who is such an idealist, someone who doesn’t believe in a safety net.

“I call myself the unheiress. If my dad had decided to leave me a million dollars, would I have turned it down? Absolutely not. But what he left me is something much richer and that is the ability to live what you believe in and put your money where your mouth is. It’s all well and good to talk about living simply, but it’s a whole other thing to live it.”

“Money is the least important thing a parent can give a child. My dad gave me integrity, a sense of humor and a sense of purpose,” Marilee says.

Marilee says the company itself is a real reflection of her dad’s beliefs. “It’s a nontouristy way of traveling.” He believes foreign travel means more if the traveler can live like the locals.

Taussig contends “Americans don’t really want to be herded about like sheep or cattle.”

His loyal customers, many who return year after year, agree.

As a boy, Taussig lived in a log house on a cattle ranch in Colorado. His mother made his underwear from flour sacks. After getting a college degree, he tried to get into the cattle business, but invested all his money in a bull that was sterile.

“I went broke and got fired before I found my calling,” Taussig says.

Taussig taught history at a high school for 10 years before taking a yearlong sabbatical throughout Europe. He and Norma and Marilee rented apartments, shopped in village markets and traveled by foot, bicycle, train, bus and boat.

“That was an educationally important year for me. It got me in deep touch with other cultures,” Taussig says. He wrote a book called Shoestring Sabbaticals and came up with the idea for Untours: a travel agency that enabled tourists to get to know a place intimately.

What does he think about AIG CEO’s making $17 million, Merrill Lynch brokers bringing in $32 million?

“I’m glad these issues are now being discussed. Piling up money doesn’t bring happiness. Having a huge bank account doesn’t produce a profound contentment in life,” Taussig says. “Wealth gets in the way of human kindness, joy and peace.”

Thanks guys. I must confess it hasn’t been easy. My friend Ivy who texts me a heart every day sent me this meme. 222b

Grief is a messy, complicated and ultimately life-changing process. But I do it with honor for Tasman McKay Grout and her beautiful vision of possibility and truth.

Never forget. Hug your loved ones close. And remind them how very much they are loved.

Pam Grout is the author of 19 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest book, Art & Soul,Reloaded: A Year-Long Apprenticeship to Summon the Muses and Ignite Your Daring, Audacious, Creative Side

Notes from the frontiers of magic and enchantment

July 28, 2016 21 Comments

“When they go low, we go high.”–Michelle Obama

2015 iHeartRadio Music Festival - Day 2 You know that declaration I make every morning? That something amazingly awesome is going to happen to me today.

Well, yesterday I was minding my own business after a fun breakfast with my pickleball pals and I get a message from an editor at People magazine.

“I know it’s last minute,” she said. “But would you be willing to interview Blake Shelton? He’s doing a pop-up concert in Kansas City. Could you possibly find time to go to the concert and imbibe in the free cocktails and hors d’oeuvres his new vodka company is offering to VIP’s beforehand.”

Ummmm……let me think about it.

You want to pay me to go meet a tall handsome man who sings?

I’ll bet you can guess what I did last night.

The point is, my friends, you never know what amazing thing might happen.

And with that, I give you a couple more fun stories about zeroes and asking largely, straight from my magical inbox.

Story A. “Being one who loves finding money on the ground, I usually have a habit of putting the coins in a bowl until I have enough for the coveted morning cup of coffee. Working at a school, it usually doesn’t take that long. After reading the experiment about asking the FP to show himself, prove himself and quit playing hide and seek, I decided to “think big!”

“So I asked him for a five dollar bill. I gave the FP 48 hours before I wanted to find a juicy, fat five spot lying on the ground. After all, I’ve read somewhere that you can go to the ocean with a thimble or a bucket – the ocean doesn’t care.

“Long story short, I was cruising through my everyday affairs at High School USA when there, right in front of me, sat a ten dollar bill. A ten! I immediately got mad at myself! “Why didn’t I ask for a hundred? Or a thousand?

Story B. “Hi Pam, thought I’d share our recent blessings. I read E-Squared about a year ago. I was thinking about re reading it, I have it on my iPad so no dramas. We were at the library and there on the shelf shouting at me was E-cubed.

“I got it out and started manifesting. I use my fridge as the sound board and write my requests on a magnetic white board. I started off with $2000 please. Within a month or so we had received that amount from various places, cheques, funding, rebates etc. I had lots of little signs in between.

“The secret joke between me and the universe had me in stitches. I decided to go bigger. I asked for gifts or prizes totally $7000. My son is a squash player and he is pretty tuned into the manifesting world and he wants to go to college in America under a squash scholarship. Out of the blue, he was approached by a private boarding school over there asking him to consider a fully-funded place there. He applied and yesterday we got confirmation he had been accepted. The rough amount they cover was not $7000 but $70,000! I suppose I did say approx. What’s a zero anyway? I’ve been telling my friends to “just ask the fridge”! Thanks Pam!!

And thank you, my beautiful miracle believers. Remember, ask largely!!!

Pam Grout is the author of 18 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the about to be released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy

21 reasons to be of good cheer

December 18, 2015 20 Comments

“What worn-out shticks are blinding you to the blessings that life is conspiring to give you?”–Rob Brezsny

People magazine sent me out to interview a Kansas City Secret Santa who passes out $100 bills. Twice. It was a hoot and a half to join him, to see the expression on people’s faces when he’d peal a couple hundys off his stack and hand them over.

So in the interest of continuing my long-standing journalism career, here are 20 additional reasons to be of good cheer:

1. A mystery woman walked into a Toys R Us in Bellingham, Massachussetts and paid off the entire store’s layaway balance, allowing strapped parents to pick up Christmas gifts for their kids.

2. Gas prices have dropped below $2 just in time for holiday visits to family.

3. The gorgeous beaches of Cuba have reopened to vacationing Americans.

4. Oakland Raider’s tackle Menelik Watson donated a week of his salary ($37,000) to Ava Urrea, a four-year-old girl who has had 14 heart surgeries.

5. Natalie DuBose, whose Ferguson, Missouri bakery was vandalized last year during protests, received more than $250,000 in donations from total strangers.

6. The curve is bending on new cases of HIV. More people are being treated than becoming infected.

7. Enough said. This note was left on a car in Edmonton, Canada.

8. Gay marriage is now legal in the United States.

9. An Ohio high school student took his 89-year-old great grandmother to prom because she’d never been.

10. A cop in Montreal has been stopping drivers and, instead of passing out tickets, is passing out $100 bills.

11. Global life expectancy has risen by six years since 1990.

12. Nearly 200 countries signed a bill to reduce the use of foreign fossil fuels.

13. A Dallas woman has donated more than 15,0000 house cleanings for people going through chemo.

14. A 12-year-old from San Jose, California, built a Braille printer (it’s called a BRAIGO) out of LEGO Mindstorms (it’s the souped up version) that lowers the going $2000 price to an affordable $350. He even offers open source plans online for free.

15. A police captain in Omaha, Nebraska organized a Valentine’s card campaign for her sergeant who remarked that he’d never received a Valentine’s card as a kid. He got hundreds from people all over the country.

16. A former professional ballet dancer developed a dancing wheelchair so all of us can dance.

17. Michelle Obama has volunteered the last five years to take calls for NORAD’s Santa hotline.

18. A New York City software engineer gave coding lessons to a homeless man. He offered him either $100 or two months of coding lessons. After just three and a half months, his homeless protégé developed Trees for Cars, a smartphone app that helps commuters organize carpools.

19. Scientists dated a bristlecone pine tree in California’s White Mountains as the world’s longest-living organism. It’s more than 5000 years old, older than the pyramids

20. And this video (which I already shared on Facebook)

And remember, my dear friends, this is the holiday season to do more of what you WANT to do and less of what you think you should.

Pam Grout is the author of 17 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.

The universe is limitless, abundant, and strangely accommodating.

April 24, 2013 5 Comments

“Infinite Intelligence is ever ready to carry out man’s smallest or greatest demands.”—Florence Scovel Shinn

On Sunday, I’m giving a talk at the Unity Church I attend and my minister told me yesterday she titled the talk “Manifestation.”

Don’t know yet whether I’ll share these two manifestation stories, but since they recently happened, there’s a 50/50 chance. But by then, who knows? I may have won the lottery or sold my TV series which would, of course, overshadow these recent events.

Manifestation, as you undoubtedly know, is when you pull something out of the Field of Potentiality. It happens all the time. You draw into your life whatever you think about. As Florence Scovel Shinn explains it, “The imagination has been called ‘The Scissors of the Mind’ and it is ever cutting, cutting day by day, the pictures man sees there, and sooner or later he meets his own creations in his outer world.”

She also says, “A person with an imaging faculty trained to image only good brings into his life “every righteous desire of his heart”—health, wealth, love, friends, perfect self expression.

So the other day, I was talking to my friend Wendy. She recently moved to Florida with her beau who just happens to be a garage sale fanatic. When they lived here in the Midwest, he spent practically every nice weather weekend scouring neighborhood sales. Now that they live in the land of perpetual sunshine, I can only imagine how often he’s out there plucking up treasures. Anyway, Wendy told me that whenever she starts thinking about something, something she believes would add joy or some other benefit to her life, Jim ends up bringing home that very item. She doesn’t have to say anything. She just starts thinking, “Hmm, I could use a new set of luggage or a new salad spinner.” Within a couple weeks, sometimes days, Jim, without even being privy to her request, comes walking innocently in the door with the exact thing she’d been thinking about.

Last week, it suddenly dawned on me that I’d been so busy blogging and traveling and doing interviews about my new book that I hadn’t done any stories for People magazine in a while. I made the mental intention to get a new assignment with this magazine for which I’ve freelanced for more than 20 years. Within a couple days, a colleague emailed me with the news that Jason Sudeikis, the Saturday Night Live star, and his fiancé actress Olivia Wilde were headlining an event in Kansas City, his hometown. Even though I was slated to be in Honduras for the event, I managed to get a pre-interview with Jason’s mom and yesterday, my story ran on people.com. The check will be arriving soon.

Truly, folks, whatever you focus on expands. Best strategy? Set an intention and then, with complete certainty, get out of the way as it barrels towards you like the Pamplona bulls.

Pam Grout is the author of E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.