Tony Robbins – Pam Grout

Nothing can hurt the real you

March 18, 2020 79 Comments

“Control your own mind. Or somebody else will.”—Tony Robbins

Thought I’d share some of the things I’ve been using to keep me from jumping on the fear train.

1. Needless to say, I turn to A Course in Miracles where I’m assured that my claim to miracles is not dependent on the rituals of medicine, economics, religion, government, etc. I get miracles for free because of who I am, because of what (not who) the Dude is. And I remember my mantra: I could see peace instead of this.

2. I practice gratitude. For example, how cool is it that, right now, all that is not essential is being stripped away. Who can even look at ads for tanning beds or smart wash carpet cleaners?

Although Greta Thunberg got a jump on most of us when she refused to comply with society’s accepted structures (school, business as usual, etc), she was basically saying what we’re all being shown right now.

Our culture and its dominant messaging is created by consultants and think tanks and marketers who see us, not as human beings, but as suckers who are only here to buy their stories, their brands and their products. All of that nonsense is going down.

The guy who hoarded all the toilet paper is really no different than the current “winners” of the capitalist, anti-life system we’ve all been playing into. Now, we can see it for the sham it is. It offers no real security. It’s all made up. For this I say hallelujah!

3. I’m also grateful we’ve got proof of what we spiritual types have been touting for eons: we are all connected and interwoven. We’re all basically the same person.

And if a tiny invisible virus can spread across the globe this quickly, if it can upend everything we mistaken believed was our security, think how fast we could transmit a different, truer story. A story of love. Of connection. Of oneness.

Now’s the time to forget monetizing, marketing, media. I’m using this enormous gift of time by turning to the natural world that isn’t complaining, isn’t worrying, isn’t stockpiling.

It continues to give of its gifts–music (thank you birds), impending shade (thank you trees), beautiful colors (thank you flowers).

And I ask myself, what gift do I have to give?

That’s all any of us ever wanted to do anyway. To love and to give of our gifts.

Many folks are eager to return to “life as we knew it,” but I no longer want to cling to that made-up world.

I’m eager for the new one that’s emerging. Birth, as we moms know so well, is messy, sometimes painful. But wow! Look at the gift on the other side.

This is our opportunity, guys, to create a better, truer, more loving world.

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest book, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World)

Why unexpected money flows to me

February 16, 2015 31 Comments

“The world is awash in money.”–Ted Turner

I’m reading Tony Robbin’s new book, Master the Money Game. It’s 600 pages of quite fascinating advice. I particularly enjoyed learning that Warren Buffett is a fan of self-improvement guru Dale Carnegie. So it’s not just us spiritual types who are out here getting our woo-woo on.

I’ll probably even take some of Tony’s suggestions. I’ve been to his resort in Fiji and, hey, the guy knows how to live. My daughter and I, in fact, bunked in Namale’s 2500-square-foot Dream House, next door to he and his wife Sage. It had outdoor showers, two pools, a couple hot tubs, maid’s quarters and 200-foot windows overlooking the ocean. It also had a pull-down TV screen on which we were able to watch the Bachelorette episode that was filmed there. If you want to read the travel article I wrote about the house where Ashley Hebert was wooed, click here.

But an even better financial tact than Tony’s is the affirmation of my power posse pal Rhonda who says, “Unexpected money comes to me every day.”

As I mention in E-Cubed, money is nothing but energy that forms around our beliefs and expectations, so if we want to believe the only way to acquire it is from a paycheck, that’s certainly one of the options. But Rhonda (yes, she’s the Never Say No to Fun gal) gets unexpected money every day.

Some days, it’s a penny. Often it’s five dollar bills. It seems five dollar bills stalk her like Mary Margaret Ray stalked David Letterman. Other days, a sales clerk at the counter where Rhonda (not Mary Margaret) is making a purchase will say, “Ya know, this sweater is going on sale tomorrow. I’m going to go ahead and give it to you for 50 percent off.”

Robbin, also in the posse, has been known to find up to five 20 dollar bills in her get this….clothes dryer. Who needs an ATM? As for me, I regularly get checks in the mail, sometimes really big ones, I wasn’t expecting.

The thing is, we can hold on with white fists to our beliefs around money or we can open up to the world’s abundance. We can argue for our limitations (a chief one being that money is scarce and hard to come by) or we can crack the window for a more-pleasing fiduciary story.

One of my favorite things about E-Cubed, in which I encourage people to seed money, is that readers are starting to leave notes and dollar bills inside the pages of E-Cubed at bookstores that some new lucky reader will eventually find. How cool is that?

As for me, I continue to believe in the world’s largesse and to know that plentitude is the only realistic way to fly.

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.

Why I’m the luckiest person on the planet, Part 11

August 8, 2014 18 Comments

“You can’t buy happiness with the currency of unhappiness.”—James Altucher

I adore books. Makes sense, right? I’m an author.

Every now and then, I fall so madly in love with a book that I simply have no choice but to insist that everyone I know read it.

I just found such a book. It’s called Choose Yourself: Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream. The author is James Altucher. I’ve already moved it to my all-time favorites list and I’ve only read two chapters.

I went to the author’s website and noticed his post: “How to be the Luckiest Guy on the Planet in Four Easy Steps.”

Talk about synchronicity. As ya’ll know, I’ve been writing about BEING the luckiest person on the planet for the past 18 months.

Altucher says he has three goals: 1) To be happy, 2) to eradicate unhappiness and 3) to make every day as smooth as possible.

Does this sound familiar or what?

The universe, which constantly sends signs and blessings, had to work double-time to get my attention on this particular book.

Here’s how it went down. Silver Lining Cruises recently invited me to do a workshop. On the call to set it up, the organizers mentioned a post they’d read by Reid Tracy (president of Hay House) talking about my book.

I’d already deleted that particular mass email without reading it (sorry, Reid, I get tons of email), but you better believe I went back to my trash folder to retrieve it. In it, he not only mentioned me and E-Squared, but he mentioned Altucher’s book, The Power of No, that Hay House just released.

While I haven’t read that one…YET, I did get my hands on Choose Yourself. I started it this morning and, as I said, I’m already completely pumped. Good thing I’m about to go play pickle ball.

Altucher says everything I’ve been saying. And he says it in a way that entrepreneurs and non-spiritual types can get. This is a guy who turned the stock market around (funny story, read the book) by giving away Hershey’s kisses on Wall Street.

After starting the book (and discovering Altucher is a literary soul mate), I tried to find Reid’s email again. Being on anything (even an email) with James Altucher is like being on a list with Albert Einstein and Abraham Lincoln. So I wanted to save it.

Alas, it was permanently deleted. But I did take a screenshot from Amazon (that I tried to post here and couldn’t) of another list of bestselling authors with me right between James Altucher and Tony Robbins.

Pretty heady company, I’d say.

Enough babbling. Just do me a favor. Read this book.

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 soon-to-be-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.

“If negative thinking burnt calories, we’d all be a size 2.”—Amy Cotta

September 6, 2013 14 Comments

“We manufacture beauty with our minds.”–Augusten Burroughs

According to Tony Robbins, there are more than 3000 words in the English language relating to human emotions. Not a surprise–we’re an abundant bunch.

However, 2086 of those words are negative. And if you want to hear a lot of them, bring up the topic of dieting and weight loss.

Luckily, I don’t have to, because Cloris Kylie Stock, one of my favorite blogger friends, brought it up for me. Here’s a blog post she sent me a few weeks ago. Take it away, Cloris:

It’s All Good Food

Burgers are “bad” and broccoli is “good.”

We think we’re being “good” even if the broccoli in question is drowning in a sea of processed cheese and hydrogenated oil.

The “good” and “bad” labels we’ve applied to food have become part of our subconscious programming, and we act on this programming without being aware of it. The messages stored in our subconscious mind affect our thoughts and mold our behaviors, so if we feel guilty because we were on a diet and still had a cookie, we’re likely to say, “Oh, what the heck. I blew it. I might as well have the rest of the cookies.” We’re also likely to feel terrible about ourselves after eating those cookies because we were “bad.”

I thought about this while visiting a local picnicking spot. The people sitting at the first two picnic tables couldn’t have been more different.

One of the tables was covered with all the “sinful” food: bags of chips and pork rinds, fried chicken, 2-liter bottles of orange soda, and assorted cookies and cupcakes. A family of seven gathered around the table. Most people in the family were largely overweight, even the children.

Sitting at the other table was a single woman of average height. The only item on the table was a cellphone, and the only item in her mouth was a cigarette. I estimated she weighed less than 90 pounds.

That’s what happens when we assign labels, I thought to myself.

Obesity and eating disorders have become such a problem in our country because of the unhealthy relationship we’ve created with food, and this relationship stems from the messages we have stored in our subconscious mind. When food becomes “bad” or “sinful,” or when we call something that tastes good “guilty pleasure,” we associate negative emotions with what is supposed to nourish our bodies. This negative energy translates into unhealthy behavior, excess weight, and disease.

But we’re not doomed.

As Pam Grout writes in her brilliant book, E-Squared, “Food is full of energetic juju, and eating should be a thoroughly positive experience.” After applying the wisdom of “The Jenny Craig Principle” in E-Squared, I’ve not only lost the pesky two pounds I gained during my torrid love affair with Ben & Jerry’s, but also learned to truly enjoy everything I eat.

We can decide to change the programming in our subconscious mind by being aware of our negative thoughts about food, and by replacing those thoughts with gratitude and appreciation. Instead of being afraid of gaining a pound, we can visualize each nutrient making our body radiant and strong. Instead of feeling guilty about the food we consume, we can give thanks for being able to afford a good meal.

And once we change our thoughts about food, we’ll subconsciously make healthful food choices.

It sounds simple because it is.

Buon Appetito!

Cloris Kylie Stock, MBA, is a career, academic, and life coach from Simsbury, Connecticut. She is a sought-after lecturer who has achieved the highest Toastmasters awards in communication and leadership. Her calling is to help people realize their maximum potential.

Blog: http://selfactualizedlife.blogspot.com

Online radio show: http://blogtalkradio.com/magnificent

“Have fun, be crazy, be weird.”–@tonyrobbins

March 6, 2013 1 Comment

“Most people are as happy as they make up their mind to be.”
–Abraham Lincoln

Last week, I was talking with Mastin Kipp. He’s the 31-year-old whiz kid behind the popular website, TheDailyLove (TDL). You might have seen him on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as one of the spiritual leaders for the next generation. Although he now lives in L.A. and hobnobs with the likes of Tony Robbins and Kim Kardashian (she’s the one who helped get the ball rolling on his website, when she tweeted out to her 2 million followers, “You should follow this.”), he is originally from my hometown. His parents still live here, he came home for Thanksgiving right after the big Oprah wing-ding and so I decided to profile him for the local Lawrence Magazine.

My editor, who adores sidebars, said, “Ask him for some tips.” He gave me several, but the one I most resonated to was this: “The one thing we have control over is our thoughts, the meaning we give to events that happen in our lives. We can frame things in whatever light we choose and how we word the questions we ask ourselves is extremely important.”

For example:

“Is something the end….or is it a new beginning?”

“Is this a breakdown…or a breakthrough?”

As he says, “It’s a very powerful thing that we get to decide the meaning we give to things.”

So in honor of Mastin and my own evolving awareness, I’d like to share a couple reframed thoughts that have really blessed my life.

1. I am the Bill Gates of free time and flexibility. I’m a freelance writer so there’s no boss expecting me to clock in. I can travel whenever I want to. I can attend get-togethers in the middle of the day—like my spiritual entrepreneurs group—or lunch with a dear friend as I did yesterday for two and a half hours. Some people would panic without a regular job. I prefer to see it as having an abundance of time and a whole wagonload of opportunities to create new things.

2. I am OTT wealthy with an unlimited supply of creative capital. I have so many ideas I want to write about, so many books and TV series and articles I want to produce. And to my way of thinking, creative capital trumps the other kind of capital because mine is capable of producing the other kind of capital and is lots more fun.

3. I have fun no matter what. There’s no question that, as a travel writer, I get to do a lot of cool things—meet medicine men from the Cook Islands, hang with wealthy people at five-star resorts, eat every meal beside the ocean—but it doesn’t take that for me to have fun. My favorite recent example of this happened in December.

I was scheduled to go to Belize to bring in the “end of the Mayan calendar” at Caracol, a jungle Mayan city still being excavated. The night I was supposed to pack for my 6 a.m. flight, my back went out. I wasn’t able to go….at that time. So I lay in bed that first day in what some might describe as excruciating physical pain. I could barely get up to pee. But I, because of my commitment to fun and joy, actually had a stellar day. I was so happy–really!!! I decided to have fun anyway. I look back at that day as very important to my spiritual growth because I realized this:

Our thoughts are the only thing that separate us from having every single thing we could ever want.

Thank you, Mastin, for the reminder.

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