So I'm with Emily Fletcher here whom I mentioned several times in the book 'The
Code of the Extraordinary Mind'.
Emily is a friend. She's one of the world's greatest meditation teachers.
At least, I consider you so. And Emily teaches at her own school which is
called Ziva in New York City, and Ziva Meditation is her website. So I've
learned so much about Emily and what I really like about Emily is how she
demystifies meditation. She de- mystifies so much of this stuff that
many people consider woo woo, and as a result she speaks at Google, she speaks at
Harvard and today though, Emily, we're not going to talk about meditation, which I
know is your is the main thing you teach. I want to talk about a different
idea I learned from you and that was the idea that we occasionally get a
calling and you refer to it as nature.
Some people call it your higher self or the Universe.
Emily uses the word nature and in the book I share a story that Emily shared
with me about how when nature comes calling,
you've got to listen. So Emily, we want to explore this topic a little bit more and
one of the things I want you to tell us is, we want to hear your story of how you
listened, right, because you pulled off something really remarkable. You went
from being a Broadway actress to starting a really phenomenally
successful business in a relatively short amount of time with no business
training whatsoever.
How did that happen? Well, I think a lot of it was timing. I sort of hit
meditation right before it became super cool and as you know meditation is the
most amazing tool there is and now there's so much neuroscience, you know,
backing it up that I think you can't, you don't have to do it but you can't write
it off as nonsense anymore, so that really helped. But a lot of it was really,
like you said, listening to nature, what I would call following charm, which is
basically listening to that still, small voice inside. And you know, I was an
actress for a really long time
and I was in Los Angeles and my boyfriend at the time, he and I broke up.
And then a month later he called and said: "What I meant to say was will you move in with
me?" And I just thought about it and I said "yes". And I left my whole life in LA and I
moved back to New York and it was the first time I'd ever put my personal life
before my professional life. And then my career blew up. I mean, it blew
up in a good way.
Okay, so it was a really good lesson in putting, you know your desires and
your personal life before you're quote-unquote like goals. So, I know
that might not sound like specifically look like what you're talking about but
it was what I wanted to do. So I actually think that nature communicates
to us through our desires.
Now, now the trick there is that if you're still living a life where you're
addicted to stuff, right, where you think that the coffee is going to give you
energy, or the alcohol is going to make you happy, or that the money is gonna
make you happy, then you're still living a life of 'all my happiness lies out here'
and you're dependent on that stuff. Once you start a meditation practice you,
start to be more self-referral for your happiness vs object-referral for your
happiness, and once you're in that space then it's much easier to hear those
downloads and to hear when nature comes a-knocking.
So, the way I like to illustrate this is, let's anthropomorphize nature, right.
Let's say that nature is the CEO of a company and let's say it has 10
employees and five of them come to work, they're late, they're tired, they're
hungover.
They're not completing the tasks and the other five employees, they show up 10
minutes before work starts.
They've completed other tasks from the previous day. They have all these
creative ideas and suggestions about the new project. Who do you think you're
going to give the raise to? Who do you think you're going to give the promotion
to? Who are you going to give your next idea and your next project to? And so if we
think about nature as the CEO and we're all the employees, nature's looking for
people who are awake and on time and taking action and executing to give the
new ideas to. So the example that I use is that, you know, that nature is just
looking for people who are awake and who are willing to take action and it
just has ideas and projects that it wants birth. And so,
I used to date this pop star back in the day and he used to wake up in the middle
of the night and go. And then he would wake up and he would start writing something
down. I'd be like, "What are you doing? Come back to bed." and he'd be like, "No I gotta write it
down, otherwise I'm gonna hear this song on the radio in two months."
So that was my first sort of window into this but then I saw this
documentary about Michael Jackson. It was 'This Is It' and they were interviewing
his manager and he said that Michael Jackson used to call him all the time at
three, four, five in the morning and he'd be like, "Michael, what is? It is in the middle of
the night?" And Michael'd be like "Get up, I need you to write something down" and he'd be like,
"What is it?" Michael would say "Fireflies, we need fireflies on the stage show." And he was
like "Michael, come on, this can wait till tomorrow can't it?" He'd be like, "No, write it
down". And he'd be like, Michael, let's just do it tomorrow. He'd be like, "No, because if we don't do it,
Prince will". This just cracked me up because I was like wait, the only guy innovating
as fast as Michael Jackson was Prince, right and so that was the guy
nipping at his heels. He was getting these downloads and he knew that if he
didn't take action, if he didn't bring it into the manifest, that nature would just
look for the next person who was awake and ready to execute. I love that story
and I remember, after we had this conversation because I get so many
business ideas but I often put them to the side because I have a business to run,
but I started approaching these ideas differently. The next I idea I got, I immediately
started acting at it and not going full-steam but acting on it,
sharing it with people, building mockups to see what people thought. And as I did
that, the idea just started developing further and further and further and now
we're launching this beautiful new technology which I'm so excited about in
the next six months. But I love what you say and I think it's so important to
listen to those gut feelings that come to you. You are the chosen one.
Yeah, you are the chosen one and if you choose not to take action,
nature will choose someone else. So thank you, Emily. Any final words for the people
watching?
Yes, just that when you hear that still, small voice of intuition whispering,
listen and then take action, because the faster you take action
the more inspiration you're going to get. It becomes a beautiful upward spiral.
That's, I want to add something to that. I remember reading the book 'Think and Grow
Rich' by Napoleon Hill, right and Napoleon Hill talks about the idea of baby steps,
right, baby steps. They're so important.
I remember hearing this joke. I can't remember where I heard it but the joke
goes like this. There was a guy who really wanted to win the lottery, so he
would meditate every day visualizing himself winning the lottery. Then he
started praying to God every day, praying to win the lottery, and then a month
passes and a year passes and diligently five times, ten times a day he would
meditate, visualize, pray to God about winning the lottery. And then 50 years
passed and he's continuing to do this, and one day he's crossing a street and
boom, he gets hit by a bus. So he ends up in heaven. He meets God and he asks
God: "What's the deal?"
"I did this every single day 10 times, I asked you to help me win the
lottery". And God said "You could have at least bought a ticket".
So, the idea is that, take a baby step and in Napoleon Hill's book 'Think and Grow
Rich', he talks about baby steps and he says the baby steps show intention, you
don't have to know if you're taking the right baby step, just take a step. If you are
thinking about starting a company but you don't have the right idea,
well, go and register a company name. That's what I did when I registered Mindvalley.
That's a baby step, but here's what happens. As you take these baby steps,
the next bit of information comes and then the next bit. And so, if this is the
goal, your baby step may be off mark, but you start auto-correcting and soon you
hit the goal. So most people are waiting for that straight answer to come. It
doesn't come that way. You gotta go with what you get, you autocorrect and boom,
you hit the goal. And the baby steps are really, really, really important. You got
to act on that inspiration.
Yeah, that's so beautiful and it reminds me of something else. I always tell people
that, you know, when you get an inspiration, people then worry about well, 'when' is it
going to happen and 'how' should I do it? But the when and the how are not our job.
It's the what and the why. 'What' do I want?
And 'why' do I want it? And if you can get clear on that and then you take those
baby steps,
the 'when' and 'how' take care of themselves. We're all trying to control that, to control the
outcome or control the timing when really it's just, you get the download,
you take the action and you autocorrect along the way.
And then whatever is meant to show up, will show up. And that is what we mean
by living from inspiration. So, thank you for joining us for this quick little
interview with Emily Fletcher. Bye friends.