It is week four of the bet, and this
week I caught myself trying to prove
my worth in three different ways, and
each time it came back to the same
childhood wound Wednesday morning, it's
getting ready for work, and something
clicked about why I have been so
bothered when memo subscribers leave.
Welcome back to the bet.
Every journey starts with a
choice, and mine is a bet.
For one year, I'm gambling
on energy over strategy.
No more forcing and no pushing.
Just the courage to show up.
And see what happens when
reality becomes my playground.
This isn't a podcast.
It's a real time experiment
in the lab of my life.
Welcome to the bet.
Okay, I just wanna kick this off real
quick by saying if you hear rain coming
in and outta the background, that
is because we're having a very rare.
Rainy day here in Arizona, and
I'm not sure how that's gonna
play out in this episode, but we
have an episode to produce here.
So the show goes on with
or without the rain.
Wednesday morning, I'm getting ready
for work, and this thought pattern
that's been churning around my
mind finally starts to crystallize.
Last week you might remember, I
talked about a memo cancellation.
That sent me into a little
bit of an emotional loop.
This week.
I decided to look at everybody
who has unsubscribed from my
email list over the last year,
and something interesting happens.
I don't have an emotional response to it.
Instead, it really felt like I was
observing it from a very different
place and this whole thing, I'm sure.
Is connected to day 20 of my 30 day
money challenge with my current coach.
I talked a bit about this last
week, but it is not a typical money
challenge because this one is all
about excavating the layers beneath
the layers, beneath the layers about
what worth and value means to us.
And here's the thing about patterns.
They keep playing out in our lives.
Especially the ones we've been trying
to change without seeing any result.
Those are usually tied to deeper
stories that are held by the
librarian of our subconscious.
And one belief that surfaced this week
for me wasn't even about money initially.
It was about love, childhood love,
without getting into the specifics,
? My childhood was marked by a very
clear before and after pre-divorce
and post-divorce, both of my parents
went down very different paths.
I'm choosing not to share all those
details because ultimately and truly,
I am so grateful for my childhood.
I truly am.
It has provided me with everything
that makes me who I am today.
. It contained all of the ingredients that
allowed me to live the life I'm living
today, and it doesn't serve me to frame my
childhood as something else, particularly
not in this look how horrible this was,
or look at what this thing did to me.
But the events of that time did
leave my seven and 8-year-old
self feeling very unwanted.
I felt very alone and the only
children I had in my world to compare
myself to were the ones I saw on tv.
And I looked to those children and their
TV families and I would see parents
sitting on the edge of beds, telling
goodnight stories, giving kisses on
foreheads, asking if their kids had
everything they needed, tucking them in,
wishing them sweet dreams, snuggling, and.
In my world, the reality was you put
yourself to bed, you better take care of
all your business and brush your teeth,
get your pajamas on, and be in your own
bed with the lights out by eight o'clock.
That was the guideline.
So my little kid brain made that mean
everyone else that I saw must have more
love than I do because their parents
are doing these things and mine are not.
And that feeling about love would
later map onto material things.
It shifted from just affection into
material things because I compared
not only the affection that I saw.
Other children getting,
but the material things.
And when we moved to LA at 10 years old,
the reality shifted for me in terms of
the material things I was exposed to.
It was a very different reality.
It was, we were living in
materialistic land, like ground
zero for materialistic things.
So especially in the high school I
went to, it was a private school and
by my senior year, I was the only only
person who didn't have their own car.
I didn't have my own car, and it wasn't
like I was demanding a luxury car,
although I saw a lot of kids getting BMWs
and Mercedes and all kinds of cars on
their 16th birthdays, but I didn't get
any car, , it wasn't even a discussion.
I didn't even feel like
I could ask for a car.
I knew that that was just not open
for discussion, and my brain filed
that away as more evidence of the
same stories, I must not be loved or
wanted as much as these other kids
were, and these types of beliefs, they
get mapped into our neural pathways.
They become the water that we
swim in, we don't even notice it.
So Wednesday morning, all of these
memories had been activated and I
was working through them doing this
breath work and pattern neutralization
activities from the money challenge.
And I'm trying to separate
out these emotional mappings.
And here's what I wanna share
with you about suffering
when it comes to the brain.
. We feel suffering or emotional discomfort
because the brain is trying to process
something that can no longer be accessed.
It's trying to pull up a memory as if that
is happening in current time, and it's not
. It is an event from our past,
but because we feel emotions,
very current emotions tied to it.
The brain believes it is occurring now.
It's trying to get resolution on your
behalf to something in the here and now
which cannot occur in the here and now.
It is gone and done.
And this is the biological basis
of so much of our suffering.
So much of our discomfort is the
brain trying to reconcile something
it cannot actually access because the
truth is the only moment is right now.
The moment I'm speaking these
words right now is the only moment
that actually exists in time.
All potential comes from the
moment we're in right now.
Our past is created from the moment
we're in right now, and our future
depends on the moment we're in right now.
And as I'm reminding myself all
of this with my big emotions,
I realize, wait a second.
All possibility exists in this
moment right now, not in my
childhood, not in high school.
Then none of those stories about
not having enough love or not
being wanted are even relevant.
This is the only relevant moment, and
this awareness opens up something else.
It's like a, a key that
unlocks the next level.
. I start thinking about all the
pivotal moments in my life books.
I remember reading conversations that
shifted everything, relationships
that marked a before and after.
For me, all of these very
pivotal key moments and markers.
But I don't go back and reread those
books every week for the rest of my life.
, I don't repeat the same conversation that
I had with somebody that unlock something
every single week for the rest of my life.
The pivot happens, the change
occurs, and we move forward,
and that's when it hits me.
I have been expecting.
Memo subscribers to stay with me
because that would mean they love me.
That would mean I'm wanted, but if they
did stay with me forever, that would
actually be the opposite of what I want.
That would be the opposite of excellence.
I would be failing as a mentor,
failing as a guide if people
needed to stay with me forever.
If they needed to repeat the same
message over and over because I'm meant
to be a light for the step they're
on, or a light for the next step,
they take not the entire staircase.
I'm not trying to be their
full road, their full pathway.
I am a point along their way where
they get what they need and move on.
I talk about an exhale when I
realize that if someone uses Memo
for a few months and it helps them
shift and take a step forward,
that's exactly how it should work.
They pull it out during a slump.
They get what they need, they integrate
it, and they continue along their journey.
That is what success looks like.
That is not abandonment.
Now, personally, I think Memo works
best with consistent listening because
it's this constant reinforcement of the
general messaging that keeps the brain
forward moving and progressing ? But
that's not my experience as a customer.
That's my experience as somebody who
built this product because I needed
this product to master my own mind.
I was determined to build a mind that
wins, but a mind that wins doesn't
mean a mind that's dependent on
something, and I had been measuring
my worth by Are you willing to show me
you love my work by staying with it?
Just another layer of dependency
that I am sure is connected to
my childhood, even though it's
showing up in my business metrics.
So Thursday morning, I'm recording
voice notes for the week, and another
pattern smacks me in the face.
When I originally structured this
podcast that I'm talking to you
on right now, the plan was simple.
Document my work every week, show
how I'm building my business using
energy instead of just strategy.
And these Tuesday episodes
would be the raw experiment.
Where I'm sharing what goes down,
what my mind is thinking, and
how I'm moving myself forward.
But I added a Friday mini memo
drop because they sounded fun.
They really did sound fun to me to do.
I thought, oh, that'll be so fun, except
sitting there on Thursday morning,
I realized what's really going down?
It was a safety blanket, ? The
Tuesday episodes really scare me.
Because I don't know what's gonna
happen each week and I have to show up.
I have committed to show up and talk about
whatever messy thing occurred, whatever
the noise, and the confusion and the
patterns or the roadblocks, all of it.
But the Friday mini memos, those
I can control because those let me
prove that I know my shit about the
operating system of the mind because
. God forbid, someone's out there
listening to this, listening to me try
to figure out my business, and they
start questioning whether I actually
understand what it is that I'm teaching.
So I added this whole other layer of
content to prove my expertise to strangers
who don't even know me yet my ego
dressed it up as a oh, that'll be so fun.
And variety is really good
for audience retention.
And you know what?
It worked.
It worked.
I think, if not the last mini memo,
the one before that was all about
the mental equation for action.
E plus S plus P equals a energy plus
safety plus pleasure equals action, ? My
brain needed to feel safe in order to
take action in recording this podcast.
The mini memo drops were the safety, ? So
it did get me to do what it was that
I wanted to do, but now I'm asking
do I actually need them or am I just
perpetuating another layer of this proving
my worth to people that I don't even know,
though I do want to know you,
whoever is out there listening,
if anyone is kind of excited.
'cause next week is the check-in
where I'll finally see the numbers.
But the mini memos are
starting to feel manufactured.
'cause memo itself, that
product is raw and real.
It is much more story based and.
These Friday drops are me trying to
squeeze this wisdom into a bite-sized
portion, and they're coming out
sounding a bit like I'm trying too
hard because I am, I'm working really
hard to think of something that fits
perfectly into that Friday slot.
So part of me wants to drop
them entirely, and part of me
thinks maybe I should shift them.
Maybe I'll do some kind of live
skill development on Friday.
I don't know yet, but just the awareness
alone helps start shifting things.
And then Friday morning, I catch
myself in the pattern again.
This time it's with Instagram.
It's beginning of September, I started
my current Instagram experiment.
The goal was how simple,
how easy could I make this?
I mapped out every post for the month.
I loved every quote when I wrote it out,
and the plan was working beautifully.
Just screenshot thoughts from my
notes, app in the morning and post,
no design, no templates, no fuss.
But this week, two different times,
I have caught myself fussing with
the captions, making multiple edits,
overthinking how things are gonna land.
And I heard this voice
starting to creep in.
You better change that.
Somebody might think that if you're saying
it like this, you're really meaning that.
It's like, oh, that's
happening two different times.
And this morning I realized
it's the same pattern.
It was my ego saying, Hey, if you're
trying to build something out of
energy here, you can't put something
out that you don't 100% agree with.
But the twist on that is energy
isn't about believing in something
100%, ? When you're building something
from energy, you have to remember that
the energy you build it with is the
energy you have to maintain it with.
if I'm building a business that requires
me to overthink the perception, , to
question every angle of what I'm
saying, or on proving that I know
what I'm doing here, or on being
really focused on how people are
gonna interpret my words, that is the
energy I will have to sustain forever.
Is that a house I wanna build?
Do I wanna inhabit that house?
Do I wanna live in that energetic
architecture for the rest of eternity?
You know?
And the engagement numbers,
to be fair, have dropped this
week and now I'm in this loop.
Are they dropping because I'm
checking more and overthinking
things, or did they drop first?
Which sent me into a little subconscious
messaging that I needed to tweak
things to get the attention back.
And when I'm working with energy, it's
not my job to get people's attention.
It's my job to manage the energy.
My job is to show up in
energetic resonance with what
it is that I want to build.
The Friday morning, I had posted something
about what I'm calling the trust fall.
How we're all just trusting
somebody who's trusting somebody
else, who's trusting someone else.
And it all comes down to are
we willing to trust ourselves?
And then immediately I
started second guessing it.
That sounds really harsh.
People are gonna think that.
I'm saying you can't listen to experts.
You gotta turn to yourself for everything,
? The drift is really subtle here.
26 days ago when I mapped out all
that content, every post felt true.
Now I see myself editing
things based on how I imagine
strangers might misinterpret it.
That is not building something
with the energy I want to maintain.
That is building with the
energy of anxiety and control.
So there's this new level of
awareness for me, catching how the
energy gets laced with these other
frequencies without me even noticing.
Okay.
I also wanna update you on that
money challenge I mentioned we're
on day 20 of 30 and I'm still
showing up, which is fabulous.
That alone is different.
Usually I get what I need from a
challenge in bail, or I decide I can't
stick with it for whatever reason.
But not this time because as I said
last week, I want my damn results.
I'm committed to this.
This week we happen to be exploring
the hermetic principles, which
are the seven universal laws that
govern everything in our reality.
Things like as above, so below the
principle of vibration, rhythm,
polarity, and it's super ironic.
Because I happened to do a deep dive
into these laws five or six weeks ago.
Inside Memo.
I was really breaking them
down for listeners 'cause
people had asked me about it.
So how crazy is it that these
exact principles are showing
up in this money challenge?
It feels like the universe
is giving me a real life lab
experiment to play with them.
So in this challenge we're talking
about the principle of gender, which
isn't about male or female, right?
It's about the masculine and
feminine energies that exist within
everything, including business,
? The masculine is this idea of push,
do, force, direct, linear, strategic.
If you think of a, a river, ? The
masculine is the river banks.
The structure that holds the water
and the feminine is the water.
. The feminine is receiving, creating,
flowing, spiral, magnetic, intuitive.
So looking at my business, where
am I operating from each gender?
Where am I pushing and forcing, and
where am I creating and receiving?
They have to be in balance.
The balance matters.
Too much pushing and you burn out too
much, receiving and flowing without
any structure and nothing manifests.
So this challenge is touching on these
principles in a way I didn't expect.
And it's really kind of cool to see
how they play out in terms of money
and business and worth and value.
And speaking of business and value,
I booked a session out of the blue
with my old business coach, Carly.
I haven't worked with her in,
I have to think it's been.
I don't know, probably seven months now.
Eight months.
, So I have a, my first session booked
with her next week and I will fill
you guys in on what happens there.
But the decision itself feels significant.
Again, it didn't come from
this desperate, I need this, or
I'm gonna fail kind of space.
It came from, this is me
leading myself coming to her.
With what I have discovered, rather
than expecting her to discover it
for me and coming to her with the
things I've unlocked and with what
I'm thinking about doing in order
to have her perspective, to kind of
guide me in that, if that makes sense.
And it feels very much
aligned with where I'm going.
And another shift that kind of showed up
for me this week was at the university.
Every year we have a program retreat,
and last year the program director
asked me to speak at the annual retreat
about how it is I work with students
and I was really reluctant to do it.
It felt very vulnerable.
To share my mindset and my brain
mapping work with my academic colleagues
who publish in research journals.
I'm over here in my own world on a
different track entirely, but their
response was good, really good.
And this year something
interesting happened.
I felt this urge to proactively reach out
and request a block of time to present.
It's definitely not
something I would usually do.
This idea emerged.
What if everyone in our program
decided to own and step into their
unique gift the same way I have?
' cause each one of us have a very specific
talent and gift that we can offer.
We should stop trying to be
good at everything and shift
the focus to be exceptional.
Our genius.
For me, that is helping students
understand exactly how their brain works
and how to move themselves forward.
Not just in the treatment room, though
of course I teach that as well, but
how the brain builds neural pathways,
how to create curiosity and interest
so the brain becomes more plastic.
, How frustration can be used
to build new neural pathways.
But I wanna take that
beyond rehabilitation.
Into human potential.
That's where I light up.
How do we use these same principles?
Not just to rehab something,
but to achieve big dreams.
A year ago, just a year ago, I
was thinking about the university
as stability a paycheck.
Now I'm on fire for our program
to be top in the country.
I want every faculty member to
claim their genius so that when our
students think of them, they know
exactly what they're gonna get.
And I wanna be that standard, not
just teaching it, but living it.
And I am living it this year.
It's proof of that.
I have developed close relationships
with other faculty, really
helping them think differently,
move forward in their own work.
And that's kind of hard to claim for me
right now, especially about my peers,
but I'm seeing myself differently.
I'm seeing myself acting differently.
And it's all proof of this bigger
identity shift that is going down.
It is happening without
me having to force it.
Everything this week
points to the same thing.
I'm still catching myself trying
to prove my value instead of
just simply being valuable.
revelation about Memo that
people leaving are actually a
success marker, not a failure.
And then the mini memos, realizing that
I'm proving my expertise in order to feel
safe, and then Instagram, that drift back
to overthinking, overanalyzing thinking.
It has to be novel for
people to stay with me.
The university finally ready to just
own my particular genius, own it fully.
It's all the same pattern, just
showing up in different arenas.
But here's what's also true.
I'm catching it and I'm catching it
faster, and something is shifting.
My substack that I started
is flowing naturally.
That was completely unexpected.
It's one of those little pings that I
followed with absolutely no overthinking.
I just jumped into it and I'm really
loving having the space to go deeper.
On concepts, then really I
can, in Instagram, there's
no obligation there at all.
It's just exploration.
And Instagram is going
to get an October pivot.
I'm still gonna show up my short
little easy screenshots, but instead
of daily thoughts, I'm going to
share the mental patterns that
I see in the people I work with.
And again, I almost talk myself outta
doing that because these patterns seem
really obvious and very elemental to me,
and then I remembered they should because
I'm obsessed with how the mind works.
That's literally my job.
So what's obvious to me?
Might be, you know, completely
eyeopening to someone else.
The saying that keeps popping up for
me this week is nothing is a problem.
I repeat it constantly.
Anyone who's been in one of my groups
has heard it a thousand times, and this
week I noticed I'm truly in this space
where nothing feels like a problem.
Yes, I'm still busier than ever, but
I don't have any problems to solve and
I don't find myself looking for them.
It's true freedom.
So week four of the bet and
the biggest shift might be.
That I'm finally understanding
that success doesn't look
like people staying with me.
It looks like people getting what
they need and moving forward.
I'm not trying to be anyone's
full staircase anymore.
I am a light for this step.
They're on.
The way you build something is
the way you have to maintain it.
Every energetic brick I
lay I have to live with.
So this week I'm really asking myself,
what energy am I building with?
Is this the house I want to inhabit?
The childhood wound about being unwanted.
It's still there.
These patterns do not disappear overnight.
When I can see it, when I can catch
myself trying to earn love through
retention metrics or prove my worth
through perfectly crafted, edited content.
Something shifts the goo from last week.
It's crystallizing into something new.
It's not completely solid
yet, but it is taking shape.
Next week is the one month check-in.
I will finally see the numbers.
We'll find out if anyone's actually
listening to this experiment.
Part of me is terrified.
It's gonna be crickets, but part of
me knows that's not even the point.
The point is showing up, building this
with the right energy, being a light,
letting my success feel like freedom.
Instead of captivity, ? I
don't wanna build a system
that feels like a trap to me.
Nothing is a problem.
Everything is data, and
the experiment continues.
Until then, I will be over here
catching my patterns, questioning
what we're gonna do with many memos,
and remembering that the only moment
that actually exists is this one.
Go bet on yourself.