I've pulled a handful of sentences from the introduction of my newest book, You Must Be Present to Win. I'm going to expand on these sentences and give you an idea of what you can expect when you read this book.
The word "present" in this title is referring to presence. One of the main reasons why I've written this book is because since my very first book, Self-Help for At-Risk Teens, that I published in 2020, I've been on a spiritual journey. I've had a lot of things happen in my life that have woken me up to what's possible when we slow down, live in the moment, and pay attention to the signs, signals, and experiences that are happening all around us.
Often, we are too busy to notice the synchronicities. A core message that you'll read throughout this book is about finding your purpose, your true purpose, and living in a way that will help you become more fulfilled, more joyful, and more happy because you're doing what is natural to you.
Becoming more present means having the awareness to take time to acknowledge the thoughts you're having. When you quiet your mind to the outside world and the noise that's constantly bombarding us, you will begin to realize the thoughts that you're having in regards to your purpose and things that you would benefit from doing if you were to just take action.
How often do you spend time in quiet, where there's no music, no TV, no cell phone, no noise in general, where you're simply sitting quietly? Even if it's while you're driving, or working, or doing household chores, having no distractions and being present while doing whatever task you're doing frees your mind up for new thoughts, new ideas, and new concepts where we can start to take hold of these ideas and really dig down to see if this is in line with our true purpose.
Because when we have recurring thoughts that keep coming to us whenever we do quiet the mind, these are what some will call "God winks" or whispers where you are getting inspiration from a source of invisible intelligence.
If you're dissatisfied with your job, current relationship, your money situation, all the different issues that may be holding you back or keeping you from being a happier person, you can find the answers to these questions or these issues with some quietness. Just simply taking a walk outside by yourself with no music, preferably in nature, can help you tune in to answers and insights that you may not be aware of that are already coming to you, but you're just too busy to hear it.
When you're distracted or constantly bombarding your mind with outside thoughts, it's very hard to live in the moment. Part of this is because our mind is continuously working after the fact. So if you're looking on your phone at some social media post, you may see something that triggers like a negative emotion, and then later throughout your day, you're thinking about that negative emotion, and you're having that experience played over and over again. So the less outside input we have, the less distractions we have, the less stuff we have to worry about or think about later.
So limiting the amount of noise is a very crucial step. Sure, there's time for a TV show, there's time for music, but you also have to have time for yourself. And time for quiet is time for yourself.
Creating the awareness that something more is there for you, something is calling to you—an idea, maybe a business idea, maybe you want to write a book, start a podcast, become a singer, become a dancer—whatever these purpose-type callings might be coming to you, the time to acknowledge them and get more information about that is in the quiet.
Presence is giving you an opportunity to rediscover yourself—your passions, your interests, your hobbies. These are all things that will bring joy to your life. Even if it's not your overall biggest purpose in life, being present means making the best decision in that moment that you can, and taking that and building on it.
The idea that you want to be a dancer, but you don't think you have any dancing skills—the negative thoughts that you're having about it may be holding you back, where you can just say, "What if I took a chance? What if I took that first step? Maybe that's the answer for me." Maybe if you get started, you'll realize that you have more natural ability at something than you ever thought possible.
I give examples throughout the book about how I came to becoming a writer. And a lot of that, I was denying it early on. I had ideas, I had thoughts around it, but I literally repressed them because I didn't think I was qualified—because I was doing construction at the time—that I could be a writer. And so I just ignored it and didn't think I was qualified.
But years going by, the feelings kept nagging at me. And I talk about in the book—especially specifically in Chapter 6 around—I had a couple different psychic medium readings where both of them identified these strong soul-level gifts of writing.
But that wasn't the end-all, be-all. It was great to know that, okay, that's what I should be doing, but at the end of the day, it was really just one medium for me because I am naturally a storyteller. So writing was just one outlet. This podcast is another outlet. Any video I do, anytime I stand on a stage or speak to a group in public—these are all just forms of being a storyteller.
Another thing that I don't really dive into in the book because it's too complicated, but I do mention and give some resources to what's known as Human Design. So in recent years, I've discovered Human Design, which will literally give you pretty much an outline as to how you're designed to operate—where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are. And in my case, my core wound is my life's work, which aligns with what I wrote about in my first book, which is, you know, growing up as an at-risk teenager and then learning later in life how to, you know, be more successful and combining these self-reliance skills I built early in life with the personal development skills I learned later in life.
I was able to write a book of self-reliance—a guide for young people who may not have guidance in their life, and give them a lot of strategies to help them become a successful adult. And success can be anything; it doesn't always mean monetary. You know, success is really just following that purpose and continuing to have little successes along the way. And the more you align with your true nature, the more you'll feel fulfilled and joyful, which in itself is success.
For me, all of this is so relevant to the current journey that I'm on that I feel the need to share it, which again is part of the purpose for my life, which is to have experiences, learn from them, and then share with other people what I've learned and what I've gone through to help others get through the same things. That's what this podcast has always been about. That's what all my writing is about.
I take all this education and knowledge and first-hand experience, and I translate that into a message that will resonate with you.
Thoughts, the feelings, and the experiences that I've had that have led me to where I am today are all because of my intuition, and trusting my intuition, and developing that intuition through the different methods that I mention in the book by being present, following thoughts to where they lead me. I've relinquished the need to be right, I've relinquished the attachment to results. You know, whether this podcast gets listened to by 10 people or 10,000 people, it doesn't matter necessarily to me because I'm just doing it because I feel called to do it.
This is my outlet to help people worldwide from the comfort of my home without having to deal with a lot of the feedback that comes with social media or videos, YouTube, and stuff, because I'm not in a place where I really want that right now. I just want to do my thing, put it out into the world, and this is the choice I'm making at this present moment.
But what I do is I meditate. And that's a big part of getting grounded and getting present with yourself, is that quiet time. You know, it starts with just turning off the radio in the car while you're driving, or just sitting quietly for 5 minutes when you get home without turning on the TV.
But to take it one step further, meditation is very crucial. It's the one way that you can have a direct communion with the Source that created you. I mean, it's literally when you are in that quiet time, you are quieting your mind. And yes, it's easy to get distracted—thoughts of what just happened or what you have to do later will continue to come into your head the way they do for all of us. But the way meditation works is you start off small. You start with 5 minutes, the next day you can go to 10, then you can go to 15, and you build up the way you do with building muscle and exercise. And when you're weightlifting, you add weight as you go. It's the same concept with the meditation.
When you quiet your mind, if you're having all these thoughts about what happened earlier or what you need to do later, you focus on your breath. You literally just feel the oxygen going in through your nose, out through your mouth—like you feel it. Just focusing on that breath will help to distract you from the thoughts you're having.
Focusing on that breath and being present, it not only gives you that mindfulness, but it's giving you proof that you're alive. That feeling of that air flowing through your lungs is the proof of life you need to know that you are enough, you are ready. Now is the time. The time is right for whatever is really weighing on you, whatever it is that's been pulling at your heartstrings—ideas, concepts, you know, whether it's switching jobs or switching relationships, or any other thing like buying a car or whatever big purchase you might be considering. You quiet your mind and meditate and go within for answers to this stuff, because you may not have the insight that you need to make a decision. So going quiet helps with that.
Another thing that I've learned to do is what's called a human pendulum. It's where you literally stand there, shoulders relaxed, feet, you know, shoulder-width apart, and you literally can ask, you know, out loud, "Is this purchase right for me?" And you will get an answer in most cases. I would say don't do it in the bathroom, because spirit like doesn't invade privacy, so I wouldn't do it in the bathroom; I'd do it in the living room.
The first thing you have to do is to establish the baseline. So when I was taught to do it, you stand there, feet are shoulder-width apart, you take a nice deep breath and you relax, and you ask, "Show me yes." And then you wait and you see if your body gets pulled forwards, backwards, side-to-side, something like that. And I think it's pretty common that yes is forward. If you say, "Show me no," you will probably get pulled backward. And I'm pretty sure that's pretty universal, because although that's what it is for me—forward yes, back no—in my research, I've found that it seems to be pretty common that those will be the way it works.
But literally, you do this, you ask the question, you will feel your upper body lean in a certain direction. For me, this has been a game-changer because if you don't know the answer to something, and any person you might ask is really just giving you their opinion, and if you want to really live in line with your purpose and you want to be connected to the Source that created you—call it whatever you may be; if you're a believer, you want to call it God, you want to call it Infinite Intelligence, you could call it the Source that created everything, whatever you like—but this is where you can get answers from that Source, and those answers are going to be aligned with your highest purpose.
Your soul already knows the answer to what you should be doing. Now, often we're just taking detours. Sometimes we take a detour, we take a roundabout way to get to the same destination that we would have gotten to regardless.
Our thoughts become our reality. Sometimes what we're thinking about is manifesting right into our reality, and it's things that we don't really want. So another thing to be mindful of is what are the words you're using. Are you negative towards yourself, or are you empowering to yourself? Are you always stating what you don't want as opposed to what you do want? Because you're going to attract these things into your reality. So if you don't want something, just don't speak about it. You only speak about what you do want, and that is how you attract the things that you want in your life, is by declaring them and talking about only what you do want.
And when you limit your exposure to negativity and the negative circumstances out in the world that we can't control, your internal dialogue begins to change, because you're less fearful, you're less—you have less anxiety. A lot of what we think about is because of what we're exposed to. So when you can limit the exposure to the negativity, you will become a more positive person naturally.
And limiting the negativity from outside sources is just one step. Another thing is to be positive with yourself, which means taking better care of yourself. And when you're taking better care of yourself, you're going to naturally feel better. Diet, exercise, any other hobbies or habits that you might have that are causing your body to have negative feelings or emotions—drugs, alcohol, all kinds of other outside sources are contributing to the way we feel.
Mind, body, and spiritual discipline is what I cover in Chapter 2 of the book, which again, we're going to do deeper dives in future episodes. The next dozen episodes or so are going to be based on the content of the book. You can expect to get full episodes on some of these topics here in the near future. So don't forget to subscribe to this podcast.
Remember that you are unique. You possess unique experiences, talents, and gifts. And the more time you spend in quiet and stillness, the louder the messages will be. Take action on the things that have been weighing on you. Now is the time.
In the next episode, I'll be pulling from Chapter 1 titled "Flow, Resistance, and the Call to Purpose."
Work on cultivating your present moment awareness and become more mindful of the responses that you get through your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Have yourself a great day.
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