Episode 083 - STRR - Michelle Russell and Amado Villela talk about Gratitude

During their Monday Mindfulness, a meeting Michelle and Amado Villela do each Monday Morning to get their mindset right for the week ahead, the topic of finding things to be grateful for came up.  It's difficult to feel connected and grateful when you're breaking everything down.  Connecting, finding God's work in all things, and LOOKING for His grace and things to be grateful for will not only keep you connected, but it will also allow you to be bigger than all the small things around you.  Here is a taste of what we do each week.  Our Thanksgiving gift to you!

Transcript of this Episode:

Hi, this is Michelle, the master of money mindset, and you are listening to BNB dash boss podcast.

And in today's podcast, we are going to be doing. A short-term rental revenue repeat because it's Friday and that's what we do on Fridays. And this one, I said, you know, for November around Thanksgiving, here's what I want to play. I want to play our Monday mindfulness that we had between the Amato and I one Monday morning.

Cause it was just our Monday thing. We did it every single Monday. It was such a great recording that I said, I have to make this into an. And it's such a great episode for remembering gratitude and just, you know, thinking about things. And so I said, this one has to be replayed around Thanksgiving. It's just a Thanksgiving one.

It's just got that theme for it. So as you listened to it, hope you are surrounded by love and if not love of friends and family and neighbors than the love of God and the peace of God, because he is always with. As you listen to this episode, I will be listening to and popping in maybe in the middle of it.

But if not, I definitely will pop in at the end and let you know my thoughts. So enjoy. And I'm today's podcast. We're going to be speaking with a model Vila. He is a very good friend of mine and I adore him completely and we do something together called the Monday mindfulness for our members. So, what we do is we talk about the things that move us and shake us, you know, our habits or rituals, the things that we do every day, keeping our mindset intact.

And we had a really great Monday mindfulness this week. And so I thought, you know what? We've got to post this so that everyone can hear it, not just our group, because our group is amazing and great, but this was really awesome. And I said, it fits right in with Thanksgiving. And I thought I'll put out a special Thanksgiving podcast and that, uh, this is it.

So here's your podcast for today? Something to think about with a motto and I, and I hope you are having a wonderful day already make sure that you save me a little bit of the pumpkin pie and don't forget the whipped cream. Here you go. This is a motto and I doing our Monday. Mindfulness all for you on this wonderful, wonderful.

God bless you guys. This is my gift to you. Happy Thanksgiving. We're laughing. We're laughing because since I, um, jeez, because we started off mornings, how was your weekend? How was your week? You start over the dumbest things. We start off with things that bother us and then I'll send, as I put down. Of what to talk about on Mondays.

I really panicked because like, what am I supposed to say? You know, just sit there and, um, just do that every day. And so I was like something that I guess, food for, for our mindfulness. Right. And as we talk, it never fails that the, the wheel, like we meander until what I've been writing us connects. Right.

And so you were saying. You started playing this Christmas music, right. To get yourself centered again, Christian music, not Christmas, but the old Christian music, you know, my God is an awesome God and all that. The things that connect you is step by step. You know, just things that, what connects me to God and, and separates me from a religion that has betrayed.

So many people, you know, in my Catholicism, like right now, I'm having a challenge with, um, I'll keep stinging, we're going to deliver some Amazon stuff. But, um, you know, when with the Catholic church, they hid pedophiles, I did a ton of stuff. And now you see that it went even deeper. And so I said, it's the basis of.

My belief system in God was through a church. How do you, how do you find God again? And so I was going through this thing. That's, I'm trying to find God without using, you know, how would you say, I want to find where God is and not, not use or the construct that they gave me. Maybe it was limitations to think about that.

Yeah. So I believe that when you, we have this tendency to, and we've talked about this before, where we look at it and in a scientific mode. Right? Right. And so what happens is when, when we're in that mode and it's very difficult because our whole world is filled with that. Everything we do and the there's a technological hierarchy right now, that's, that's sitting at the top with.

Technology is and scientific advancements and understanding are, are at the top. And it's at the top because a lot of people value it, right? People value beanie babies. Then everybody will be collecting beanie babies until nobody values them anymore. Everybody has a closet full of worthless, teeny bit beanie babies.

Right? So. It's at the top because there's a, we perceive a lot of value for a whole host of reasons, right? We, it could be for our businesses to expand our business or really to research information, to gather information, to socialize to, um, and you want to go deeper on discoveries of medical, stuff like that because we want to solve these problems.

So it becomes like, like the, uh, the golden chalice, uh, you know, where, where, or the fountain of youth or whatever. A lot of money, a lot of effort, a lot of focus, a lot of talk of going into that direction, you know, because it's gonna, it's our savior. It's going to say, it's going to save us from the problems that I have.

And so by default it becomes the top of the hierarchy. Right. And it becomes very important. And so, and so then that colors, the way we view the world, right? How do we, how do you view the world, your house through technology, right? Your business through technology, your, your interaction with. Through technology.

So it's colored through all of that and then technology or the scientific method. What it does is it breaks things apart because as it breaks things apart to understand things, right? So like, if things look at the camera on me, like on my computer here, it's made up of pieces and it's made up of pieces and there's like a little lens.

And then there's a thing that senses light and cables and plastics. All these things that make it up and we go deeper and deeper and we can take it all apart. And then we'll say, well, what is this little piece? There's a little black thing here. What does that do? What's this little thing. It's like a little barrel.

What's that thing. What does this green thing is what always lines. And we can find somebody to explain to us what it all, and we can get really granular. What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? Or what are these things do? And we break it down, break it down, break it down. Right. And so then all of those things make up the camera, but what happens is that we can easily just say that's just the.

So there's a difference between breaking something down. It's a little pieces to find out how it works. Okay. And what's it made out of, but we can easily in a split second, say, that's the camera? Well, what is the camel like this part? And the thing that sticks said, you're done, you're done and you move forward.

And when you, when you do that, when you do that, then what's happening is you are you're going from going from the scientific method to a more spiritual method. And the spiritual method is what does it mean? This device is laying down on the ground and I don't have a need of a camera. It matters nothing to me, what it's made out of where it works.

But if I have a need of a camera, it becomes whole, it becomes one whole thing. And I don't need to know how it works, cause that has a meaning to me. And that's more of a spiritual part. So I hope I can make that transition where we can get stuck on all the pieces and how they work. And so then that can break, break our traditions down.

It can break down our, our spirituality because we can put, uh, some sensors on our brain. And then every time we have a spiritual experience, they can say, okay, this is what's happening is what's lighting up. You know, all these things that are lighting up. Things. And then all of a sudden, how does it feel like, wow, it feels like I'm having a spiritual experience.

It's like, okay. So then they can go and study that and figure out, oh, take this pill, this drug, and you'll have the same experience.

And so they can say that's all that was, and you're going to sit there. Well, that sucks because the spiritual experience that I was having was really had a lot of means. But once you figured out what was happening in my brain and all the chemical reactions that were happening in the synapses and all that kind of stuff, then, then it's really, it's really just an illusion.

So then all of a sudden, when you have another, a special experience, you're like, it's just the chemical reaction of. And, and, and the meaning is removed. And then there's like an emptiness, which is a sad thing. Right. So then, so because we have taken it away from a spiritual thing, that's happening to a scientific things.

Here's the, here's the pieces, here's the pieces that it's made out of and he's hardly work. Yeah. So when we are in that, where, when we are in that mode, The pieces that it's made out of and how they work. Right. We lose contact with our soul. And so then when we move it to what it, what it means to us, then we start tapping into contact with ourselves.

It's not good or bad, right. Because it's a process because what would you have to realize is that if we're looking at the camera on my computer right now, is that data, those didn't exist. At one point, there was a person. That was studying how things work. And they said, if I do this, if I do that, if I do this, and then I will create something that people need, it's a camera.

I can save that image onto to here. Oh, this will be cool. I'll just the slides and all these things. Right. And then, and then now you have, you have a situation where he was trying to figure out something that works because he saw that. Help or fill a need that we have as humans, which is to see images and talk.

And then you have a situation that, that manifests itself as an example, where my son is a, is in robotics, was in robotics in high school. Right. And it's not, it's not battle robots. They create these robots and they have to do certain tasks and the time, right. They have to put in an Uber blocks and stuff and all these things.

And so then, but the program isn't just building. You, you have to have a photographer, you have to have a media expert. You have to have somebody that coordinates the travel. You have to somebody that coordinates food. You have to have somebody that when you're saying all this stuff that goes with it.

Right. So then, so then what happens is that they don't just involve the kids that are good at robotics and robotics. There's like this whole little community that gets created by people who print the. Yeah, they'll do all these things. Right. And so then all of sudden you have this really the rounded group of kids that, you know, one may not know how to code, but it doesn't matter because they're making t-shirts and little, because they need to do these little knickknacks that they trade with other teams.

Right. They come up with all these things. So there's always, this whole, a lot of people get involved in it. Right. So then the other thing is that they have to do an outreach. So they didn't have to go to the food bank or clean a park or something like that as a group. Right. So they can't just stay within the group that go outreach to the group.

So then the camera's helping that because as they're showing pictures, they have the little videos at what they do. Right. So I put together a girls team in Australia. Right. And so then one of the things they do is they go to another private school in a less developed part of town or part, part of town and help them create a robotics team.

Wow. And so then they expand that. And so then they help. Two or three girls schools in India create a robotics team. And then they are able to, um, on a weekly basis, correspondent mentioned them over the internet to these girls in India and help them do fundraisers other stuff anyways. But what does that, how of all the things right.

And the guy, all he was trying to do is figure out how these pieces work to send, uh, image over the internet. And so somebody took that. And gave it meaning and expense so crazy. Okay. So keep that in mind with things where if you find yourself losing heart, because you're losing, you're losing your religion is because you're breaking it down to pieces and seeing how they work and what they're made out of.

Yeah. So I, so w when I cooled back, um, yeah, so I'm looking, so the Catholic church would be the camera, but I'm seeing that now, you're saying, okay, how does it work? How does it, what are the pieces and what are the pieces? But there was something more, because honestly it wasn't the camera that was creating the images or giving me the fulfilling me, or making me the person who I am.

There was something more that was operating in the. What was behind that? What was behind all of it. So pull back even farther than the camera and look at all the different cameras and all the different kinds of cameras and all the different, this one's a movie camera. This one's a still camera, this one doesn't black and white film only.

And this one does this, or this is an old fashioned ShutterBox. And so now there's all these cameras that represent all the religions what's behind all of them. And then, yeah. So you just have to pull back. And so when, when you, when you have a thing that meant a lot to you, right? That has a lot of meaning it's because it breaks down, you start looking at it at a scientific way instead of.

Exactly. Yeah, but it's cool too, that we can not lose our religion, you know, like not lose our well, because losing a religion thinks of this, but losing my faith, there we go, not lose my faith and just know and have faith. Right. And it's all for the best don't freak out. It's just a changing of perspective and it is what it is.

Is that. And we'll talk about this as we go forward under the water. Like you always talk about that going up and looking underneath now. That's what it feels like. Right. Right. Because you're looking and going, how are you seeing this before? Oh, this is way different than what I thought it was and what it meant to me.

But that doesn't mean that I lose, I have to lose the whole thing. And if we want to look at the church as that camera and think of the church as a tool to connect to spirit, right? And the church comes up with all these rules and regulations and things like that, all these things that you have to do, because all it is is taking a picture of God.

So you can focus on God, right? And then put your lens, this lens cap on this. Take that lens cap off. And so then, so there's somebody, somebody goes in and breaks into your house, takes your computer and goes films, porn with it. Right. And you're like, okay, I need a mash my computer because computer sucks.

It's worthless. It's like, no it's because somebody used it for another purpose. It was built for a certain purpose. It was, it was probably even just built. You know, again, they took something where they didn't build the church for that they build, because they're like, okay, I need to connect the spirits.

Like, okay. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna gather here at the street. Right. Okay. And then, okay. It's like, okay. I was like, oh, that tree dies. Like, okay, well let's build something more. Let's put a stone. Right. And we'll go and gather and we'll talk about it again. It's like, okay, you know, it's raining.

It's like, okay, how about we'll make the hut? Okay. We'll make a church. We'll make a building. And everybody comes to the building and we'll connect. We'll connect to, to God here. And people are connecting to God or connecting to spirit. And then all of a sudden somebody comes in. It's like, Hey, a group of people that I can victimize.

Sorry. So it's like, so then they, they use the tool that gathers people together. And, and victims. And then, so what happens is like, Hey, I'm happy. I'm happy. Everything's going great. Got plenty of corn in the field that cattle, my wife loves me. I got 200 kids. It's great. You know, it's great to be. And they're like, okay, would you like to come to church?

Why he's like, because I'm still feel better. It's like, I feel good right now. And then, so then what happens is my cattle are dying. Things are falling apart, you know, I'm just going to kill myself. I can't take this anymore. It's like, we'll come to church. You'll feel better. It's like, okay, I'll try that.

So it attracts broken. Yeah, attracts grow, broken people because broken people don't want to feel broken anymore. And it's not the rock. It's not the church. It's not the stone. It's this tool to connect to spirit so that you understand that it feels that you're broken, but you're not broken. Right. And then, so we have this, this thing through Instagram and things like where it appears that everybody's happy.

No, not everybody's happy. Everybody has parts of their life where it's it's that we don't like, and it goes to like, it's broken to, it looks like this is unbearable. Right. And we have this in some parts that we really liked and we're really enjoying. Right. And so we have this, we don't have a life that is perfect or unbearable.

We have a life that has everything in it. Right. Yeah. And so then we can handle. Oh, we think we can handle the things that are good and we need help handling the things that aren't variable. Right. And so then, so then those are the that's what happens when people come to church? And so it's about finding, finding meaning and integrating everything.

That's the first thing I have here. And so the thing about finding meaning and things is that we, we look at life and then we say, Here's the negative things in my life. I'm going to move those to the side, get them out of the room. I don't want to look at them anymore. And you start cleaning out your room of all the things that are like, and then you just keep the things that bring you joy, I guess.

Right. You do a little Marie condo and you doing some spark joy work now. Right. And you sit there and you're like, okay, this feels better. Right. And then, and then you can get to a point where like, okay, but I have no meaning to mind. And I believe that having meaning in your life is like, okay, all that stuff he got rid of, you have to now bring it back in and then understand that that is part of you integrating, right?

Because you know, there's some things you can get rid of like the old shirt, but your, your mother-in-law or whatever, or your mom, or, you know, or their health problems you, that your parents may have or something like that, you can't get rid of those. Right. And so then you have to integrate those into your.

Integrating them into your life, integrating the good stuff and the bad stuff into your life will give you meaning the trick is how do you do that? And so one of the things we don't do is we, we don't try to break things down. We don't try to break them down in pieces. I can, you know, with my mom's health problems, I can go and look it up and find out what her health problems are.

And then she has trouble with her legs or holes, have trouble with their legs. There's not enough circulation and I can find out, okay, wider, wider legs, have that color. Why does she get those blisters? You know, what can I do to fix that? What kind of white man? I can all figure that out. Right? It doesn't fix it.

But what I can do is say that, okay, this is something that is in my life and I'm going to create, uh, some understanding to manage it and I'm going to be okay with it because it's part of my. It's like spice in a dish or flavoring in a dish. And I have to be okay with it. Once I am able to bring that in and be okay with it, then my life has meaning.

And I remember, I don't know if you remember that story. We were doing a Jane seminar. Um, so anyways, there was this lady and so we were writing down these things that were like, that were pissing us off. And sh and, and she does is like right down, you know, like a bitch session. She starts writing things down, you know, everybody writes down all and we made this and you're like more paper, please bring the more pain.

And so, um, so he's already down in his one lady had written ends up where as they stand up afterwards, like was like, talk about the stuff that they were bitching about. So one of them was that their parents had gone into hospice or something like, or. Um, and, um, she had brothers and sisters and for some reason they, she ended up with a parent, their parents, parents.

And she goes, I hate this parent. It's like, hate this parent as like, she's just, you know, and parents can either love you or they hate you. They're dumb between, right? Yeah. And I took care of a parent for a friend and it fell in love with me, but it heated everybody in the family. So when somebody has to walk by the cage, but it would like, I couldn't get, I had to like push it off of me and I thought it was going to bite me, but it in the cage, cause it wouldn't leave me alone.

Right. So, and so my friend's like, oh, he fell in love with you. It always falls in love with. Person in that household. Right. And so she, she didn't have that relationship there. So she hated, and she complained, like, I can't believe this. Why do I have to take care of weddings? It's like, and then, and then Jane does her thing.

Right. And I can't remember the question she asked is like, well, do you have to take care of the parents? Well, yeah. And he goes, no, I mean, do you really have to do. What would happen if you weren't here tomorrow, would that parent die? She goes, now somebody else will take care of it. Okay. So, so you're not the only person and she sort of stepped her through this.

Right? And then she gets to this real is this thing is like, you could say, no, you don't have to do this. You can give us paired away. You can tell your brothers and sisters. You guys got to wait for you to take the parent and I'm giving you this other stuff. Right. And so the lady gets to that point, she goes, yeah, I can do all of that.

And so then why don't you do that? And he goes, because the parent's important to my parents and I love my parents. And that's the kind of person I am. She goes, it's, there you go. You don't have a parrot because it was snowing on you or because people are making you it's because that's the type of person you are.

And you made that choice to another person. Yeah. And so what was my point? Yeah, because then she would, she, I remember those exercises. She would have, you make those lists. And then when people made the list of the things that they did, like, it was much smaller and harder for them to find. They think that list was shorter and they were struggling to find those things.

And then she read, she gave them a readjustment and a thought process. Is creating, being grateful because once you start, start the morning with gratitude and you're always looking for things to be grateful for more of those things show up, because what you look for is literally what you find. So if you are constantly focused on the bitch session, which most of us were, we could fill up those pages.

And if we're constantly focused on what do we see, that's good for us. We'll see more of that. It's like looking for the color reds. I look around the room and everything. That's red, find everything that's red. And everybody's like, okay, I see this, this and this. And it's like, okay, what was green? And you're like, oh, well, shit.

I was focused on the red. I didn't see any green. And it's like, okay, well this time look around the room. Look for everything green. What did you see? That was green. It was like, well, there was this, this and this, it wasn't there before. Why didn't you see it because you weren't looking for it. So look for the blessings, look for the good things, focus on those things.

The things that you're grateful for and more and more of them will appear. You'll start to spot them like the new car that everybody seems to have bought. Since you bought yours, it was like everybody had those cars before you just never noticed that. Because they weren't in your reality start making the good things, a part of your reality.

Yeah, exactly. And so, so yeah, you're developing on that. And so one of the things I found was that when we did the bitch session, right, right. Um, and then was like, and then it's flipped it and said, okay. The things that are grateful for, I remember thinking, oh my gosh, as I bitched and bitched and bitched and bitched, and bitch, I felt smaller because I kept breaking things down into these little tiny things.

And I was focusing on little tiny things, things that didn't matter, but they wouldn't know me. And I just felt really small, but I didn't feel small until I did the gratitude. One when I did the gratitude is like, I feel bigger. I feel more like I feel more right. And so when you start feeling that you're feeling small and insignificant, because you're starting to break things down using the scientific method, instead of being grateful for things.

And then four. And so then, you know, you can be grateful for something that I'm not grateful for and vice versa. Right. And so why, because it means something to you. It doesn't mean anything to me because that's where you find your meaning is to look for things that you're grateful for. And there's no, it's not granular.

It's not a little pieces. It's always big, big. And if you can't find something that you're grateful for, if you're stuck in that, you know, that depression and stuff, because my mom's struggled with depression. She had, she attempted suicide several times and was in and out of sight boards because of all the attempts to under her life that she had made.

But one thing I got from it when she was starting to recover from all that, because eventually she did beat. And as she got older, she got better. But that thing that she started doing, and she said to me, she goes, when I can't see anything out of the darkness of the depression that I'm in, she goes, I have to help others because once I step outside myself and I do something for someone else.

I realize how insignificant those things are and that we're hiding the light. And she said, and then I realized that I am a part of something so much bigger than just myself, that there is so much more because when she was stuck in depression, She felt very small, insignificant. Like there was no getting out of it and she could only see or feel, or really connect with just herself.

It was a very lonely place. You know, she felt like I'm all alone. Nobody knows how this feels. This is how it's going to be forever. You know, those things. But when she was helping other people, she realized. There's so much more and it allowed her to see. So I think that those are the wonderful things about gratitude that we feel bigger, but we also feel connected to everything else, to God and to other people we allow ourselves to, we take ourselves out of situations where we would feel alone and isolated.

And we start to realize that we are all a part of this wonderful community of beings and we can see to what they call the fingers of God. Like how. People like the miracle ways that God miraculous was moves chess pieces on a board so that we met this person at this right time. Or, you know, like, I love those stories where, you know, either they're like, if this didn't happen in this didn't happen in this didn't happen.

Then this guy wouldn't have been there at that right time. Do you see that thing? It's all over our news for the past couple of weeks, I played it over and over again where the couple was walking across the street here. And they were pushing the air, pushing the stroller. So there's a couple of walking across a street and just imagine that, uh, the light turns green.

So the cars, you know, they're, they're walking, um, with the lights. So they're, they're walking with the light. The cars have the right of way going next to them, right. Not obviously through them, but there's a car that runs a light and. It is. I mean, it is on a direct course for hitting these people. Like it is freaking crazy that this person, I mean, you know, these people are going to die.

You can see it on the camera and suddenly this car comes and she. She's going straight and she takes this car. That's going to hit these people. And she just knocks it off track at the, I mean, like it is so miraculous that it's like, you know, God had to put that car there and it's crazy because she saved all those lives.

That wasn't, you know, if you're like a person like me, that wasn't an accident. That was an intervention. It was a divine intervention from God, you know? And, and it helped everyone there too, because it saved that person who was driving impaired from having a homicide and going to jail. Probably they got a DUI and they got a lot of stuff, but definitely.

Things that they're not, they're not going to be in jail for the rest of their life. They're not going to feel responsible for murdering three, three people at the lady whose car was ruined because she was the one who was driving and save them. And her car was smashed to pieces. Carvana gave her a brand new car.

You got a brand new car out of it. And she was like, holy cows. She had a POS card. Luckily, it was a good piece of shit because it, it saved her life. It was enough to keep her safe during this collision. And she got a brand new car and those people are alive and everyone in their family was saved. So like all these lives at one time were impacted by a Devon.

Hand like, you know, that's kind of how I believe that everything works, that you, if you take those steps back, you see how all those little pieces came together. And so when you're helping someone. I love the stories. Like there was just a story of a guy where he went to a house and he asked the guy how much his rent was and the guy told him, and he took out these hundred dollar bills and the kid does this on YouTube all the time.

He has this video where he's like, you know, Mr. Philanthropist. And basically I don't like the kid because I think to myself, you know, he's just putting himself on TV so you can, you know, show everybody what he's doing. But he got caught by God because this time. When he gave this guy, this money, the guy, it was a Hispanic couple.

It had to be close to the border and his wife didn't speak any English. And he, he looked at him and he said, what is this? And he said, it's your rent? And the guy's thinking all cocky, like I'm paying her rent. And the guy looked at him with all seriousness. He said he started crying and he goes, I was just in Cyprus.

I was just inside on my hands and knees, praying to God just now to help me because I got laid off and you're just like, oh my God. And then he goes, and he goes, let me get my wife. And he gets his wife and he said, we were just praying. And she's looking at her and she's going, what's going on? And he said, this man, he's telling her in Spanish, this man.

Just gave us our rent. And she was like, oh my God. And she's like, we were just praying and you just sat there and you were watching this. And you're like, that took that kid, that YouTube kid trying to get all famous was just played by God, no freaking clue. And it's like, you are just played. God just used you as his Paul.

To do something wonderful and miraculous for this couple who were in there on their hands and knees and praying and saying, please, God, we got laid off. We don't want to lose our home. We've been here. We got nothing else. You've got to help us. And two seconds later, there's a knock at the door and somebody hands, all the.

You tell me how that is not miraculous, you know, like everything in this world. If we look for the miracles, that's all we see and you, you literally can do that with almost everything. It can't, you know, so, you know, even when those things are destroyed, like even when that camera I'm looking at that camera and all the flaws in that camera, when I stepped back or I'm under that water, like you say, and I look back and I go, no, there is something much bigger.

And just this camera now work. It's not about the camera. It's something about, much, much bigger in this world. Don't you think? Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly the point here of how, you know, God created us and he said it was. And then we bring it down to these little granulars and nuggets and stuff like that.

And we're like, this is not good. This is not good. He's like, no is good. Right. And the, and the, and the processes that, what we talk about mindful Mondays is to get yourself into that mindset of this is good. And what I am adding to that is that this is good, and you have to have the. To integrate those things that you don't think are good.

Right. Because it's all good. It's all good. I'll be used for good doesn't that says that in the Bible too, God took what was created or what the devil was using for evil and he turned it good and you know, that's exactly, exactly. And I was just listening to this this morning. Somebody was saying like, so basically that you had the garden of Eden, right?

And then Cain, you know, he creates the first cities, right? So basically you have evil that creates cities. We leave the garden and then we integrate into cities and communities and stuff. And so then they become the focus of these corruptions and bad things happen. All bad things happen in cities, right?

When people aren't in the country, everything's fine. And he's like, don't go to the city. Right? I'm going to destroy that city, look back at it so bad. You know, there's all these things that can happen, right? So cities become this, this symbol of bad things because it just congregates more and more men together to get more and more bad things.

Right. And so we in, we as Christians need to integrate that and say, oh, this is, this is good. Because at the very end, DOD creates a shiny city on the hill. He will take all that, all that crap that we did. And then, and then he will perfect. It even napping, you will create a perfect city and a perfect. So we integrate that.

So we do this on Mondays, right? We have to integrate everything, everything that comes into your mind, you have to integrate it somehow. Right. And allow it. I would say if it's a person that you can get rid of in your life, get rid of them. You don't need that bad energy. But then again, sometimes that person that's giving that energy is, I mean, you're stuck with, to be a family member, mostly, mostly thinking.

Right. And know that that has, that has purpose and meaning when that situations arise. We talked about how we have to re-enact that thing where you have to sit down and create the gratitude, right. That is religion right there. Because what you're doing is what the word religion means is that to realign yourself, to back to litigate means to tie ties up something.

Right? Right. So what you're doing is realigning your read, tying yourself to this concept of being grateful and religion is basically. You coming back in a place in time to re-establish that, because if you don't do that, then you get stuck in that scientific process where everything is broken into little pieces and none of it seems coherent and none of it has meaning you have to come back except all those pieces and then focus on, on what your purpose and what your meat, your meaning, your purpose are.

Then all those little pieces have a place. Right? All, everything has meaning and. And that's what religion is as you go back and you start again, right. You start again from scratch and you go back and you have to, you have to physically mark those times when we're physically marking these things on Mondays, right.

It's to start at the start of the week. So we do my mindful Monday, because regardless, regardless of what happens or doesn't happen, regardless of whether you work your plan this week, we honestly don't work your plan, regardless of whatever happens. We have to come back and say that everything's okay.

And you have purpose. Yeah, and we do that with time. And we do that with, with, um, you talked about with rituals, you have to consciously separate time rituals and places to do that. It's difficult to do on the fly, but if you're always trying to, you can still do time. You can still do rituals. Sometimes your time is not yours, right?

So your rituals might be different and originals may, may seem weird and creepy when their rituals are basically habits, though. Exactly. Yeah. It's just brushing your teeth every night is like a ritual ritual. Exactly. Right. So what happens when you don't do the ritual? You lay in bed? Yeah. And then I got to go get brush my teeth,

create rituals. Good rituals are productive rituals. We've talked about that. How many times, especially when we did that atomic habits. Exactly right. And we have, and we have time rituals where we do Halloween. We do Thanksgiving, Christmas. And guess what? Guess what happens? Those things give us purposes.

Yeah, right, because they're there it's set time. And what I want you to do is, is to meditate on how much meaning that ritual brings to you and how it makes you feel. Right. You don't have to do that every 12 months or whatever, right? Yeah. You don't have to wait until Thanksgiving to be grateful. You can bring that.

You can bring that same sensation and excitement and looking forward to that. And giving a lot of purpose and meaning to a lot of things in your life. If you do it on a daily basis, when you do it on a late day daily basis, you're replaying that, that, you know, Christmas, you know, family Volvo, all those feelings that come with that, right.

You can break that into more often things. Right. And when I say. I don't know, am I, am I maybe, maybe people are listened to as like, yeah, I get Rachel's. Oh, cool. I love rituals. Let's do rituals. Right? Am I my thing, because I'm more like a thinking person or a scientific person. It's like, okay, that's pretty awkward.

Right. That's an awkward thing to do, but, but we have to move it from that because I'm breaking it down. Like, what is it? What does it do is nothing. It's just like a little statue. It's just like, But even, even if I think that I still gather things and do ritual things. Oh my gosh. Did you watch the profit this week?

The profit is like one of my favorite shows. I love it because margin profit or the profit as if, to make money, the profit as to make money. It's a show that's, I don't know, seventh or eighth season on. I think it's on TLC, but I can't remember, but I watch it religiously. I want to get religiously religious.

Like I want, I want to get all his DVDs. I want to get, um, who's the guy that the chef, that's always yelling at people Ramsey when he does make overs for restaurants. And then there's Tabitha that does salon I to, I want to get those three. Right. And then if my kids say, I want to start a business, I'm like, okay, here's all the bees.

You will watch them off. Exactly. Because I mean, yeah. Marcus has got some great stuff this week. You went to a pizza parlor, which I thought was really weird because I was like, why would he go to a pizza? Like, yeah. So he went to this pizza joint in New York and there was a dad there and the business was in the son's name.

Like the business was the son's name. They were struggling with their business. It was really busy. They shut it down to rehab. They did a bunch of stuff. Anyways, the outside looked like a piece of shit, right? So the, he came in at needs. He was trying to talk to them, see what was going on. And they couldn't, they didn't know how to keep books.

I'd never started a business before Marcus finally just said, what the hell made you stop out of the blue? Just decide. I know Jack shit about restaurants, businesses, or anything else? Like what made you do this? And he said, my wife was killed in nine 11. And he said, what? And he said, yeah, he said, Um, I forget you said at the time was like 25 years or something.

And he said that she was killed in nine 11. She, she saw something with the explosion. She called him and said, I'm going over to the nursery and check on the kids that was inside the building of the second. And she went there to check on the children. I don't know. I can't remember the, like how she worked there or whatever was going on, but she went to check on the kids and then the second plane hit and the building collapsed on her and she died.

So his kids at the time were like nine or 10 or whatever. They were very young and he got a large sum of money. He decided because he was just this blue collar guy and he had worked his ass off his whole life or somebody else, and he was going to give it to a son and he gave you, he must've given some Joe's daughter, I guess, each of them and start a business for them.

So he wanted his son this to be his son's business with this money. And Marcus said, that's really important. And he said, why did you not tell anybody this? Because do your employees know this? And he said, no, I don't talk about my business to anyone. My that's my personal stuff. Marcos was telling him you've got to share this.

Right. So then the kid was struggling because he was young. He had never had a business. He didn't really know any, he wasn't putting, he was working hard, but it didn't have. You know, like it needed, he needed some, he needed a Y this kid really needed a Y because you really didn't have Y. And so Marcus took him outside, and this is what you said that maybe remember this because he picked up a rock and he gave this kid the rock and he said, this is, this represents your mother.

And this represents your business. And he said, because you wouldn't have any of this, if it wasn't for her, this is her protecting you and your future from out there, from somewhere else. And he said, what does this rock mean? And, and he said, it means everything. And he goes, it's your mom? And he said, so what do you do with this rock?

And he said, I protect it. And he said, I take care of it. And he goes, you take care of this. Like, it's your. He said, you take care of this. Like it's everything that she meant to you. Every memory you have, everything, this rock is your business, but it's your mother. And so he said, so think about that. So the kid goes on, he cleans up the outside, he does some stuff.

And then Marcus decides, you know, I can't invest in this business, not really the type of business I invest in, but I'm going to invest 30,000. I'm going to give you a loan. We're going to rehab the whole inside. We're going to really make it, represent the story, you know, because the StoryBrand is really important.

And the kid comes back to Marcus later and he pulls out the rocks. And he says to him, he goes, I kept this rock because this business is my mother. I mean, he goes, I will take care of it forever. And he's like, thank you, mark doesn't mean hugs him. And you're just like, oh, Johnny gets it. You're like so happy watching the story because.

W literally these things only have the value that we put upon them, right. So we need to place value on those things. We need to see the value in everything. There was a reason for all of it. So take that away. I can tell you're going right now. I I'm struggling with like, just shut up because it's like, cause I always have to cause I'm the scientific method and Lenny, I want people to understand what just happened here is that we took something.

We, we assign the meaning to it, the rock. Right. And it's because you're a fricking spiritual beam. That's why. Period. You're not an animal. You're not a thing that can be taken apart. A scientifically because a robot and artificial intelligence will never be able to assign a meeting to a rock. A rock will never become a mother.

And this, in a sense, a Rockwell would become a business, but because our spirit is dying to speak to us or the other way around, it's like we're dying. We literally are dying to connect to. When we do that, we Pierce the veil and it means everything. It means the world. Yes. Yes. That's where I want you to get to.

And so weird that my stories and your story is always like, and so that the tools, the camera, the tools are, don't just have things in your life. You can have a bunch of pretty things in your life, but in your ritual pick physical objects. And assign meaning what does that mean to you? Right. Um, and, um, pick a time and pick a place, right?

Because we, we are in a three-dimensional world, we are spiritual beings experiencing a physical environment. And the only way back to that special place is to manipulate our spiritual or physical environment to make us. Absolutely. I agree. And I believe that we should treat those times just like that rock with the respect that says, look, I am going to take that five minutes every morning to write down the three things I'm grateful for or to meditate or to whatever it is like that all those habits or rituals we create deserve that same sort of respect.

Yes. So we need to do that for not just for ourselves, but literally for our wellbeing and our spiritual being, because I think that that helps us. And I think that the respect would be, we want to set it apart and respect the fact that it is set apart. So the things don't, you don't respect the things you respect that there's a lot of.

And I'm in a place, right? That where, where you are not going to move back into your spirit. And then the first place you start starting point, right, is this place, which is separated by time space. And it has things in it that represent those. And those are the things that become sacred. Right. And once it becomes.

And you believe it and you feel it, then the magic happens and you can move into the spirit. Right. And so that's what religions did. They created those things, they created sacred things. Right. And then create a sacred place. They created sacred time. Right. And you didn't, you didn't go there to do anything else.

You know, there wasn't, there was a time where like all the, all the merchants went into the temple. Selling things. Right? And, and you've got mad. He's like this, these are not sacred things. What you're doing is not sacred. This, this is a place where sacred things and that's where he got mad and started kicking them out.

Right. And so you have to do that. Where there, you have to have that same energy, is that when you create the time and space and things, when the world starts encroaching on it, you have to set the same type of resilience to say, get out.

Yeah, I think you do. That was brilliant. One today. Are you complete? I'm complete. I hope you enjoyed that episode. I wanted to make sure that we had this one right around Thanksgiving time, because I think it's really important to remember gratitude and I thought it was such a great episode. It wasn't really an episode, actually.

It was one of our Monday morning mindfulness, like I mentioned before. There was such a good lesson in this. I thought it was really important for us to get, especially around Thanksgiving. We need to remember all the things that we are grateful for. All the blessings that we've been given by God here, especially in America.

We are so blessed. And even though right now, they're trying to squash our first amendment rights and they're trying to squash our second amendment rights. The constitution feels like it's not even there anymore. The government is doing whatever the heck they feel like doing. There are people out there fighting for us.

And we have to know that as we record this, this is looking pretty dire. Like things are looking pretty dire and they're not protecting the little guys or the investors. People have worked really hard, but every night I get on my. And I pray and I got this great book and I may have talked about it before, but it's a prayer book.

It's 40 days of praying for the United States. And it's called if my people pray, it's like two 50, it's a little booklet as I do. I realized that this is God's battle. You know, we have to be a sovereign people and really have to turn our eyes and ears to the Lord and what he wants us to do. And he wants us to forgive our enemies and pray for them.

And so I do, I pray for, I pray for this president Biden because I know he got an office crooked. I know that they cheated and lied. I know they cheated and lied on our election here in Arizona. And I pray, you know, that people will see the light. Maybe something will change. And I really pray to God that that happens, but I'm going to let God handle it.

I'm going to have faith in him because he knows what is right for us. And he will protect us. Hi, love this episode because it just reminds me. Be grateful. There are so much still to be grateful for even when things are cloudy and stuff. Uh, there's a really great song by casting crowns called praise you in this storm.

And it's one of my favorite songs because it's just when you feel down and like, everything is just going on around you. It says, I think that you're going to come in and save the day God. And when I say my prayers at night and I'm on my knees and I say, amen, I look up and it's still raining. I will still praise you in this storms.

I love that. I love that. Just, you know, the battle belongs to you, Lord, the battle belongs to you. So I want you guys to have a blessed and safe Thanksgiving. I love you guys. I want to thank you so much for being my listeners. I want to thank all the people who are leaving reviews for us. I really appreciate you taking the time that you did.

I appreciate you so much. We want you to succeed in these United States. It's a such a great country. You guys, it's such a great country and we are so blessed to be here. Even through all of this, we will persevere. I mean, even if there's going to be a revolution or whatever it takes, we will persevere because we're meant to, this is God's country.

One nation under God. They can't change that. God bless you all have a great day. Go and grow.