When I'm not hosting this podcast, I am writing books. But it is really hard for me to write when I'm at home. So I like to find remote cabins in the middle of nowhere to just hang out and write. But I hate the idea of my house just sitting empty, doing nothing but collecting dust and definitely not collecting checks. And that's why I'm an Airbnb host. It's one of my all time favorite side hustles. Other popular side hustles are awesome, too, don't get me wrong, but they often involve big startup costs. By hosting your space, you're monetizing what you already have access to. It doesn't get easier than that. And if you're new to the side hustle game and you're anxious about getting started, don't worry, because you're not in this alone. Airbnb makes it super easy to host. I mean, if I could do it, you could do it. And your home might be worth a lot more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com.

Host.

I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab.

We had.

All right, we have been rocking and rolling on some very serious finance topics lately, so let's mix in a little fun, shall we? Over the next few days, we're gonna dip our toes into some finance and business takes that you might not be totally sold on maybe just yet, but that's okay. Think of this as a religious studies class. You might be jewish, but you could find elements of Catholicism interesting, right? But these two episodes will definitely be more fun than any religious studies class you've ever taken. The person I'm speaking to today is fun personified. Truly, it is. Emily Fletcher. Emily is the founder of the community, Ziva meditation, the host of the podcast. Why isn't everyone doing this? And the author of stress less, accomplish more. Emily has done what a lot of author expert types are trying to do right now, which is to build an engaged, premium community, and she has done it. Today. I ask Emily how she did it. Plus, Emily has the most unique eyebrow raising method for manifestation I have ever come across, so of course I must ask her all about that. And yes, I know money manifestation is not everyone's jam.

It's not necessarily mine, either. I do believe, though, in the self fulfilling prophecy of what we tell ourselves. Meaning, if you believe you're going to be broke, you are more likely to be broke. And if you believe you're going to be rich. You are more likely to be rich. Whether you believe you can or you can't, you're probably right. And that's not magic. That's just the way confidence plays a role in our financial lives. And if manifestation is what you call getting yourself in the right mindset, I love that for you. But I know this might be a little far on the woo woo spectrum for some money rehabbers. And as I mentioned, I'm going to do the same thing tomorrow. Tomorrow you're going to hear from Peggy Vandepla, who claims the secret to professional success is microdosing on mushrooms. More on that tomorrow. But first, here's Emily. Emily Fletcher, welcome to money rehab.

I feel ready to rehab my money. I feel ready to rehab all kinds of things. And I feel excited to be here with you.

I am so excited to have you. I was just on your podcast. Why isn't everyone doing this? And we started with a dance party and a meditation, and I feel a little inadequate for the way we start money rehab. When I first met you, you gave an amazing speech at Patau, which I've talked about on the show before. And we were playing with beach balls or some other kind of balls. They were paper balls. They were like rubber balls or some sort of makeshift balls. And then you just so articulately talked about the power of the orgasm in a way that was orgasmic, to say the least. So I wanted to have you on the show to talk about the intersection of sex and spirituality and money and your great expertise around helping people manifest through sex and spirituality. How can we include money in that?

Well, I would say oftentimes what people are wanting to manifest is around finances and abundance, or if it's the house or the trip or the vacation. As you say, our dreams have price tags. So regardless of what it is that you desire, what you're looking to call in, there's usually going to be some amount of abundance that is required. And what I've found after doing this work of helping people to use the most creative force on the planet, which is their sexual energy to manifest, is that it's a direct relationship between how much pleasure they're willing to hold in their bodies and how much money they believe that they deserve. So it's interestingly how emotionally and spiritually linked our finances are with our pleasure and our sexuality. And if you even look at the energy centers of the body, they both live in the same energy center, like our sexuality and our safety, which is oftentimes associated with money, live in the root live in that base energy center in our bodies. And so with both, we need a sense of safety, right? In order for us to even touch pleasure, to touch sexual energy, we have to feel safe in our bodies.

And same with money. Like, if people don't have enough, if they're in scarcity mindset, then it can lead to feelings of being unsafe. So, actually, with both, it's like how home can I feel in my own body? And then from that place, can I start to believe that I deserve abundance? Can I start to believe that I deserve pleasure? And then what I have found is that the more pleasure we allow ourselves to have in our bodies, the more abundance we allow ourselves to have in our bank accounts.

And tell me why the power of sexuality and orgasm is the most powerful power of them all.

If you think about it, making a baby, creating human life, is the most divine thing that humans are capable of. You could argue that God the creator. And so we all have this ability. A lot of us don't choose it. A lot of us don't want it, but we have the ability to create human life. And yet every single time we orgasm, we don't create another human life. Thank goodness. It'd be very, very crowded on planet Earth. And yet that same sort of divinity, that same sort of creative potential, is baked into this chemical cocktail that nature has installed inside of all of us. So my very basic formula for manifesting is feel good. Place the order, place the order, feel good, feel good. Place the order, place the order, feel good, feel good. Place the order, place the order, feel good, feel good. Place the order, place the order, feel good. So it's a super simple formula to understand, but it's more complex to execute on, because feeling good is not about putting a happy face sticker on top of a gaping wound. It's not about spiritual bypassing. It's not about toxic positivity. It's about doing, actually, whatever it takes to sustainably and reliably feel good.

And oftentimes, that means trauma work. Oftentimes, that means therapy. Oftentimes, that means cleaning up your lies. Oftentimes, it means feeling generations of unprocessed emotions. So it's like we got to get into the trenches and figure out what it is that's preventing us from sustainably feeling safe and good in our bodies. And then from that state, usually after meditation or dance parties or yoga, we really start to increase the dopamine and serotonin, which are neurotransmitters in our body, we start to feel good. And then the other part of the formula is place the order. And that might sound simple but I am constantly shocked at how few people are doing that. And I'm sure you hear this as well when you ask people about their financial goals. And they're like, more I want to be rich. I want more money. But they never actually look at their expenses. They don't actually look at what kind of house they want. They don't actually think about how many vacations they would love to take. So it's taking the time to be specific about again, what our desires are like. Do I believe that I deserve my desires? So we feel good and we place the order.

That's my simple formula for manifestation. Now, what is one of the most reliable, potent and powerful ways that we have to feel good as a human? Orgasm. And the cool thing is that it doesn't even have to be about orgasm, but it could be just any level of pleasure, any level of play, anything that is going to raise your frequency, your endorphins, your hormones, your bliss chemistry in your body. The better you feel, the more of a magnet you are going to be to the things that you want to attract in your life. And there's obviously a bunch of science around the electromagnetic frequency of our brains and how our hearts are actually 5000 times more powerful than our heads. 5000 times the electromagnetic frequency emanating from your heart as from your head. And you're starting to release this potent cocktail of bliss chemicals that nature has installed inside of us. And at this moment of peak pleasure you start to submerge yourself in the dream. You see yourself on the vacation. You imagine opening up your bank statement and seeing whatever number it is that you want to see there. You feel the feeling of lying in bed with the partner that you're calling in.

So it's basically imprinting in your body that that dream is safe and making sure that all of your energy centers are in coherence with each other and then pointed towards your dream.

Place the order. Feel pleasure. Feel pleasure. Place the order. So if we break that apart, I assume have an orgasm, wish for things.

It's not about wishing necessarily because wishing implies that it's not there. Even wanting implies that it's not there. And this is starting to be a pretty high level manifesting conversation. But the nuance really matters because if you say like I want more money, I want a boyfriend, I wish I could take a vacation, you're accidentally highlighting the absence of the thing. And I would define stress as the distance between where you are and where you think you should be. You're putting your attention on the lack. And then what we put our attention on grows. So you keep putting your attention on the wish, the want, the desire, which is very different than imagining that that thing is happening right now. Like submerging yourself into a five senses reality of the experience that you desire. But the thing is that your mind does not know the difference between a real memory and an imagined memory. We spend, what, five to 20 hours a day worshiping our worries. How many hours a day do people spend freaking out about not having enough money, not having a partner, being told to have a kid, not having a house?

Like, we literally worship our worries all day. I'm saying take two minutes and feel into the dream. Submerge yourself in it as if it is happening now. Smell the smells, taste the tastes, hear the sounds. Let it be a reality inside of your body. And then it doesn't necessarily have to be orgasm, because I know a lot of people are. Orgasm is not available to them. Or maybe there's trauma, or maybe they don't feel safe in their bodies. But really, this could happen through play, it could happen through breath work, it can happen through dance, it could happen through anything that makes you feel good. So it's really about feeling good and placing the order. And at the moment of peak pleasure, whatever that looks like for you, then you submerge yourself in that five senses reality of the dream as if it's already happened.

Can you give me an example of that? Let's just use orgasm. Let's say it is available to everybody. Okay, so you're in your peak pleasure of an orgasm, and then how would you manifest?

Yeah. So the thing I want to be careful of is I don't want to give you another thing to do inside of sex with themselves or with someone else. So it's not like, you know, you're going into this beautiful, orgasmic, expansive state, and you're like, oh, now I have to think about my finances. So, because that can be quite contracting. So what I teach as part of sacred secret. So sacred secret is the modality I've been birthing for the past three years. And it's a really simple formula where we visualize, alchemize, and magnetize. So first you drop into, usually a meditation if I'm leading, and then you visualize the thing that you want. You alchemize anything standing in the way of that. So you got to clear out the gunk, you got to clear out anything keeping you from feeling great. And then we magnetize and we do that through pleasure. Right. So you're building the pleasure in the body. In this case, let's say we're using orgasm. So I think it's easiest to start this in a self practice. You can do it with partners, you can do it in groups, but I think it's easier on your own to start.

So basically, once you're clear on that vision, then you would start to build that pleasure in the body. And then you would imagine it moving through your root and then building up through your heart, letting it merge with that frequency of possibility and love that lives inside of all of our hearts. And then you let that energy build all the way up into your head. And at the moment of peak pleasure or the moment of orgasm, it's just like, enjoy the orgasm, be in that state. And as you start to reenter your body, as you start to regain consciousness, because orgasm inferences le petit mortgage. So it's the little death. We're practicing dying, and really what we're doing is we're practicing transcending between our small s self and our big s self. So orgasm is a way for us to connect with all that is. It's a way for us to connect with totality. And so it's like, just enjoy that. But then as you start to enter back in your body, you're dedicating all of that pleasure, and you're dedicating all of that energy to the dream. And you do that by submerging yourself in the five senses reality from that place of possibility, from that place of.

I have everything I need. Ive gotten really good at doing this. I interview people. How did you feel after your last orgasm? They usually say connected, blissful, calm, happy, holy. Like anything is possible. And so from that state of fulfillment and connection and bliss to manifest from there, you are going to believe that your dreams are more possible than you would if you were driving in 05:00 traffic or at 430, and you're exhausted at your Zoom screen after a day of work. So the state of consciousness that you're in when you're thinking about your dreams really matters.

And have you done this around career and money?

I have. I've done this a lot.

Tell me everything.

Went through a big life change in 2020. I managed to reframe meditation as a productivity tool. Like, I took the most feminine, receptive thing there is, and I publicly rebranded it as a productivity tool. My book is called stress less, accomplish more. It's basically like, if you meditate, you'll be able to make more money and have better sex. And I would do it again if the world was what it was 13 years ago when I started. I would write that book again because I want to get the medicine to the people. And so it's like, great if you're meditating because you want less cellulite and want a bigger bank account, I don't care, because guess what? When you start meditating, you're going to be kinder, you're going to be more connected to yourself, and over time, you'll start to be more altruistic. So basically, I took this very masculine, very achievement, very accomplishment oriented career, and then the whole world changed. In 2020, I feel like the whole world went through a bit of a near death experience and faced their own mortality in a way that we wouldn't have otherwise. So I felt like people are willing to take stronger medicine.

We don't have to put so much candy coating on the medicine anymore. And I also think the severity of our mental health crisis has increased. And so people are looking for more potent tools. I think we're starting to reprioritize what's really important to us, and in so doing, feels like there's more alignment, so more feminine. So certainly that has been happening in my world as well. So I also went through a divorce. In 20, 23 weeks later, I met my now cosmic lover. So even in the middle of 2020, even going through a really intense divorce, I had the biggest launch of my whole career. I launched a whole new program. I filled my mastermind, which was 30 x anything I had ever charged before, I filled it. In two weeks, I got invited on free trips to Antarctica, to India, to Croatia, to Egypt. And then when I was going through the deepest, darkest points of the divorce, the thought of my son's father and I together with my son, with our partners in a park, like, I had this one very specific thing that I was manifesting, and I was breaking my own rule, because at the time, it didn't seem possible.

It seemed like such a pipe dream. But then it happened. My son's father and his new partner, me and my new partner are in the park, the park that I had been imagining with my son. We happened to run into each other. My son was three at the time, and he kept putting us all together and having us all hugged, and it was just the sweetest, cutest thing. And I was like, wow. This happened much more quickly and much more elegantly than I ever could have imagined. And I think it's because I was holding this very specific dream from this state of infinite possibility, even though it seemed very unlikely at the time, you.

Just gave me chills. I guess we've been wasting our orgasms for so many years. Damn it.

Funny, because I actually want to make a t shirt. Never waste an orgasm. And the reality is you can never waste an orgasm. It's always a good idea. It's medicine, it's healing.

So I think a lot of our listeners are probably beginning to intermediate woo. So for blocking and tackling, how would you do that? Would you say, okay, I really want this park thing to happen. I'm going to manifest that and every orgasm I have from here until the park thing happens. That's what I'm going to really imagine.

The beautiful thing is that you want to trust once you place the order. Two things. One, God is not a short order cook. So it's like you don't get to control the how and the when as if you're doing it every single day. I need this thing right now. There's a level of desperation in that and there's a level of not trusting in that. And it's like, did you hear it? Did you hear it? Hey, God, did you hear my order? Hey, God, did you hear my order? It's like, that's not really it. You gotta place the order. Trust. We gotta surrender. We gotta let go of our timing. And then each time you want to ask, hey, nature, how would you love to use me? And this is important, right, that there's a two way conversation happening. It's not just your will, right, that truly, it's that we're taking the time to listen. Hey, nature, how would you love to use me? And if you're really listening, that directive will likely change from day to day, from week to week, from year to year. Once you have placed the order, once you have done the ceremonial piece of it, then you have to take action.

God helps those who help themselves. Like, it's like pray and move your feet. So yes, you do the ceremony. Yes, you place the order. But then you have to take action on the 3d as well, because otherwise then the 3d channels aren't open for the things to come to you.

Yeah, you can't just lay on the couch and manifest and have orgasms and expect money to fall out of the sky.

Yes, you got it. Maybe make a phone call, maybe send a text message. You take action from a place of pleasure, from a place of nourishment, from a place of joy. But yeah, inaction does not really lead to speeding up your dreams.

So this is one tool. I think some, but not all, Wall street bros that we've had on the show or I've worked with have said that money mindset is way too woo woo. But whether or not you believe in the power of money manifestation or not, and money is obviously hugely affected by the way we feel about it, anxiety, hubris, all sorts of other financial traumas can work against you when you're saving or investing. So how would you recommend people start to regulate emotion around money?

I would say if your nervous system is dysregulated, period, then it's going to be dysregulated around money. So anyone who's looking to decrease the stress in their life to have a more regulated nervous system, obviously, every hammer finds a nail, but I've never found a more effective stress relieving tool than meditation. So I've dedicated the past 14 years of my life to teaching. You know, I think we're at, like, 300,000 people now. And what I do is that I give people the tools to meditate on their own, where they don't need, like, an app or Wi Fi in order to meditate. Like, you can really just drop in anywhere, anytime. So I think that meditation is an extraordinary tool for regulating your nervous system. And interestingly, Warren Buffet attributes a lot of his. Actually, I think he might have said all. You can fact check me on this. Like, all of his success to meditation, because it makes you feel like you can slow down time because you get so outrageously present. It can also allow you to start to see trends because of how present you are. Like, the more stable your nervous system is, the more present you are in the right now, the bigger the aperture gets on the amount of information that you're willing to receive in your brain.

When we're stressed, we go into fight or flight. Quite literally, our vision gets myopic, and the amount of inputs that are allowed into your brain decreases because we have something called a reticular activating system, which is basically a filtration device in the brain. And so if that thing is in fight or flight, if that thing is stressed, the only thing the brain can afford to filter in and out for is what is. Is this thing going to kill me or not? Like, it's constantly looking for life threatening situations if your body's dysregulated in fight or flight. So if instead you're regulating your nervous system, using things like meditation, like pleasure, to feel good, then you become more present. Your brain can allow more things in, because it's not constantly worrying about threat, and you can start to predict trends, and let's just say nothing of your performance. So meditators perform 45% higher on something called the tripartite performance variability test, which means that meditators can do things quickly, accurately, and all while remaining calm, 45% better than non meditators. And that is simply a byproduct of stress and a regulated nervous system. Or not. So I would say that just full stop.

We should be doing this as humans now when it relates to money. Money kicks up so much. Our survival instincts, so much of what we've inherited from our parents. Will we be able to feed our children? What am I going to hand down? Our egos, our sense of worth? Like, all of this can be attached to money. And so, again, if your nervous system is dysregulated, then it will attach all of those things to your finances. But if you're meditating and you're coming to it from a place of presence, then I think you have more power to write whatever story you want to have with money.

Hold onto your wallets. Money rehab. We'll be right back. Do you ever get fomo fear of missing out? Well, do you ever get FOmo Tupita fear of missing out on the perfect hire? If so, I have the antidote. It's LinkedIn jobs. LinkedIn jobs helps you hire professionals you can't find anywhere else, even those who aren't actively searching for a new job, but might be open to the perfect role. In any given month, over 70% of LinkedIn users don't visit other leading job sites. And that adds up to a serious squad of awesome candidates. LinkedIn has over a billion professionals on the platform, and these candidates are super qualified. So much so that 86% of small businesses get a qualified candidate within just 24 hours. I work with LinkedIn jobs for all of my dream team needs, so they're hooking up. Money rehabbers@LinkedIn.com mnn go there and you can post your job for free. That's LinkedIn.com mn as in money newsnetwork. To post your job for free, terms and conditions apply. Money rehabbers you have money hidden in your house? Yeah, just hiding there in plain sight. Okay, so I don't mean you have gold bars hidden somewhere in walls, treasure map style, but you do have a money making opportunity that you're just leaving on the table.

If you're not hosting on Airbnb, it's one of my all time favorite side hustles. By hosting your space, you are monetizing what you already own. It doesn't get easier than that. For me, hosting on Airbnb has always been a no brainer. When I first signed up, I remember thinking to myself, self, you pay a lot of money for your house. It is time that house returned the favor. And to get real with you for a sec, I felt so much guilt before treating myself on vacation because traveling can be so expensive. But since hosting on Airbnb, I feel zero stress for treating myself to a much needed vacation because having Airbnb guests stay at my house when I'm traveling helps offset the cost of my travel. So it's such a win win. I mean, if I could do it, you could do it, and your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com. Host and now for some more money rehab. I've heard a lot of people, Emily, talk about this bias that people in spiritual work shouldn't aspire to make a lot of money. What do you think about that?

I don't think anything could be further from the truth, because spiritual work, at the end of the day, is reminding you of your connection to everythingness. That it's reminding you that you're not just your body, that you're not just your ego, that you're not just your small as self, that actually, hopefully, any spiritual practice people are engaging in, reminding them of the totality of their spirit, it's connecting them to the thing that will live on beyond the depth of the body. And that thing is infinite. That thing has an infinite ability to create, and it has an infinite ability to receive. So it's actually the ego that would have you say, I don't deserve that. It's the ego that would say, no, that money should go to someone else. Because when we're in our spirit, we're in our expansiveness. It's like, oh, I am a part of everything. And the more healthy I am financially, the more healthy everyone is financially. I would love to see a day where meditation teachers are making more money than petroleum executives, who are some of the richest people on the planet, pharmaceutical executives, petroleum executives. And yet these things are making people and the planet very, very sick.

And so I would love for people who are doing real spiritual healing work to be wildly abundant because it feels like there would be an energetic laundering of the currency. And because I think that money wants to know where it is going, right? Money wants to feel safe. It wants to know where it is being directed to. So I feel like we've got to get out of this lack consciousness from the people that are doing the big, heavy lifting spiritual work on the planet.

And what's your relationship with money now? I know it's changed.

Well, I would say I have outrageous gratitude that I'm not taking it for granted. My main course is called Zeba online. It's a 15 day training. Every time I open my email, there's someone just purchased Ziva online. And almost every time I log into my email, that's happened. And for a while, I almost took it for granted. And now, every single time I see it, I'm just in deep, deep gratitude. Wow. Thank you to this person who decided to invest in themselves. Thank you to this person who trusted me with their consciousness. Thank you for this abundance that is coming in. Really in that mindset of enthusiastic gratitude for what is. Because I believe that enthusiastic gratitude for what is. Is the fastest path to enthusiastic gratitude for what is on the way. And in full transparency. There are times that I get scared, and there's times I get into fear and lack and contraction. And I think my life and my business have been on such an amazing growth trajectory for so long that when things go through natural cycles or I change or the world changes, of course there's going to be a contraction as well.

And so I'm doing my best to come back to the core principles of enthusiastic gratitude. Put your attention on what you want. When I get into those fear stories myself and practicing spiritual hygiene, of making sure that I'm in a super regulated state, anytime I'm going in to look at my bank account or invest.

Are you manifesting anything right now around money, or is there a particular dollar amount that you think about? Yes.

So, interestingly, we just had our highest grossing year at Ziva this past year, which is really exciting. And at the same time, our profit margins are lower. So I'm like, oh, just because you make more money, does it mean you're taking home more money? So it's like this simultaneity of celebrating, okay, we've surpassed a goal, and yet we're taking home less as a company. And we started a podcast this year. We're investing in these new initiatives, which is exciting, really. What I'm manifesting is that all of my courses fill with the most amazing humans with ease and grace. That it's just like the exact aligned people. The courses are filled with ease and that they're all overflowing with waitlists. That's my dream right now.

And do you ever think about a magical number?

I do. So this year, we just grossed 4 million. And so I like that idea that ten x is easier than two x, you know, I don't know if that's true or not, but I like it as a concept. So this year we're looking for 7.5. Would love to grow 7.5. I would love to take home a minimum of two, because in New York City, that's really like taking home one, you know? So after taxes, after everything, I'm taking home 1 million.

And do you have a f you money number?

What feels like a number where I only do the things that I 100% desire, and if it does not delight me to the point of orgasmic bliss, it's not going on my calendar. I would say if I had, like 10 million principal and that was invested and I knew that that was growing, that I feel like my living expenses would happen off of that, the investment income from that principal, and then I could just teach live, which is honestly my highest delight is teaching people in person. But I have a story, and this might not be true, but historically I've had a story that it's easier to make money online because you can reach more people than it is with people in the room. And I would like to blow that story up because I just, you know, you can take the girl out of Broadway, but you can't take the Broadway out of the girl. And I just so deeply love the energetic exchange that happens in the room, and I see the depth of healing and transformation that happens when people are working in the room together. So I probably just teach live.

Yeah. Irl over URL all day.

Yeah.

I wanted to ask you about the fact that people think some manifestation personalities are scammy or sketchy. How can people vet these coaches or spiritual manifestation gurus to make sure that they're legit?

You would not want to seek financial advice from someone who is broke. You would not want to take health advice from someone who is sick. And I would say same thing from a manifestation teacher. I would look at their life. I mean, I know we can only do so much from Instagram stalking, but you can see, do you like the way that they are portraying themselves in the world? It doesn't mean you have to be like them. But is there an essence, is there a principle there that you can feel that they're living by? And is that something that you desire in your life? Even Joe Dispenza, who's a very popular manifestation person, he's really geared, at least to start, he geared his stuff very much around helping people to heal physical ailments because he was a chiropractor and he broke his back. And so there are other people who really teach about manifesting money. You just want to make sure that they are practicing what they preach as much as you can discern. But then, at the end of the day, you got to check in with your own nervous system. Does this feel like a full yes in my body?

Do I like the way that I personally feel when I am in this person's transmission? And if the answer is yes, and if they are helping you to get the results that you want in your life, then great. And really, I think that should be the only litmus test, is, are you getting the results that you want in your life from doing this work and then know that it is work, like therapy is work. Sitting down and meditating is work. Exercising is work. Relationships are work. And by work, I just mean, where does it fall on your priority list? Are you taking time out of your calendar to invest in this thing? And are you clear about what outcomes you want from the thing? Because manifesting is as much about clearing your old limiting beliefs and cleaning up the darkness as it is about magnetizing the magic.

You've built such an amazing community, Emily, with your company, Ziva. Meditation. A lot of businesses want to create that kind of effect, that kind of community effect. So, if we dig into this business strategy for a second, how would you suggest people first starting to find folks to bring into their community?

I'll share what I did, which I think is relatable advice, is, start where you are. Utilize the communities that you're already in. So, for me, I was on Broadway for ten years, and when I graduated from my meditation teacher training, I had opened up the East coast division of the number one acting school in Los Angeles. So I was actually teaching acting while I was graduating from my meditation teacher training. And so every week, I would see 25 actors here, 30 actors here, 60 actors here. And so I had this community of people who respected me and who trusted me and who wanted to improve their performance. And I think that's very much why I went into meditation for performance, is because I was a performer. I dealt with high performers, and I was working with actors. And so I would give intro talks at the acting schools. I would. Let's say I taught one CEO of a company to meditate. He would then bring me in, or she would bring me in to do an intro talk for that particular company. So anywhere where there's already an organized group, anywhere you have connections, I think that's a great way to start.

And then if the product is good, then hopefully people start referring people. And with Ziva, it was interesting because it's such a dramatic change for people to live your life in fight or flight and not sleeping and being sick and having insomnia, to go from that to, oh, my God, I'm sleeping. Oh, my gosh. I don't feel anxious anymore. Oh, my gosh. My sex is better. Oh, my gosh. I love myself again. That's such a dramatic, profound shift for folks. They want to find a new community with people who are having a similar experience. Because oftentimes we form our tribes around, oh, we all go out drinking and complain about, there's no men in New York City, or we all get high and play video games or whatever. So sometimes that doesn't feel so resonant once your whole outlook on life has changed. So, Ziva, certainly with a community for us, we had that in our corner, because it's such a profound healing and a shift that happens in people when they start practicing every day, that they are seeking out like minded people to have a community with. And I would say my team, my whole team is meditators.

Like, they all are drinking the Kool aid. Like, they all meditate. They do the zebra practice every day, twice a day. And so the entire customer service team, it's certainly not the cheapest. I didn't like outsource to people who live in another country who don't speak English as their native language and who aren't meditators. These are tried and true, very emotionally intelligent people who have been doing zipa for a long time. So they're able to steward and deepen the connections inside of the community.

And going back to the bias that people who work in this field should live in a monastery and give all their expertise away for free. I mean, how have you thought about that when you're pricing your work?

It's honestly been a big challenge, because people. Price reference meditation against free. When people think about meditation, they think, well, which free app did you download? And my course is $399. And so that feels, quote unquote, expensive if your price reference is a free app. And so that's one piece that's been an interesting challenge, really just an educational challenge. It's like, I have to educate people on why Ziva is different. It's a training. It's a matriculation. It's not an app. But the other piece of the monastic piece is bigger. And I'll just go on like a little bit of. A little bit of a soapbox here for a moment is that this is not just around pricing and money, but actually the technique itself. I think for so many thousands, maybe hundreds or thousands of years, we've thought that whatever monks are doing must be so much better than what we're doing. Because they're monks, we think they must be more enlightened or more spiritually evolved, but it's just different practices. So in India, it's less than 1% of the population that is considered monastic by nature. And those people don't want to live in society.

They want to go to the cave. They are reclusive by nature. They are celibate by nature. They're not sacrificing their desire to have sex to be closer to God. That is what they desire. And again, it's less than 1% of the world's population that is monastic by nature. Where we messed it up in our game of telephone is that in India, they took a lot of this sacred knowledge that had been passed down teacher to student, and it only lived in the consciousness of people's brains. It wasn't written down. And so when India started to get invaded, they put all of the knowledge into the consciousness of the monks because they were living alone in the caves and in the mountains, and they didn't want the ancient wisdom to be destroyed. So finally, when it was discovered, we're like, oh, my gosh, these monks have all these magical powers. They're so holy. They're so much more powerful than we are. It must be their practices. That's not the truth. They just were the ones that were acting as living encyclopedias, whereas people like us, who have jobs and kids and who like having sex and who don't want to live in caves, the other 99% of people, we're not less spiritual than monks.

We just need a different practice. And so, because I think we've conflated monastic practices are better than householder practices, we've now also decided, well, if you live like a monk and don't have a house and don't have kids and don't have a job, you're somehow better spiritually. You're more spiritual. And I think that this is showing up in some ways that are not so good for society. Because if you look at it, even the church, right? Like, if you try and make a person who is not celibate pretend to be celibate, that sexual energy does not go away. It gets sublimated, and it comes out in unhealthy abusive ways. And so the same thing can happen with money. If you are a householder who wants to own a house and who wants to have sex and wants to have a child, it doesn't make you less holy to do a householder practice. And it doesn't make you less holy to want to have money.

What's a householder practice?

So, like, what I teach at Ziva is not a monastic practice. So the reason why so many people think that meditation is hard is that they're doing derivations of monastic practices. They're doing things that were originally designed for monks, but then got watered down for not monks. Got it. Which is different than Ziva. So Ziva was actually designed for people with busy minds and busy lives. It was designed for the other 99% of the population. That is not monks.

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. When I went to Bali and I met with all the medicine men and healers, and I wanted to be healed, and I was like, please tell me what's wrong with me. They were just like, your diagnosis is busy. Mine?

Yeah. Thank you.

I just came from New York. Yes, Emily. We end all of our episodes by asking our guests for a tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. What is one piece of advice? It could be anything. It could be investing, saving, budgeting, starting a business, signing a prenup. Any advice that you might have.

I mean, I told a story about I wish I had signed my prenup. Contracts are not for the day that everything goes well. Contracts are for the day that things don't go according to plan. And I wish that I had signed my prenup, because it would have just made things so much easier. And I would have done great financially. I think that's a great one. But I think more important than that is a little bit spiritual. But it's harkening back to the conversation that we had earlier, rather than setting just a financial goal. I want to make $10 million. It's. Why do you want to make $10 million? And so I would say, start with the dream. Start with your vision for yourself and for the species, and then start with the why. And then from there, decide what financial lubrication would help me to go to my dream. Because I really believe that it's easier for the money to show up if it knows what it is funding. And I think if we only dictate our financial goals on zeros, it's easy to get into competition and fear and lack versus. All of our dreams are so wildly individuated and so beautifully unique because nature wants to use all of us in different ways because she gave us different gifts.

So it's a when you're setting your financial goals, rather than starting with just the zeros, start with the dream. And what are the zeros?

Funding and go get laid.

Yes.

Money rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lapin. Money rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions. Money rehaboneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one on one intervention with me. Me. And follow us on InstagramoneyNews and TikTokoneyNewsNetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.