Joyanne Sloan's Podcast

How do you know you have a mind?

Welcome back!  As I go about my life, I encounter all sorts of situations that inspire me to share them with you in upcoming podcasts.  The subject for this week's episode was found one day in traffic.  The bumper sticker read: How do you know you have a mind if you don't change it once in a while?

I loved it!  I'm always finding myself drawn to those ideas that really get me thinking.  And if you've been a regular listener to the Peace of Prosperity podcast then you know that my main purpose is to also encourage YOUR critical thinking; to build that skill in a way that supports your well-being and your success.

You've probably noticed that I don't really offer advice.  Because I'm not really interested in telling you what to do and I'm definitely NOT interested in telling you what to think!  Instead, my goal is to simply share the inner workings of my own mind in a way that fosters you to arrive at your own answers.  We coaches understand that it's useless to suggest any particular course of action because the odds of you actually acting upon outside advice is slim to none.  It's much more likely that you'll follow through on the ideas that come from your own inner wisdom.

And that brings me back around to our question and how your mind is a fluid entity by virtue of the fact that it's growing and expanding as you continually experience life.  So that means that your mind will naturally change in response to your own evolution.  And the point that I want to raise to you is that a commitment to preserving specific concepts or otherwise defending a certain position or mindset is tantamount to derailing the success that comes from your own internal progress.

What's more, if you take a good look around at what's happening in our world, you'll discover that the very nature of the pronounced conflict and resulting human suffering is directly connected to individuals collectively defending their belief systems and ways of life to the exclusion of what other’s may choose for themselves.

Looking at the origins of the word ‘fundamentalism’ I discovered that it was first put into use around 1920 to describe a conservative desire to restate, reaffirm and reemphasize foundational ideas related to faith.  And while there's nothing wrong with faith, I do not personally believe that it, in any way, justifies a fixation on thinking in a way that attempts to alter people’s behavior. The reality is that autonomy is our common destiny. And achieving that destiny dictates the use and changing of minds the world over, beginning with yours!

Therefore, I want to ask you to take a closer look at your own fixed ideas; identifying the ways in which you expend precious energy defending who you have decided you are or what you know.  Look at the way you label others and examine the labels that might apply to you and the inherent limitations of such definitions.  What I'm suggesting is that you don't need to live within the constraints of definition to have integrity. Definitions do not protect!

What that means is that you have the power to have BOTH in this life.  You can have the wholeness and soundness of integrity while maintaining an open, flexible mind.  And to clarify what I mean, I want to point out how your brain is distinct from your mind.  To accomplish that, I’ll refer to the definitions offered by author William W. Hewitt who says that the brain is a physical part of your body, a supercomputer with fantastic memory.  On the other hand, he says that your mind is the total intelligence that is YOU.  Your mind is not physical and doesn't die.  Your mind is not your brain but uses your brain as a communication link between you and other intelligence.

The major take away here is that your mind is not limited and therefore your success is not limited.  Your mind, if consciously allowed to remain open, is necessarily kept in a state of constant receptivity.  And it's that heightened awareness that secures your ability to receive the guidance, resources and untold blessings connected to success.

In my own life I've been noticing how personal challenges often result in unnecessary struggle when I adhere or attempts to protect what I think is the right way.  There is never just one solution but often the best answers come about when I consciously choose to stop relying on my brain exclusively. I have to permit my mind to leverage my brain and the guidance available in the broader consciousness to arrive at an alternative path. That's the middle path that involves using your heart along with your knowing to unearth a fresh perspective.

That new perspective is the byproduct of your higher awareness and the acknowledgment that what many first appear to be the only way was actually just one of many possibilities.  I want you to consider all the possibilities; to avoid focusing on what you know and shift towards what can be.  For when you do that, your brain releases its hold on your history, your stories and your self limiting thoughts and becomes available to the myriad opportunities once concealed from eyes shut tight by caution.  All you have to do is look!

In the words of Mary Catherine Bateson:

“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.�

Here's my 7-day challenge for you:

I ask you to take what you think you know and who you think you are and set it aside for just a few moments.  Imagine your mind as an intelligence far too vast to be contained.  Picture your mind as powerfully interconnected to the highest possible awareness and greatest possible outcome for your life.  Do nothing else but remain still for it is the steady, quiet soul that is rewarded with the bounty of the ever-present and all-powerful thing we call JOY!

Please join me next time when I ask "Are you separate from success?"

Until then, I leave you with abundant peace.

What’s Your Credo?

Welcome back!  Let me begin with gratitude to my faithful audience and to the hundreds of new listeners tuning in each week to the Peace of Prosperity podcast.  If you have a question or suggestion feel free to call me toll-free at 1-866-374-8539.

Our topic this week is about how to answer the question "What’s Your Credo?" The word credo originates from Latin and dates back to 1175.  Its literal translation is ‘I believe’. In other words, your credo is comprised of a set of beliefs; those concepts that resonate with you at the deepest level.  Your beliefs, good or bad, are the byproduct of your collective life experience.  And when you have the opportunity to meet someone or to enter into a new situation, your mind will engage in collecting information from that person or situation and then procede to compare what you've just learned against what you already know to be true for you.

So, your credo is highly personalized.  And what you believe in at the core level informs your judgments and subsequent actions even without your being aware of it.  In other words, your belief system can be thought of as a measuring tool against which to judge something or someone as being authentic and trustworthy or alternately, it can cause your bullshit meter to sound the alarm.

And the best part is that your belief system is it finely-tuned system for guiding your decisions and actions.  Your credo is part of you and can be relied upon to operate at all times, under any conditions, and often without you even knowing it.  And it's that lack of awareness that requires addressing because among your many beliefs are unexamined and self-limiting beliefs.

As a coach, I work closely with people on becoming aware of how their thoughts limit or control or even prevent the action steps that are so vital to transformation and success.  Every day you're put in a position of making all sorts of decisions, large and small.  The little ones are easy, but the big ones often take on the appearance of the unwieldy obstacle in your path.

As always, my goal is to offer you a fresh perspective on the situations you face day in and day out.  Oftentimes when you can see a given situation from a new place, what once appeared as a problem can then be seen as an opportunity.  It's what we coaches refer to as the 30,000 foot view.

And to see the circumstances of your life from that altitude enables you to pull yourself out of the daily minutia and into a mindset from which you can clearly see the deeper connections and broader significance of what’s currently presenting itself to you.  From above your apparent conundrums, it becomes so much easier to free yourself through powerful action. 

But, if you remain mired in what’s only immediately significant or temporarily difficult, you run the risk of indecision or, worse yet, inertia.  Have you ever watched someone you care about be really STUCK?  The only thing harder than that is being stuck yourself and not even knowing it.

So, if you find yourself unable to pull the trigger and you've felt the sting of opportunity passing you by, then this episode is dedicated to you!  This is your opportunity to establish, and then live by, your own personal credo in a way that can significantly impact your results.

My challenge to you this week is to write down the essential beliefs by which you live.  Those are your strongest beliefs, not about others, but about yourself.  They are the self-evident truths that you believe in absolutely as the hard-won treasures of trial and error.

I'm encouraging you to include only those beliefs that are both positive and life-affirming.  Exclude any beliefs that are based on fears or limitations about your capacity to be wholly prosperous and thriving. You’ll notice how limiting beliefs show up in a pattern of response and, once you’ve connected the dots of that pattern, you can wittingly discard what has never and will never serve your highest and best expression.

Upon constructing your credo, you'll possess a set of guiding principles against which to apply all the various decisions of your life.  It will act as a system of checks and balances while providing both clarity and direction for all the significant opportunities for expansion coming your way.

As you write down your beliefs, be flexible not rigid; knowing that your future growth will necessarily alter your experience and thoughts.  Take your time in putting your credo on paper.  Notice what you've learned from your own private history and synthesize it.  Condense that knowledge into your own pearls of wisdom.  And combine them with the essential truths of those that inspire you.  Type it up, print it out, display it clearly so you can learn it by heart. Contain it, act upon it and rely upon this tool to free yourself of

lethargy and doubt.  Once liberated from indecision’s orbit, you may use this tool to build a remarkable future, choice by essential choice.  And that future of yours is one that you may occupy completely as yourself; an authentic expression of the YOU that you've become through intention and integrity.

Before I conclude this episode, let me share my own credo with you as adopted from the beautiful writings of William Henry Channing:

"To live content with small means;

to seek elegance rather than luxury,

and refinement rather than fashion.

To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;

to listen to stars and birds,  babes and sages with open-heart.

To study hard, to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never;

In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious

grow up through the common... this is my symphony.�

Please join me next time when I ask "How do you know you have a mind?"

Until then, I leave you with abundance peace.

Welcome back!

Our focus this week is on answering the question "Are you on autopilot?"  It seems that all of us find ourselves there at some point or another.  And that's to be expected.  But this episode is dedicated to my listeners who find themselves on autopilot for weeks on end; hectic days that turn into hazy months that become years you can't remember.

Essentially, when you're on autopilot, the details of life seem to disappear before you.  In that situation, the delicate nuances that enrich this experience we call being human are blurred, misplaced or altogether lost.  It means that you no longer occupy the driver's seat; effectively abandoning your post and the resulting successes that accompany self-direction and self-determination.

If autopilot is a consistent factor in your life, I'm assuming that you didn't exactly choose to end up there.  And if that's true, how is it then that you arrived in the mindless realm of robotic being?  It's not an accident… so what happened?

The reality is that autopilot creeps in like a stealthy, little habit.  Its symptoms are often silent and insidious.  Autopilot is what makes you crave quality time and quality of life.  But in the way of that is your to-do list; the infinite list of tasks that you and I come to believe are who we are.  As if what you ARE somehow relates to what you DO or get done.

Autopilot can infect you unwittingly.  It becomes a natural coping mechanism if you bought into the baseless but ubiquitous notion that the stuff you accomplish equates to the stuff of success.  Success isn't about doing but about BEING.  Consider this for a moment… is real success something to achieve or perhaps might it be something you express, something you are, something within you that can never be taken away?

In my opinion, the status quo approach to success it like a treasure map; you start here, you go there, then over there and finally, if you're lucky, you end up at the big payoff.  In that way, you're led to believe that success is a destination and, as such, exists largely as conceptual.  But what I'm suggesting to you is that you consider a fresh perspective on success as immediate, actual and available to you this very moment.  For if you choose the old way, you'll unknowingly fall into a trap of do-do. Do this, do that, do it better, do it faster, but whatever you do, do do and do even more do-do!

Can you see it now?  Can you understand how it is that autopilot can easily take over in the midst of multitasking?  It happens the second you divide your focus and yourself from a single task to doing two or three at once.  That division constitutes self compromise because it immediately and predictably robs you of your ability to be present for the subtleties of success. 

Success rarely occurs in the form of a 100 foot yacht on the Riviera.  It can, but it generally doesn't.  Instead, success manifests itself as acknowledgment, gratitude, and generosity. It has many faces including trust and support and unexpected opportunity.

Your job then is to learn to identify success in all its permutations.  And the only way you can do that is by paying attention to others and mostly to yourself.  That's the idea of focus.  Having focus is about leveraging the power of sight; both outward sight as well as insight.

With focus, life becomes clear.  With focus, you become lucid and able to perceive and act upon the cues and guidance that reveal life’s most valuable riches; treasures that otherwise remain invisible to all who fail to recognize the intrinsic unity of themselves to prosperity.

My challenge for you this week is simple.  So please grab a pen and write down this short pearl of wisdom.  Ready? Here we go:

“Perpetual productivity perpetuates scarcity!"  What that means is that you're invited to stop believing in, and acting upon, the false notion that being efficient is relevant to your worth. Actually, keeping forever busy only serves to maintain the lack of time and energy and balance we all associate with a happy life.

If you believe in efficiency, then you'll always be expecting more of yourself as though what you’ve accomplished thus far and who you are right now is in some way inadequate.  You are NOT inadequate.  You are a unique instrument of divine possibility that can only come to be with your permission.  So I encourage you to stop choosing conditional love for yourself for it’s through the power of UNconditional love alone that you may willingly be a host to the delightful destiny within you.

 In the words of author Diane Mariechild:

"Trust that still, small voice that says, This might work, and I'll try it."

Please join me next time when I ask "What’s your credo?"

Until then, I leave you with abundant peace.

Welcome back!

Our question this week asks "What is the purpose of pain?"  And the topic of pain is particularly interesting to me because of my background as a Wise Woman Herbalist. One of the ways in which I show up in the world relates to my ongoing desire to be nurturing to those around me.  As one who’s consistently focused on guiding others towards healing and wholeness, you can bet that I've got quite a lot to share where pain is concerned.

Let's begin by looking at how it is that we deal with pain.  And just to be clear, when I say pain, I'm not referring to the random headache.  Instead I'm approaching this subject from the broad standpoint of both physical and emotional pain and the various ways in which they’re inseparably joined to each other.

It’s probably been your experience that conflict on the mental or emotional level has a direct impact upon your body.  In fact, you may be fascinated to learn that pain travels through your body at the astonishing rate of 300 feet per second.  It's incredible but true and it speaks to that terrifically sensitive tuning between your brain and your nervous system.

If I were to place a single grain of sand in your eye, not only would you feel it instantaneously, but you’d become downright focused on getting it out as fast as possible.  That’s a perfect example of how it is that we're taught to handle pain.  In other words, you do your very best to get rid of what ever is hurting you.  If you're exposed to popular media in any way, then you're well aware of the myriad pills and other prescription medications that promise to end your suffering.  And the more quote unquote "effective" something is, the more we sing its praises.

But, and this is a big BUT, there’s a rather large wrinkle with that approach.  For in the process of alleviating pain, the focus is erroneously placed upon the remedy and not the cause.

There are a thousand ways to remedy suffering and what I'm suggesting to you is that the vast majority of those methods are largely different forms of escape.  Escape has many names: alcohol, sex, overeating, overworking, drugs, shopping and hundreds of other habitual behaviors to which you may run for relief.

Reality can be rugged; its sharp edges carelessly wounding the unconscious among us.  However, the reality of the here and now, in all its imperfection, is the only location from which you may glean true knowing and the gifts that are only available when you're fully awake.  In simpler terms, you must be present to win.

You see the winning results not from turning your back on pain but from turning towards pain and honoring it as your wisest teacher.  Speaking of teachers, one of my mentors once told me that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.  And in a radical shift on popular belief, I want you to consider for just a moment, that you can actually avoid suffering without avoiding pain.

Think about it.  Think about the message that pain is attempting to deliver.  Consider the magnificently perceptive instrument that is your body and how carefully attuned you are to receive even the most subtle communication. One of the purposes of pain is to get your attention.  Indeed your resistance to that messenger is a guarantee on suffering.  Pain wants your undivided focus so it says "hey there", or "yohoo… back to me" or finally "all right, no more games.  Stop screwing around ’cause I mean business."

And you wouldn’t be alone if your response to such pain is to just swallow a bigger pill which only puts you in a one-on-one battle with your body... and guess who's going to win?  In a war of denial, pain is the inevitable victor.  And acknowledging that is an opportunity for you to avoid suffering by facing pain at its source.

The ultimate cure available to you at all times is regard.  It's paying intentional attention to caring for a self that's depending on you to provide it a home.  Having said that, I want to recommend that to be numb is to be dumb.  In other words, avoidance is ignorance.  And ignorance is not simply a matter of ignoring what you don't want to face or feel, it's also a matter of ignoring the generosity of your life that's concealed by pain.  It's like a riddle you have to solve. 

And finding the answer to that riddle requires reverence.  Yes, revering pain as the divine messenger it is, means that pain is entitled to respect.  And to respect a thing is to validate its worth or to formally express esteem.  You do that by being with your pain in a concerted and intimate fashion.  Therefore the alternate path before you is not medication but meditation.

For when you meditate upon a thing you give it your absolute attention and, only when you do that can you begin to understand its nature.  Only then can you learn its name and its origin.  And when you know where it lives, you’re rewarded with the permission to go to that place within yourself and tend to its needs with healing compassion, affection and kindness.

As celebrated author Mark Twain once said:

"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."

Here's my 7-day challenge for you:

Over the next several days, begin to pay attention to the inextricable connection between your mind and body.  Notice any pangs or uneasiness that expresses itself on the physical level.  When some form of upset presents itself in your body, take a few minutes to close your eyes and bring your awareness to the location of any pain you may be feeling.  This is the point at which you may attempt to correlate your discomfort with those areas of your life that require attention.  For example, is what you're unwilling to say to someone manifesting itself as a sore throat?  Or perhaps, is the current burden you're carrying showing up as back pain?  Try to establish an energetic relationship between what troubles you and what ails you, for in that connection lies the power and the purpose of pain.

Please join me next time when I ask "Are you on autopilot?"

Until then, I leave you with abundant peace.

How do you go from surviving to thriving?

Welcome back!  Let's dive right in to this week's thought-provoking question... "How do you go from surviving to thriving?"  Is there anyone listening who doesn't resonate with that?  I think we've all encountered episodes of struggle in life and that’s to be expected.  But this podcast is aimed at those of you that deal with chronic struggle; a perpetual state of survival from paycheck to paycheck, from job to job, or relationship to relationship.

Doesn't it make you wonder who you'd be if you no longer had to struggle?  Well you DON'T have to.  It's not a prerequisite to prosperity.  And it's not part of the rules.  As someone who writes and coaches on the topic of success, I'm also engaged in my own prosperity practice.  Quite literally, I practice what I preach.  I’m my own best student because I’m so intimately connected to the myriad facets of the effort to have and be enough.

You may have noticed that I used the word effort and not struggle.  Success does require effort.  It takes action repeated over time to yield results.  And those results are what move you toward enough and beyond.

You see "enough", by itself, relates to merely surviving.  On the other hand, to really be thriving, requires that you have more than enough.  But how?  How do you grow into more when being a survivor is all that you know? 

Ask yourself then, how do things grow in the real world?  Growth comes with nourishment, of course!  Nourishing and healing the sacred self is a process I began years ago and will continue over my career.  Giving myself what I need most is a fundamental aspect of my own prosperity practice because I finally got clear, after decades of needless suffering, that only I could provide myself with what I truly need.

That's been a journey of mending my relationship with food again and again because, like many of you, I learned early on that food was an easy fix for loneliness, frustration and depression.  I used food as a way to give to myself three times a day because I'd never learned HOW to feed myself what was most profoundly satisfying: reverence, integrity, time, compassion and commitment... to me!

As I learned to finally feed myself holistically, my relationship with food was transformed.  That represented a significant and irreversible shift away from scarcity; leaving my "not enough" identity behind to pursue my rightful role as the embodiment of abundance.

And just for the record, I want you to understand that personal growth is cyclical nature.  My sense of abundance isn't a constant state because life ebbs and flows in its natural rhythms.  What's important to remember is that when the tide of abundance is receding, you can absolutely rely upon its return.  Trust is everything!

That trust is born of the wisdom that you can access the experience of abundance, or what I call the Peace of Prosperity, again and again.  That peace is not an external construct, but an internal destination.

Do you know the way there?  So many of you don't.  You don't know how to get to that place and you don't know how to feed yourself.  The result of that is undeniable and pervasive.  Look around, people are starving themselves physically and spiritually; subsistence living in the land of plenty... but why?

Because it's what we know.  It's what we've learned.  Did anyone ever teach you how to feed your self?  Did your parents show you how to provide yourself with the nourishing substance of life?  If not, why not?  Who was their example?  Where in your lineage can you trace back to self nurturing?  Sadly, many of us can't. 

Perhaps like me, your family background might include strong belief systems in which self-denial was encouraged.  That way of thinking still exists and will likely always exist in the paradigm of scarcity consciousness.  That mindset equates self-sacrifice and self-control with godliness and honor.

And here's where I'd like to point out the pronounced flaw with that approach: if you don't eat, you won't grow.  So, in order to lead a truly divine life, YOU must be divine.  And at its core, the word divine means to shine.  So to shine vibrantly, to do your brilliant best and to make a difference in your world requires that you receive all the nurturing goodness that you can possibly contain.

Although the sweet reality is that you can't contain it if you try, so don't even try!  Commit yourself to receiving the bounty surrounding you and permit yourself to be the conduit through which your own growth inspires others to feed themselves with shameless receptivity and life-giving reverence.

In the words of Carl Jung:

“That I feed the hungry, forgive an insult, and love my enemy -- these are great virtues. But what if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and most impudent of offenders are all within me, and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness; that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then?�

Here's my 7-day challenge for you:

Look upon life as a divine delicatessen.  Identify those dishes that are available to you right now then choose those that you want to have most.  Upon choosing, take notice of any resistance that comes up in the form of self-limiting beliefs.  It's those beliefs like "I can't" or "I shouldn't" that effectively prevent you from allowing your self to receive all that you need.  So decide that for the next week, you'll treat yourself as nobility.

You refuse to accept life's leftovers; no crumbs of compassion or bits of benevolence that barely sustain you.  Instead, make a feast of your life.  Break the fast of self-sacrifice and take the big slice of life with all the frosting.  Feast upon the morsels of tenderness that fill you up and let you experience lasting satisfaction.

Dream up your own spiritual smorgasbord... a fondue of friends or a prime cut of passion; a soufflé of savoir faire or a sumptuous pastry filled with the sweet flavors of what can be.

Please join me next time when I ask "What is the purpose of pain?"  Until then, I leave you with abundant peace.