Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Could The Secret to Financial Freedom Be... Orgasm? This Entrepreneur Thinks So

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

The secret to financial freedom can't be orgasm... can it? According to Emily Fletcher, it can— and it is. Emily (founder of Ziva Meditation, the host of the podcast “Why Isn’t Everyone Doing This?” and the author of Stress Less Accomplish More) joins Nicole to explain. Believe it or not, there's more. Emily takes Nicole through her business and explains the actionable steps she took to build a community around her brand. Learn more about Emily's work here: https://zivameditation.com/

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start, or even too complicated, if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you.

I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no

maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits

apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. 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 going to 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 other 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 are 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 Vandeplatchy, 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 Patow,

which I've talked about on the show before. And we 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 right like you could argue that you know the 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 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 that 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'm 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 i 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 you know there's obviously a bunch of science around the electromagnetic frequency of our brains and how our hearts are actually 5 000 times more powerful than our heads 5 000 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 too old 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, right? 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 is that i don't give you like 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, right? 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 a 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 the 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 re-enter your body, as you start to regain consciousness, because orgasm in French is le petit mort, right? 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. I've gotten really good at doing this. I interview people, you know, like, 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 like driving in five o'clock traffic or at 4.30 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 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 like face 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. It's like, I think we're starting to reprioritize what's really important to us. And in so doing, it 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 2020. And three 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 30X anything I'd 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 hug. 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. It's so 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? And it's like, that's not really it. You got to place the order, trust. We got to surrender. We got to 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, 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. 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. 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 wifi 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 Buffett attributes a lot of his, actually, I think he might've 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, like 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, right?

And that's just to say nothing of your performance. So meditators perform 45% higher in 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 a place of presence, then I think you have more power to write whatever story you want to have with money.

Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high-quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving

support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly, I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make

some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN.

Chime. Feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bank Corp. Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. 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-ass self. That actually, hopefully, any spiritual practice people are engaging in are reminding them of the totality of their spirit. It's connecting them to the thing that will live on beyond the death 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, when 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 Ziva 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.

So I'm 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 that 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 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 wait lists. 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 10X is easier than 2X. 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. We'd 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 FU 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, then I feel like my living expenses would happen off of that, that was growing, then I feel like my living expenses would happen off of that, the investment income from that principle. 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 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. 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? He would not want to take financial advice from someone who is broke. He 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 that 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? And 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've 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 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 like utilize the communities that you're already in so for me i was on broadway for 10 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 where 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 force, 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're all are drinking the Kool-Aid. Like they all meditate. They do the Zipa practice every day, twice a day.

And so the entire customer service team, it's certainly not the cheapest, right? 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. that's been an interesting challenge. Really just an educational challenge. 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 big.

And I'll just go on like 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 one percent 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 were 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, 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 mind. And I was like, 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 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 and i think that's a great one but i think more important than that is a little bit spiritual but it's hard getting back to the conversation what 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 I'd say 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 Lappin. 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, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTok at Money News Network 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.