Sense of Soul - Breaking Free for Abundance

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Today on Sense of Soul Podcast we have Deborah Fryer PhD she is a money mindset mentor, creativity catalyst, spiritual business coach, and creator of the Anatomy of Money™ system for holistic wealth and well being. She’s is also the host of the The Anatomy of Money podcast featuring illuminating discussions and interviews on how you can expand your awareness and be free from the traps of the mind. It’s all connected.  In her mentorship she helps heart-centered entrepreneurs break through subconscious mental, emotional and financial blocks so they can create sustainable, soul aligned 6- or 7-figure businesses with ease, speed, and confidence without working harder, feeling guilty, downplaying your success, or selling your soul.
 Deborah holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton, and she is an award-winning filmmaker who has created content for PBS, NOVA, Frontline, the National Science Foundation, and other media channels. She also has a premedical degree and has been teaching and practicing yoga and meditation for over 30 years. Her unique blend of ancient wisdom, modern science, narrative medicine and creative visualization has helped thousands of business owners around the world change their minds, their mindsets, and their relationship to money, power and true wealth. Deborah is the author of Best Brain Hacks, Turn on Your Tap, and the forthcoming Anatomy of Money: Your Inside Guide to True Wealth. You can learn more at https://www.deborahfryer.com Follow her journey: @deborahfryer More about Sense of Soul at https://www.senseofsoulpodcast.com Affiliates https://www.mysenseofsoul.com/sense-of-soul-affiliates-page

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, I have Debra Fryer. She is a money mindset mentor, a creativity catalyst, a spiritual business coach, and the creator of the Anatomy of Money System for Holistic Wealth

and Wellbeing. Debra holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton. And she is an award-winning filmmaker who has created content for PBS, Nova, Frontline, and the National Science Foundation and other media channels. She also has a pre-medical degree and has been teaching and practicing yoga and meditation for over 30 years. She is also a best-selling author. and I was lucky enough to meet her here in Colorado, up in Boulder, where we both attended A Woman's Mastermind, where she spoke about the divine feminine and stepping into your power. And I'm so excited to have her with us today. So please welcome Debra. Hello, hello. Oh, finally. Yay. I got your voice back wonderful oh I know well I did listen to your podcast

I think it's amazing I left a review this morning and well and even actually when when I originally met you at the mastermind with Michelle I just think that first of all, you had me at divine feminine, but I mean, the way that you are just so vulnerable and authentic and you're, and actually I'm saying exactly what I wrote in the review, but your generosity to share your story. And it's very heartfelt. And I can feel the energy behind, behind your story. And it's very heartfelt. And I can feel the energy behind your voice. I can feel it, the emotion, just like a sister, you know, wanting to share with her sisters. Thank you. Putting more of what I know in every cell of me to be true out there,

because so many people walk around in reaction to what has already been created, right? They look at the circumstances and they're like, oh, I got to change that. I got to get rid of that. I got to fight that. I got to do something different. I got to make that be different. And when we're always using our creative energy and our creative life force to push against something. I mean, this is the laws of physics. The pushing against in the world of form means that we will encounter resistance and then it will push back. What we resist persists. And so what I love sharing is the principles of creation, which are how does energy constantly transform, right? Energy, the primary thing that we all are is energy and it cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed. And so I love talking about transformation from the perspective of you as

energy. I mean, this looks solid, this body looks solid, but actually it's 99.9999% space. There's not resistance in space. It's way easier when we access the multidimensional parts of ourselves that are not bound by gravity. And we can use that to create art and books and podcasts and relationships, et cetera. Yeah. Just a little shift in perspective and perception and narrative that we tell ourselves, right? The limitations we put on ourselves. And it's a big shift in perspective because we're so used to looking out there for affirmation, for recognition, for approval.

We're so used to, Oh, if they look at me and they approve of me, I'm okay. If they say good job, Debra, then I know what I did is good. And if they didn't tell me, I jumped to the conclusion that it wasn't good. I mean, even that is like, just because they didn't say it was good, it doesn't mean it wasn't good. It means they didn't say it was good. It could be amazing and they might not like it. And so, you know, part of our misperception that we all grow up inside of and we're all waking up to a bigger recognition that their opinion doesn't necessarily have to be my opinion of me. Yeah. Your opinion of me is not my business. Yeah, totally. You know, I think it's about your intentions.

You know, it's about why are you doing it? And I think that that part is what aligns you with the universe. And if we're aligned, then everything else kind of just falls into place too. Yeah, alignment is an interesting benchmark or it's an interesting kind of magnetic north. I believe that when we are aligned, that is when we're walking as soul, we don't feel pushed aside by something that comes from outside of me and pushes me over. We don't feel bowled over by external circumstances, by somebody else's opinion, by somebody else's disapproval, by somebody else's disappointment, by somebody else's jealousy, or by somebody else's praise. You know, their praise also isn't necessary for me to keep creating in the way that I'm here to create.

But of course, we all like praise. We all like recognition. We all like appreciation. Of course we do. It's human to want to be validated. And it's really a both and. If we solely wait for external validation and we don't get it and we feel I'm not worthy, right? I invalidate myself because they didn't validate me. If we're solely looking for something out there, we're not aligned because we're not recognizing our own value. And then they're reflecting our value to us. So if we're coming from a place of,

I have nothing and they say, oh, look how great you are. It's going to be so not in agreement with my sense of who I am. If I think I have nothing valuable to contribute, I don't matter. And they're like, oh, you did a great job. And I'm so identified as not mattering. I won't be able to hear that. I won't be able to hear that. I won't be able to take it in. And so it's really interesting. It's really interesting. It's kind of a paradox, right?

If somebody says you're really great and I think I really suck, I won't be able to hear their appreciation of me because it's going to be a vibrational mismatch. Yes. You're not aligned with that vibration. Right. I'm not aligned with my vibration of my worthiness. And the minute that I begin to own, oh, this is who I am. And they see that speck of me. I think that's actually why we love it. Because when somebody appreciates us,

when somebody recognizes us and we feel it, we're reclaiming, we're reconnecting, we're revisiting, we're owning a teeny weeny bit of ourselves that actually hasn't gotten enough airtime, that wants more airtime. So it's actually part of me that wants me to allow me, that wants me to validate me, that wants me to recognize me. And I can do that directly. Can I share a story with you about something that I'm just actually waking up to that has been present in my system my entire life? And I've been painting part of what is my great work, which is the anatomy of money, which is what I teach. And so I'm looking at behind you, you've got this beautiful visual of the chakra system,

red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet behind you. You've got it horizontally. And in the painting, we're all actually the chakra system vertically. We humans are that vertical orientation where red is the densest, heaviest feeling. That's the earth chakra. And then the orange is the second chakra. And it has to do with fluidity and relationship and creativity. Yellow is the earth chakra. And then the orange is the second chakra and it has to do with fluidity and relationship and creativity. Yellow is about our passion. It's about our solar plexus. It's the light of a thousand suns. It's our metabolism of everything that is moving through us. Earth, water, fire, air, ether is moving through us and we through it. The green is all about the vibrational field of the heart, the reciprocity,

the love, the anahata, the unstruck vibration. It's the potential of all before we've struck it, before it's been conditioned. Throat is about speaking and expressing. The third eye is about the movie that you play in your mind. How do you see yourself and how you see yourself? You project that onto the world and then the world is your screen. And then the crown is, of course, your connection to the all it is. So I've been painting this and I've been teaching this for a really long time. But as I sat down to paint it, I thought, how am I ever going to translate vibration into image? How am I ever going to translate this feeling, this vibrational truth that vibration can be dense and it can be light, it can be dark, and it can be very open? How am I going to translate this wave-particle duality thing?

It just doesn't translate into form. I'm talking about the formless. We're talking about the formless. Vibration is formless. How am I going to translate it? So as I'm doing the painting and I'm writing about the painting, I had this memory of me at maybe three and I saw myself padding out into the living room. Nobody's up yet. It's just me. I'm naked except for my underpants. And I have truth bumps right now. All the hairs on my arms are standing up. And this is the first time I've shared this out loud. I've been writing about it, but it's the first time I've actually allowed my voice to use it and share it in a public way. So I see my little three-year-old toddling out and my older sister, she's a year older than me. She has one of those boxes of Crayola crayons,

that 64 crayons with the crayon sharpener on the back. And I want to play with it. And she's like, no, this is mine. You can't touch it. So I don't, but nobody's up now except me. And I see her crayons and I'm like, I'm going to get into her crayons. And I see the living room wall, pure white wall. And I'm like, wow, that's going to be a really nice canvas for me to paint on or to draw on. So I take all the crayons and I draw this big garden and grass and trees and sky. And there's a big sunshine with rays. And I put a smiley face in the sun and I'm so proud of my creation. And I've like dumped all the crayons on the carpet so I can see the crayons. And of course the shavings go everywhere and it's so pretty, this rainbow and my three-year-old self is just delighting.

And then I hear some doors open and I'm like, great. They're going to like see my creation. They're going to be so proud of me. Not. My mother sees what I've done and she says, what do you think you're doing? And she is so angry and she slaps me or maybe she didn't slap me. The memory that I have is that I was slapped. Maybe it was just verbally slapped. Maybe it was energetically slapped, but I'm crunched and I feel my whole little body collapsing. And my mother runs to the kitchen. She gets the 409. She sprays down the wall. She scrubs away and she erases my beautiful garden. My sister comes out and she follows my mother. She also hits me and she says, what are you doing with my crayons? Those are mine. Don't touch them. Those are mine. And my mother says, go to your room and think

about what you've done and don't come out until you're ready to apologize. And my little self just crumpled, like my little artistic creator self in that moment, you know, toddle is too of an energetic word. She went back into her room, but felt so ashamed of her creativity, felt so ashamed of this beautiful garden that she knew is. And I buried that for a really long time, for years and years and years and years. I felt like I'm too much. My creativity is too much. I'm going to be in trouble. I'm in big trouble. And, you know, and it's taken years for me to unpack that. And I notice as I'm painting, I'll notice this thought form that says, you can't do that. And I'm like, huh? Hello conditioning. Yes, I can. But it's really a process of going deep into some of the old vibrational frequencies of like sadness will come up as I'm painting. And I'm like, where's that coming from? I love painting. And then I'll realize,

oh, it's coming from this little girl who was sent all by herself to process her emotions. Like I was confused. I thought I was being creative. And the feedback I got is you're being destructive. And I now know that they're part of the same cycle, that we don't get to create without destroying. You can't make an omelet without breaking an egg, right? We can't, we can't create to create without destroying. You can't make an omelet without breaking an egg, right? We can't create a painting without destroying the unconditioned part of the painting, right? Which is the canvas, which has nothing on it, right? We can't make cookies without breaking eggs and separating the wheat from the chaff to get the, whether it's flour or almond flour, right? We got to pulverize something and turn it into something else. And that's what we're always doing. And so my understanding of

energy is always transforming itself is both allowing me to heal some of the old ways that I was like, I can't create, I can't be paid as an artist. I can't make money as an artist. And yet a lot of people do. Why not? Right. And that's almost like you have to align yourself back with that three-year-old. Right. And when we feel a constriction, when we feel something we name as shame, when we feel something we name as disappointment or reprimand, It feels like we're being squeezed from the outside. It feels like something's pushing on us from the outside. But then the question is, well, what is it pushing on? What it's pushing is that creative essence that is rising. What it's pushing is the soul

version of me that can't help but express itself as garden, as sunlight, as beauty, as art. I'm one of those creators, and I believe that we're all one of those creators who can't help but express in the wildly exuberant ways that we do. We're designed to be wildly expressive and exuberant and enthusiastic. And the conditioning that we have taken on personally, in my case, it was a real reprimand. And I don't know the context, maybe we were in a rental house when I was that age, or maybe I shouldn't have been doing that anyway. My mom recognized I had artistic talent and she was like, here, Debra, here's an easel. Here's all the paper you want. And here we'll put newspaper on the floor. You make as much of a mess as you want, which is actually what she

did. But, you know, it was the context, you know, it was like, I just saw everything as my canvas and let's circle back to what I said in the beginning, like the world is your canvas. We're always projecting onto whatever is out there and it's being reflected back to us. You see love, you're going to see love. You see beauty, you're going to see beauty. You see conflict, you're going to see conflict. It's all there. You pick. And three being, you know, that prime time for, you know, building that subconscious mind, you know, I, there was a guest and I can't remember who it was, but he actually knew Jane Goodall, the woman who the girl is, you know, and she has a very similar story. He told her story of very similar, um, how she got in trouble for doing a masterpiece

on the wall too. Oh, interesting. Yeah. You'll have to. And then she went into the wild and she vibrationally that there are these animal entities, right? There are these animal beings that are, that are communicating with us. This showed up in another painting. So there was another painting I was doing and the instruction was to look at the painting and find a face, like let the soul of you speak. And we find images when we look at the clouds, we find images when we look at the water, like everything is constantly speaking to us and informing us. And we see what we're looking for. We see what our subconscious mind is looking for. So this painting that I just did, and I'm looking

at it right now, everybody else in the group, I was painting with a group of about 200 painters and they're all getting faces. They're all getting like the soul face. I got the swan, which represents the consciousness rising up. One of my spiritual names is Saraswati who rides on a swan. So I got a swan. I also got a dog. I don't know if you saw my dog. I did. Like I'm part dog. I'm part bird. I got my daughter. That's her two favorite things, swans and dogs. Right. And it's a connection to consciousness. It's a connection to being multidimensional. I think about a swan, it can live on land, it can live on the water, it can live in the sky. I also got turtle, right? Ancient mother wisdom that, you know, carries its house with us, that it's at home wherever it is. And it can be deep in the ocean, yet it comes up and it breathes air. I also got, not surprisingly, a butterfly, right? And this image of transformation, but also the interconnectedness when a butterfly flaps its wings, eventually, you know, it creates a hurricane over here. And so interesting that these are some of the images that just, they speak to me and I

see birds all the time. I see birds and often when I'm going for walks with other people and I'll say, oh, look, there's a da-da-da. And they'll be like, how did you even see that? I get that too. And going back to talking about how we were formed by our experiences as a child. I love that you used an example that's not traumatic because some people think it has to be traumatic. And let me tell you, one of the biggest things that I've had to overcome is self-worth and self-love. And this was not from a traumatic experience. It was, I didn't want to play softball anymore. And I was, my dad was so devastated that I didn't want to play. Even

on his deathbed, told the nurses what a great softball player I was. And by this time I was more awakened, like, oh my gosh, he's still talking about it, but it wasn't mine. You know, I wasn't worried about it, but I was playing out my life, many situations that actually rooted back to that. So I love that. You know, sometimes we think it has to be trauma and people think, well, I don't know why I have these hangups. I had, you know, a great life, very structured, great parents, this and that. It's the little things sometimes. Well, and what you're speaking of is also the undercurrent of it is love, right? Your dad had an identity of you as a great softball player.

And so that was your dad's version of you, which is you're a great softball player and you probably were a great softball player. And probably were a great softball player. And then at a certain point you decided I'm done with that. But you're still a great softball player, even if you never play again in your life. Right. And that's what his memory is, is you're really great at X, Y, Z. And when we move beyond that, there's a way that we can tend to, like, you felt like it was devastating to him that you didn't want to do that thing. It's because his identity was over here and you now have a new identity, which doesn't agree with his. And so how do we make it be a both and how do we make it be?

Yes. I am a great softball player and I'm complete with that. And now I'm going to do something else and I'm going to be great at this other thing. And I'm great at this thing. And I, and I was a great softball player too, right? Like how do we allow for all of it to be true so that we can really love rather than feeling like, oh, they're mad at me or, oh, they're disappointed in me. Right. The story though, was that that was our one thing we did together. Like he was my coach. We got to practice together practice together you know as his oldest daughter you know and my youngest brother when he started playing you know definitely he had no problem shifting yeah but so that's really important that's because it's the love right because he was the coach

because he was your dad and you just said it this was something we did together how do you keep the togetherness right we did in, I worked for him most of my life. We were always super close. So when he died was a very big deal for me. And, you know, I, I thought, well, I don't think I'll be able to get through without my dad. I really don't. And, and I, and you said something in your, in your podcast that hit home. I did. I felt like maybe I lost a limb. Like, I just don't know if, you know, I'll be able to do it like I did before. But I always say now that my dad gave me birth twice because I had to learn how to do it by myself. And I didn't have his support. It was very hard and he'd be so proud of me. And a lot of what I did for him, which I bitched about all the time. I'm like,

I don't want to sell sports equipment. This isn't my path, but I use in my business today. So, and he also comes from a lineage of business owners. And for some reason, I never saw that in me until I did my ancestry work, until I did work on myself and saw my own worth. And I was like, darn it, I'm fricking just like him. I'm a business person too. Look at your logo. It looks like softballs.

Hey listeners, did you know that Sense of Soul has a network of lightworkers affiliates program? Now you get to work with one of our inspiring guests. And I'd like to introduce you to one of our affiliates. Hey listeners, this is Jennifer from The Soul Experience and host of the podcast The Soul Traveler. I'm here to tell you about the most profound method of inner work that somebody can do while on a spiritual path. It's called quantum healing hypnosis. In a single session, you will revisit your past lives. Your subconscious will come forward to scan your body

looking for blocked emotions and health concerns. And then your higher self will answer the most important life questions you have. Your session is audio recorded so you can play back all of the advice from your higher self. And you know you can trust the advice because it's coming from that part of you that is connected to Source. So if you're ready to take the next step on your spiritual journey, then visit me online at thesoulexperiences.com and be sure to mention that Shanna from Sense of Soul referred to you. You can also go to mysenseofsoul.com and in the menu, look for the Network of Lightworkers. Now back to our amazing guest. I know your story with your dad is similar and I would love for you to share if you don't mind sharing that story yeah so the story of my dad where to begin so I'll tell you two stories about

my dad one of them was around the same age I I was probably four or five now, still living in that same house. And my parents were separated. And I had a date with my dad, which was really special. And my dad had a private plane. He had a business in those days that was called Lisa Plane. And I had a cousin named Lisa. And I thought it was named after Lisa. I thought it was Lisa plane, but it was actually lease a plane L E S E plane. It was like, instead of rental cars, it was rental airplanes.

So my dad had this business called Lisa plane and he was going to take me flying. And so I remember the door, uh, he knocks on the door and I have my patent leather shoes and I can look down and see myself in my patent leather shoes. I had a blue and white striped sailor's dress with a little anchor on it. My dad was a sailor later in life, not at this time in my life. And I had my little pigtails. And so my dad and I get into his car and we go to the airport to get into his private plane. It was a private plane. And the way that you got into the private plane was you had to climb up onto the wing and then through the co-pilot seat into the pilot seat. So my dad climbed up on the wing first over the co-pilot seat and he sat in the pilot seat. And then I

climbed up and somebody had to help me, you know, so I had like a whole bunch of like little stairs to get onto the wing. And I sat down in the co-pilot seat and mostly I didn't ever get to sit in the co-pilot seat. I normally had to sit in the back with my big sister because normally my mom was in that seat, but this was just me and my dad. So I got to sit in the front, which was super exciting. And I pulled the door closed and I closed the door. And then I got to put on the headphones with my dad and listen to the control tower. And then we got up 10,000 feet and I got to fly the plane and it was super cool and exciting.

And then the door came open and I almost got sucked out of the plane. And my dad immediately threw his body on top of me to keep me in. And he, and he got the door and apparently I hadn't like latched it properly. I just closed it. I was only four or five. I was just a little girl. I didn't know any different. And, and my dad gets on the control tower and he says, we have to make an emergency landing. And we made an emergency landing and, um, we, you know, we get down or my dad locks the door properly. And then, uh, we, we went home. And when we got out of the airplane, we're in the car driving home. He says, we cheated death.

Once again, don't tell your mother. And remember, my parents are separated. So I walk in to the house and I'm traumatized because I almost fell out of an airplane. I almost died. And so I run into my mother's arms and I start to cry because, you know, we have this thing that's called an adrenaline hangover where your body releases a bunch of adrenaline. You don't realize the trauma until you're safe. And now I'm safe. And I burst into tears and my mother says, what's wrong? And I say, I almost got let over plane and the door came open and da, da, da. And clearly I'm fine. I didn't fall out of the plane. I didn't die. My dad did the responsible thing, but you

know, according to again, my little four or five-year-old memory, my mother says, your dad is so irresponsible. You're not going to see your father again. And so this was a really, really traumatic moment for me. And I thought, oh, it's my fault. Like I'm the wedge between my mother and my father and I'm in trouble. So again, here's that thing again, I'm in trouble. I've ruined something. Right. And so, you know, fast forward many, many, many years now I'm in my forties and I'm still running this story that says I'm in trouble. You know, I'm never going to amount to anything. So I'm on my way to medical school. And part of my path being on the way to medical school is I'm working in an anatomy lab and

working in an anatomy lab means that you get to, you know, dissect the human body and get to know every single organ and the way the nerves work and the way the cardiovascular system works. And you get to see this whole structure holistically and how every part is working together. So in the middle of this path, my dad drops dead of a heart attack. He has massive cardiac arrest. One moment he's reading the news and the next minute it's like he's dropped his body like a bag of stones in a river and he's done. And the next day I had to go into the anatomy lab. And I remember I wrote an email to my boss and I said, I can't, my father just died of a massive heart attack and I don't think I can come in tomorrow. And she said, that's fine. I totally understand. Take whatever time you need.

And I sat on my meditation cushion and I thought, I can't not see what killed my father. I really have to understand this. So I went into the anatomy lab and I had to take a human heart out of a human cadaver. And the human cadaver was a man and he was about the same age as my father. And when I held this man's heart in my hands, I could see that he also had died of a massive heart attack. When the heart is properly functioning, the top atria squeeze and the ventricles receive the blood and then the ventricles squeeze and then the atria fill and then the atria squeeze the ventricles fill the ventricles squeeze the atria fills and so it's this coordinated action where both sides are squeezing at the same time when there's massive coronary they're all discoordinated they're uncoordinated and it's very chaotic and so what i could see in the heart that

i was holding in my hands of this cadaver was that one side was completely empty and one side was completely full. And I realized in that moment, I had been running my whole business completely counter to the laws of nature, completely counter to the laws of physics and biology, completely counter to the divine masculine and the divine feminine from the ancient Hindu traditions and actually from all spiritual traditions that energy is moving and that there's a feminine quality of flow and there's a masculine quality of supporting the flow and they want to work in concert with each other. And I had been really out of alignment.

So I'd been overgiving. I'd been underchar other. And I had been really out of alignment. So I'd been overgiving. I'd been undercharging. I hadn't been sleeping. I hadn't been exercising. I would go, you know, days without eating because I air quote, didn't have time because it was a client that needed the project and I'd be pulling all nighters, but then I wouldn't charge for it, et cetera. Like I was so out of alignment with myself and I walked out of the anatomy lab that day, it was October and the Aspens were this beautiful gold green. They were just starting to change and this beautiful cobalt blue sky. And I remember saying to the trees, how do you do this? How do you transform so beautifully and so gracefully and so non-dramatically? It's incredibly dramatic, but it's awe. It's not turbulence. It's awe. And they said, watch us. We'll teach you.

And I really took that to heart. And I started watching the cycle of nature. I watched how when the leaves fall, they become compost for the next generation. I watched how when most of the leaves have fallen and the tree is completely bare, it's completely exposed, it's completely vulnerable, more light gets in. And, you know, I began to receive messages and insights like this that I really took to heart. Literally, I took to heart as I was grieving my dad, as I was, you know, grieving this massive change and like, how am I going to, how am I going to do this? And everything began to shift in the outer world for me because my inner world was really reorganizing and realigning itself. And at this time in 2013, I was still supporting myself as a filmmaker.

And I had intended I'm not going to do anything until the first crocus. This was in October. And so I thought I'm just going to be like Persephone. I'm just going to go underground. My intention is I'm just going to heal. I'm going to do anything until the first crocus. This was in October. And so I thought I'm just going to be like Persephone. I'm just going to go underground. My intention is I'm just going to heal. I'm going to grieve. Nature isn't productive 24 seven. And I had been operating as if I was supposed to be productive 24 seven. I was completely violating the laws of nature. I wasn't allowing myself to rest. Wasn't allowing, you know, my business to go dark for a while like nature does every night. So March comes and the phone rings and it's one of my past clients who says,

Deborah, we've got, and she names a number in her budget that is 10 times what the previous film was that I made for them. And she says, can you help us? Like, yeah, I can, I can help you out with that. And, you know, it was this very quiet, very still pond feeling of, of really being aligned with what are my gifts? What are my creative gifts? What's the perspective, you know, and funnilyily enough I was making films about the environment I was making films about earth uh water fire air and ether I was making films about climate change I was making films about the earth and the water and the sun and like and I couldn't see

that all of that was inside of me yeah wow. Wow. That's beautiful, Debra. So you too, your dad's death was much like a rebirth for you. Yeah. It really opened up something. And you know, when my dad said so many years ago, we cheated death once again. And I started asking myself, well, what does it even mean to die? And the eternal part of me, the non-physical part of me, the non-physical part of my dad, yeah, he dropped his body, which is the physical part of him. The physical part of him died. The body part of him died. The essence of my dad, the spirit of my dad is very much alive and well

in me because like you, my dad was an entrepreneur and I thought I'll never be that. I will never do that. Like I'm an artist and you know what? He radio shacks me all the freaking time. What I mean by he radio shacks me, he'll mess with my electronics. He'll mess with, you know, a plug won't work that used to work. You know, I'll talk about my dad and all of a sudden the lights will flicker or something will disconnect. And like, he just does this because he's saying, Hey, I'm watching you. I'm supporting you.

I'm cheering you on. I love you. You know, and the part of me that's like, Oh, I'm not going to have his support. Well, actually I have his support more than ever because he's no longer contained physically. He is everywhere and he is in me and I'm literally like breathing him every inhale and breathing the soul of all of those who have come before me. And he lives, you know, in my heart and my business success. I know he's proud of me. Just like your dad is proud of you. Which is so crazy because I spent most of my life thinking I was disappointing him.

Yeah, me too. And I think that sharing stories like this, this is what helps us connect. It's that sisterhood that's missing. That's been missing for a long time. I felt the power just sitting with you women in Boulder when we all met and that young waitress had come up to us. That was so touching to me. She said her mom needed to hear what you were speaking of. I think what she had overheard. I was like, wow, you know, for a young lady to look out for her mom in that way. Right. Gone are the days, right. That we're just stuck in some patriarchal kind of narrative. I can be as a business woman,

like all the men in my father's family that I saw lineage after lineage. My brother's liked that too, but did not include myself. Yeah. It's fascinating how we think it's okay to exclude ourselves. Yeah. And I did that too. I was like, oh, I don't have to be paid. Oh, I don't, I don't have to sleep. Oh, I don't need X, Y, Z. Like, like on what planet do you think you can exclude yourself from being included in? There's one planet. We all share it. There's one water cycle that is circulating around the entire planet. We're all, you know, being nourished by that one water cycle.

And we're seeing how out of alignment, you know, humanity is right now. And it is really up to each one of us to do our part, to be aligned, to begin to write the misalignment because, you know, with climate change, we're seeing that some areas are getting way more water and some areas are getting way less water. We're seeing way stronger storm systems right now because, because we're actually changing the way that water's flowing on the planet. We're changing the way water's flowing on the planet because we're moving water around. And so the mass of the water, the weight of the water is literally changing the orbit of the earth.

We are interfering. We humans are interfering. And we got to be honest about this. Like, what can I do? What can I contribute in a way that is aligned and will support co-regulation? And I'm really talking about nervous system co-regulation because when somebody is very angry, if I join them in being very angry, I'm actually increasing the amount of anger on the planet. So can I be compassionate? Can I be loving? Can I be understanding? There's nothing wrong with anger and anger when it's not used in the way that it's meant to be used, I believe that anger is our creative life force. It wants something new to be created. And so I believe that there's a way that we forget when we say, oh, I don't matter. Or when we say, oh, I'm not like that, right? I'm not like one of those entrepreneurs in my family, right? When we exclude ourselves, we're saying I don't belong. And this is a root

shocker issue. There's one earth, we're all living on it. There's one water cycle, we're all being supported by it. There's one envelope of air that surrounds the entire planet. We're all breathing from the same one. And the sooner that we recognize that we are interdependent, that we are interconnected, that we are co-regulating, the better it is for all humanity, for all the humans and all the four-legged and all the winged and all the finned and all the feathered and all the six and eight and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight legs and all the millipedes, like all creatures are all interconnected in this giant web that we call life. Yeah. Just like the tree, you know,

was your teacher through those seasons. Yeah. And even the trees, right? My exhale is the trees inhale. The trees exhale is my inhale. We couldn't be here without the trees. In fact, the trees, the plant matter came first evolutionarily and the trees and the algae and the plant matter had to be here first to create enough oxygen so that we could live here. We're so interconnected. Yeah. I have a crazy gnarled tree in my front yard. I even have a rosebush that has a 90 degree angle. I mean, something's up in the energy in my front yard. I even have a rose bush that has a 90 degree angle means something's up in the energy in my front yard. You know, you could see even that it goes in a clockwise direction because you could see how the twist and stuff are going that way. And what's really insane is that my

daughter has one of those crocheted swings on it and she sits in it and I caught her on video and I didn't even realize it, but she was in this meditative state. She had her eyes closed as she was swinging. I looked at this video over and over and over because I longed for that peace, that innocence, and that just letting go and just being. She was one with the tree, with the wind, with all the elements. And I've come so far away from that and always am looking for opportunities for getting myself back, not only to nature, but also to that feeling of being a child like we've talked about a lot today yeah trees are such good teachers they're modeling for us how to be rooted and how to stand tall and the and the wind comes and the tree just stays steadfast where it is. But it has strong roots, right?

Right. And, and, but how often do we not do that? How often are we in the realm of people pleasing where I'm going to go over here because they're going to like me and then I'm going to go over here and I don't want them to disappoint me. So I'll do this thing, which is really not in alignment with me, but I'm going to do it for them so that they like me, right? We don't actually stand in a steadfast rooted fashion that allows us to rise right where we are just to rise right where we are. I mean,

trees do it all the time. You walk around the forest and there's the mother tree and then there's all the little seedlings and they just rise right where they are. If you walk around and you see volunteer, you know, there's like a cucumber that's growing in the middle of the tomatoes. And over here, there's like, you know, an Aspen and, and, you know, because all the Aspens are connected underground, right. And trees are also moving fire and water through them, right. The system of the tree, the cardiovascular system of the tree, it's rooted in the earth. And then the leaves take the sunlight, right. The fire, and they transform that into sugar and they bring it down into the plant. And then they bring the water up and they distribute the water to the branches and the leaves, right? So they're

constantly moving fire and water. We call it xylem and phloem in a tree, but it's really, you know, they're very elemental just like us and we are trees, right? Each one of us is a tree, but we're all interconnected. Yeah. So how, how can we keep our tree in abundance? Well, the tree's natural state is abundant, isn't it? The tree's natural state is to drop some leaves and those leaves become the compost of the next generation and the tree rests. And then the tree expands into more space than it has ever taken up before. It expands higher or wider than it ever has before. The birds come and they eat the fruits and they fly away and they drop the seeds. And then the tree just organically doesn't have to do all the work. The squirrels are doing it. The birds are doing it.

The monkeys are doing it. The tree doesn't have to go and reproduce itself. It doesn't have to expend any more energy than just by being itself. And the tree just makes the seeds. It makes the flowers. It makes the fruits. And then the animals come and eat the fruits or the flowers or the seeds or the bees come and eat the pollen, right?

And then they move around and they're pollinating other flowers or they're or the seeds or the bees come and eat the pollen, right? And then they move around and they're pollinating other flowers or they're dropping the seeds. The monkey eats the seeds and then it runs through the forest and it poops out the seed and the tree got to reproduce itself somewhere else thanks to the monkey, right? Like everything is so interconnected in such a beautiful way. So I believe, you know, how do we, when you ask the question, how do we maintain our inner tree? How do we maintain our sense of abundance? Just by being yourself. You know, I think what interrupts it is the conditioning that says, you can't be that abundant. You can't have that much fun. You can't grow that big, right? We, We naturally are abundant, but growth is natural and releasing, which is the destructive part of the cycle that I learned at age three. I didn't realize I was part of the cycle. It wasn't against

the cycle. It was actually part of the cycle that the letting go is part of the cycle. The tree has to let go so that it has the energy to grow to the next level. We got to let go of stuff. We got to let go of the belief that we can't. If we just accepted our natural abundance, rather than fighting that we are abundant, we would just naturally be what we are. And continue to grow. Yes. Yeah. Oh my my god I love that so much okay I'm gonna be a tree with abundance of leaves well sometimes and sometimes you're gonna be a tree like you described the tree in your front yard that has dropped its leaves and you're gonna be exposed you're gonna you're gonna allow more light to shine through you'll

have longer shadows and lots of birds when they come to a very fruitful tree right and you'll go through cycles and every business goes through cycles of feeling totally exposed every business owner will feel through cycles of I'm totally exposed. And there are other cycles where I'm this very shady, lush, restful Haven, and the birds are coming and the squirrels are coming and the children are coming and, you know, and there's just this richness. And then there's going to be a cycle of letting go just like we're breathing, right? There's a richness of taking in and there's a richness of letting go. And all of it is part of the cycle. You know, my dad was an overheat work too much and I'm much like that too. And so the resting

part, the winter is something that I would have to work on the most. You're in Colorado, right? You know, it'll be like 60 in the early morning and then it will get in the high nineties, right? That's a big temperature swing. And so watch the flowers, watch how they're going to be really open when the sun is up, but go take a walk like it between eight o'clock and nine o'clock at night. And you're going to see the flowers actually shut down. The flowers close, they open in the light and they close or go diving on a coral reef sometime. And if you dive at night, you'll see that the reef, some of the corals structures are closed when it's dark and they open when it's light, right? Even every day, nature shuts down. Every night we have

darkness. Well, if you live in the low 48, not if you're, you know, above the Arctic Circle, then you have daily all the time. But, you know, for the most part, we're in this expand, contract, expand, contract of warm and cold, of dark and light, right, of growth and compost, which is one whole cycle. So even when we're in deep winter and it's dark and it's cold and it seems like nothing is growing you're still in a creative part of the cycle sleep is a creative part of the cycle rest is a creative part of the cycle I'm almost better sometimes in that cycle because you know sometimes you're just you're too overwhelmed with too many ideas. I'm like a half-ass multitasker. That's what I become because I put too much on myself. So resting is always something for me, that place that I was telling you, my daughter was

in just being and letting go. Yeah. You know, let us link arms together to be on a mission to recondition each other that it is safe to rest, that we're not lazy for resting, that we don't have to work really, really hard. We don't have to kill ourselves by working so hard. You know, both of us had dads who overworked and had heart issues and, and they left the planet sooner than we wished they had. And yet it wasn't up to us. They're our greatest teachers and they're modeling for us that rest is, is part of the equation. Rest isn't lazy. Rest isn't counterproductive. Rest isn't wrong. Rest doesn't make you bad. And there's such patriarchal conditioning that says you got to work harder. And if you work harder, you get more done. The actual truth is that if you rest more, you will be so much more productive. And when you unhook your mind from

the overthinking beta, what's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong, what I have to do, when you unhook from that and you allow the mind to expand to its unconditioned version where everything is, you can actually accelerate time. You can expand time. You get so much more done in so much less time because you're not using your life force to find fault. You're not using your life force to create hardship. And if we think it has to be hard, if we think it has to be hard, we're going to use our life force to create hardship so that we can be right, right? Our identity requires us to make it hard. If we

think we have to work hard, can't be any other way. So this is actually a deep, intimate reconditioning of the nervous system that I can make great money doing what I love. I can help millions of people and be relaxed, be joyful. I can live as soul rather than the overachieving, high-performing, got it, got it, got it, got it. Well, that's one option. You can certainly build a business. You can certainly help people in that state of hypervigilance and high alert and expending a lot of energy, controlling everything. You can definitely do that. I did that for many years and I was successful enough, but I was also really unhappy. Yeah. And I was having a heart attack probably. Right. And I thought I was cruising for a heart

attack and now I'm helping way more people. I have a much bigger reach from a place of relaxation and, and ease. And when I say relaxation, I want to put some context around it because in your body system, your body is constantly toggling between pressure and relaxation. Every breath you take is because there are sensors in your lungs and in your diaphragm that tell you there's too much CO2 building up. You got to let some of that go and take in some fresh oxygen, right? And so your body is constantly responding to pressure. Thank goodness, because otherwise we'd all be leaking, right? We wouldn't be able to contain the liquid. We wouldn't be able to contain the liquid we wouldn't be able to contain the food we wouldn't be able to metabolize life

so pressure is actually helping us and this is you know what i got from holding a heart in my hands is that this kind of squeeze this this peristaltic expand contract take in let go is what's allowing us to move food and water and nourishment through us it is what's allowing us to move food and water and nourishment through us. It's what's allowing us to move money through us. It's what's allowing our nerves to communicate with each other. Everything is in this cycle of expand and contract. And if we misperceive that we're only supposed to expand, expand, expand, expand, but we're never grounded, we're never anchored, we're never rooted, We blow a gasket. We blow a fuse. We burn out. A hundred percent. You're so right. Tell everybody where they can find you. I love that you started

a new podcast or it seems like you've been going for a while now. The podcast, it's got some legs. I'm going to use the anatomy of money metaphor. It's got some legs. It's walking itself into the world. It is newish. I started the podcast, I think season one dropped in December. And then there was quite a long while. And then season two dropped, I think sometime around March. And we're really consistent.

We release an episode or two episodes every week. That's the Anatomy of Money podcast. You can find that on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts. I also have a free Facebook group at the moment. It's on Facebook. I don't know if it'll be there forever, but right now you can find us on Facebook. It's called the anatomy of money Academy. And I'm in there every week, dropping lots of truth bombs about the mind, body, the body, mind, and the mind, body, money conversation that we've been talking about. You can also find me on my website, deborahfryer.com, and you can grab, there are free books there. One's called Best Brain Hacks, 108 Scientific, Spiritual, and Sensual Ways to

Train Your Brain for Success. And you'll find in there lots of ways, lots of practical ways that you can use right away. We've talked about many of them here, having to do with visualization and meditation and painting and art and all different ways to get your brain out of fear and into a feeling of freedom. And there's also a book there called Turn On Your Tap, where I introduced you to EFT, tapping, emotional freedom technique, tapping. I love that. It is such a powerful modality and it has literally been scientifically proven to change the way blood flows in your brain so that you no longer default to fear. You no longer default to anxiety.

You no longer default to stress. Oh, that's awesome. That's crazy. I didn't know that. What a beautiful way to learn about the anatomy of money through learning about who you are and what maybe, you know, those little moments that when you were three, four or five years old, that may have really affected you unconsciously. And also just using nature to be a teacher. You know, I'm not attracted to the idea of someone trying to teach me how to understand money and how to be good businesswoman. Talking about a bunch of ego, power, manifestation,

fire, fire, fire, change your identity to make more kind of thing that kind of model doesn't do it for me in fact it turns me off so much because it's so masculine right and part of the message is is that you need to change and you're totally perfect as you are. What will need to change for you to experience a greater degree of happiness is how you see yourself, right? And if we're missing seeing ourselves as creative, if we're missing embracing our innate power because you're soul in a body, if we're rejecting the spark of life force that you are, you know, you're a divine ambassador. You're a divine missionary walking your God-given or goddess-given or innate intuitive, I don't want to use language that unwittingly might exclude anyone. This is not about a masculine God or if even God-goddess

language doesn't work for you. There's a source universal intelligence. There's a level of vibrational truthiness that you're vibrating that wants your 100% acknowledgement of how powerful you are. Yeah. That's what we're talking about. In any part of ourselves that we put on like a heavy coat, we're like, ooh, I can't let my light shine because they're not going to like it. That's going to show up as an internal conflict. And everything that the anatomy of money shows us is where we are in conflict, right? Being in conflict means not in alignment. When we're in alignment, 100% of our energy is in alignment with 100% of our energy.

A laser, right? Laser focus or a laser itself means all the electrons are going in the same direction. So you are a laser. It's like electrons are going in the same direction. So you are a laser. It's like you are the magnifying glass. The mind is a magnifying glass. And if you ever put a magnifying glass on a piece of paper on a hot sidewalk, what happens? The light magnifies and the paper bursts into flames. When you see you clearly, if you're looking through still water, the other day I was walking around a lake in our neighborhood and the water was so

still, I could see all the way to the bottom. When your mind is so still, it's not turbulent with all the conditioned narratives and the agendas and the projects and the Facebook and all the stuff I got to do. When you make your mind so still that you can see all the way to the very bottom, you will see as above. So below you will see that you are a reflection of the majesty you see reflected in the lake. Yeah. So much wisdom. Thank you so much. I think this is beautiful. I would encourage anybody who's listening. There's many things out there that tell you, you know, take this and you're going to be able to manifest and find all the abundance in the world. And just to me,

it's a lot of gimmicks. And this is, this is not about that. This is about really learning who you are so that you can be who you're supposed to be. Like the tree is abundant, right? It's just naturally abundant. The tree doesn't have to do anything. The tree doesn't have to, you know, negotiate. I'm going to take up more space over here and you take up more space over here. The tree doesn't do that. The tree isn't in a power struggle of, Oh my gosh, I'm making too many peaches. They're not going to like our competition. My leaves are better than yours. Right. The lilac doesn't look at the dandelion and say, look at me, you suck. You know, meanwhile, the dandelion has taken over the entire park and there's no lilac in the park,

right? Like one of my favorite expressions is there's all in small, right? The word all is in the word small. We're so conditioned to think that bigger is better or louder is better or more Facebook likes is better or a big list is better. And that's not, that's not true. No. In fact, it's funny because I had someone say, you should really do something for that tree. It's just so out of whack. And I'm like, oh my God, it's my favorite part of it. You know, I don't want to cut that part off.

That's like so unique to this tree. I love that. I love that as a metaphor for us. What if each one of us could look at ourselves and instead of saying, you should get rid of that part of you because it's out of whack. We said, I love wall as a canvas. Like it's one of my favorite, it's my favorite part of me that my creator is creating my creation. I love that. Thanks for sharing that here. Well, it's been coming through, but you know, more and more I'm able to see when the voice shows up that says, but you're going to ruin that. I'm like, why do you keep leaving with you're going to ruin that? If we don't pause and hear that inner voice, that is the first one

to say, you're going to ruin it. If we don't hear that she's living in us, what does she need? Why is she always the first one to raise her hand? Right? I mean, she needs love. She needs to know it's okay, sweetie. You are totally fine. Destruction is part of the cycle of creation. And I love the mess that you make as I'm painting. I also use a lot of water. My easels over here. That's why I'm looking over here. So one of my paintings, I used a ton of water. I like the sadness was coming up and I just let the sadness flow. I just let the sadness flow because it wants to come out. So I used a ton of water. So the painting is dripping. And then I start getting drips all over the floor and I've got a big thick cardboard underneath my easel. Like I've set it

up just like my mom set it up for me in the corner where I can make as much of a mess as I want. And nobody cares. And you know, it's just a moment of pausing and recognizing when that voice comes up that says, you're going to make a mess. You're going to ruin everything. Am I, am I ruining it right now? What if I make the most amazing thing out of the ruin? You will. Right. And then I realized I love ruins. You know, I got a PhD in classics in ancient Greek and Latin. Like I studied ruins. I studied old archeology. I studied old literature, right? Like I naturally gravitated towards ruins. Wow. Isn't that hilarious? It always aligns. Doesn't it? Totally. Totally. My God, you've been such a blessing. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me and for this beautiful conversation. You're amazing. Hello, my name is Melissa Oatman and I'm the host of Awaken Your Inner Awesomeness. I'm a teacher, healer, intuitive, and single mom of twins. I'm an empath and a recovering people pleaser. I created Awaken Your Inner Awesomeness to help other people like me learn how to stop living their lives for others so that they could start living their absolute best lives. I cover topics in spirituality and self-improvement like setting healthy boundaries, working with the archangels and protecting your energy i end every episode by pulling a card of guidance to help you get a message to start your day off right

i also interview fascinating guests who cover a wide range of self-help topics if this sounds interesting to you then what are you waiting for start listening today. www.mysenseofsoul.com where you can work with me one-on-one or help support Sense of Soul podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.