Oahu Meet and Greet (part 2) - In this episode I share my story (and recent updates to it) to a new audience during an informal meet and greet on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Part 2 of 2.

Click here to listen to Part 1

Topics discussed:

• When it’s important to be specific in goal setting.
• How to experience the power of Rare Faith when you suffer with depression or anxiety.
• Knowing “What’s my part?” and what Rare Faith has to do with the Passion of Christ.
• What you should know if you’re concerned about priestcraft.
• How “peace” as a feeling counts for activating second level goal achievement.

Originally recorded April 12, 2019 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

TRANSCRIPT:

Host: Welcome to the Rare Faith Podcast, where the solution to every problem is only an idea away, and where the same activity with just a little more awareness always yields better results. Award-winning, best-selling author Leslie Householder brings some of her best information to this inspiring series of life-changing episodes that you won't want to miss. Show notes for this episode can be found at ararekindoffaith.com.

Leslie: Collin. No, Collin’s son. Are you Collin, too?

Collin Jr.: I’m Junior, yep.

Speaker 3: I got it.

Collin Jr.: Yeah.

Speaker 3: I used to raise my hand at school. So before we even knew about you guys, Colorado, we were going to go on a 10-gallon fish tank for our final uses. I don’t know how long, but we recently had neighbors that moved, and then they left a bunch of stuff in their garage, so they asked us to clear it out. There happened to be a 10-gallon fish tank in there. That’s awesome.

Leslie: How many of you have read the book Charlie by Jen Whalish? Jen Whalish. Yes, yes. I mean, maybe you’ve seen the movie, but I read the book as a girl. You’re talking about how you got to Hawaii, and it just makes me think about when I was a teenager reading Charlie, when they were first married. Do you remember what their finances were like when they first got married? She described their apartment, how the shower head was in the kitchen, so she’d hang a plant over it, and I just thought, oh, that’s so romantic, to struggle as newlyweds, and that became my dream, and so here we are. Thank you very much. Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 4: I didn’t have that before.

Leslie: He or she who has the more passionate vision wins, so what were you dreaming?

Speaker 4: Obviously not with enough energy.

Speaker 5: I just have a quick one about that. When we were moving here, we sold our house, and we had a friend, the trustee of his father’s estate, that was kind of helping us just get a car, so we moved here. We didn’t have a car, and so he was just going to give us a used old van, but we were trying to visualize what we wanted, like what car we wanted, and I was like, well, I don’t want a white car, and we had these neighbors that had an old Toyota Sienna, and I’m like, and I don’t want a car like that. Can you guess exactly what van I got?

Leslie: A white Toyota Sienna.

Speaker 5: White old Toyota Sienna. We pulled up, and I’m like, I totally did that.

Speaker 6: Yeah, so it definitely works. I’m visualizing myself as a millionaire, so when I get there, you all get invited to my house, and it just screws.

Collin Jr.: I think the good thing is that...

Speaker 6: Write it down, please. It doesn’t... Oh, yeah. I also draw it. I mean, the drawing. Write it down, but you’re going to take it home.

Leslie: I think it’s easier to think about what you don’t want.

Speaker 5: It feels less scary to think about what you don’t want, and it feels more vulnerable and scary to think about.

Leslie: Yeah, because what if it doesn’t work? Yes. What if I’m disappointed? What if I’m the first person that does 150 squares, and it doesn’t work?

Collin Jr.: Yeah, no.

Leslie: But what if it does? Exactly. So six months prior to our restaurant experience, we had decided that I needed to write a sequel to The Jacobit Factor to share the things that we were learning, and one thing that we were learning is that you set a goal, and quite often we’re seeing this with people that we were teaching, our students, that you set a goal, and oftentimes what shows up is opposite, absolutely opposite of what you were intending. And most people, you know, whether they saw The Secret or whether they’re reading these books or something else, they interpreted that to mean, oh, this doesn’t work because I set this goal, and this crappy thing showed up instead, which is opposite. I asked for more money, and we’ve got this huge debt that just happened or whatever it might be. Or I imagined the relationship going better, and we just had a fight, you know, where it’s just opposite. And what we were learning through the recession, because we were experiencing this, but we were also being really, really intentional about what are we learning? What is the hidden treasure in this experience that we’re supposed to learn? Because we felt like ambassadors of it to teach what we learn, and I promise you the articles that I wrote during the recession are my best ones, because the times where I’m coaching myself, I’m like, I know how I’m supposed to think, and so I’m kind of coaching myself through my writing, and those became my articles. It looks like, oh, she knows what she’s talking about. No, I am teaching myself as I go because I’m in so much pain, you know, but those have been the most popular articles and the ones that seem to help people the most because we were in the most pain.

Leslie: In The Jacobit Factor, it ends before the epilogue with the couple who are like, oh, we finally get it. Yay, we’re going to make this new life, and they’re so excited. Well, opening scene, not quite the opening scene because there had to be a prequel included to explain some things, but first thing happens, he’s so excited. He’s going to go to work. He knows that there’s going to be a mentor showing up because he’s ready for the next lesson. So he’s just got his radar up for who’s going to teach him the next piece because they’ve got these goals. They’re going to move. They’re going to have their dream. And he gets to work knowing that because they’ve changed their vision and because they’re passionate about where they’re going, things are going to go better, but the first thing that happens is he gets a reduction in pay notice, and that is a gift to him to help him get to what he had imagined. But most people, when that happens, they’re going to think, oh, well, crap. That didn’t work, and they throw it away, and they don’t see it for the gift that it was. Instead, he looks at it, and he wrestles with it for a minute, and then he thinks, no, I’m going to do this right this time. And the way he chooses to respond to that, you can see in the book how that opens doors. And so the sequel follows the couple who are talked about in The Jackrabbit Factor to show how they get from where they were to the success implied in the epilogue 10 years later, but also follows a man who needs a medical miracle for his son and also a businessman who needs $4.5 million by Wednesday. And it’s how their stories intertwine with each other to help them all get and find what they need. And that’s one thing I love about the principles, is that they’re applicable to the stay-at-home mom who needs some help with figuring things out with her kids or the fridge or whatever it is that they need, and it helps the CEO who needs to figure out what to do with the employees when their business is tanking, or it helps the guy who needs to create an invention to save people with a certain heart problem. The principles apply no matter what the problem is, and that’s one reason why it took me so long to figure out what is my elevator speech, because who’s your audience? Anybody who’s got a problem, which is way too broad according to marketing experts. And so it really has just become, I like to teach about rare faith, the kind of faith that causes things to happen, and that is a reference from Boyd K. Packer. Is it in here? I think we added it. Basically, he said there are two kinds of faith. One of them operates ordinarily in our daily lives. It’s the kind of faith that relates us to things that are scheduled to happen. We know the sun will rise. We know that growth will take place. He says, but there is another kind of faith, rare indeed. It is the kind of faith that causes things to happen. He says it is worthy and unyielding and directed and channeled. It has great effect, and I love that. You know, you may have heard about the law of attraction. That is one of the seven laws, and people who study the law of attraction, if they stop there, they miss the pieces that help you understand why something shows up opposite and what to do with it when it does. They miss the piece that says just because you can doesn’t mean you should. You miss the piece that they’ll say you can have abundance because you deserve it. Well, I don’t think we deserve it. I think that by God’s laws, we don’t deserve or earn any of it. It’s by the grace of Jesus Christ and the atonement that we can live the law imperfectly and still gain the benefit. Because if it’s truly a law, then we would have to be perfect to live it to reap the benefit, and none of us are. Yeah.

Speaker 7: I was gonna go on for like a personal kind of serious side. Sure. You mentioned depression. I’m actually, I was diagnosed with that and anxiety, like the fear of what’s gonna happen next, that’s anxiety. I mean, all of us kind of experience that a little bit, but for me, it goes beyond because of the chemicals in my brain and everything that my doctor told me is that sometimes I get so blinded by a negative thing happening that I don’t see anything else. And then I don’t even go to the next step. I just stay in that hole. And the way you were describing like with your books and everything, now I’m like really looking forward to at least reading something because I’m still kind of there in my own personal life. And I’m glad I have family and everything because it’s really helpful because what I tend to do is see the good in everyone else except myself. And then I completely think that I’m just an utter failure. So whatever, everything that you’re explaining, and I’m only like 25, so I’m like the second youngest in the room, but yeah. You know, because I’m just beginning.

Leslie: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7: Everything. So I’m just really glad to be here.

Leslie: I am glad you’re here and I’m glad you shared that. And I can tell you that I relate to that feeling that I know how I’m supposed to think, but I just can’t make myself do it. And when I finally got to a point where I gave myself permission to feel that broken, feel that incapable, feel like my capacity to do what I’m supposed to be doing is just not there, and we’ve got family who deals with it, and when we were able to understand the chemistry and how the capacity to do it is just not there, but I found out it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because here’s one thing, and if you hear nothing else, this is something that really, really helped me. Whenever I’m pregnant, my chemistry is whacked and he can tell before I even think I might be pregnant. He’s like, you’re pregnant because he can see it. He can feel it. You know, it’s just my outlook.

Speaker 4: Like it’s the long, tall, pointy hat, you know, and the broom that just gives it away.

Leslie: You know, that’s why I was so mad that my broom was broken. This is one of the things that you don’t hear from law of attraction teachers. And I think I may be the only person who I’ve ever heard say it. And it might be because I’m coming from this place of having tried to live it and teach it in a place of depression. Number one, I would set a goal or a vision of what I wanted to do, a state. I’d write down what I wanted to happen, how I wanted my life to look. And I’d write it in present tense as though it’s already happened. Because if I read it often enough, my goal is to trick my subconscious mind into believing it’s already happened because it can’t tell the difference between an experience that is real and one that is imagined. If it thinks it’s real, it’s going to heighten your awareness to the people, the connections, the things you want to say, whatever. It just kind of kicks in and helps you do things on a subconscious level to lead you there. But I would set these goals and then I would try to be faithful about them. And you know, knowing that, okay, I just have to make sure I don’t doubt or I don’t worry that it might not happen. Okay, so what if I have this dip where I’m having a horrible, horrible day, my chemistry’s off, and it’s not just that I can’t, I don’t even want to. Maybe I could if I tried, but I don’t think so. You know, you have to want to, and I just didn’t want to. My prayers would turn to, please help me want to want to. Please help me want to want to want to. You know, this is how far deep I... depending on the day. But at the end of that, knowing that it kind of comes and goes, is it always constantly for you or did you have little ups and downs, even though they might not be happy to sad? It’s just like coping to sad or coping to upset.

Speaker 7: Well, the thoughts are kind of constant, but I’m able to, like in the moment, you know, kind of stop the full negative to the point where I can actually function. But I understand like mine’s up here.

Leslie: Yeah, yeah, so it’s functioning, non-functioning, functioning, non-functioning, but it’s still a depression.

Speaker 7: Yes, and then the anxiety kicks in too. And that’s when I worry about everything under the sun. I mean, just the big things, the little things.

Leslie: Yeah, yeah. So I would have a bad day, year, whatever, you know, I would have a bad period of time. And I would either say, crap, I just blew it. I just killed the seed because I’m just horrible. I’m thinking horrible. And I think it’s going to all blow up and nobody’s going to help. And I’m not going to be able to cope. Just all the cycling, ruminating and everything. And there would always come a point where I would become conscious of what I was doing. It didn’t mean it stopped, because it didn’t, but I would be conscious and I’d say, look at what I’m doing again. Look at what I’m thinking. Look at how I’m thinking. And I changed from thinking, oh, well, I guess I blew it, to I think it can still happen for me because of the atonement. I feel awful. My energy is bad. I’m angry at everyone. I’m angry at myself. But I choose to believe that things are still working and gathering for me. It was a choice. I didn’t feel it, but I chose to believe it. And even if I didn’t feel it, if I could say I choose to believe, then I think that’s enough. That’s enough. Because I’ve seen seeds grow in nature, even through a period of drought. I’ve seen plants grow and survive even after toxic rain. They’re more resilient than we think. And I found out that if I go through this bad period, and I think, oh, I guess I killed it and I just give up on it forever, yeah, probably killed it. But if I get through this and I become conscious of what I’m doing and I would acknowledge, I think I don’t have the capacity to hold this together myself. I can’t do it. But I know You can and I choose to believe it’s still on its way. That’s enough. Does that help anyone? Yes. It’s fabulous. Do you have anything to say on that?

Speaker 4: Amen. No, I mean, it’s really true. We can think that we ripped out that seed and we can just give up, right? And then we did rip it out. It’s gone. But if we keep nourishing that seed, most of the time we haven’t ripped it out.

Leslie: And here’s the thing. If you can see it and you feel it as though it’s happened, you’ve planted the seed. You only have to feel it momentarily and it’s enough, size of a mustard seed. And to choose to believe, the hardest part isn’t planting the seed. The hardest part is kicking out the doubt. But it’s the without doubt that is the key. And when I’m feeling doubt, I can speak the words, I choose to believe, help down my unbelief. I can choose to believe. I speak it. I say it. I might not feel it, but sometimes speaking it is all I’ve got to give, and it’s enough. And then one of the other laws is the law of gestation, because you don’t know how long this seed takes to bear fruit. We don’t know. But one thing that made a big difference to me, we talked about this yesterday at the college, the university, was that part of the power comes from seeing it and feeling it and then letting it go, being okay if it doesn’t happen. Because I think sometimes we get too attached to needing it to happen, which is... it repels. And sometimes it takes more faith to believe you can be okay without the change than for it to happen. But you see it, you feel it. This is what I put out there. This is what I intend. This is what I hope for. And my job is to just go about my life looking for ways that I can help bring that about, but knowing that I’m not the manager of the universe. It’s not my job. It’s not my job to manage the creative process. My job is to see it, feel it, and go about life at peace. Oh, I’m going to share something with you.

Trevan: That is... that’s so understated right there. That is such a huge thing for me. When I learned that I needed to resign as the manager of the universe, I always wanted to know, like, what is my part? When do I know when I’ve done enough? Because, you know, my head can hit the pillow at night and I always feel like I could have done more. What if I had just spent five more minutes on that or called that person or whatever? And this just helped me understand what’s my job and what’s God’s job. And I need to stop trying to do His job. He does it way better than any of us, right? Especially me. And just do my part. And it helped me see what my part was. That has made so much of a difference.

Leslie: How are we on time?

Trevan: The oven says we have 14 minutes.

Leslie: I’m wondering if anybody would be interested to know... so in my preparation for the presentation I did at BYU Hawaii on Thursday, the topic was principles of entrepreneurial success for the Willis Center. And I felt like I needed to talk about the difference or the power of instinct and inspiration in your goal achievement, what role they play and how to access them, how to initiate those. But there was a little piece that was really unclear to me. I was trying to figure out how it fits, how to reconcile some things. And so as I’m flying over, I was really wanting to sleep because we’d had three and a half hours of sleep. And he was sleeping and I was trying, but then I get this thought and I turn on the light and write it down, right? So this was me throughout. But would anybody be interested to see my... this is just my brainstorm.

Trevan: It was a really good presentation.

Leslie: You get that, right?

Trevan: And men in the room will understand the sleep part.

Leslie: Now some of this is an epiphany and then a new question. And so I’m just gonna read it as it came. What is the difference between instinct and inspiration? Does instinct come from God? Is it the same knowing? Inspiration is born of passion. Whether it is drive or desperation, emotion is present. Is it at the root? It is a catalyst. But what about instinct? And for those of you who have seen the video or any of the things that I’ve taught where, like with The Jacobit Factor, you’ve gotta see it. If you can see where you’re trying to go, then your instinct’s gonna kick in to know what to do next. That’s like those who have read The Jacobit Factor and I talk about the date where I went with a friend and we recorded on our tape how we were getting to the restaurant and then we gave the tape to the men and said, here, play this and take us to the restaurant. But all they were hearing is turn left, turn right, go 30 miles an hour. And we’re all giggling in the back because they don’t even know where we’re going. If they had known the destination, they would have instinctively known how to get there. But instead they’re listening to step-by-step instructions. So if you can see it, you’ll instinctively know what to do next.

Leslie: To me, instinct is what kicks in when the vision is clear. For example, if your kid has a messy room and they’re stumped at where to start, have them close their eyes and see it done. And instinctively, they’ll be able to choose the next step, the first step. So what is the difference? Is it the source? If inspiration comes from God, then does instinct just come from ourselves? Is it okay to give credit to anyone but God? How can I reconcile this? Animals have instinct, that they know where and when to migrate. Are they inspired, or is it something more automatic or mechanical? Maybe whatever it is that keeps our heart beating, the subconscious is the same thing that mechanically delivers next-step instructions when you hand it an image of the desired result. Maybe that mechanism was just built into our hardware when we were formed. We’re on our own with the capacity to solve problems. But when the problem is bigger than the existing software can handle, we need a new godly download. We pay for that installation through the currency of emotion. As is the case with any problem, we start by seeing it done. That triggers an image of a next step that will lead you there. Sometimes the next step needs to be, get a new program from the cloud because the existing programs are not equipped to handle that one. Examples in scripture when this happened: Enos, Lazarus, Joan of Arc is an example. Relying on the arm of the flesh, my thoughts and ways are not yours. Sorry, this is getting choppy. But instinct is an endowment for survival. Animals have instinct. It’s how God created us. What makes us unique is the fact that we are offspring of deity and have it within us to create. It is our invitation to rise above instinct and learn to think like He thinks. For me, I first had to employ vision to heighten my instinctive skills. Whatever our focus is, that’s what the instinct will kick in to help us achieve. But if you want to think like God thinks and participate in miracles, add the feeling part, engage the heart. You do the essential with instinct, but you accomplish the impossible with inspiration born of passion.

Leslie: Okay, is this like boring? Because this is going to get deep right about now. The next thought that came to me is, well, what is the passion of Christ? It was the ultimate miracle, the miracle of all miracles. He felt, He felt everything. To access miracles, we need to feel. And He demonstrated that by feeling everything to perform the ultimate miracle. It was not an intellectual experience for Him. It was the moment in history when one man felt every possible emotion that can be felt, and that is why it was accomplished, the only thing that could fulfill the law that would have otherwise cost every one of us our souls. We start out with the most basic animal instincts. We think of food, we go after food. But God asks us to master the natural man. We try to do better, but we don’t realize we can use our instinctive, inborn mental mechanics to become instinctive about nobler things. See, the end that we intend is how we activate it. But take it a step further by becoming not only masters of ourselves, but masters of our circumstances. This is activated through passion, and not the kind of passion that is reactive to animal behaviors, but intentionally guided, activated, employed. What is instinctive is fear. Fear is instinctive.

Leslie: And just about this time the plane was having some unreported turbulence. Instinctively, I tensed up. But an inspired response is to envision the Lord beckoning me to come and fear not, like He did Peter when the waves raged around him. The image I hold on the screen of my mind is a choice. What images do you hold? Do you imagine the plane wrecking into the Pacific Ocean, or do you hold your mind’s eye on the Savior? I put Him there, I saw Him there, and I said, You’ve got this. You’ve commanded the very elements. You’ve got the plane. You’ve got me. I could imagine peaceful... by the way, I have fear of flying. I struggle with that. And so just to even say yes that I would come to Hawaii, I’m like, I’m gonna have to do this. I’m updating our will. So I imagined Him beckoning me to come on the water. I could imagine peaceful skies without turbulence. And I asked that He calm the air the same way He calmed the storm that threatened His disciples. And it tested me for another two minutes, but then it was calm again. The pilot said that he hadn’t known how long it would be because it was unreported. I’m coming to this, what you were talking about, and this is why I brought this up. If to feel is to create, or if to feel is to become inspired, what if there is no intensity of feeling? Peace counts as a feeling. Sometimes the absence of fear, or choosing to calm ourselves, is enough of a feeling to keep the creative process moving. It doesn’t have to be intense passion for what we’re creating. It can just be set the goal, see it done, and choose peace.

Leslie: There was a presentation I did last summer called Keep Calm and Watch What Happens. And I’m dying to get that onto the podcast. I’m waiting for the audio. There have been issues with getting that audio. But when I was asked to speak for that event, I always try to speak on something a little different because I’m making podcasts and I want it to have some variety. I’m wondering, all right, what should I talk on? And those words came to my mind, keep calm and watch what happens. And so I submitted that. I’m going to talk on that. And then I’m thinking, I wonder what I’ll be saying. So I’ve got two months to pay attention to what life is teaching me. And through those two months, I was practicing keep calm and watch what happens. And at the same time, some things in our business were starting to move and shift and grow in ways that I had not been comfortable with. And I kept reminding myself, okay, I’m just going to choose calm and see what happens. Choose calm and see what happens. And the kinds of things that started to fall into place were so miraculous and amazing that I think God was trying to teach me: as long as you don’t fear, I can keep doing this. I can keep this growing. I can keep supplying you with what you need. Your job is to choose peace. And so where I talk about see it done, feel it, I think people—and even I thought—that meant I have to be passionate and feel it often and I have to feel it intensely, and because it’s not happening if I don’t, so I need to make sure this is really big and huge. And no, peace counts as a feeling that keeps the creative process moving. This is why I couldn’t sleep on the plane.

Trevan: Can I interject real quick? A way to approach it is just to decide what to create, what your goal is, what you think God would have for you and what you want, and then go to Him and thank Him for it in advance as if it’s already happened. And when you feel that peaceful confirmation, know that that’s Him saying it’s yours. He’s given it to you. Just like Gideon and the Midianites, by giving them into your hand, you’ve already won. And the Lord speaks in this kind of language, and we can move forward with confidence knowing it’s already ours. It’s maybe not in our physical reality yet, but He’s already given it to us. Now we just proceed to do our part knowing in full confidence that it’s already been achieved. We just need to follow through and do our part.

Leslie: So where I came to that idea that peace counts as a feeling, sometimes to choose to feel peace is the most powerful creative catalyst of them all. Christ’s passion redeemed us, but His peace sustains us. I think what He felt in Gethsemane was intense, but His message to us has not been be intense. His message to us is, I already paid all that. I already did all that. I already suffered. I already experienced all those feelings that you deal with on a day-to-day basis. I’ve already done that, so you don’t have to. Therefore, you can just have peace. And you know, you study Come, Follow Me, you study His teachings in the New Testament and how He instructed His followers to chill out, to be at peace, because as long as you choose peace, He can continue to supply. He can continue to provide. And we worry that, well, what if He doesn’t? If we choose peace, He can. And when we don’t feel like we have that chemical capacity to do that, we can speak the words and say, I choose peace, even while we’re raging inside, even while our mind is spinning. We can speak it, and He knows our capacity. He knows it. I read a book once where it just inspired me so much where it said that the angels are ready and able and willing to help, and sometimes all it takes is a glance heavenward, and that’s all the permission they need. It’s all the permission they need. And sometimes I like to imagine angels being that ready. You know, I am suffering. I can’t do this. Here’s permission to help. Help my family. Help my children.

Trevan: And your family members who have passed on before you are intimately involved in your lives and our lives and orchestrating our experiences for our greatest good and development. And they, I believe, sit in council over us to decide what is going to be for our greatest good and to orchestrate everything. So it helps me. That understanding helps me to embrace what comes and be grateful for what comes, recognizing it as, okay, this is intentional. This is for me to help me to grow in some way. And it might look really ugly or really create a lot of fear in me, but that’s to help me either heal or grow or whatever it is.

Leslie: So I think one thing that helps me, there have been times even in recent years when I wasn’t pregnant that I was feeling some of that. And the sooner that I can go to my knees and say, Heavenly Father, thank you for this depression. Thank you for these awful, ugly feelings. Thank you for how awful things are. And for that fight we just had or whatever, thank you for that. I have no idea why it’s good for me, but I know it’s part of this plan for me to experience these things. Thank you for the growth that it can give us somehow that I may realize in the next life. The sooner I can even just attempt to be thankful, acknowledging that all things are for our good, the sooner things start to shift and give me another functioning day the next time, you know.

Trevan: So in short, I have to say one more thing first. I have to say those who are struggling the most in the room—and we haven’t talked about all your challenges, so we don’t know who that is—but if you think you are that person, just be grateful because you are the luckiest person in the room. We’re doing guided Mindset Mastery courses, and isn’t it interesting, Denise? Would you say it’s interesting how as we have these lessons each week, the experiences that you guys would have in your life, your life experiences, seem to weirdly coincide with the lesson that we were having that week?

Denise: Yes, it does.

Trevan: It was crazy.

Denise: And when we’re up for facilitating, it seems like whatever we’re talking about is even more going on in your life.

Trevan: Yeah.

Denise: Yeah.

Trevan: And it’s not just this course. Life is like that. It’s just we don’t usually see it.

Leslie: So in wrap-up, that restaurant moment where we’re like, I think we’ll have it figured out in 10 years. Will we still be teaching? Yeah, that’s what we do. I don’t think we had quite sold it yet, but we were getting ready to short sell our dream home. That’s on my website, the one that, hey, look, we’re before and after. Well, that after, we had to short sell it.

Trevan: We chose to short sell it.

Leslie: We chose to short sell it. We chose it. It’s better than the alternative. We’ll be in a house again. We’ll be in a house that we’ll retire in or that we... And when we thought about what that might be like and what we wanted to build and what our kids would be doing and that 10-year span, the anniversary is this summer. It’s this summer. And thinking back to the things that we talked about we’d be doing, we’re doing them. And the house that we dreamed of, we just bought in August. And it had always been our dream that we would teach together and do this together. And there were a lot of relationship kinks that had to be worked out, and painful kinks that needed to be worked out. And those...

Trevan: I was just waiting for a change.

Leslie: Likewise. And I have to say that all those kinks—and I’m sure there’s more that need to be worked out—but that’s gotten to a place where we’re enough on the same page that we can act in this way. And I look at how things have kind of come together. I can look back on those 10 years and see the suffering that had a place and purpose and the experiences and the one, two, three other homes that we lived in between then and now, and the one, two jobs that you had before. Basically, about two years ago, he got laid off, which was not part of the picture, but we see how it led to... You know, every piece, it was really good. There’s an article on my blog you ought to read, So My Husband Lost His Job. That’s a good article. That’s a good one because the first time, or before when he’d lost jobs before, you go into this fear, you go into this panic. But after what we went through those 10 years and then he lost his job two years ago, we knew what to do with that. I mean, he came home. It was 10 o’clock. I wasn’t supposed to be home at 10 o’clock.

Collin Jr.: I am. I’m like, oh, what are you doing here?

Leslie: You know, he came home. He’s like, got some exciting news. He says, we have a great opportunity. You know, and he tells me this. He’s like, and I choose to believe that this is really, really awesome. This is going to be really great. And within 30 minutes, he had a phone call. He got a phone call offering him an opportunity at this other job that was way better. Thirty minutes, thirty minutes. He had applied for this job or looked into it sometime earlier when he was feeling things weren’t going well at work. And he could feel that things were starting to shift and move in ways that weren’t looking good. He had started looking, but he put that seed out there and they hadn’t bitten. And so 30 minutes after he comes home and tells me how he chooses to approach this, they call and he gets that job. I mean, now he works from home most of the time and we get to do this and it pays better. So anyway, that is our story and we’re sticking to it. We are celebrating this 10-year conclusion. You know, now we get to look forward and see what else we want to create. But in celebration, we’ve got this Fundamentals eCourse. It’s an online training. It’s not the mastery program. The eCourse is just kind of the foundational principles. It takes you through all the laws, takes you through both Jackrabbit Factor and Hidden Treasures. They’re both downloads as a part of it. It also has As a Man Thinketh and The Science of Getting Rich in it as well, plus 20 extra lessons. $37, but it’s free in celebration. If you want to take one of these, it gives you a code that’s going to be good through April. So you can sign up for that. The mastery program, the difference is it just goes deeper and it also requires you to do tasks with each lesson. Like don’t move on to the next lesson until you’ve experimented with this little piece. Do this task, you know. And through that process, it takes you through two phases. Thomas has done phase one.

Host: It’s in the storage unit. I know exactly where it is. It’s called self-help.

Leslie: Phase one takes you through an experiment where you try the principles on something inconsequential. It’s supposed to be inconsequential. It’s not supposed to change your life yet. Thomas is an overachiever.

Speaker 6: It’s the proof that even at stage one, you can sell your house, demolish it, and get a new house.

Trevan: And you can get a white Toyota Sienna.

Leslie: So that first phase takes you through that first experiment and we set it up like a scientific experiment where we show you how to keep the controls, and there’s this one variable, which are your thoughts. And with that inconsequential goal, we help you have that success, and then you’re thinking, oh man, if I can do that with this thing that doesn’t matter to anyone or me or anything, like it’s something goofy. Carrie, my assistant, she wanted to see money fall from the sky, and she did. It was the weirdest thing. It’s on my blog. You can read about it. Ken, he wanted to have a duck approach him. That was a fun story. Something where you don’t have emotional history around things that, you know, ducks never approach me. You pick something that there’s no history. It’s just random. Like, I want to see three trucks in a row, red, white, and blue, whatever. That was a cool one.

Speaker 5: I just read the livestock on the blog.

Leslie: Oh, oh yeah. She’s living in Thailand right now, I think so. Thailand right now. And she sees people carrying weird things on motorbikes.

Collin Jr.: All the time.

Leslie: And she’s like, okay, I’ve seen this weird thing. I’ve seen that weird thing. I’ve seen whatever. I want to see livestock. I want to see someone carrying livestock. She’s like, chickens don’t count because they’re everywhere. And so at the end of her experiment, she’s like, it hasn’t happened yet. And she’s choosing to think the way the class trains her to. And finally she saw it and she posted a picture of these pigs on this motor... you know, carrying them. Pigs on a moped. So anyway, that’s phase one. Phase two, you pick something that does have meaning in your life. Like, okay, here’s how I want to change my life. And now that I know I can do it with pigs on a motorbike, what can I do with my life? So that’s the mastery program. That’s the difference. This one doesn’t require you to do things along the way. It just kind of teaches the principles.

Speaker 8: But I did this one first before I started Mindset Mastery. And it helps so much. Like, because of the eCourse, that’s how we got into the house we’re in right now, you know, and then I decided I better learn more. And that’s when I went on.

Trevan: Will you write that down for me? I’ll write that down.

Speaker 8: But yeah, that’s from that course. It really helped me really start our relationship changing. I mean, so many things.

Leslie: I’ll also tell you that we’ve been doing the Mindset Mastery course for now... I think we’re now over 10 years. I think it was 2008 when we opened that up. And it was a manual, a 300-page manual. We have one in the car that you can look at. Like a 300-page manual with some workbooks and some CDs and a DVD and a journal and instructions on how to use it and everything. And it takes you... it’s like a 12-week program that most people take longer. But that’s $847 for that class. And my mentors are like, you know, it needs to be $2,000. And we spent over $150,000 in training to learn the principles that are in it. And so I was trying to make it a form like $847 is going to be a stretch for a lot of people. We do have Black Friday sales that bring it down. But a few years back, we put it online in a digital version where you could go through the lessons online. And that’s $197 for six months’ access. It’s a three-month program, but we give you six months to finish it. And that’s $197. Recently, we added a guided program because people going through it on their own—some people are really good at self-study. Others want someone to be accountable to, like, oh, I’ve got to check in, I’ve got to do my homework, whatever. And so just in January we opened what’s called the guided program. And that’s what they were talking about earlier, where you’re in the online version, but you’ve got an expert guide taking you through each lesson. And then you come together in a group of 12 people on Zoom online from all over the world, people checking in and talking about their week so that they’ve got this accountability. That’s $497. It’s kind of like the pathway price for a class, right? But the reason I tell you all that is because we’re super, super excited. We just opened a new way to make it even more affordable for people who can’t afford $197 or $497 or $847, like the sevens. I don’t even know what that’s about. It’s just... seven laws. Huh?

Collin Jr.: Seven laws.

Leslie: Seven laws, that’s why. Seven days.

Collin Jr.: Seven days. There you go.

Leslie: It’s biblical.

Collin Jr.: It is.

Leslie: It’s significant. What’s that?

Speaker 7: Is it seven, like the perfect number?

Leslie: Seven is the perfect number. I’ve got a number here. Hang on. So the new way that we have, and we used to have this years ago, but it was a month-to-month access to the online. We had it built so that for a low monthly payment, you could just take as long as you need to or as short as you need to if you want to be super ambitious and try to do it in 12 weeks. You know, that’s three months with this deal. But it started getting outdated, the platform we built it on. And it was getting clunky and frustrating. And it was frustrating to us trying to maintain it. And so we moved it over to a new, better system. But like everything broke in the transition. And it’s taken us four years or so?

Trevan: Years.

Leslie: Years to get it working again. And we just, I think we’re there. I think we’re there. And so now if you want to do the online mastery course month-to-month, which is only $10 more than the foundational, but it’s a month-to-month thing, and then you just cancel when you’re done. We have people that finish the course and they don’t cancel because they want to review it or they want to start it and do it again. We have people go through it more than once. They get to this place and they’re like, okay, I want to do it again for the next level. Take their life to the next level or change this other thing about their life. So I just wanted to make that announcement that that’s new. We’re excited about that, that that’s finally open again.

Trevan: That option though, the month-to-month isn’t available for the guided. It’s just the self-guided.

Leslie: That’s the self thing. So the difference between the 847, the big package, is that at the midterm, if you have the $847, then you work with me personally on the statement that gets you into phase two, that helps you work. So I work with you personally on that.

Speaker 8: And you have the materials. And you have the materials.

Leslie: It becomes a permanent part of your success library. It doesn’t go away when your access expires. So does anybody have any questions?

Speaker 4: I just, I want to put a testimonial.

Leslie: Okay, speak up.

Speaker 4: If anyone is thinking or doubting or wondering or whatever, I used to be a success coach. I was exposed to As a Man Thinketh and Science of Getting Rich, Think Big, Think and Grow Rich, Covey stuff, Og Mandino stuff, all kinds of stuff like that. I have an MBA as well. And one of the biggest challenges I had with all this stuff, even being a success coach, was the fear of priestcraft. I felt like there was a lot of stuff that was out there that was bordering on priestcraft, if not going over the edge into priestcraft. One of the reasons why I love Leslie’s stuff is because it’s not there. If you’ve felt anything tonight, one thing I know I felt from her through her writing, through her podcast, through everything I’ve been exposed to, there’s humility and the gospel is there. She talks about the atonement. You don’t hear that in The Secret. You don’t hear that when people talk about the law of attraction. You don’t hear that in Science of Getting Rich or James Allen. I mean, they kind of maybe suggest it a little bit, but Leslie goes there. She quotes prophets. She quotes scripture. And it’s not like the money part that she just did was like... I’ve heard money pitches from lots of different programs, and nobody does it as humbly and as no-nonsense-ly as Leslie does. And there’s stuff that she gives away for free that is awesome. So I don’t know how much more I can boost up Leslie, but she’s awesome. At least go read Jackrabbit Factor if you really are curious about it. And like for me and for our family, it’s been, like seriously, it’s been a miracle. And yes, I promise you, we want to finish the second phase, but it’s your fault. If you didn’t teach us all this good stuff in the first phase, then we wouldn’t be in the situation where we couldn’t even have time to finish the second phase. But I just wanted to thank you, Leslie, for going through all the stuff that you went through and being humble enough to put it together and to share that with the world, to put yourself out there like that. Because like I said, I feel like I’ve been exposed to a lot of stuff, some far-out-there stuff, metaphysical stuff, all that kind of stuff. Yours is so pragmatic and so spiritual and so systematic. It gets all these things that there’s bits and pieces missing in other programs that are good. They don’t have everything. I feel like your stuff really, really has everything. So that’s... I don’t know how much better of a testimony I can give you. That’s my testimony of her. Amen.

Collin Jr.: Thank you.

Trevan: I would say Leslie would come to me over the years with that look, and I’d be like, oh, here we go again. She’d say, I want to tell people about this experience, share this story. And I’m like, oh, not that one, not that one. That’s too embarrassing. It really makes you look terrible. Okay, it’s true, whatever. So I’m like, okay, you know, it’s going to help people. And she’s like, yeah, it’s going to help people. All right. So yeah, I mean, credit Leslie for that, just being vulnerable and open about our dirty laundry. And the feedback that we’ve gotten from so many people is that that’s what they appreciate, is that she shares the struggles and the challenges.

Leslie: I mean, this is ongoing. I’m still figuring things out. And this is what gets me super excited about it, is that I’m going on 18 years, 19 years now teaching this, and I’m still learning new things about it. This concept of the passion of Christ and that peace counts is a huge epiphany for me, that okay, does it have to be intense? No. Peace, peace.

Speaker 9: I want to just give credit for Denise because the last few months I’ve been struggling a lot. And give credit to you because everything she’s learned from you, she gives right back to me. That’s the fourth way of getting this information. But everything she’ll talk about, oh, we did this this week, and I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m going through that right now. How do I do this? I mean, I’ve had two major surgeries in the last 10 months. And like I said, my husband is a battalion commander. I don’t know if you have any idea what that is.

Leslie: It sounds important.

Speaker 9: It’s very, very stressful. And six kids at home. And I started going full-time student, and I was really excited with Karen and doing all these other things, and my plate became a buffet. And I was struggling with the fact where I’m like, I need to be released from all of this because my soul can’t take it anymore. And I was struggling with just saying, Carmen, I can’t do this anymore. You know, and of course I conflicted with God and saying, oh, I’m quitting You, but I’m not just the calling, you know. But it was still a struggle to say I’m done. And so for the last few years it wasn’t like this. It was highs and lows. And whether it was medication, then it made me bleh. And I’m not a mad person.

Leslie: I can tell. Yeah.

Speaker 9: And I like to feel, and whether it’s aggressively happy or sad, I want to feel those emotions because that’s how I run. But I was getting so angry at everything. Just angry and disappointed. And so being mom and wife and student, I was just like, I can’t do this anymore. I just don’t want to do it. And, you know, she was like, no, you’ve got this. You can do this. You’re doing great, you know. And I said, I don’t know. I just don’t know if I can. And so even just your little... every clip that you were saying, she would just... no, I have not read your books because I wanted it raw for her, emotions, you know. And she said, okay, so your first lesson is change your story. Change your story. And I was just like, but I’m always getting this negative stuff from everybody else, always coming at me and shooting me down or whatever it is. I mean, how can I just shut them out? You know, she goes, just do it. You got this. Just, what do you want to see? And I was like, I want to see the trash in the garbage can. You know? And so one of the other things that she was telling me, she goes, why? Why do you need to see that trash in the garbage can?

Speaker 3: Who cares?

Speaker 9: Leave it on the counter. Maybe someone will pick it up. And if they don’t, who cares? She had to apply a lot of concepts with me. I’m a quick study, though. That’s her personality. But definitely, that’s why I’m here too, studying applied behavioral science, eventually to get my master’s in school counseling. I want these tools to go for students. A lot of kids nowadays, they have so much self-doubt, and that’s one of the things, is changing that mindset.

Leslie: Awesome.

Speaker 9: Awesome.

Leslie: Thank you so much.

Trevan: I think there’s some more books coming from you guys.

Collin Jr.: Well, I tell you, when we do, she didn’t either.

Trevan: She didn’t want to write any of those books.

Speaker 5: Hush. But you made her.

Trevan: She wanted to sleep, you know, so she had to write so she could sleep.

Speaker 9: So you were trying to work through us when I was upstairs? You sleep, she wrote it.

Leslie: I’ll tell you this. When we do stuff like this, and we have over the years, we always kind of gather friends that we cross paths with and have updates from for years to come. I mean, we did a little meeting like this up in Idaho. And my daughter, the one with all the names, she was about seven years old. And we were going to sell books there, and she wanted to make little bookmarks for the books. So she took the image of the book and just kind of scrunched it this way so it was all stretched funny, and then laminated them. And those became the bookmarks. And so she would sit at a table outside of the event. This one was in a room in the basement of a hospital in Idaho Falls. Anyway, so people are seeing her, this cute seven-year-old, selling bookmarks. And they were so gracious. They were $1 each. And she was signing them, you know. Super cute. Fast forward to about two years ago, she’s preparing to go on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And a year before she left, or before she would leave, she was diagnosed with a medical condition that needed to get under control before she could. And that just kind of threw us all for a loop. And so a friend recommended a functional MD three hours away that could help her. So they start working together. She gets to where she can go and she starts her mission. Well, was it during the mission or before she left? The doctor sends me an email and said, hey, I just found this. And it was a picture of one of her bookmarks that he had purchased when he happened to be in Idaho at an event where we were speaking. And this is her doctor. And while she’s on her mission, she’s struggling some more. And he was in Thatcher, Arizona. She was serving in Salt Lake City West. And it was touch and go. There were a lot of times where we thought she was coming home. There was anxiety, there was depression, Hashimoto’s, and everything that comes with that. So week by week it was just a miracle that she was able to make it another week. She wasn’t always functioning very well and struggling. But this had been a passion of hers her whole life. And at one point where it was looking like she may come home or she wasn’t gonna be able to continue, her doctor was expanding and he opened an office in Park City. And about that time, she got transferred into the ASL, which she wasn’t originally called to ASL, but she got transferred to the ASL program, which spans about three missions in that area and included Park City. So she was able to visit her home doctor while she was on her mission and get that little extra support, you know? And so I just look forward to seeing what stories and what kind of experiences and what changes happen. And some people, they’ll email me and say, oh, 10 years ago I was at this thing and here’s what’s happened since, and I’m ready to do Mindset Mastery, you know? Sometimes that’s how it goes. But we’re just glad that we were able to be here and meet you and see you in person, 3D, you know? Some of you, we’re friends on Facebook. But thanks for being here, and I hope that this has been beneficial to you and helpful. Thank you. Let’s give it up, a round of applause.

Host: This concludes today’s episode of the Rare Faith Podcast. You’ve been listening to Leslie Householder, author of The Jackrabbit Factor, Portal to Genius, and Hidden Treasures: Heaven’s Astonishing Help with Your Money Matters. All three books can be downloaded free at ararekindoffaith.com. So tell your friends and join Leslie again next time as she goes even deeper into the principles that will help you change your life.