Get Into Your Abundance Zone with Ephraim Olschewski

A Personal Note from Orion

There are very few people in life where when you have a conversation with them, your whole world changes. And one of the biggest reasons this may happen is not because of what they say, but simply because they know how to listen. Listening is such a powerful tool, one that unfortunately in this digital age, many of us forget how to do – we are constantly distracted by the buzzing of our notifications. But what would happen if you were able to connect on a deeper level, by truly listening to others, and having yourself be listened to?

Ephraim Olschewski is a life coach who works with some incredible people, and charges hundreds of thousands of dollars in doing so. He has a very special ability to listen on a deeper level, and create transformation so that you get into a zone of abundance and attract whatever you want in life.

In this Episode

[04:57] – Ephraim starts off by telling the audience a bit about himself, leading with the important fact that he’s a husband and a father.
[05:57] – What sets Ephraim apart from other coaches?
[08:17] – Ephraim talks about the importance of listening, which he says is an incredibly important but very lacking skill.
[10:39] – What is “the zone” that Ephraim has just mentioned? He answers, then talks about how to get into the zone.
[14:16] – We hear about how often Ephraim gets into the zone. He points out that you can easily notice when you’re not in the zone, and explains that transcendental meditation has helped him get into the zone more frequently.
[17:25] – Ephraim estimates how much he has invested in his own training, development, and education, and explains how much his coaching services cost.
[19:58] – How does Ephraim change his clients’ lives?
[22:40] – Ephraim offers advice on how to build a better relationship with the self, and recommends Byron Katie.
[25:50] – How has Ephraim’s relationship with himself changed since he was younger, and what kind of relationship does he have with himself now?
[29:03] – The trait that Ephraim consistently finds in the most successful people is being in action.
[31:44] – Orion and Ephraim talk about the emotion underlying the actions that successful people take. Orion points out the difference between action coming from fear versus abundance.
[34:38] – Does Ephraim use a lot of social media in his business?
[38:16] – Ephraim discusses how he got his first clients when he started out as a coach. Rather than him looking for them, his clients found him.
[41:19] – Orion responds to what Ephraim has been saying about money, saying that she can’t relate to the way he sees money and abundance.
[44:00] – Ephraim walks Orion through an exercise surrounding money.
[48:10] – Ephraim offers another way to work through your ideas about money, which involves writing down all of your thoughts and feelings about it.
[51:43] – Our relationship with happiness, rather than our circumstances, may be what needs to change to allow us to feel happy.
[54:27] – Ephraim uses a specific example to illustrate what he means about our relationship with happiness.
[56:49] – Instead of “wanting” money, what would Ephraim suggest?
[57:45] – What are Ephraim’s three top tips for living a stellar life? 1. Practice transcendental meditation 2. Consistency. 3. Surround yourself with people who bring out the best in you.
[58:54] – Where can people find Ephraim if they want to get in touch with him?

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hey, it’s Orion. Welcome to Stellar Life podcast. I’m really happy that you’re here. Before I’m introducing my amazing guest, I would like to show you something that I’m doing, it’s really special, last year I launched a challeng‏‏Awaken Your Inner Goddess Seven Day Challenge. We launched the challenge before Valentine’s Day. About 450 women took it, and since last year, I had women, oh my God, mind blowing breakthroughs, one after the other, where womean got married and invited me, got into extraordinary relationships, felt amazing, felt more like their goddess part was shining and they attracted more abundance, and it’s really cool. It’s 7 days, 15 minutes a day and it’s just unbelievable the amount of transformation that happened after 7 days of taking 15 minutes a day to do something really, really special for yourself. I haven’t relaunched it yet, but in the meantime, you can join the group Awaken Your Inner Goddess Seven Day Challenge, and just get in the group and get to know the other ladies. Everybody there, they’re very beautiful from the inside out, amazing, supportive. I’m sorry guys, this is not for you. I love you dearly but this is a safe place for women to really express themselves. Join the group, Awaken Your Inner Goddess Seven Day Challenge. In order to get in, the only thing that you need is to have a decent profile. I’ll make sure that there are no fake profiles and that the woman has a profile picture, and I also will ask you three questions that you need to answer. If you are a real woman, you answered the question, and you have good intentions, you will get in the group and you will be able to take on the challenge. Join us. Awaken Your Inner Goddess Seven Day Challenge. Today’s guest is Ephraim Olschewski. He is a master listener and a creator. He’s a sought after coach for executives, entrepreneurs, and highly committed people around the world. He had the privilege of working with some of the most powerful leaders alive. Honestly, I know him personally. He’s a good friend of mine, and he is brilliant. Every once in a blue moon, you meet somebody that is really very special in his thinking, in his abilities to transform people. He is one of those people, super special, super smart. Today’s conversation is very, very interesting. I know you will enjoy it because I did. We started with one topic, we moved to another, but it was all about listening deeper, getting in that zone of abundance, and brilliance, and attracting whatever you want in your life. Now my dear, onto the show. By the way, the group is on Facebook, just to clarify. Awaken Your Inner Goddess Seven Day Challenge is a Facebook group, so join us. Hey Ephraim, and welcome to Stellar Life podcast.

‏‏Aye, thanks for having me.

‏‏Yeah, thank you for being here. I’m very excited because we had many conversations and every time I had a conversation with you, I left with something great and even with a transformation. Sometimes you host in events, and I’ve attended one of your events and it was mind blowing. It was really good.

‏‏Yeah, thank you.

‏‏Before we start, why don’t you just tell our audience a bit about yourself?

‏‏I think probably the most important thing that I’d say about me is I’m a husband and a father.

‏‏And everybody just went awww.

‏‏That is the most important thing to me. That’s really what my life is about. As you know, we just had twin girls, 11 or 12 days ago.

‏‏Congratulations again!

‏‏Something like that. It’s been amazing. That’s fun. I am also a coach. I work with highly committed people, I help them get more of what they want. In some cases I help them get less of what they don’t want. Also, I, as you said, from time to time, we’ve done events or intensives or courses, and another one coming up in January actually. That would be in Salt Lake City, in my old home. I would be looking forward to that. We might talk a little bit about that, who knows? Thank you.

‏‏For sure, for sure. What separated you from other coaches?

‏‏I think I’ve worked with some of the best coaches in the world, personally. I think when we talk about coaching, it’s such an interesting thing because coaching is one of those things you can wake up one morning and decide, hey, I’m going to be a coach, then you’re a coach. You can’t do that in a lot of other professions. You can’t wake up tomorrow and decide you’re going to be a dentist and go start practicing dentistry.

Coaching is one of those things you can wake up one morning and decide, hey, I’m going to be a coach, then you’re a coach. Click To Tweet

‏‏That wouldn’t be very good.

‏‏Coaching’s like that. The other thing that’s interesting about coaching is that having a piece of paper or some kind of a certification. There’s companies out there who do that. That doesn’t make you qualified as a coach either.

‏‏I totally agree.

‏‏Yeah. There’s plenty of companies that will give you a piece of paper and they’ll say you’re a certified life coach. I tell people, “I’m not a life coach because I’m not qualified to be a life coach. I’ve never ever been a Yoga instructor, so I couldn’t be a life coach.” But I think the thing about me that is different than what I think about in the work that I do and I can’t speak for all coaches obviously, but when I work with somebody, I listen to them in a way that they haven’t been listened to. We really get to the bottom, really at the heart of what is going on for them, what’s holding them back, what’s driving them, what’s having them not get where they want to go, what’s gotten them where they are today, and really getting to the bottom of that.

‏‏I’m in a mastermind and yesterday we had a call, and we actually talked about listening. We get into the Zoom Rooms with a partner and one of the exercises was to say something but have the other person completely ignoring you. I practice that with my friend, and while she was talking and I was looking in the mirror, smelling my shoes. When you don’t listen, the other person, they shrink. People need to be listened to more. How do you fine tune your listening? Were you born with it? Or did you develop it?

‏‏I don’t know. I don’t remember how I was born. What you’re saying though is so important because this idea of listening and actually being a very effective listener is, in my opinion, one of the most lacking skills. If not the most important, for sure one of the most important, that I think that the person could have to have success in their life. Mostly, I think, what we want to talk about when we talk about listening, it’s not usually that obvious, when you’re out at lunch with somebody or you’re talking with them or even if you’re on the phone or whatever it might be. It’s not usually as obvious that you’re ignoring them, and putting on makeup and looking in the mirror and just totally ignoring what they’re doing.

‏‏I was just joking. I was like, oh, what an opportunity for me to be a joker. Let me try.

‏‏Obviously. You and I have that in common, I think. It’s much more subtle than that. Most of us are pretty good at looking like we’re listening or pretending to listen.

‏‏Yes, that’s so true.

‏‏Most of the time, we’re just listening to respond.

Most of the time, we’re just listening to respond.

‏‏Especially men.

‏‏I cannot comment on that. We’re actually listening to respond. What are we listening to? I think if most of us get honest with ourselves, we’re probably listening to the voice that’s going on in our head rather than what the person that’s speaking is actually saying. Probably one of the first things you have to do is get honest about what am I listening to, am I listening to what’s going on in my head or am I listening to what’s being said, and really be with the person who’s speaking.

‏‏When you coach, do you say you’re in the zone and what is the zone?

‏‏What I just said is probably a good segue into it and that is really for me, if you’re in the zone or what they might call being in the flow state or anything like that, for me it’s about in a way, simply put, being out of your head. Being in flow with the natural state-things are already happening. Most of the time people are missing that, being up in their heads, thinking about it and analyzing it. Being in the zone, I think, is a place where you disappear and there’s just what’s happening and the sense of me being there is not really there. I would say anybody who has a level of mastery in what they do, whether it be a really great coach or a professional athlete or a CEO. If they have a level of mastery of what they’re doing, they really aren’t there, there’s no sense of themselves there. I think that’s being in the zone.

‏‏How do you get into zone?

‏‏You can’t make it happen. Isn’t that the interesting thing about it?

‏‏I really want to make it happen.

‏‏I know.

‏‏I want instant gratification and I want a magical pill for everything in my life, and I want a manual for my life.

‏‏I think they make pills like that. They make pills like that, you take them, and I think they give you the sense of being in the zone. But it isn’t really duplicatable or replicable in the long run. In professional sports, athletes say that you have to let the zone come to you.

‏‏Okay.

‏‏Being really present, right here, I’m intent, I’m focused on what’s happening right now in this moment, not what happened even two seconds ago and not what will happen in five minutes, or not what’s going to happen in five second, but right here, right now and then all of a sudden, the zone comes to you.

‏‏The last time I remember myself being in the zone, where it was really vivid, was when I did my first Aikido test. I was with my partner, and it was, I swear to God Ephraim, it was like a movie where I was doing the movement and I saw everything. I could see what’s happening before it was happening. It was almost like an alternate reality, and it was so cool. But you say just let the zone come to you, I’m like well, it’s not coming, hello? Been waiting for a while here.

‏‏I’m wondering when you were describing that, if there was this moment when you thought I’m in the zone?

‏‏Oh, no. It was analyzing it afterwards. I was just, oh what just happened? That was awesome.

‏‏If you think you’re in the zone, you’re probably not in the zone. It’s like yeah, I’m in the zone and it’s like oh, I was in the zone. Right then, when I had the thought, I’m in the zone. I think it just doesn’t work that way. It’s not something that you can make happen. Of course there’s practices and things you can put into place. Isn’t one of the purposes of meditation to be able to get into that state, and be there more frequently?

‏‏Right. Do you meditate?

‏‏I do.

‏‏What’s your habits? How many times a day do you get in the zone or the zone gets to you?

‏‏I need a notepad that I carry around with me. And I can go, oh, I was in the zone. The zone tracker, it’s an app.

‏‏Zone tracker, sounds good.

‏‏I think the interesting thing about being ‘in the zone’ is that you really notice when you’re not in the zone, at least for me. And then okay, how do I get in the zone? You know you’re not in the zone when you’re stressed out, and you’re anxious, and you’re all worried about the past or the future. That’s not the zone. That’s not the zone I want to be in. Noticing what my actual state is, that’s a good start. And then, for me, I practice TM, Transcendental Meditation. That’s 20 minutes, twice a day. I wake up in the morning, I meditate for 20 minutes and then some time in the afternoon, I meditate again for 20 minutes. That’s probably made the single biggest difference for me in my state of consciousness. That’s really what we’re talking about, the zone is just a state of consciousness that we can get into.

‏‏How do you meditate? If somebody is listening and they want to meditate just like you.

‏‏Learn TM. If you ask any of my clients, I think most of them now are practicing TM, probably because I won’t leave them alone about it. You just got to learn TM, they’re like, okay fine. We’ll go learn. You know who Ray Dalio is, the hedge fund manager, he started Bridgewater, he’s the most successful hedge fund manager ever. He started Bridgewater in the ‘70s and they grew that into $160 billion under management or something like that. He’s been practicing TM for 40 something years now. I read a quote from him that was a little bit older, he said, “I’ve been doing TM for 35 years.” This was maybe 10 or 12 years ago. This guy is pretty successful, worth $16 billion dollars or something like that. He said whatever success he’s had, that TM has made the single biggest difference in that success. That’s a pretty big claim for a guy who I’ve really admired and have an enormous amount of respect for. I thought I probably should go learn this.

‏‏Right.

‏‏There are centers all over the world that teach TM. I think that’s made the biggest difference for me. I’ve invested a lot into my own training, development, and education and I’ve sought out some of the best coaches that I could find.

‏‏When you say a lot, can you just give our listeners a concept of what a lot means to you?

‏‏Yeah. I think in the last 10 years without sitting down and adding up every dollar, but I would say somewhere in the ballpark of a half a million dollars on the last 10 year.

‏‏Right. This also the amount that people pay you to coach with you.

‏‏Yeah. When somebody works with me, typically, it’s at least a year. It’s $100,000 to work together for a year. Some people might go, wow, that’s a lot of money. And I think if we talk to the people who worked with me, they would tell you it’s a bargain.

‏‏Okay, tell me why.

‏‏When I work with somebody, for me, I can’t work with somebody who I don’t, or I won’t anyway, work with somebody who I don’t really respect them. For me it’s such an intimate process and relationship. There’s things that I know about some of my clients that nobody knows about them. Things that they haven’t told anybody. To be able to work with people in that kind of environment, and then we’ll go from something that would be too personal to even share in a setting like this, even as an example, and then to go to something… The next week, we’re talking about growing their business, how did they double their revenue in 2018.

‏‏It’s all related.

‏‏It’s so interconnected. There’s no separation between that. I think if somebody was thinking, okay, I’m looking for a coach, people say to me,what are the top things I need to do? And I say, TM and get a coach. If you could only do two things, just do those two things. But what’s interesting is that it’s very difficult for people to put into meditation practice, even if it’s only 20 minutes, twice a day. Start with what you can start with. You can do 5 minutes, 10 minutes. There is a saying that if you’re too busy to meditate for 20 minutes a day, then you should meditate for an hour. I get more time, you know when you’re in the zone, you’re more effective and more efficient and you get more done. I think about the time that I invest into that, I get more time back.

Start with what you can start with. Click To Tweet

‏‏Correct. How did you change your client’s lives?

‏‏I think I would have to say I work on the philosophy and it’s just my own philosophy for me, for my own personal life. If I had all the business success in the world and all the money in the world, and my life home was a failure, then I would say that the whole thing is really a failure. Because to me, that’s the important part. My relationship with my wife, my relationship with my kids, and everything else is secondary to that. When I work with somebody, it’s really on that foundation. Obviously there’s an ROI for somebody who invests that kind of money in a relationship like this. It’s really about my relationship with myself, my relationship with the people in my life who are important to me, whether that be a spouse, or children. Then if I had a business and most of the people who I work with there are entrepreneurs or they’re high level executives, and they’re responsible for people performing. That’s really the foundation but people who I could tell you story after story. I think what I’d say I’m probably most proud of is the people who I work with, the clients that I have. It’s the relationships. It’s the relationships with their spouses, with their children, with their employees. The way that that changes and who they become for those people in their lives that they really care about.

‏‏Yeah. They take a stand for themselves.

‏‏Yeah. It’s like, oh, they get to make a lot of money or something. That part’s really great. To me, at one point in my career that was all about that for me. Everything about working with me was all about the money and I would say you can make more money and I hope you make more money. There’s an aspect of that because there is an ROI financially, you think that there has to be. But those relationships, I think that’s what it comes down to as the most important thing, at least for me. Of course, anyone who would work with me would align with that or they’d go that guy’s crazy. Money is the most important thing. Then, that’s fine. That just wouldn’t be somebody who would want to work with me.

‏‏I love what you’re saying. What will be your approach or tips on building a better relationship with self?

‏‏One resource that we could talk about is The Work from Byron Katie.

‏‏Oh, I love her. Let’s talk about that.

‏‏I love Katie for a long time. A mutual friend of ours, Robert, or I call him The Pope.

‏‏I love The Pope as well. Robert Pope.

‏‏That’s right. He is really the one that turned me onto Katie’s work. For anyone who doesn’t know about it, the Four Questions. You just Google the work from Byron Katie and you’ll find all sorts of amazing free resources about it. I think the most effective meditation, because that awareness and that expanded consciousness, that state that I get in when I am practicing meditation, that transforms my relationship with myself. From that place, I can start to do things like The Work from Katie. I think about if my mind was a garden, I would want to plant things that I would want to grow in there and I’d also want to pull out the weeds and the things that I didn’t want growing in there. I think that’s what the work is so good at doing, is seeing what are the things that are growing there, what are the thoughts and the things that I believe that just aren’t true and getting them out of there, or at least that I stop believing the things that aren’t true.

‏‏Just to clarify, Byron Katie’s work is all about questioning your thinking. She has four questions, and at the turn around, which is the fifth question. It’s just about answering to yourself is what I’m thinking right now serving me and what would life be like if I did not have these thoughts? The moment you start questioning your thoughts, you can see that your thoughts are just thoughts. Because you’re the one who thought them, you could change them.

‏‏Yeah. At least I can stop believing them, the ones that aren’t true. I don’t know if it has to be any more complicated than that, actually. Just consistently doing The Work, and then there’s this turn around. This who would I be without the thought?

‏‏I love it. I love that question, who would I be blank. Who would I be if I think this? Who would I be if I see myself as that? I love this question. It’s thought provoking. It’s powerful.

‏‏For me it’s always like free, or something like that. I’d be free.

‏‏I would be free!

‏‏Yeah. Who doesn’t want to be free? I’m constrained and unconstricted and have a real freedom and peace. You might even call that being in the zone.

‏‏You might. How do you think your relationship with yourself changed since you were younger? What type of relationship with self do you have right now?

‏‏Growing, and expanding, and a growing one. I think that the way that I look at my relationship with myself is that I want to look at how is the world showing up for me? How do I see myself? Which is really what we’re talking about, because I do see myself a certain way. How do I see myself, and I’m constantly, daily, looking at how is it that I’m seeing myself and how is it that I actually want to be seeing myself. And then bringing those things into alignment, and usually, whatever it is that I’m seeing about myself that isn’t true, doing the work on that, and then how is it that I actually want to be seeing myself and then bringing how I would want to see myself, bringing my actions into alignment with that.

‏‏How do you want to see yourself?

‏‏Powerful. It’s very masculine, isn’t it?

‏‏I love that word too. I want to be powerful.

‏‏Yeah. I don’t mean powerful like how a lot of people think about power probably. There’s a distinction from power and force. Hawkins did this really incredible work around power versus force. I’m not really diving into all of that. It just meant for me, I’ll simplify it as that force is the negation of power. It’s anything that’s controlling or dominating or manipulating. And then power is in the world of influence. It’s free of attachment. Power is my ability to translate intention into a reality. That’s a quote from Werner Erhard, he said that, “Power is the velocity with what you translate intention into reality.” When I say how I want to see myself as powerful, I mean who I am for myself as somebody who can create an intention and then go fulfill on the intention. It’s so extraordinary. We take it for granted because it’s normal for us. It’s like that’s what we do, we’re the only being in existence that we can go create an intention from nothing and then go organize ourselves to fulfill on the intention. That’s really an extraordinary thing.

‏‏You’re talking about manifestation and quick manifestation.

‏‏Yeah. I think sometimes when we say manifestation, people think we’re talking about magic. It’s not magic, it’s creation. It’s all created.

‏‏Creation is magic. That’s how I see it.

‏‏I love it.

‏‏You work with amazing people, super successful, what do you find are the traits of the most successful people?

‏‏Action. They’re people who are in action. They’re up to something. They’re up to something and they’re in action about the thing that’s important to them in their lives.

‏‏Sometimes I feel like I’m in action. I do a lot of busy work, and it’s almost like pushing against a mountain. That’s what it feels like sometimes. Like there is no instant manifestation and the magic of creation, there are just freaking tons of action and hard work. When I get into those holes, what would you recommend doing beside just work and TM?

‏‏It’s like you know my answer. You knew I was going to say TM.

‏‏Tell me! Give me the blue pill.

‏‏It’s like you knew I was going to say TM. There seems to be some sort of a distinction then of what kind of action. There is that action that’s busy work, that I get to feel busy. I had a client who was in sales. He’d call me up for our coaching call. I’d say how are you, and he’s say, I’m so busy. After this went on for a couple for weeks, I just said, what do you get out of being busy?

‏‏The badge of honor. I am busy. Oh my God. Look at my life, I’m so busy.

‏‏For a lot of people, we think that is really great. Like wow, I’m so busy. It’s in our culture right now, we have people out talking about the hustle and the grind and staying busy and working 20 hours a day and how can you get by on three hours of sleep. It’s just not my thing. I just think there’s a better way to do it, or at least another way. A way that I would prefer to do it. Action is where am I getting my action from. That’s the question I’d ask you. Where is the action coming from? Is the action really a core action that’s going drive forward the thing that you’re committed to? Because it’s very easy to engage in a bunch of surface actions that won’t actually produce the results that we want but we get to feel like we’re really busy. I ask this question of what’s the next most powerful action I can take? I would know that based on what I’m committed to creating, what my intention for what I’m creating is and then what would be the next most powerful action I could take? Then if I use that as a compass to make all the decisions that I make about what I do and what I don’t do, that really works for me.

‏‏I also think that because we live in this what I call magical universe, beyond the next most powerful action, there is the emotion. Is this core action coming from fear or from abundance? Because sometimes our vision can get foggy. If we really want to achieve something, we get stressed and we get into a place of fear, like of abundance and then yeah, this is the core action I need to take but it won’t work as well as if you’re coming from a place of abundance. Can you talk a little bit about that?

‏‏I think you just said it perfectly. If you’re foggy, stressed out, anxious or in this fear place, it’s just really hard to be effective from that place. I heard Jerry Seinfeld who was talking about his daughter when she was 13, he was talking about her doing her homework. I think he just really nailed it for me with the way the he described that, the visual just worked for me, because he says she’s doing her homework, and she’s all stressed out, and it’s late at night. He says something like, “Why don’t you just go do TM and then come back and do your homework.” She says, “Because I’m so busy I don’t have time to do it.” He’s like, “You’re not going to get anything done in the state that you’re in right now.” I think if our action is coming from this foggy, anxious, stressed out place, and most of us are just kidding ourselves, we don’t actually know what it’s like to not live with stress. For me, before having the consistent practice of TM, I would’ve said I’m not stressed out. I had no idea how stressed out I was.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏I have nothing to compare it to. Because when you sleep, your cortisol levels are only resetting maybe 10% when you’re sleeping.

‏‏That’s it? Wow.

‏‏Yeah. That’s like if you’re really good, you’d be really good at sleeping. I think the average is more like 3% or 5% for 8 hours of sleep.

‏‏That’s terrible.

‏‏What happens is we have this compounding stress. You sleep and you get a little relief from a bit and the next day, it just keeps compounding. It’s not that I said you can’t function with it, but it gets harder, it just gets more and more difficult if you don’t have a way to actually get to zero. We have a stress that I think most of us. I think that’s part of what creates that anxiety and the fear. When you’re stressed, that happens. A lot of people would say, “I’m not really that stressed out.” I think that we just don’t know. We don’t really have a good thing to compare it to. We don’t really know what it would be like to not be stressed out.

‏‏Yup. Do you use a lot of social media for your business?

‏‏Actually, Stephan posted a video on Facebook, ironically.

‏‏Stephan is my husband, by the way.

‏‏Yeah. Earlier this year, I think it was, and it was [Bill Mar [00:34:45] talking about the 60 minute thing that they did and how often we’re interacting with our phones. I was already on the fence thinking I’m probably wasting a lot of time on Facebook. I watched the video and I deleted Facebook and Instagram off my phone and that was it. It hasn’t been back on ever since. I haven’t missed that and it doesn’t seem to have missed me. I just realized, wow, that was an enormous amount of time that’s being wasted. I know for some people it’s a big part of their business, and that’s great.

‏‏Yeah. Like me, that’s why I can’t disconnect those social media. Everything I do is through social media. Damn you, social media. Do you have a website yet?

‏‏I don’t have a website. I don’t think I have ever had a website really.

‏‏So you built a multimillion dollar business with no website and no social media?

‏‏I have a Facebook account. I don’t remember the last time I posted something on there. About once a month, I will jump on Facebook on my computer and see what’s happening in the Facebook world. That’s about it. Anything else that’s really important, people tell me.

‏‏Oh, wow.

‏‏I don’t watch TV, I don’t watch the news.

‏‏Do you watch movies?

‏‏I like movies. Yeah, I like movies. Do you still have no Netflix?

‏‏No. We got it back.

‏‏You got it back. You’re back on the Netflix drug.

‏‏It’s a drug. It’s an addiction.

‏‏I have Netflix. I like Netflix.

‏‏I’m not watching it as much as I used to. Liar.

‏‏We need a liar button. You can insert that after, you can put it over the top. That’s great. I don’t have any problem with that kind of stuff. I’m not a big binge watcher anyway, I never have been. But I do enjoy it. My wife and I will watch a show at night sometimes or something. Yeah, I like it. I’m not trying to be superhuman or something.

‏‏You sound like a robot. Anomaly, you do everything opposite what every other marketer tells you to do, and you win the game of life, which is awesome and I’m like wow, how’d you do it? TM and Byron Katie. But there is something more! There must be something more.

‏‏I think maybe I’m just way too technically challenged. I’ve just never been much of a marketer. I heard marketing distinguished as that what you do to create selling opportunities.

‏‏That’s good then.

‏‏I don’t use social media to promote myself. As a coach, I think the only thing you really need as a coach, you just need to be a good coach, that’s it. That’s not necessarily true for all business. In some businesses, you really have to be great at marketing, and be really good at what you do, but if no one knows about it. But for me as a coach, I’m mostly not trying to work with a thousand people. I’m very selective about the one I work with. And the right people find me.

The only thing you really need as a coach, you just need to be a good coach, that’s it.

‏‏When you started as a coach, how did you get your clients?

‏‏It’s funny, they really found me.

‏‏It’s the TM thing, huh.

‏‏I was meditating and they came to me. I had somebody who I had met in an event, and we had a conversation and I said, “You have to work with me.” I wasn’t even coaching. I had another business and I was doing this other business and I’m like, “You have to work with me. You have to coach me.” I had a coach at the time and so we had this conversation and we ended up working together in a coaching relationship. And then I have somebody else who called me one day and he goes, “I got to work with you. You got to coach me.” Coaching is one of those things that found me. I didn’t go out looking for it, it really found me, it came to me.

‏‏Right. Another coaching question. How do you create a shift around beliefs and perception around money?

‏‏My answers are almost always the same to all of the questions which is we really have to get to the root of how am I seeing the thing that I’m dealing with right now. If somebody wanted to have a breakthrough around money, they would want to get to the root of how do I see money right now or what’s my relationship with money right now. I had this realization years ago, I used to wake up and I’d be all stressed out and worried about money, and if I was going to have enough, am I going to get enough of it today and am I going to get enough of it in two years, and am I going to get enough of it for next month.

‏‏I can’t imagine you having that stress.

‏‏Oh, it was very real. It all seemed very real. I just realized I’ve never done that with oxygen. I never woken up and thought, man, I got to save up my oxygen today so that I have enough of it for tomorrow. I got to have enough oxygen for the next two years, or when I’m 65, I got to save up oxygen so I have enough of it when I’m 65. I thought what’s the difference? The difference is my relationship with oxygen. Is that there’s just always enough, it’s just always there when I need it. I’ve been really fortunate, I haven’t had any kind of serious complication where I haven’t been able to breathe or to get enough oxygen. I know that’s a real thing. It’s just an analogy, somewhere analogies fail. But for me, I realize, my relationship with money was it was going to run out and there wasn’t going to be enough of it, and I needed to be concerned about it, and worried about it. I thought what if I had a relationship with money like I have with oxygen, what kind of a difference would that make? If I was thinking I just thought there’s just enough of it. It’s just there when I need it. Because that’s my experience with oxygen, it’s just always there. What I just said, does that make any sense?

‏‏What you just said sounds really like a fantasy to me. It sounds like, oh just think about it and I hear it from many gurus. And they’re like, oh think about it as oxygen. Get into a mindset of abandons, and it sounds like so far away. It doesn’t sound like I can relate to it. I don’t have this connecting cord between what you said and where me, myself personally, am right now with money and abundance. They say that God is an experience and not an idea. I think God, but I can feel God, and when I feel God, I know that the God exists. That’s not what I feel with the money part where it’s a thought, it sounds really beautiful, I can put it on a bumper sticker on the back of my car, but I can’t really relate to it.

‏‏Yeah, that’s great. Thank you. It’s great feedback. What was money like for you growing up?

‏‏For me? Horrible, missing.

‏‏Okay. You notice people, they grow up with a lot of money. I know a lot of people, when they grew up with a lot of money, they just seem to keep having a lot of it.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏I don’t know what the percentages are of people who actually make a jump from poor to middle class and from middle class to wealthy. But I’m guessing that most people stay in about, if they were born into poverty, most of them stay in poverty. If they’re born middle class, they stay in middle class. There seems to be this comfort zone or something like that for us around money.

‏‏Like a thermostat.

‏‏Yeah. We get too much of it we go to figure out to get rid of it. This is uncomfortable, I have too much of this stuff. But we also have a thermostat of what is not enough for us. That’ll keep going, we got to get more of this. I heard what I just said about money or some version of that years ago. I thought what you thought. That sounds really like a fantasy. It sounds nice, I have no idea how to get there though. I think the access to getting to there is to get to the, what is it that I believe about money. I think last year, I had a client, we were having a conversation. I said we’re going to do something together for the next 30 days, everyday we’re going to do the work on a belief about money.

‏‏Wow, everyday for 30 days.

‏‏And it was really fascinating, the sorts of things that came up. Can we do something around money, like you and I?

‏‏While I’m vulnerable and everybody’s going to listen to me? Yes, fine.

‏‏Okay, let’s do it.

‏‏Don’t judge me, people.

‏‏They’re going to judge you. It’s what they do.

‏‏Please judge me, don’t.

‏‏They’re going to judge you. Maybe they’ll judge you to be amazing. It’s really interesting, through being vulnerable, we really find we’re invulnerable, I think. That’s what I found.

‏‏That was very complicated.

‏‏Tell me why you want more money.

‏‏Why I want more money?

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏I want to buy my mom a house, and I want to be able to shop in Rodeo Drive.

‏‏Okay. I like how you slid the buy your mom a house thing first. I like that one.

‏‏I have to look a little more spiritual and conscious. And also, I feel like when you do have money, and even though money is not connected to your value and all that good stuff, people do judge you, people look at you differently. You can open more doors with money, you can help more people with money, you can do more for yourself and your family with money.

‏‏Okay. Is all of that true, what you just said?

‏‏Yes.

‏‏Can you know that it’s true?

‏‏No.

‏‏Where did the no come from?

‏‏Because I know what the next question is going to be. Do you know 100% that it’s true and I don’t know 100% that it’s true.

‏‏This is a woman who’s done the work.

‏‏Yes. Okay, let’s do it. Okay, I’m playing, I’m playing, I’m game. Let’s go.

‏‏I’m just making you know that it’s true.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏In what you just said, there’s re so much wrapped up around money.

‏‏Right.

‏‏What is money?

‏‏Money. The paper that represents value.

‏‏Yeah. Only 3% or something like that of actual money is printed.

‏‏Right. So it’s basically an idea.

‏‏Do you know anyone who is addicted to drugs or has been?

‏‏I knew one. Yes.

‏‏Okay. Most drug addicts, you can imagine, they don’t usually have a whole pile of drugs that they’re storing up in their basement, right?

‏‏No.

‏‏Yeah. People, I think that we have to get to really honest about it is that most of us are addicted to money. It’s like you get a bunch of money, it’s a high. It feels really good, there’s a thing that comes with it. I think probably a good way to see am I addicted to money is if I’m a drug addict, I’m always chasing the next high. I’ve got to find where am I going to get the next drug. If I’m addicted to money, it’s going to be the same kind of relationship with it. Where am I going to get the next high? Where is the next hit going to come from?

‏‏And then you’re going to have withdrawals. As in like stress and anxiety and where is it going to come from.

‏‏Feels like that, doesn’t it?

‏‏It’s interesting because I live a very good life. I live in abundance, and still, it’s there.

‏‏I have worked with people who have made more money than you and I could spend together. We’ve had conversations just like this. The thing that motivated them and drove them to making all the money was the fear that it was going to be gone. Even having all the money, in some cases, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. This concern looms in the background. Am I going to screw it all up? I don’t think it’s unique to you or to me. I think it’s a very human condition.

‏‏Thank you.

‏‏I don’t have a magic wand, you just have to start to do the work. If you want to transform your relationship with money, you start to do the work around what’s my relationship like with money?

‏‏Yeah, for sure. Something that you would suggest to me and to the audience is maybe writing everything, all the ideas that we have around money and then take it every sentence and do the work with it for maybe 30 days, like you did with your clients.

‏‏Imagine if you had a white board or just a piece of paper or whatever and you wrote down “Money is” and then unfiltered, you wrote down all the things that money is. What that really is, or what that represents is the context that you have for money. You know there’s a difference between content and context.

‏‏Explain.

‏‏People want more money, the money that shows up, that’s the content. The context is the space that it shows up in. I’m going to be a little more general then we’ll get more specific. Content are the circumstances and the situations. Context is the space that the circumstances or that the situations show up in. I use an example, if we have a room that’s dark and no windows and it has a blue light. We pull a yellow car in the room. We turn the blue light on. The car never looks yellow in that room. Most of us, what we spend most of our time doing is moving the car around in the room, like it’ll make some kind of a difference if I park it somewhere different in the room. It won’t matter where in the room I park the car, it still won’t be yellow in that context. The context being the lighting, the space that it’s showing up in. Rather than going to work on the content, what we really want to work on is the context.

‏‏What you’re saying is rather than working on getting more money, we need to work on our belief system.

‏‏You have something like, I don’t know exactly what it is, but something like you would say you want more money, and I’m not trying to put words into your mouth, but you want more money. What’s something that you don’t want more of?

‏‏Stress.

‏‏Okay. You don’t want more stress, why?

‏‏Because it could lead to disease and it feels bad.

‏‏Do you have enough of it already?

‏‏I have enough of it, yes.

‏‏Okay, you got it. But money, you want more of it.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏And I’m guessing you want more of it because there’s a context that says I don’t have enough of it.

‏‏Correct.

‏‏I’m not saying that’s the context, and if we had more time, we would dive into it more. But I’m saying like if you can identify the context, and you can do this, you can do in the work and you can actually look for yourself, and you can see what’s the context that I have for money. I said what if you had a context for money, that it was like oxygen? And you said that’s really hard to relate to. Like I can’t really imagine what that would be like. Maybe there’s some kind of a context like there’s not enough of it. That’s trying to fill up the black hole. If my relationship with money is there’s not enough, how much money would be enough money?

‏‏It’s never going to be enough, like you said with your clients. Hundreds of millions, billions, it’s never going to be enough.

‏‏Yeah. This is easier to see because money is like a thing. We can actually count it and add it up. But I was having a conversation with somebody couple of days ago. They said, “I really want to be happy.” I said, “Okay, what’s your relationship with happiness?” What they got, was that their relationship with happiness, if we boil that right down. Their relationship with happiness is that happiness is where I’m not.

‏‏That’s horrible. That’s pitiful.

‏‏If you get that, it’s like I want to be happy but my relationship with happiness is over there. It’s on that other job, it’s in that other relationship, it’s in those different life circumstances. It boils down to happiness is where I’m not. I’m not here and happiness is somewhere else. The thing about us is that we can only ever be here. My relationship with happiness has to change. Let’s just imagine for a minute that you could say, okay, I would be happy if and then we drew all these circumstances up. We said, if I had this job, this kind of husband, and I have 2 ½ children, and a dog, and a cat, and a white picket fence, and then I would be happy. And then let’s just say we wave the magic wand, then you got all of that. But your relationship with happiness hadn’t changed. All that would be different now was you would have just parked the car in a different spot of the room.

‏‏That’s brilliant.

‏‏It still wouldn’t be yellow. Your relationship with happiness would actually have to be something like it’s here now where I am. And then all of a sudden, I would be happy. I know that’s so backwards for the way that we think and what we’ve been taught, at least what I was taught growing up and through my life.

‏‏What were you taught? Did you grow up with a lot of money?

‏‏No. Not at all. I was the middle of nine kids, and somehow we seem to have everything that we needed. But no, we didn’t have a lot money. I don’t know how my parents did it. They’re really extraordinary. I don’t know how they did that. But now, we did not have a lot of money. The first time I had a new pair of clothes that I recall, was when I was 13, I got a pair of jeans from Walmart. That was the first new pair of clothes that I remember getting. I actually think my childhood was extraordinary. But we didn’t have a lot of money, that’s for sure. We’re not really taught this. I don’t know what class you took in school that taught you, oh, if you want to be happy… We even have this thing about the pursuit of happiness. You’d only pursue happiness if it wasn’t right here. If it’s here, there’s nothing for me to pursue. If we talk about in the context of money, my relationship with money would have to change like, what if it was that I have all the money that I ever needed, always. It’s not positive thinking, you actually have to get to the root of what’s the context that I’ve had and then invent a new context for yourself.

‏‏I really like that. We never pursue life, we do pursue liberty, which is freedom, and some of us pursue happiness as if it’s not here, and we can’t connect to it. That’s powerful.

‏‏I use this example of the things that you want and I usually ask people, I go, “What kind of car do you have?” And they say, “I have a Honda Accord.” And I say, “Great. Did you wake up this morning and you really wanted a Honda Accord?” And they’re like, “No!” And I said, “What’s your relationship with the Honda Accord?” Then they said, “I have a Honda Accord.” “Oh, you mean you’re not wanting that?” “No I have it.” “Oh okay. So your relationship with it is you have it, you’re not wanting it.” You notice that about us, we don’t want things that we have for the most part. The things that we’re wanting are things that we think we don’t have. If we’re going to have something, it’s not a relationship of wanting, it’s a different relationship. That’s a thing that we have to sort through and get to for ourselves, no one can give you the answer to it.

‏‏What do you want?

‏‏That’s a great question. Currently, I am want-free. That might change in two seconds. But currently, I think I’m want-free. I can’t think of something that I go, I really want that. I think part of that for me is because I know that my language creates. I am not in a big hurry to create myself as wanting. Because you notice wanting is really degrading.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏It doesn’t actually produce the thing that you want, it produces a further separation of the thing that you want.

‏‏What do you say, if you want to say, “I want something.” You won’t say the word, ‘want’? What would you say? I uhm something.

‏‏I am what I’m committed to producing.

‏‏What I’m committed to producing.

‏‏You might say I want more money and I would say, I’m committed to producing x amount of dollars. And then I’d go organize myself around producing the money. And it isn’t just a clever play on words, it’s actually a difference in my relationship with the thing.

‏‏You never say, “I want something.”

‏‏I wouldn’t say never.

‏‏I want coffee. I say I create the possibility of coffee showing up, I’m committed to coffee.

‏‏I know. But why want it? Why not just go get it?

‏‏Because when you say, “I want it,” somebody can give it to you.

‏‏If it’s working, I’d say stick with it. Bottom line for me, I’m just a fan of what works. If it works, and in the context of money, if wanting money works, I say keep wanting money. It’s just it never worked for me.

‏‏Right. Instead of wanting money, what would you suggest?

‏‏You tell me.

‏‏No, you tell me.

‏‏If you said I want more money… I’m making a desertion that you only want things you think you don’t have. If you weren’t wanting it, then what? You might just be committed to something.

‏‏Yeah. Or in good relationship with.

‏‏There’s also intention. You could intend for coffee to show up. There’s not an attachment in the intention, there’s no attachment to it.

‏‏Wonderful. I was right in the beginning of the podcast when I said this is going to be mind blowing. This is really good, it was amazing.

‏‏Yeah. I can’t believe it now, or however long it’s been that’s gone by.

‏‏Yeah. Extraordinary. Before we say goodbye, what are your three top tips to living a stellar life?

‏‏Okay. TM, that was a setup, right? You’re setting me up to say that. If I can’t create space in my life, it’s just not going to be what it could be. I’m obviously a big fan of TM. It’s something that I practice, something that my whole family practices, my wife, my kids. I’m a big fan of it. TM, and then consistency. I think that’s key. And then for me, it’s surrounding myself with people who are going to bring something out of me that wouldn’t be there, this idea of surrounding myself with the people who are going to bring out the best in me. I’m pretty protective, intentional about who I surround myself with. That’s off the top of my head. Consistency, for me, TM, and then being intentional about who I surround myself with. A rising tide raises all ships.

A rising tide raises all ships. Click To Tweet

‏‏Beautiful. Where can people find you if they want to contact you?

‏‏That’s great. I’m on Facebook, Ephraim Olschewski. I think we can probably put my Facebook page in there.

‏‏I’ll have everything in the show notes as well. If you’re driving you don’t have to write right now. Where else?

‏‏Email ephraim@nullethanolschewski.com. I’ll reply to emails. I don’t have some staff over here, it’s me. I reply to emails, if people want to talk with me, I talk with them. On Facebook, people use Facebook Messenger, and then email.

‏‏Wonderful. Ephraim, this was a joy. Thank you so much.

‏‏Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s been great.

Your Checklist Actions to Take

✓ Listen intently when having conversations. There’s so much you can learn and offer when you are all ears to the person you’re talking to.

✓ Find your “zone” and stay in it. Your zone should be something you love to do and share with others.

✓ Be present and focus your intentions on the now. Don’t let the past bother you and the future make you anxious.

✓ Spend some me-time by meditating and being in a relaxed state for at least a few minutes every day.

✓ Nurture relationships and focus on having a positive impact on the people in your life. Don’t get caught up in the business of making money.

✓ Get familiar with The Work of Byron Katie and adopt her insights in your professional and personal life

✓ Reflect on how you see yourself and how you want to see yourself. Bring both into alignment through your outlook and actions.

✓ Maintain a work-life balance and don’t glorify the act of being busy. Prioritize and always make time for what truly matters.

✓ Be more appreciative in your daily life. Appreciate the people who are always there for you and what life has to offer.Show your appreciation through your words and actions.

✓ Establish a good relationship with money and avoid being too attached to it. This is the secret to living an abundant life.

Links and Resources:

About Ephraim Olschewski

I work with highly committed people who know what they want to create and who act with fearless decisiveness to achieve their goals in their business and personal lives. My clients understand that they impact their environment without regard to the economy or any other circumstance that arises. Simply put, I am fiercely committed to helping my clients get more of what they want, get rid of what they don’t want and be more effective within the limitless possibilities in the world of wealth creation.