How to Finally Make Peace with Your Busy Mind with Flow Dreaming Creator Summer McStravick

In this Episode

• [06:00]Summer McStravick explains that flow dreaming is a method and philosophy that helps people get into a highly emotional state and grounded intention.
• [11:08]Summer discusses the balance between action and pre-action, emphasizing that being in flow does not mean being lazy but rather being in a state of ease.
• [25:32]Summer emphasizes the importance of not engaging with negativity and instead focusing on how to experience and navigate it.
• [30:27]She defines how she chose to embrace the experience and discover herself through it rather than fighting against it.
• [31:22]She describes how empaths can create a strong emotional and energetic self that is resistant to negativity.
• [35:42]She illustrates how she monetized her flow dreaming practice and created a successful business.
• [44:43]Summer advises people to notice if they are reacting or pre-acting, be conscious of their lack of thinking, and practice flow dreaming.

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About Today’s Show

Hi Summer, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Hi Orion, I’d love to spend the next 45 minutes or so with you. It’s wonderful to be here. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Before we begin, could you share one beautiful childhood memory with us?

Gosh, that’s out of the blue, one beautiful childhood memory. There was a creek up in the mountains that my dad used to take me hiking to visit, and we called it Boulder Creek because at the top were two natural swimming pools of very icy cold water that flowed down that creek, and I just remember walking along that creek bed, very shallow, weekend after weekend growing up, it was beautiful and wonderful. It’s nothing but nature and my dad.

How beautiful. I really love this question because I get such beautiful answers. I think when somebody starts an interview, even when I go on interviews, I get in my head, and I’m like, “I really want to perform.” I really want everybody to get what we get importance-driven when it comes to I want everybody to have a breakthrough, and this is the best thing. But then we go into like the childhood memory and to the core of who we are, which are just beautiful little children who love wonder, love life, and love nature. I just feel like it’s me when somebody like you answers it in a genuine way; it’s really beautiful, grounding, and elevating at the same time.

We’re starting with icy cold creek beds in beautiful green forests, so we can hardly go wrong from there.

I’ve realized a lot of people who are neurodiverse want their minds to stay engaged, but can still get into a meditative state.

I’ve been listening to a couple of your meditations, and just the way you describe nature, your vocabulary and your voice, because you used to be an opera singer. I’m like, “You’re voicing a long time ago, but I can still hear it in your voice.” Your voice is so beautiful and soothing, and you narrated in a very emotional way. Let’s dive in. Let’s talk about what you do and how it started.

You kind of already hinted at it, the emotional way. That’s what makes my work a little different. It always has been a little different than traditional ways of thinking about consciousness and meditation, manifesting, whatever you want to call it. I’ve been teaching a process called Flowdreaming since 2005, I think. Had a book come out and kind of changed everything, but I’ve been practicing it for Well since 20 2000. My gosh, 25 years. I’m old. I’m very old, older than I look. That’s a joke, kidding. 

You look beautiful. It’s not just ‘no’; you are.

It is a method and a philosophy at the same time. I realized a long time ago that I was pretty terrible at meditation. I’m honestly still terrible at it today. I have difficulty quieting my mind. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized a lot of people who are neurodiverse, for instance, people with ADHD, people who are heavy readers, and they can just graph and see stories for hours in their mind.

People like us want our minds to stay engaged, but we can still get into that meditative state. Flowdreaming as a practice. You said you listen to a couple, those are like guided meditations, but I call them guided programs. Their purpose is to get you into a highly emotional state, grounded in an intention, something that you really deeply desire to become, to heal, or to create. 

Calling it just a manifesting technique is really making it smaller than it is. We use imagery. Most importantly, we use flow space. The idea of being in flow has gotten kind of popular, this biohacking, life hacking, getting into flow states, you can optimize your brain. It’s not a hard thing to do. It’s not tricky. It’s a natural state that we all slide in and out of all the time. We capitalize on our ability to jump into that state. We feel things there, and there’s a big reason we focus on feelings rather than thought. 

If we want, we give our mind something to do by letting it see beautiful visuals, or whatever comes in to kind of metaphorically explain to us what we’re doing and make our mind feel like it’s our happy little, I always call it my happy little dog friend. If I don’t do something with my happy little dog friend, it’s going to yap at me until it gets my attention. But if I say Fetch this image, it goes, “Yes, I will, I love you. I want to please you so badly,” and so my mind will go make the images and stay occupied and feel like it’s actually participating in what we’re creating. That’s the method, but there’s a philosophy as well.

What is the philosophy?

Behind it all is this understanding: where do I start? I know I should have this down by the back of my hand, but there are so many angles to come in. When I look at the world, I see it as a continuous flow of movement forward. Everything in our lives is in a state of becoming the next thing. We are born, and we travel in basically one direction. Nobody is reverse-aging that I know of. We’re all moving forward. Our planet is moving in the same direction around the sun. Our galaxy is continuing to expand. 

Time itself is drawing us into the next moment, every little chunk of the next moment. If you take that to heart, you realize that I am literally becoming something more every single second. Like six minutes ago when we started, you now have six minutes built in, more experience for you as a soul or as a being. What did you put into those six minutes? Hopefully, it was something interesting and worthwhile. Now, in that natural direction, it’s a state of ease. You didn’t try to have the next six minutes. This happened. There’s no effort involved in this. It’s a question of knowing what I want to experience or become in the next moment, knowing that I’m going to be carried in that anyway, no matter what. 

That is sort of an idea of what flow is, this natural river, going back to the creek. This natural little creek of goodness and it’s always carrying you. Many of us are fighting our way along. We are trying to turn it around, trying to bully it into doing things, trying to make stuff happen in it. If we just let ourselves kind of relax and realize there is a natural direction I am already moving in as a being, I wonder what that is and how supported I am in that. I often say it’s like a little creek falling down a mountain. It’s going to find the path of least resistance. 

Even if there are big boulders in the way, it’s going to find a way around them. That’s the easiest, the conservation of energy. It is a natural law. It will find its way pulled by gravity to the lowest point, to the ocean. We, too, have a natural direction, a natural flow, finding the way of least resistance. I apply that principle to everything in my life. I also apply the principle that I can create the next thing by kind of pre-experiencing it. That’s where emotion comes in.

But the way you say it might sound like I don’t need to do anything and just go with the flow and see where life is leading me, but you’re a mega producer, you got books, you’ve got courses you’ve been places, you’ve got events, you’ve been very much so in the physical world, making money, working hard. How do you combine that with flow? Somebody who is listening to you right now understands that, I guess, a dance between both. How do you still produce and work in 3D, but also be in the real world? Where is the connection? How do you connect the two?

In the real world. That’s a great question. Being in flow does not mean being lazy. I always make that distinction. When you are just saying, “It’ll happen if I just ask the universe, it’ll just drop in. You’re only doing half of what’s required.” If we think about the world we live in. We basically live in a world of duality. Many of us believe that everything is naturally one, yin and yang, and it creates one. But the first split becomes two. I look at it like this. You have action and pre-action. Action is what’s required of us to physically go out and kind of gobble up the world to create the next experience to test things and try things and hunger for things and to do the thing to put ourselves out there, to face the fear, to jump over the hurdle. 

Being in flow does not mean being lazy.

Pre-action, on the other hand, is what comes before, or rather complements, the action. Pre-action is, think of it like this. You’re building a house with no set of blueprints. You just tell all the construction people to go out there and put something together. They’re out there, and they’re working hard. They’re in action, action. Pretty soon, you’ve got 19 bathrooms, no bedrooms, and a kitchen in the basement. Then you say, “God, what happened to my life? Did you have a blueprint?” You think, “Well, yeah, I had ideas for it, but did you have a blueprint from inside you?” If you have a physical self and a non-physical self, we’ve got to incorporate both all the time in everything we do. The physical self is the action self. 

The non-physical self, the flow self, the greater self, is the pre-action self. That is the one that’s creating this kind of, I call it, emotional energetic blueprint. This is where I describe life, and this is where I go into flow, and this is what I do when I’m flow-dreaming, literally. Sometimes I’m going to close my eyes when we talk, but I go in there, and I say, “This is how my life feels to me right now. This is how my home, the world around me, feels. This is what I’m walking into next. This is what we’re building next. This is what I’m receiving from it. This is what I’m tasting of it.” I’m actually focusing way less on the actual thing.

I’m focusing on what I call the emotional endpoints of the thing. Let’s say you mentioned that I’ve built a big business over the years and have flowdreamed out to every continent except Antarctica. Guess I don’t think so. But all of that came from a desire not to grow this thing, but I want to feel like I’ve made a difference. I want to feel like the right people are absorbing this. I want to feel like I gave the world the very best thing I was capable of giving, and I want there to be nothing getting in the way of that. I want it to be frictionless, easy, and completely flowing, and I want to be supported in every possible way, and I feel the joy and the contentment that come from that. Now that that intention, as I feel it, remember: how I said you just absorb six minutes? Now you’ve absorbed 12 minutes.

You just absorbed a feeling in that moment that’s now a part of you. Every time I feel that way, I am actually kind of re-coding myself, because I’m adding more of that into me. It’s like pouring sugar, teaspoons of sugar, into your coffee, if anybody still does that. But your coffee gets sweeter and sweeter. The more sugar you’re pouring in. Every time I pour in emotional endpoints like that, I’m literally adding to my being, which is going ahead and collecting all of this experience.

The more I practice, the more I literally become this. I become it. What I become is what the world then encounters. To go back to the principles of manifesting, when you’re facing the world this way, and the world is mirroring you back, it’s going to try to align with you. Most things try to align with who we are. I am building my outside world by building it on the inside first and letting the outside world react to me. That’s a lot of information in a short amount of time, but in a nutshell, these are some of the main concepts. I play the long game when I’m doing this work because what I’ve made myself feel 10 years ago is still bearing fruit today, because it’s still part of me, and I’ve just added on and built onto it. Does that make sense?

It makes sense and it brings me back to the times I mentioned to you I lived in Japan and I used to go down there’s an avenue called Omotesando and there are beautiful fashion houses there but every few blocks you got like a little Shinto temple it’s not really a temple it’s it’s like a I don’t know like a structure with a bell and you can toss a coin and clap your hands and ring the bell and ask for something. Used to go there, and I used to be very grateful. I used to be a very dreamy person. I used to fantasize and daydream a lot, and I was very grateful. Every few blocks when I walked down, I was near my house, I would ring the bell, throw a coin, and just be grateful and appreciate my life as I got older. 

Now I’m a mom, and I am in a place where I am affected by geopolitical events and whatever is happening here. I feel like the energy here is that almost everything you hear is stronger. They say the veil is thinner in Israel, but it’s like, it’s a lot. When you go to a place that is more intense or when you, cause I know you’ve been through hardships. Read your bio, and maybe you want to tell us your story, which is incredible. How do you handle going into that place of coding that emotion again and again and again, even when you’re in the outside world, or when your body is in pain?

The dreamer and the doer have to be perfectly balanced.

I’m trying to think about how to best answer that. There were many pieces that were packed in there. First of all, I’ve been to Japan too, and I’ve done that, written on the little pieces of paper, and tied them in. It’s such a beautiful practice. I know exactly the feeling you’re describing. I wish we had something like that here. How do you function in these energetic hotspots?

That was many questions in one. I love it.

Is one question. “How do you balance the dreamer and the doer?” Is another one. I always say to people, “You want to be right in the middle of the dreamer?”

I should have had you write my questions because the way you say it is so great.

The dreamer and the doer have to be perfectly balanced. If you are all a doers and many people are only materially minded, and they only build things from what their mind tells them to do and what society says, “You grow up, you go to school, you maybe get a partnership or married, maybe you have kids or not, you grow older, you take care of your kids, you retire.” It’s just at a certain point. People who are only action-oriented tend to burn out. They tend to stop at some point and say, “Is this all there is? There’s got to be something more.” Because they’re coming from a place of pure action without intention. 

They’re going through these motions and doing the things until they realize it’s not satisfying me. I just keep doing more of the things, trying to think I’ll finally get that feeling of contentment, peace, and joy. They end up on that wheel of production, wheel of exhaustion. You have your other people who are more on the pre-action or the dreamer side. Their nature is to say, ‘can feel it,’ ‘I can see it,’ ‘I can sense it,’ ‘I can smell it,’ ‘I know it,’ but they never set foot out the front door. It’s almost like they’re creating inside their home, but nothing from the world can reach them, because they’re not walking out the door to interact. 

They say, “How come nothing is being made? How come? Nothing is actually happening.” They tend to get disappointed because they say, doesn’t work. It’s not working. I don’t believe it. I’ve been in this state all the time. I’m like, yeah, but you didn’t, you didn’t, you didn’t reach that beautiful balance right in the middle. It’s almost a Buddhist philosophy. Of course, I don’t need it, but I want it to do it, or at least give me an experience like, “How do you, how do you reconcile both?” There is a way, and we practice it now to get onto it.

When I talk about flow dreaming, I’m talking about a way of interacting with the world.

The third part, the energetic hotspots we’re in. When I talk about flow dreaming, I’m talking about a way of interacting with the world. I am creating something. I imagine that everything is right now, I am communicating with you. My voice is blooming forward toward you. It’s actually being carried in some ridiculous way, instantly, almost like magic, as a series of ones and zeros, hitting you in Tel Aviv from San Diego, California. It’s crazy that we can have this. But what if there’s another kind of energetic exchange going on right now that’s also instantaneous, that I, my energy, am surrounding you, you’re surrounding me. 

You’re actually now a part of me, frankly, for the rest of eternity. Because now you are etched into my experience. We’re having this energetic exchange, as well as this talky-talk exchange, this physical exchange. We’re exchanging on multiple levels right now. When we’re creating something, like the podcast we’re making together, it’s something being made. It’s energy and information going outward. Remember how I talked in the beginning about dualism, the basic split. You can make things go outward, or receive them inward. It’s the difference between writing an email, like I’m creating something and sending it out and receiving an email back. 

When we’re receiving back, I call that empathic intuition, and I also teach it. It basically says the world is nothing but a swarm of information. It’s everywhere all at once. Time and distance, in a way, are illusions we choose to participate in. It feels very real. But we also know that another part of us is not really locked into it. We’re always receiving tons of energetic information that most of our bodies just have to bump away because we are physically cemented. But a part of us is receiving it all. You’re in a place right now where, as I said, “It’s an energetic hotspot, and there are these things of them like hotspots on the sun, solar flares. They move around the Earth and through civilizations over time. But when you’re in a place that’s so dense with emotion and worry or fear or excitement or drama.” 

You can’t help, but it’s like you’re swimming in it. It’s like you’re so thick. It’s like you’re swimming in an ocean of Jell-O. You feel the effort of it. You have to work harder at it. I’m swimming in San Diego in an ocean of I don’t know, salt water perhaps. San Diego’s got its own issues right now. The US doesn’t get me going. But you’re absorbing a lot around you, and you’re trying to navigate through that. That’s why a lot of people right now, especially people who are sensitive or empathic, are feeling just over it. We have maxed out our absorption. We are full sponges. We can’t take in any more energy.

I know I am like, done with absorbing stuff and saying, “I’m so empathetic, and I feel everybody.” “Hey, I don’t want to create this identity for myself by just saying it. I’m so empathic. I’m so sensitive.” I sense everything and everybody, which I mean, to some extent, very, very true, but I also don’t want to have this limit my potential to swim in jello and, and like, and like be super fast inside the jello and like a jello athlete or something where I can manifest whatever and shield the bad and bring in just the good and focus only on the good and manifest what I really want to manifest no matter where I am on earth or what my circumstance is or how my body feels. How do you do that?

Well, I just taught a six-month course in how to be a functional empath, but it’s over now. You can’t come. You can’t join, but in a nutshell.

If you can give me just the cliff notes, just like the summary, maybe we can talk about the summary just a little bit.

When I’m teaching empaths how to embrace their nature, and I have a 40-item checklist that says, “How empathic are you? How much do you identify as this type of being? You would probably hit a lot of those check boxes.” When I’m telling people how to navigate negativity, let’s keep it very basic. There’s negativity around us. Negativity from partners and spouses, kids, and family. Negativity from our environment, negativity from our politics. This is just like the neighbor’s dog. The boss at work. Every place you’re walking into, this bloom of negativity. Where is that negativity? Let’s go back to emotion.

All of these people are radiating energy right now. Just like I was saying, you and I are blooming out this energy of positivity and curiosity. We’re creating this. We’re creating it inside of ourselves. It feels really good. But many people are trapped in their minds. They’re circling. They’re angry about something. They’re not resolving it. They have unhealed trauma inside of them. They feel unheard. They feel powerless. They’re angry at somebody for not doing something that they need them to do. All these people with their, I call these, power leaks. They’re just blooming this out. You walk into an environment where people are very unconsciously, no one knows we’re doing this, but we do, we all do this, until we catch ourselves. I call that lack of thinking a kind of whole. It comes in all different forms, but basically, oh no.

It doesn’t matter how evolved or spiritual you are; we all fall into those traps and get triggered, and just be human. It’s enough that,  especially when you know what it’s like to be elevated when you go down, as I feel like the more light you have, the more the lower you can get. 

The bigger the crash, the more you can have. I agree, because you see it. You can see the contrast. Bigger and bigger. All of these people have this lack of thinking or this negativity that’s coming out of them. Lack thinking, scarcity thinking, fear thinking, releasing, letting go of their own inner power to other people and circumstances. You walk in, and you’re like, “My gosh, I can feel this all around me. How do I function in this?” I discovered that, unlike the old-school ways, I put up a protective bubble around the block. I don’t like to do anything that requires extra effort because I just want to be part of my nature. 

By building a fluid, strong, constant, consistent, emotional, energetic self that’s filled with positivity, expectation, joyful anticipation, and the sense of whatever is coming toward me, I’ve actually really worked on how I’m going to go through this. It really doesn’t matter if somebody drags something yucky into my world. Instead of saying, “I’m going to go into the yuck with you, I’m going to match your response that I work on: I wonder how I can experience that. I wonder how I can navigate this, staying true to my real self.” That changes the dynamic completely because I always think of it like a virus attacking a cell. They always say the virus can find one little area on the cell where it can stick, and that’s how it gets in. 

I try to make it so that the cell that I am, the virus has nothing to stick to because I’m not putting out any engagement with it. I don’t engage with it, I don’t get it. The virus can swim all around me, but it can’t touch me. I’m someplace else. Two airplanes, I’m gonna be the higher airplane, the yuck is gonna be the lower airplane, and even though we may be in the same sky, in the same space even, we’re not touching, we’re doing parallel lines. When you’re creating yourself, you can’t match anything that’s yucky.

Gratitude is a beautiful yellow crayon.

Do you not get triggered by people?

This is the ideal I’m telling you about. Not a walking saint here. But when I get triggered, a lot of stuff goes through my mind. We’ll use a small trigger rather than a geopolitical one because humanity as a whole is already dealing with many triggers. Like as a whole, think of yourself as one cell in the whole body of humanity, the body itself is being triggered, and you are one cell in it being likewise triggered. But if it’s me, and let’s say I get some bad news today, knock on wood, I won’t, but let’s say I get some bad news. My reaction is either to go into fear or go into racing. Tensing up, kind of freezing my energy, and going into anger.

What I’m doing then is I’m bubbling up all of these emotions that are going to closer attach me to what happened, that are going to validate what happened, that are going to swing open the doors wide to the front of my being and house and say, “Come on in, I’m actually totally matching you, let’s do this.” We all start with that, usually. But when you train yourself with lack thinking to recognize that feeling and go, “I am now recreating anger and fear inside of me. How long do I want to do that for?” In my world, fear is like emotions in a box. They all do something different. Gratitude is a beautiful yellow crayon. Fear is maybe a dark gray crayon. It’s not purposeless. 

If I don’t have a gray crayon, I could never do a dark night sky. It’s got a reason. Fear comes in, and it says, “Hey, something to pay attention to.” “Hey, something needs fixing.” “Hey, something is causing suffering.” That’s where most people don’t know what to do next. The fear keeps ringing. It’s like a fire alarm that you can’t get turned off on your ceiling. It just keeps going. It’s not supposed to. You’re supposed to listen and then act. The next thing that I’m gonna do is look at it and say, “How do I wanna be in this? What can I glean from this?” 

I wonder what this will turn into. Instead of saying this horrible, catastrophic thing is going to happen as a result, I don’t want to participate in that. I’m aware of it. I’m certainly not gaslighting myself. I totally get that a bad thing could happen. Who do I want to be? You mentioned it earlier, but part of this, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, metastatic cancer, the kind that travels, when I was 43. That was like a breakthrough moment, frankly, the worst thing that can happen. When I had two little kids still in grade school, and I thought, “How am I gonna do this?”

That was the moment I recognized I could either go through this entire thing angry, fighting, and mad at my universe, mad at my god mad at my mad at my body for betraying me, or I could lose all faith and just say, “Life sucks and it’s so unpredictable and horrible but do I really wanna keep experiencing that for the next year and a half that it’s gonna take to get through all of my therapies?” I said, “I don’t think that’s gonna help me. Cancer, why are you here? What do you want from me? Why are we doing this together? What can I get from you? What if I, instead of bracing against you, embrace you? I don’t mean embracing you like I want more, but I’m gonna embrace the experience of this and discover myself through it.” I’m taking the alarm and choosing to experience it differently so that it quiets down.

What did you discover about yourself from that experience?

Anybody who’s diagnosed with any kind of bigger, bigger issue, whether it’s fibromyalgia or something that’s more crippling. Cancer or heart failure, whatever it may be. ‘Do you have time to reflect on what I am doing here?’ ‘What do I want to make of this?’ ‘How have I been engaging with life so far?’ ‘Is it the way that I want to keep engaging?’ ‘Am I showing up the way I want to?’ ‘Am I being really me?’ ‘Am I being a person that other people want me to be?’ ‘If I’m doing that, why am I prioritizing their needs over my own?’ 

‘Maybe I ought to just be me and let other people have the opportunity to grow in how they handle me, instead of trying to protect them.’ This is something a lot of empaths do again. We already feel what other people are going to think or feel. We pre-feel it before they do. Our goal is not to feel it twice. We change ourselves. We’re little chameleons. Like we change our colors and we start matching them. We make sure we’re not upsetting or triggering them, or whatever it may be, so we don’t have to feel what we know we will feel with them, because we already sensed it.

We have to learn to become ourselves.

But what that does is it locks the people around us into a state of non-growth because nothing is giving them anything to challenge. We have to learn to become ourselves. It’s the greatest gift you can give the people around you: yourself, because then they get to go into their growth mode and decide: do I want to encounter you, change myself, or figure out my own feelings of anger, or do you want to keep protecting me? Now we’re kind of going off on a little rabbit, little rabbit hole here. 

No, it’s fascinating what you’re saying, keep going. 

To answer your question, I don’t try to buffer away negativity. I ask why it’s present. I recognize that here on earth, we’re going to get both. Remember, because again, yin and yang, they’re young. We’re going to get both. Ease and resistance.

What were the conclusions for you when you asked those questions?

Kind of like what I’ve just been explaining. I know I will get both, and people mistakenly think that if I’m a great manifestor, nothing bad will happen to me. I can control everything. I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That is the opposite way you should be going into this.” You’re going to discover that when you manifest, you can control even less than you thought you did before. It is going to go so sideways on you. That’s really where this concept of flow comes from. If you’re trying to control things, squeeze them tightly, and make things happen, you’re not really in a state of flow. 

You’re in a state of squeezing and holding. Life is moving. Life is one constant state of uncertainty. I teach people how to be surfers on that uncertainty. That’s how you stay on top of the waves in the water. When I am envisioning my future, I recognize. Some good stuff will come in, some bad stuff will come in. It’s not that I’m creating the bad stuff or creating the good stuff. I’m creating based on how I want to feel. 

From the top of the pyramid, you can start plugging in all the different ways life in the universe can get you those feelings. We pick our paths based on what we know.

I want to feel joyful, happy, and healthy. I want to feel loved. I want to feel safe and secure. I want to feel free. From the top of the pyramid, you can start plugging in all the different ways life in the universe can get you those feelings. We pick our paths based on what we know. When I say I want safety and I want freedom, which is weird because they seem like they’re opposites. But what’s one of the main things that gives us safety and freedom gives you a head. Money, money, money, money.

Money, so how are you so productive? Tell me your secret to being so productive. I just love it. I love how you are up there in the ether manifesting, while also building a real-life, successful business.

Speaking of money and business, I realized that if I wanted independence in my life, I had to work for a decade at Hay House, under Louise Hay and Dr. Dyer. Dr. Wayne Dyer and I worked together for 5 years. I produced his radio show, and we got, got to learn from him by being on air with him, really every week for a number of years. 

Yes, and I wanted to ask you about Louise Hay and Wendy Dyer.  

Life was skilling me up for something. I did not know it at the time, but where was I going with that? When I left that position after 10 years, I said to myself, I never want to work for someone else again. Why did I say that? Because I had a desire in me, like I said, “To focus on my own curiosity, my own studies. I need a way to give this to the world. What do I need to do that? What do I need for that freedom?” That safety needs to make money. I need to somehow turn something that is essentially free into a monetizable asset. Because, like I’m teaching, I teach people how to flowdream for nothing. 

The basic thing, here, have it. It’s the other stuff that comes behind it. That if I work with people one-on-one and kind of step them through this transformational process, or if I create flow dreams around specific topics. I have such specific topics as finding myself a great home where there’s no barking dog next door. I would take that one manifesting desire that one person has. I’d create a float room around it, which I feel is so peaceful and joyful in my home. I feel so content. 

The quiet just allows my soul and being to relax in this beautiful atmosphere. We’d go straight to the emotions and then. Whatever home, whatever place most fits this, show up for me. Come into my life. Become part of me. I’m ready for this shift, and I embrace it now. Then the action part of you goes out, contacts a realtor or whatever, finds the space, and takes the action to secure it. But you’ve already energetically set up the template for how you want that space to make you feel. 

I’m kind of going off track a little bit here, but the idea is that after I had left that company and decided I had to grow something that allowed me to do my work, it became fairly, I don’t want to say easy, because I put a lot of effort into it, like a ton. I worked all the time because I enjoy working, frankly. I like to work. But I kept saying, “I don’t want to work in a state of resistance. I want to work in a state of flow.”

If I can grow safety and security around me and wealth around me, that’s going to free me up more and more to do this thing that I want to say at the end of the day, I gave to the world the very thing that was the most unique or important or meaningful to my fellow humans. Support me in that. Support me with opportunities, support me with connections, support me with next steps, support me with the middle-of-the-night fabulous ideas that suddenly make everything click in place. I would pursue things that I thought would get me a place like another book, another book contract or another whatever, starting a course or a school program I taught for many years. 

I would say, “flow.” But on the other hand, if there is an easier way, if there’s a more flowing way with least resistance, I want that. I don’t want the ones full of resistance, and, based on that, it’s kind of like you let yourself be very flexible with what you end up or how you end up reaching your goal. That’s why I said before, “That control thing is a little game we play in our own heads to make us feel secure. But real security is being able to move with the opportunities that are just moving into our lives every moment, shifting, knowing that the easier path is here, the easier path is there.” Easy, not lazy, remember.

Beautiful. Thank you for that. I always wanted to meet Dr. Wayne Dyer in person, and I was too late, too late. I love his teachings, and what a wonderful blessing it was to work with him one-on-one. Also, I saw Louise Hay on her 90th birthday in San Diego. Have you been there? Were you there? I was there too.

I believe I was. It was her 80th, actually. Come to think of it, I can’t remember. I know there was a big one. I can’t remember.

It was a bit, I think it was our 90th and then a few months later she loved this world.

No, then it was a radius. I think I was at her 80th, not her 90th, because I was gone from Hangouts by then.

It was a really beautiful experience because I loved her book. My mom gave me her book when I was a teenager, and it really helped, I guess, change the way I see things. That and The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, those two books really shaped the way I see things. It was just a beautiful opportunity. Like, “What was it like to work with them?” Because sometimes when you work with people, it’s different than somebody like me who’s fantasizing about what it’s going to be like to be near them.

At the time, I saw my upbringing as: I come from a very woo-woo family; my mom is a medium and intuitive; my grandmother practiced acupuncture and acupressure and taught herself. She actually had a turkey farm. She had a Non-physical guide that she communicated with to regulate my great-grandmother generation after generation. I am the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter, firstborn, going back like seven generations. I grew up in a very woo-woo home because we all seem to turn out this way, whether we want to or not. 

I decided I was going to go to college, be different, be respectable, and not be a woo-woo, crazy psychic. I was going to get a degree in writing and work in publishing. I went with that intention. Of course, the universe always has better plans because it knows what you truly desire. My desire has always been to do something meaningful in this world. The very first job I got with a publishing company happened to be under Louise at Hay House. Very first job. I didn’t even apply for it, actually. It was a very strange way that I was brought in. The odds were a million to one.

Notice if you are reacting or pre-acting in your life. Reacting is what you’re doing 90% of the day.

During that time, I did not realize that I was being skilled up. I was basically getting my master’s degree in how to teach and work with people. My job was the director of New Media, which, back then, was the internet and podcasting. We started Hay House. I started, “My gosh, we, our crew started Hay House Radio and converted, know, started converting all those old cassette tapes and whatnot to CDs and eventually from CDs to online seminars and webinars and on demand.” I was learning how to communicate with the world. I was learning how to take someone else’s material and help them communicate it to the world. 

If Louisa or Wayne wanted to say, “We need to create a seminar around this, can you put the structure together? Can you get this all together?” “Yeah, I’ll get it together.” Of course, they created all their content and everything, but I had to figure out how to get this to the world. I was learning from them how to be a speaker and a communicator. I was also being steeped in a realization that that’s actually really important work. It’s you’re not running away from being a psychic. 

You’re actually opening people’s minds to a consciousness, mysteries, and possibilities that the world typically shuts down, but you can do it in a way that’s scientific, factual, grounded in healing and love, and even informed by some therapeutic principles. I said, “Okay, I can embrace that.” That’s how it was working with them. By the time I was working with Louise, she was just more like the head of the office. She would come in and pop her head into the office. How are you doing? We’d chit-chat and all that.

Be conscious of your lack of thinking. Start by being aware of the energy I’m experiencing: is it negative or positive? Start to notice which emotions go into each one.

You just used it like your voice; you just imitated her. You just sounded like her. My goodness. How are you doing? I don’t know. I don’t know how you did that. That was amazing.

I don’t know either. Part of my work when I’m working with people is reading to them. I call it reading a person’s energy or flow. Like when I look at you, you’re giving me one little feed of information, this little vocal feed, you’re giving me a visual feed of your mannerisms. But then there’s a greater feed, which is the collective you. Everything that’s made up of you, your energies, your experiences, your past. I can imagine them. If I actually close my eyes, I would probably start picking stuff out of your head. That’s why I don’t call myself a psychic, though. Just say, “I’m just looking at the world as just the swarm of energy. For me, Louise is still an energy. She’s still a present energy. She’s just not physically located anymore.”

Do you see my phoenix wings behind me?

That’s it. It’s not surprising that I might sound like her for a moment. It’s probably just tapping right in. Hi Louise.

I would love to have you back on the show, but I want to be respectful of your time. Before we say goodbye for now, what are your three top tips to live a stellar life, and where can people find you?

One, notice if you are reacting or pre-acting in your life. Reacting is what you’re doing 90% of the day. Something happens, you respond to it. Another thing happens, you respond to it. Even when you’re planning, you’re planning something because you don’t want something else to happen, or you do. But you’re constantly referencing what’s already occurred. Pre-acting, though, is when you’re looking ahead and saying, “This is not connected to anything. This has literally not happened yet. This is what I’m feeling. This is what manifesting is.” When you get into that 10 % sliver of your day, here’s how I’m feeling. This is who I’m becoming. I’m going to practice these feelings, even if they feel weird or uncomfortable, because I have no right to feel them. Of course, you don’t, because nothing in the past has triggered them yet. You’re setting yourself up for the future when you do that. 

Notice which emotions go into each category. You’ve got some positive emotions: expectation, joy, love, healing, and peace. You got negative ones: apprehension, bracing, fear, doubt, and worry.

Number two, be conscious of your lack of thinking. Start by being aware of the energy I’m experiencing: is it negative or positive? Start to notice which emotions go into each one. You’ve got some positive emotions, expectations, joy, love, healing, and peace. You got negative ones, apprehension, bracing, fear, doubt, worry about it not working out. What you’re creating is what you’re adding into you. That’s part of you permanently, forever and ever. Information once known is always known. Once you become aware of your lack of thinking, you can start to grab onto it and shift it more and more quickly. 

Three, consider practicing flow dreaming. That’s a shameless plug. But for me, it’s the easiest way to get into this state. It takes like 5-15 minutes. It’s not like meditation. You’ve got to practice forever to try and get good at it, and constantly tell your mind to ‘shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.’ That’s not exactly meditation, but in flow dreaming, it’s a creative and emotional experience. Let yourself try it at least once to see if it’s a good fit for you. Not all modalities work for everyone, but this one seems to work for many of us. Those are my three top tips, along with where to get them. 

I have a podcast called Flowdreaming that has been out since 2005. it’s, I finished my 21st season this year, which is a great way to learn for free. Over the years, sometimes I do Flowdreams live in it, sometimes not. My website is the next best resource. That’s flowdreaming.com. Have a membership that gives you 36 courses on manifesting, creating all kinds of things, and more than 300 Flowdreams I’ve recorded. I have an app, too. If you open your phone, you can find the Flowdreaming app and start practicing there. I give away a tutorial to teach you how to do it, and a couple of Flowdreams as well, financial abundance and instant alignment to get you kind of walking this path. Those are the three most wonderful ways to jump in. Of course, if you want to work with me privately, just raise your hand or shoot me an email, and we can start talking. 

Summer, thank you so much. This was just exciting and wonderful. Thank you for sharing your light and your wisdom with us.

Thank you, Orion. Wonderful questions. Thanks for letting me babble on so much.

Thank you, listeners. Remember, notice if you are reacting or pre-acting, be conscious of your negative thinking, practice flow dreaming, and have a stellar life. This is Orion. Till next time.