A Personal Note From Orion

According to today’s guest, Pam Grout, making things is the best way to spend a life. Through her passion, she was able to craft a cool life and open the possibilities the world can offer. She also rewired her mind using gratitude to invite miracles into her life.

Pam is a world traveler, a loving mother, a best-selling author, a millionaire and an inspiring witness to everyone she meets. She is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 20 books, including the brand new Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (and Therefore the World.) She’s also a freelance writer who has published with Scientific American Explorations, Outside, Men’s Journal, People magazine, Travel + Leisure, and many other publications, and the creator of the TV series, Going Rogue, and the wacky proliferator behind two popular blogs. Her current focus is the 222 Foundation, where she started to honor her magical daughter, Tasman, who has been guiding her from the nonphysical since October 15, 2018.

In this episode, Pam shares how she tapped her creativity in writing and how traveling helped her become more spiritually connected. She also discusses how living in the moment will allow you to see the bigger picture of life. Tune in as Pam and I dig more into life, gratitude, and creativity.

 

 

In this Episode

• [01:17] – Orion introduces her next guest, Pam Grout, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 20 books, a freelance writer, creator of the TV series Going Rogue, and the wacky proliferator behind two popular blogs.
• [02:46] – Orion wants to know about Pam and the beginnings in discovering her passion.
• [06:26] – Pam says that she has traveled to over 40 countries and lived in Japan for three and half years.
• [10:41] – Pam shares growing up in a conventional Christian-type family and talks about her awakening journey to be open to possibilities, beauty and love.
• [14:27] – Orion asks Pam about the suggestions for the process of rewiring the brain to look for what’s right.
• [16:25] – Pam discusses the tips in preparing and responding to problems and things happening by first keeping the nervous system calm.
• [20:23] – Orion asks about the Course in Miracles and why it’s important to have a whole course to attract the miracle.
• [23:23] – Pam talks about the book she wrote called Course in Miracles Experiment.
• [26:23] – Orion wants to know the miracles experienced by the readers when people used her books.
• [31:21] – Pam and Orion discuss retraining our mind since it is used to being hard, wants to make it hard and wants to be given instructions on how to do things.
• [35:42] – Pam explains about connecting and not blocking one’s creativity.
• [38:17] – Orion shares her realization of not losing her creativity and asks Pam how to unblock creativity.
• [42:24] – Pam shares her three tips for having a stellar life.
• 45: 13 – Visit Pam Grout’s website to check her blog posts, read her books and know more about her.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hey, Pam and welcome to Stellar Life podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Before we begin, can you share a little bit about yourself and how did you discover your passion or passions?

Making things has always been a passion.

A little bit about me, I love to create since the time I was a little kid. I think making things is the best way to spend a life. We’ve got this short life span here, so making things has always been a passion. When I was a kid, I used to make little furniture for little dolls. I’ve just always made things.

As I got a little bit older, I learned how to read in second grade and I started realizing I could do this, I could write books. I started writing books, I mean, little silly books like Paddy, the Penguin and Blackie, the Bear when I was in second grade. I’ve just always loved to write and I feel so blessed because my entire career, I was able to make a living doing my passion, which is writing.

I have published 20 books. I’ve written countless magazine articles. I have traveled all over the world. I’ve been able to craft a pretty cool life out of using my creativity and using my skills at writing. I’d say I started writing way back in second grade. 

Then when I went to university, I got a degree in journalism and worked for a newspaper for a while. I’ve done about every form of writing there is, but I’ve done my own, writing books and writing about the things I wanted to write for about 30 years now. Yes, I’ve had a very blessed life.

What do you like to write about the most?

The cool thing about being a writer is you don’t have to pick one topic.

That’s the cool thing about being a writer, you don’t have to pick one topic. Whenever you get interested, you can get an assignment, hopefully, and then you can write about it. So I get to choose. I guess I consider myself a jack of all trades, master of none type of person. That’s perfect for a writer because, okay, so today, I’m going to write about New Mexico, for example.

I’ve done a lot of travel writing. I’ve done three books for National Geographic. That really enabled me to see the world, which has been really a passion of mine too is traveling. I think when we travel, we realize the world is a lot smaller than we think it is. People are the same no matter where you go.

Anyway, I guess in some ways, I was able to combine both of my passions, which was traveling and writing by doing travel writing. What do I like to write about? I obviously like writing about spiritual things. That’s most of my books. Half of my books are travel books. Like I said, three books for National Geographic. I did several books for Globe Pequot, which is another travel publisher. I did one, Girlfriend Getaway Guide or going on trips with your girlfriend. That was fun. Those are the things that I most like to write.

Art and Soul I had fun and discovered as a writer is, okay, so let’s say an editor gives me an assignment, it almost doesn’t matter what it is. When I start researching it, I start talking to people that are passionate about whatever it is that the assignment is about, it becomes interesting to me too.

Even if I’m not initially aware that I’m interested in whatever it might be, but once I start talking to people that are experts in that field and love that field, I find out that it’s fascinating. I think pretty much anything can be fascinating if you look at it the right way. Any person is fascinating if you get to know them.

The writer’s job, of course, is to delve into and find that part that’s so interesting. I think that’s why I’ve been very blessed to have this life, to be able to learn about a lot of different things, and to be able to write and do what I love.

I traveled a lot as well prior to COVID. I traveled to over 40 countries and I lived in Japan for three and a half years.

Excellent.

Yeah, I really enjoy traveling. I guess, for me, how travel and spirituality were working together is when I left to Japan with $700 in my pocket, just on a whim when I was 20. I got it from my mom, I got the book, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. I really believe that if we connect to gratitude and we set our mind to what we want to happen, it will happen.

Making things is the best way to spend a life. Click To Tweet

I was envisioning my life in Japan and even the person I eventually met in Japan, who was my boyfriend at that time. I remember going down on Omotesando. It’s like the Champs-Élysées of Tokyo. Every block you have a temple. I would throw a coin, clap my hands, and say a prayer. I always was in gratitude and saying, thank you, angels. Thank you for my guides, thank you for my guidance. 

That brought me to, actually, have an incredible experience in Japan from a place where I wasn’t—I didn’t have money. I went there like a young kid. I never traveled outside of Israel, it’s where I’m from. When I landed in Narita, it was so overwhelming. It was like a sea of Japanese people and I’ve never experienced that before. If I didn’t have that inner faith, I don’t know where I would end up. What was your journey like and how did you find your spiritual connection?

I’ve been to a lot of places. In fact, I’ve been to Japan. When I went to Japan, they asked me to come speak about my work. I guess my book, E-Squared, and maybe some of my other books are really popular there. I spoke to 2000 people and I was met at the airport by all these screaming fans wearing my face on their head.

Really?

Yeah. Literally, they had made a facsimile of my face and they all have these hats that are made out of my face. I just flew 17 hours or whatever it is. It’s like, I just want to go get some sleep. I don’t know if you’ve read the book E-Squared, but there’s a thing about yellow butterflies, so they had a piñata with yellow butterflies and all that kind of stuff. That was really fun. I very much liked Japan too, and I like all the temples.

I’m sure you must have gone to Kyoto. Anyway, it’s just a beautiful, beautiful place. I definitely enjoy that, although I didn’t live there for three and a half years. I was there for a couple of weeks.

I’ve been to a lot of places. I just feel really blessed as far as trusting and how you asked how to compare spirituality. I think one of the things that happen is when you travel, you’re out of what your comfort zone is. You mentioned, you went there, you didn’t know. It opened you up to new possibilities.

We get stuck in ruts, into what we think we know, what we think is true. But when you travel, you’re kind of jetted out a little bit. Things are never quite the way they seem. I think you’re more open to new possibilities, possibly when you’re traveling. You’re not so sure that everything you know is exactly right. That gives the spirit time to come fix. To me, we’re all immersed in spirituality. There are, as you mentioned, angels. That’s the state in which we live. However, we cement this belief system in the material world, and we believe this is it.

We get stuck in ruts, into what we think we know and what we think is true.

Most of us are looking literally at this tiny sliver of reality, I mean, tiny. We don’t even begin to see all the possibilities, all the things that are out there. When you travel, you’re just a little bit stepping out of that little sliver of how you see everything. I guess that would be my answer to how do travel and spirituality go hand in hand? 

Were you always spiritual? Did you get awakened in the middle of your life? How did it work for you?

I grew up in a conventional Christian-type family. My father, in fact, was a minister. But talk about a narrow viewpoint, the way I was raised was very narrow. There were very strict rules—the 10 commandments and all that kind of stuff. I just did that. I went to church a lot and it was fine. 

But when I got off to college, I started reading and meeting new people. I guess my horizons were broadened and some of those beliefs that I was taught as a kid no longer applied. I began to see a bigger reality or a bigger picture.

Focus on the present because the past and the future are irrelevant. Just live in the moment. Click To Tweet

I think it was more of a gradual thing. I love the stories about people just having this radical awakening like Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, or something like that. Mine really wasn’t that way. In fact, I wouldn’t say I’m even awakened now. I would say I’m on a path. I’m on a journey.

This is the most awakened thing to say because when somebody tells me that they’re awakened, they probably are maybe not.

Yeah. I feel like I’m on a journey. It’s important to me. I always say my intention is to wake up or to just be open to possibilities, and to open to what could be to the beauty and the love. The whole world is just shimmering with light and love, but we don’t see it, again, because we are so focused on this very tiny sliver. That’s my word of the day, I guess, sliver of reality?

I like it. In Kabbalah, they call it the 1% because we live in the 1% reality and they talk about moving the veil into the 99% of reality or whatever it is. How do you cope with what’s going on right now in the world? Because the 1% of what’s going on in the world seems a little tough with all the restrictions.

We keep observing this one little thing, and it just keeps growing and growing.

So true. I agree, but what you just said was the key when you said the 1%. Why are we all focused on that 1%? I believe it’s even bigger than 99%. The cycle is infinite. That’s actually possible, but everybody is looking in at that little 1%. How silly is that?

We’re really focused on that. How do I cope is to keep reminding myself that that is just one viewpoint. It’s one of the many collapsing ways. We sort of collapsed the way in terms of physics. I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book E-Squared but I talk a lot about some of the physics principles, the observer effect, and that kind of thing. We keep observing this one little thing, and of course, it just keeps growing and growing and growing.

In quantum physics, when you see something, it appears. When you look at something, it appears, and when you’re not there, it’s not there.

Right. The observer effect is what they call it. There’s really no true scientific experiment because the observer or the person doing the experiment, their viewpoint is playing out all the time. I guess the way to cope is to recognize that it’s just a tiny sliver—my favorite word for today—that there is much bigger and much more, and to just continue to be asking to see the bigger picture, the bigger life, the bigger whatever. That is my goal. That’s how I cope.

To build your future from your future and not from your past.

Or not even to worry about the future, just think about the now, this moment. I’m really trying to focus on this moment only. The past is irrelevant, the future is irrelevant, only this moment. That’s one of the tools I use, just really living in the moment.

Our brains are still quite primitive. They are still wired to look for the saber-toothed tiger and to look for danger. That’s why the media is so wonderful at capturing our attention because we are so wired to look for what’s wrong. How do you rewire your brain to look for what’s right? What are some processes that you suggest?

You mentioned gratitude earlier. I think gratitude is one of the most simple ways to help rewire your brain. If you stop and recognize just how grateful we are for just how much we have, how much we are blessed with no matter what. Finances have nothing to do with just the facts of the world. The sun came up this morning, how cool is that? The sun grows plants and grows crops for us to eat.

There are just so many gifts and blessings, but we don’t even stop to look at them.

There are just so many gifts and blessings, but we don’t even stop to look at them. We take it all for granted. I think focusing on gratitude. I don’t know what all you know about it or how you found out about me, but one of my books is called Thank & Grow Rich, which is a take-off, of course, on Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. But it’s all about gratitude and from the kind of capital that we all are privy to, not so much financial capital necessarily, but creative capital, social capital, and alchemic capital—the ability to make changes.

Let’s see. What are the five kinds of capital? Alchemic, social, creative, spiritual capital, and then adventure capital. Those are the five types of capital that I believe in going for, but also, I just think gratitude is because everybody can understand gratitude. I think sometimes people poopoo it and think it’s too simple, but it isn’t. It literally changes your brain. It changes everything. It changes where you put your focus.

Gratitude is a big one for that. You talked about the news and one of the things I’ve said several times is that watching the news or focusing on the news or that 1% is like putting a please-kick-me sign on your back.

That’s funny. I find myself really curious about what’s going on and all the new rules and restrictions. I don’t want to be like an ostrich with our head in the sand, but also I don’t want to focus on that completely. How do we find a middle way where we know what happened and if something bad is going to happen, we need to prepare for it? Because they’re talking about cyberattacks, breaking the food supply chain, and all that. 

The whole world is shimmering with light and love, but we don't see it because we are so focused on this very tiny sliver of reality. Click To Tweet

If I just don’t look at it, that means it’s not going to happen, or do I need to look at it and be prepared? How do you navigate that?

I feel like I’ve got enough information. It’s pretty easy to get enough information. I think what I try to do is just limit it to a small amount of information, just enough to know and to recognize that what I’m—I feel like if you focus too much on problems, being prepared for them, and thinking about what could happen, you’re literally wiring your nervous system to not be able to respond when things do happen. I think it’s important to try to create a headspace.

How so?

If you sit around and watch the news all the time, you’ve heard of that term, doom scrolling. If you watch the news a lot, that is going to wire your nervous system to be on edge. I mean so much on edge that it’s hard even to cope. However, when it comes right down to it, when we need to respond to things happening, it’s more or less in the moment. If we have a relaxed nervous system, a calm nervous system, we are able to react better to whatever challenges or whatever things that we will be presented with.

If we have a calm nervous system, we can react better to challenges.

Everybody can do what they want to do, but for me, it seems best to try to keep my nervous system calm so that I can hear the spirit, to hear the angels, to hear the guidance that I feel like is coming in. Because when I’m focused on, oh, this is going to happen, I got to worry, oh my God, then all that is blocked. All information coming in, all answers are blocked, and I want to have those. I want to be privy to all the answers, all the guidance that I can possibly get.

Yeah. You seem like you have a very relaxed nervous system like you did a lot of work. Were you always like that?

I wouldn’t say I’m always like that even now. It’s just a goal of mine. It’s just an intention of mine. I have four main intentions that I like to say and one is peace of mind. Peace of mind, surety of purpose, clear, unmistakable guidance, and then my fourth one is unceasing happiness to recognize that truth of life that is who we are at our inner core. Those are my four big, broad intentions that I’m shooting for in my life.

The biggest thing we need to do is to see things differently. A change in consciousness is what we need. Click To Tweet

I am a student of A Course in Miracles. The terminology that we use—everybody’s got different terminology—is the Holy Spirit. I say, Holy Spirit, help me see this differently. If I’m starting to get my nervous system held up, I can ask to see it differently. I believe there’s guidance that will help me see things differently, and to me, that’s the biggest thing we all need to do is to see things differently. A change in consciousness is what we need.

What is the Course in Miracles and why do we need to have a whole course to attract the miracle?

Have you heard of the Course of Miracles?

Yeah.

It’s a course that has been around for maybe going on 50 years now, and it’s not a path for everyone. It doesn’t even attempt to be a path for everyone. It’s just saying some people will really resonate with this. What A Course in Miracles is a mind training, to retrain your mind because again, what we see out there is a product of what’s in here. 

That’s the big thing. Our egos are showing us the scary world and oh my gosh, run for cover, duck, duck, duck. That’s what the ego wants to constantly feed us. That’s the little thing that runs at the bottom of the news feed constantly telling us, oh, no, help, help, something’s wrong, something needs to be fixed. That’s the ego’s message.

I try to ask the Holy Spirit—again, that’s my terminology. It can be any different terminology. I want to see things differently. Help me to see this differently. That’s my goal is to try to see things differently. If anything comes in that looks scary, just accept things the way they are and love what is. Love what is in this moment and what we have. Anyway, that’s it, I guess, in a nutshell.

Our egos are showing us the scary world.

Why The Course in Miracles? Again, it’s not for everybody. It just happened to be something I really resonated with. I’ve been working on The Course in Miracles. I hate to use the word work because that makes it sound as though it’s going to be really, really hard. I think that’s one of the issues. Even with spirituality, we think it’s got to be hard. We have to jump through these hoops and we have to do all this, but it’s so easy. 

In fact, A Course of Miracles says, it’s not really hard, this practice that we’re asked to do. It’s just so different from the way we’re used to living our lives. So not hard, just different.

Yeah. When Louise Hay was 90 years old, it was her birthday, or 90 or 94th birthday, I got to see her in San Diego on stage. She was too old and fragile. She didn’t even talk. She just blessed everybody with her gaze. Oh my God, that was such a beautiful moment that I experienced there. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, she passed like six months later. It was really sad because she was a great teacher.

When I was a teenager, my mom gave me the book, You Can Heal Your Life. I live by that most of the time when I remember to get away from the 1% and come back to where I need to be. I heard about The Course in Miracles from her. Can you share with me about The Course in Miracles and what was your experience with that? What was your experiment?

The book I wrote called Course in Miracles Experiment?

Yes.

The Course of Miracles is a big, thick, heavy book. It has almost 1000 pages, maybe more than 1000 pages. If you go to any spiritual gathering like any Louise Hay pack gathering, it’s like, how many people here have The Course in Miracles? Well, 100% of the people will raise their hand. Oh yes, they have a copy of the Course of Miracles. Then you ask them, how many have actually read it? All the hands go down.

Do you know how many spiritual incredible books I have that are just behind the screen? Like tons. So many, but it makes me feel good having them.

Yeah, I totally get that. Some of them are easier to read than others. I think part of the reason that people have resonated with my work is because I make it easy to read and fun to read.

You make everything really fun. I went on your blog and I was like, wow, she’s very special. I’m going to ask you about that later, but I love the way you own yourself and you’re so genuine with your communication. But back to The Course of Miracles?

The reason I wrote that book is that people don’t read it. It’s hard to read, it’s very dense, it’s thick. Most people use it for door stopper, so I decided that I would make—I don’t know if you’re familiar with how it works. There’s a text with The Course of Miracles that explains the thought system and there’s the workbook.

I heard it’s a very difficult text.

Yeah, and then there’s the workbook and that’s 365 lessons. You literally go through a year of mind training. What I did in the Course of Miracles Experiment is I—it came to me like it was mine to do because I was just blogging about my year of doing The Course of Miracles. About February, March, people were like, oh, we love this so much, you need to turn it into a book.

You hear that once, it’s like, oh, maybe I need to turn it into a book. Then you start hearing it again and again and again. It’s like, okay. Okay, universe. I get it, I need to turn it into a book. I went to my editor in Hay House and said, hey, look, this is what I’ve been doing. What I did is I took each of the lessons and then I put it in what I call Pam Grout Speak just to make it easy, make it fun, and make it so people can actually want to do it. Because if you don’t want to do it, you’re not going to do it. It can’t be a struggle, it can’t be hard.

I just rewrote those 365 lessons. I made it easy to understand and fun to read. A lot of people are just doing both—the actual workbook and mine together. Some people are just doing mine. Obviously, a lot of people just do the course workbook. But if there’s a 365-day program that you go through each year and then eventually, you can quit doing it, just give it all to the Holy Spirit. I’m dense, I’m slow, so I pretty much started over at the beginning of every year.

What did your readers or people that use your book, what are they saying? What miracles happened in their lives?

Oh my goodness, I have had so many people write to me with miracles. Ever since I wrote the book, E-Squared, are you familiar with that book of mine?

No. I haven’t read it, unfortunately. Now, I want to.

Our society tells us to work, work, work. But creativity is more about playing. Click To Tweet

Okay. That’s the book that went global and has been translated into 40 languages. That’s why Japan wanted me in town and why I’ve been to the Philippines, Finland, Peru, and everywhere speaking about my book. But in that book—now I forgot exactly what I was saying. Something about I’m making it easier. What was your question?

We were talking about the people that wrote to you about miracles.

Okay. Anyway, there’s the Nine Do-It-Yourself experiment. Is it true that there is this force out there that wants to interact with you, that wants to communicate with you, that wants to bless you, that wants to guide you? Is that true? I have these nine experiments that people do and they’re all fun. They take about 48 hours to prove to yourself. It doesn’t matter what anybody else says, you have to believe it yourself. What did you believe? What is your experience?

I challenge people. I thought I’d even set up the scientific method and here are the hypotheses. Here’s how the experiment worked and then people pray. Anyway, because of that, in one of the chapters I mentioned, if you find synchronicity, write to me. I think my email might be in there.

We all are due to have miracles.

Especially when the book first came out in 2013—probably for the next two or three years, it started going all over the globe—I would get literally hundreds of emails every day with people saying things like, ‘you’re never going to believe this.’ I always say, ‘yes, I do believe it’ because that is what I write about. Anyway, they told me about all these amazing, miraculous things that have happened to them after reading E-Squared, which is also a book about The Course of Miracles, about how miracles are natural, miracles are our inheritance. We all are due to have miracles.

Anyway, it tells in there how to do these experiments and then to see it, to test this out for yourself. Don’t take my word for it. Test it for yourself. Anyway, you ask what kind of miracles. I mean, you name it. I’ve had everything from people that have been given cars, people that have woken up with $10,000 more in their back to—oh gosh, I’m trying to even think—finding a dead relative that they’ve been looking for for years and years and years on some genealogy. 

In fact, I did a follow-up book that was called E-Cubed and it had nine more experiments in it. In there, there was a whole chapter and I called it “Well, Duh.” I told some of the stories about people and the amazing miracles that happened to them.

Here’s one just quick that comes to the top of my head. The first one is, is there this force or not? I set it up to where you ask for some kind of science, some kind of gift from the universe. A lot of people would write to me about that. The second one was I say, okay, I called it the “Volkswagen Jetta experiment” because we tend to see what we put our attention upon, right?

The reticular activating system.

Right. I had people, I gave them specific things. I gave them 48 hours to be looking for these things. This one girl—rather than take my suggestion—decided she was going to look for white feathers. One of the things I say—set it and forget it. It’s a crockpot principle. 

Anyway, she goes, okay, I’m going to see white feathers during this 48-hour period of the test, of the experiment that I have been doing in this book, but she’s geocaching with her family during these 48 hours and they’re driving back from wherever they were at. You know what geocaching is, when you go out and find these little—it’s just a fun treasure hunt sort of thing and it’s on your phone. You’ve got a GPS marker then you find these little treasures.

Anyway, they’re driving back from this outing that they had and suddenly, the traffic backed totally up. The little girl, the girl that is doing the experiment, her daughter said, mom, look, somebody must have killed a chicken. Lining a highway were white feathers for like seven miles.

She had asked to manifest to see white feathers. For seven miles, the traffic is backed up. She said, I don’t know if a truck turned over. I don’t know, but for seven miles, they got through those seven miles, the traffic cleared up, they got home, and on their welcome mat when they got home was one white feather.

No way.

Yeah. These are the stories that people were sending to me. They still send it to me. But the book came out in 2013 and it’s 2021, so eight years ago. Almost nine years ago now, the book came out. For the first three or four years, I was getting hundreds of these stories. I still get some, but I don’t get quite as many. 

Anyway, I just hear all these stories all the time about miraculous things that happened. It’s almost like pulling from a different dimension. Again, it’s pulling from a different than that 1% that we’re all aware of or from that sliver that I’m talking about, there is this other world. There is this other way you can interface with it.

In the quantum field where everything has potential. Abraham-Hicks, they call it the “vortex.” Some people call it the “quantum field.” It’s the field of infinite possibilities where all your dreams can just pull everything that you want from there. But what is the process? How do you do it?

Just let it happen. Trust that it’s there. It truly is simple. People just want to make it difficult. Here are your seven steps and everybody wants their seven steps and their big how-to manual.

If it’s so simple, why do we need a whole course of miracles?

Because you have to retrain your mind. Your mind is so used to things being hard, what’s going to be hard.

We are so indoctrinated in our way of thinking and seeing things that the whole process is just to open our horizons so we can see more.

It’s as simple as that. It’s truly as simple as that. However, our little mind wants to make it hard and wants to be given instructions on how to do this.

Why do we want to make it hard? Why can’t we make it easy?

I don’t know. It’s a good question.

I guess the way you point it out, you have to study hard, work hard, do hard. Everything needs to be hard, hard, hard. Then people are taking part, and I’m so busy and I work so hard. Sometimes in my life, I make things complicated. I’m like, if it’s not hard, I won’t be able to have it. I need to really work at it, really want it, and really suffer. But we can skip the suffering and we can just get to manifesting.

You have to retrain your mind.

I did manifest incredible things in my life, I have to tell you. I manifested my husband. I was at a Tony Robbins event, at Date With Destiny. We had our relationship vision and wrote our relationship vision. I sat by a waterfall at [1:00] AM when the day was over because the days are really long.

I had a breakthrough, a breakdown. I was crying, laughing, crying, laughing right in my relationship vision, and then I was at peace. That is after I was healing from an abusive relationship. It was really hard to date. It was really hard to get into any relationship.

I was about three years later after that relationship. After I wrote my relationship vision and I was in a place of surrender when I was like, God, I really tried to do it on my own. I tried to put the world on my shoulders. I can’t, please take it, and there was direct communication there. And 48 hours later, I was introduced to my now-husband. Nine days later, he proposed to me on a hot air balloon in Vegas.

Wow, sounds great.

Yeah, and I said no. But nine months later, he proposed again and then I said yes. Same way as having my child. Doctors gave me a 5% chance to conceive. I was like, no, we’re going to work with the field. We’re going to co-create.

I did use what I can use here. I used IVF and stuff, but it was a lot of co-creation because the chances were slim to none. In my head, I was like, not going to be 5%, it’s going to be 95%. We’re going to switch it. We’re going to look at what’s possible.

That’s beautiful.

Thank you. What are your daily rituals or practices to look at what’s possible?

I have several that I switched back and forth. I’m a better writer so I like to journal. I like to write in my journal. I meditate often. I still check in with my Course of Miracles lesson. I would say those are my main practices. But it boils down to just trying to keep my mind in this moment and not to go racing forward, not to be thinking about the past, and to really just be grateful.

How can one connect to their creativity? Creativity, is it you just write down things and then the inspiration comes?

I believe we are always connected to our creativity. Again, we may block it, we may not be aware of it, but all of us are creative. One of my books is called Art & Soul. I have Art & Soul then I have Art & Soul, Reloaded. Anyway, I have a little test in there and it says, okay, there’s the PSAT to get into college, there’s the MCAT to get into medical school, and there’s the LSAP to get into law school. Here’s my test if you are creative. It has one question, are you breathing? If you answer yes to this question, that means you are highly creative.

Yes, I am.

Anyway, that’s what I believe. Accessing creativity is more about not blocking creativity.

We may block it or be unaware of it, but all of us are creative.

How do we not block creativity?

We continue to create. Again, I feel like when I get blocked, I have to ask for guidance. I feel like it’s just a natural state to be creative. I don’t know how old your child is.

He’s two years and four months now.

Okay. You don’t have to tell a kid to, okay, make sure you know that life is right. They just do things with complete abandonment, fully alive in their bodies. They’re just going for curious, trying things. But as we get older, we learn rules and we have the way we’re supposed to do things. Little by little, that life and that creative pull to that creative impulse are trained out of us, I think.

One of the stories I tell in Art & Soul, Reloaded is a story, it was in a stage play that I saw. The kindergarten teacher has this group of students and she says, how many of you are writers? They all raised their hands. How many of you are painters? They all raised their hands.

Then in fifth grade, that same group of people, they asked them again, how many writers, painters, dancers? It’s gone down a little bit. By the time they get to high school in a state play, they asked them, how many of you are dancers, painters, writers? Only a handful will raise their hand. Little by little, it gets trained out of. I think that is what happens. Our society, again, tells us to work, work, work, work, work. Creativity is more about playing.

When I get blocked, I have to ask for guidance.

I feel the most creative when I’m not stressed out, when I’m open, when I dance, and when I sing. I did this really beautiful painting. I didn’t paint since I was eight and then I decided to go to this art studio and I did a painting. It took me 10 hours. It was really pretty. I did it and I was so surprised that I didn’t lose it. I think when we grow up, we think, oh, we haven’t done it in such a long time. I can’t be, I can’t do it. Who said that story? I think this guy from The Tapping Solution, I forgot his name.

Guy from what?

From the Tapping Solution.

Oh, Nick Ortner?

I think so. God, I can’t remember his name right now. But I saw a video of him telling the story and he said that he just started painting, people liked it, and I think within a month or two, he booked a one-man show, an exhibit of just his paintings.

Then when he met his friends who are painters, like oh my God, I can’t believe you got it. We are trying our whole life to get that and he was thinking to himself like, thank God I didn’t know that because if I knew that it was difficult, I would never manifest it. What can we do to get to that state of unblocked? Do you have anything that you can share about how we can unblock our creativity?

I have a little TEDx Talk about creativity. I suggest writing down three ideas every day. It doesn’t have to be a good idea. It doesn’t have to be an idea you’re going to do, but it gets your brain thinking in terms of being more creative. That’s one step.

Just write down three ideas. It can be anything. That’s one thing and then also in my TED Talk, I talk about dancing in the bathroom. Just do something silly because it gets you out of that responsible side of ourselves and think we shouldn’t do that.

I became very responsible since I became a mom. Everything now, I’m my mom, I’m a mom. I do things a certain way because I’m a mom. I want to be more open. I write three ideas every day. I just write any ideas, three ideas every day, and then what?

That’s it. That’s what I suggest. Again, listen to your guidance, listen to your heart. Don’t block stuff that’s trying to come to you. I feel like there are so many gifts and blessings that the universe is trying to give to us and it needs channels to get them up there. So just do it.

I believe in just letting go.

If you keep asking me how-to, how-to, how-to, I’m totally opposed to having some prescribed way of doing anything. I believe in just letting go. You mentioned the word surrender earlier, that is the key right there. Surrender and know that whatever you’re meant to do, whatever the spirit’s trying to get through to you will come through if you surrender. I don’t have all these different ideas for how to do it.

I just want to ask you, how do you surrender?

I know. That’s how our minds work. We keep asking for guidance, asking someone else when we just need to—

Just listen within and listen to the source, that’s the key.

Right, but everybody wants the how-to, how-to, and how-to. I think trying how-to is what blocks us half the time.

Exactly. That’s what came to mind right now. Because we’re looking so much, the how-to is here. When you go from here to here, the answers are here, and then you open the channel. I think the how-to, like you said, distracts us from actually reaching our potential because we need to go through the journey, we need to learn from a thousand teachers, and read a billion books before we know how to get to that place.

That’s the dominant paradigm that we all believe, but I say no to that.

I like that. Thank you so much for that reminder. It was really cool. Before we say goodbye for now, what are your three top tips to living a stellar life?

Top tips. there I go again. Okay. Again, gratitude is very important. I’ve talked about this many, many times, but I will talk about my AA 2.0 program. I guess if you haven’t read my books, this will be new to you so I’ll go ahead and tell you.

You’ve heard of the AA program, the 12-step program. I’m all about smooth and easy, so I have an AA 2.0 which has two steps. Here are the two steps. I get up in the morning and I say something amazingly awesome is going to happen to me today. I don’t specify what it might be. It’s just something amazingly awesome. That’s where the AA came from—amazingly awesome.

It may not be grammatically correct. Every day I go, something really fabulous is going to happen to me today. I’ve gone through the whole lot and now I’m audaciously beautiful, extraordinarily epic. Anyway, something cool is going to happen. That’s step one. Just pronounce that before you get out of bed.

Second is I have what I call my possibility posse and we text blessings. Gratitude speaks either from the day before, so three things that we are grateful for that happened to us yesterday. Each morning, we do this. The thing that’s different about this gratitude practice from some gratitude practices is that it has to be something different each day.

If you said, oh, I’m so grateful for my child, you can’t say that the next day, you have to come up with something different. That puts you on the lookout to be always looking for things to be grateful for. That’s what I call my AA 2.0 program.

People have sent me things like they may mean something amazingly awesome is going to happen every day. They’ve sent me a plaque saying something amazingly awesome is going to happen to me today. It’s kind of become my signature. Anyway, gratitude would be one of the tips for living a stellar life.

Second tip—I mean I’m just making these up on the fly—would be to surrender, to let go of that sliver of reality that you think is the way it has to be and just open yourself up to what’s trying to come through. What should I pick for number three? Go outside every day.

That was more than three. I like that, though.

Was it? Okay, good.

It’s always good to focus on those things. It’s always good to remember those things. I guess, sometimes, our stubborn minds want to hear the how-to from somebody like you and also hear, stop with the how-to and just connect to your heart.

Yes, there you go. So simple.

Where can people find you, read your books that are amazing? I haven’t read them yet, but I am definitely going to get the two we focused on today because I’m so freaking curious and in awe about them.

My books are available on Amazon or bookstores. But on my website, if people want to find me, I have this blog on my website. There are literally like 800–900 blog posts and it’s all about this kind of stuff. It’s pamgrout.com. If you know my name, you can find me. My Twitter and my Instagram, it’s all Pam Grout. 

Okay. Pam, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your light, your wisdom. I just love how genuine and honest you are. It’s just so beautiful and refreshing.

Well, great. It was nice talking to you.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, listeners. Remember to be in gratitude. Always look for something wonderful that is going to happen to you. Get up in the morning and say, something amazingly awesome is going to happen today. Let go and surrender. Open yourself up and have a stellar life. This is Orion, until next time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓}Travel the world. When you travel, you’ll realize that the world is much smaller than you think. People are the same no matter where you go. 
{✓}Get out of your comfort zone. Be open to new possibilities and see the bigger reality.
{✓}Live in the moment. Your past and future are irrelevant. Only in the present moment can you achieve true happiness, peace, and joy, which are all key to your mental wellbeing.
{✓}Always be grateful. You get so many gifts and blessings in your life, stop and look at them. Gratitude is one of the most simple ways to help rewire your brain.
{✓}Limit the information you get from news, online, etc. Just get enough to know how to properly prepare when something happens.
{✓}Relax your nervous system. A calm mind will enable you to react better to whatever challenges or situations you encounter. This will also allow you to have a clearer connection with your spirit guides and angels.
{✓}Always try to see things differently. Accept things the way they are and love what it is. Love what is in this moment and what you have. 
{✓}Connect to your creativity. Learn how to unblock your creativity by writing down three ideas every day. It will allow your brain to be more creative.
{✓}Listen to your guidance and your heart. There are so many gifts and blessings that the universe is trying to give to you. It needs channels to deliver them to you.
{✓}Learn how to let go. Whatever your guide wants to get through to you will come if you surrender. The key is to listen to the source.
{✓}Visit Pam Grout’s website to get to know more about her. Also, check out her books on Amazon.

Links and Resources

About Pam Grout

Pam Grout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 20 books including the brand new, Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (and Therefore the World.) She’s a freelance writer who has published with Scientific American Explorations, Outside, Mens Journal, People magazine, Travel + Leisure, and many other publications. She’s the creator of the TV series Going Rogue, and the wacky proliferator behind two popular blogs. Her current focus is the 222 Foundation she started to honor her magical daughter, Tasman, who has been guiding her from the nonphysical since October 15, 2018. Pam can be reached at www.pamgrout.com and @PamGrout on all the socials.

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