Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] When I was about 21 years old, living in Cambridge, England, I decided to get a job on the river as a river guide. River tour guide with Scudamore's river tour company.
[00:00:15] And this is a beautiful job in Cambridge, in England. So it's a college town with these beautiful old colleges that some of them were built in the 11th century. You know, these are classic Cambridge university like, really high quality, quality old school buildings with beautiful lawns and old architecture and great halls, and it's just epic. And the river that goes in between the colleges gives you a kind of views of the college in a way that you can't see in any other way. And it's absolutely beautiful. So I just had the inspiration. I knew someone who had a job there, and I thought, you know, I'd get into it. The job itself had two parts. The first part of the job involved trying to convince random people walking down the street to stop what they were doing and come onto a boat for a tour on the famous Cambridge river.
[00:01:16] So what would happen is we'd stand on the pavement wearing this kind of ridiculous straw hat and our little company sweater that said Scudamore's river tour company on ithood. And we had this laminated board that had pictures of the colleges and pictures of the river. And then when passersby came through, we'd say to them, river tours.
[00:01:42] Would you like to come on a river tour? River tours. Come on a river tour. Would you like a tour, madam? River tour, sir? And that sort of thing. And we would basically say whatever we felt like. And hopefully some of these people just wandering about would be sufficiently compelled to express their interest in more. And if they were interested, we would tell them a little bit more about it. And if they wanted to do it, we would write them out this little ticket on this little slip that showed the number of people, and it had our initials at the bottom of it, like a little receipt, if you like. They didn't pay anything. They just took that, and they took it down to the boathouse. And if they actually paid, then we would get a commission from those people.
[00:02:31] So we had to work hard for our money. And it was very random, you know, because there's all sorts of people walking up and down the streets all day long. And initially, I personally found it very disturbing because I'm naturally more of an introverted person. I actually took the job as a means of doing something that I would find slightly challenging, and it's not the sort of thing that I would naturally be inclined to do. So I thought you know, I'll give it a try and see what happens. And initially, I didn't really get any sales, and it really wasn't working out for me at all.
[00:03:11] And there was two ways of making money. The first way was what I just mentioned, to get people to sign up and give them their little slip. The. The other way was just to sit around and we would get paid minimum wage. And minimum wage was three pounds 50, which is equivalent of about $5 an hour.
[00:03:32] So basically, I could either show up for work and just sit around and get paid, you know, 20 or 30 pounds at the end of the day for doing nothing, or I could work hard, and any amount of money I made over minimum wage, I would get extra. So it was. It was kind of an interesting situation. To work or not to work.
[00:03:56] Should I put in the extra effort or should I just sit around? Initially, frankly, I did just sit around because I realized that I wasn't getting any results, and it seemed a bit pointless to put the work in. And then there was the other side of the job, which was to, when people did sign up, whether it was me or some of the other people working there, we would all be pulled out and told, okay, it's your time to do a tour. We didn't get paid for the tours. We only got paid for the commission. So every time we were pulled off the street, we were losing out on making money, which is an interesting situation.
[00:04:30] So we didn't really want to do the tours. And initially, I couldn't even punt. Punting is like. Punting is a. Like a gondola, but not as fancy.
[00:04:40] And you have this big pole that you push down, and you have to punt along the river, avoiding all the other boats that are there while giving a tour to the people and pointing things out. And we mostly made up the tour out of our heads. It wasn't necessarily based on history. We just made things up, and we learned things from other people. That window up there, that little window, the reason it's so small is because there used to be a tax from Henry VIII, a window tax, and they didn't want to pay the tax, so that's why they had a small window. And all the japanese people would look up, they'd go, oh, window. Yeah.
[00:05:21] And because there's tons of japanese tourists. And it was just. It was just a funny experience all round.
[00:05:28] So initially, it was difficult to punt down river without. I used to bang into the sides. It was a complete disaster. I wasn't making any money, couldn't punt me it was just terrible.
[00:05:38] So after a while, I thought, you know what? I'm no good at punting. I can't get any sales. This just isn't working out very well. But luckily, the same time I was doing that, I just started doing meditation, and I was learning about the power of the mind, and I started learning about how when we shift our consciousness and when we have good thoughts, and when we have visions, powerful visions, and when we aim to give happiness and feel that we've attained everything, then massive transformation can occur. So I was learning about these sorts of things in the morning, and then I come to work and I'd fall apart and everything would be a disaster. And it got to the point where I thought, look, I really have to practice this stuff in my real life because this is just not working out very well.
[00:06:36] And just keep in mind that what was going on when I was at work was that I would be standing there with a board on the side of the road, and there'd be five or ten, even other scudamors, company guys like myself, who were all trying to get the same people off the street. So it was high competition. Plus there was other boat companies. You've got this limited number of people walking down the street, tons of scooter molars, river tall people on both sides of the street, up and down the street, some closer to the boathouse, some like, way down the other side of the road, like way down the block. So everyone's trying to figure out where could they go, where they're going to catch the most tourists, like vultures?
[00:07:18] And I noticed some of these other people, somehow they were in the right spot, or something was going on. And other people were getting all these commissions and making hundreds and hundreds of dollars a day, and I was basically making nothing. And I was really wondering, like, what is it that's wrong with me that I'm barely making just over minimum wage and there are people just all around me somehow pulling it off. We're in the same things, doing the same thing, saying the same things.
[00:07:46] So one day, after too many disappointing results, I decided I really needed to try something radically different.
[00:07:56] And prior to that, what was going on internally for me was whenever I saw potential customers coming down the street, in my mind, I was thinking to myself, I would really like it if these people could give me some money. I was thinking things like, why isn't it working out for me?
[00:08:21] Why am I not successful?
[00:08:24] Why are these people not signing up? What am I doing wrong?
[00:08:30] There's something wrong with the people. Just the whole thing was a bit negative, quite frankly. I wasn't sure exactly what I was thinking, but there was a sort of energy, the vibration behind it.
[00:08:41] So my attitude was basically, I want them to do something, I want them to join my, my river tour, I want them to sign, you know, give me money. And at the same time I was having a bit of a negative attitude that they probably wouldn't and they're probably not very good and something wrong with me. So it was a mixture of wanting things to happen, having negativity towards people and towards myself and towards the other people. So it's all kinds of desires and negativity in the background.
[00:09:13] So I decided there was a need for a very different approach. And a little Starbucks coffee shop sat about 30 seconds away from the boathouse. And one morning around 08:00 I ordered a large black coffee and I decided to try a new approach to my work. And my new approach was, instead of trying to get people to join the river tour, as I had been for months, unsuccessfully, my new focus was to simply see everyone as a spiritual being and beam happiness, golden happiness, towards them.
[00:09:59] So my goal had changed.
[00:10:02] My internal aim had shifted from selling rivetors to giving joy, golden joy, I imagine, like a big golden, golden, joyful vibrations, complete transformation. So I drank my coffee, because the thing is, you have to remember, I wasn't making any money. So I thought, what have I got to lose? I might as well stop trying. It wasn't working anyway. So had my coffee and I went out on the street. And whoever I saw, I very clearly focused on looking beyond their body to the eternal, beautiful soul that animated their body.
[00:10:47] The beautiful jewel of light shining behind the eyes. And I felt deep in my heart that each one of these beautiful souls that's walking towards me is part of my spiritual family.
[00:11:01] And these are divine souls who are just moving through life.
[00:11:10] And as I saw them coming towards me, I sent them blessings of love and joy from the heart.
[00:11:20] And it really was my desire. I'm not interested in selling anything at all. I just want to give everyone smiles and, and blessings.
[00:11:29] My aim was simply to make a connection of happiness, to have that sacred moment where in that split second where our eyes met and I could see them, to just give them good vibrations from the heart and send them love through my face vibrations. And I honestly, truly didn't care at all whether they joined a river tour or not. Not even the slightest.
[00:12:02] It was just, may this soul be blessed and may I experience just a moment of joy and give them some, some special spiritual gift.
[00:12:13] I wasn't trying to get them to do anything anymore. It was purely that they felt happiness and good vibrations and we shared a moment, just for a few seconds.
[00:12:24] So that was a radical shift. And it really, this isn't some like little mental game to try and get sales, it was a real thing. I thought, you know what, let me really practice this. I'm here pretending to be this person on the street with this board in my hand, but actually I'm just giving blessings.
[00:12:42] And at the same time, I still played the part of pretending to be a river tour guide. You know, I would still say, I didn't just smile at them, I would also say river tours or something like that, but I didn't really care. It was kind of like a side, it wasn't the main thing, it wasn't where I was coming from.
[00:13:01] And I was like, look, I'm just going to drink my coffee and give blessings.
[00:13:07] And as a result of this shift in perception, which I didn't expect to have any effect at all, I was in the same place doing the same thing, you know, just standing around.
[00:13:19] I also noticed as a result of that, that I became less inhibited, less stuffy, less self self obsessed, less negative. I wasn't feeling at all negative. I was feeling very joyful, more expressive, more amusing. And my offer for river tours died, getting more kind of ridiculous and flamboyant and a bit absurd, just because I just, it was just fun and games. I just thought, this is hilarious, what have I got to lose?
[00:13:46] My general vibration and demeanor changed. So it all felt like it was light, it was free, it was fun, it was just whatever, you know, I'm free, I've already attained everything. I don't need anything.
[00:13:56] So I didn't expect to see any sales, but I just felt better about the whole thing and I made people happy. And some of the people who normally would be scowling and wondering why I'm offering them river tours would happy because a lot of people were tourists, but a lot of them were locals and they didn't want people offering them river tours. So it just, the whole vibe with everyone I connected with was just wonderful. As soon as I made that inner shift, I noticed a few things happened.
[00:14:25] First, fully. Firstly, I enjoyed myself like a thousand times more. I just loved my work, it was just great. I couldn't wait to get to work. So I thought, yeah, I can give everyone blessings.
[00:14:36] And since I was no longer wanting people to give me anything, I felt I could be more open, more expressive, more connecting.
[00:14:44] And people seemed to smile back at me more. And there was just a good vibe overall.
[00:14:52] And the fact that my days became more enjoyable was in itself, in itself a great gift. So just keep this in mind. The shift in my own consciousness made me personally feel profoundly rich.
[00:15:12] I felt very wealthy and very happy without anything else. My numbers hadn't changed, I wasn't making any more money, but I felt stoked, I felt joyful, right. That to me, that was like a major shift. Instead of feeling negative and feeling self doubt and all these things, I just felt absolutely in just such a wonderful space. So that in itself, to me, in and of itself, was more than enough.
[00:15:46] And this is extremely important to really ground in that, quite frankly, our inner state of consciousness, day in, day out, all the time, is way more important than anything else all the time.
[00:16:02] Then, to my surprise, I noticed that all the good vibrations started increasing and so did the sales.
[00:16:12] This is really was not what I expected or anticipated or was the reason I did it. I wasn't planning on getting more sales. I just did it because I thought I needed a change. But I noticed that quite quickly people would avoid these other river tour guides who are all over the street in all directions, on one side, on the other side of the street, on one side of the street, to the other side, one end of the streets, the other end, down different streets near the boathouse. They would walk past all these different guides and walk straight up to me and have me write them out tickets.
[00:16:55] It was. It was. I was just amazed.
[00:16:58] And at one point, I actually broke the sales record, which was really high record, and I was shocked. I remember the day that happened. It was. I remember it was a Sunday and there was tons of river tour people, and I was just in such a good mood and every. Everyone just kept walking up to me and just, like, writing out tickets for ten people, eight people, 15 people, and it was, you know, it started making hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pounds, which is a lot of money back in those days for someone my age.
[00:17:37] So I couldn't believe it. I was quite amazed, actually. I was quite. I genuinely surprised at what was going on, considering that all the other circumstances were the same. I was. I looked the same, I was wearing the same clothes, same hat, same board, same everything. The other people were the same. It was the same season, the same sort of tourists, all the situations were the same, except all of a sudden there's tons of joy and tons of money.
[00:18:07] And that really taught me a profound lesson about life. And something that I have been striving to achieve and continue in different ways because I'm no longer a river tour guide.
[00:18:21] And what I've learned from this are a few points which I'd like to share with you. There's four main things to take from this.
[00:18:30] Number one is aim to give happiness and not to get anything.
[00:18:38] This is easier said than done when we want something from people, when we desire something from them. We're not coming from a place of giving, we're coming from a place of taking.
[00:18:53] And taking is not a good vibration. People pick it up and they don't feel safe. They just don't feel safe.
[00:18:59] And I understand it's not easy to do this because we do actually need help from other people, and we do actually need money to live. Right? So this is a high, high level spiritual practice.
[00:19:13] But people pick it up when there's a. A sense that they're trying to suck something out of us. I pick it up when people are trying to get something from me and I feel awkward about it. Yeah, we'll pick it up. So instead of that, we need to aim to serve and shine and bless those with whom we're in contact with. We need to move our attention away from getting to giving from the heart as best we can.
[00:19:47] And this shift in consciousness really is profound, and it's highly effective in creating a better situation all round, because, first of all, when we focus on giving, it makes our own life much better immediately.
[00:20:05] So we feel that then this is really important to have a solid spiritual practice and to do things that make us joyful. So we'll talk more about that later. But the more we have other means of feeling good, through meditation, through powerful thoughts, through good vibrations, through going into nature, and doing things that don't require anyone else giving to us, but we just feel stoked.
[00:20:30] So if we feel more good vibrations, then we're much more likely to be in a good position to give to others. Now, the secret here, this is a little bit difficult to do because I'm suggesting to do something that gets results.
[00:20:50] But in order to get the more money, more sales, we have to do it without the desire for more sales. This is why it's difficult.
[00:21:01] Because if I say to myself, look, if I am in a good space and I give everyone blessings, I'm gonna make more money, money.
[00:21:11] So if I'm doing it for money, that that kind of, like, is a drop of poison in the glass of water.
[00:21:24] It's very subtle. If I say I'm gonna have a good vibration so that I can have more success.
[00:21:31] Even though it's true, the intention is corrupted.
[00:21:40] This is. This is very important to be aware of and to check ourselves again and again and again.
[00:21:47] So instead of that, we need to say, I want to have higher levels of consciousness because I want to have higher levels of consciousness.
[00:21:56] In other words, I want to have higher levels of consciousness because it feels good, because I'm becoming closer to my highest state of being, which is good for me and good for everyone else, and so that I can give more and so that I can be more divine and closer to God, to a higher power.
[00:22:14] So we need to have our motivation behind it genuinely coming from a good place. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with making money and making sales. There isn't anything wrong with it. It's a wonderful thing. But when we, when we try and have higher consciousness to make money, then it's not got as the same level of power as I want to have higher consciousness because it's important to me to experience higher consciousness.
[00:22:45] So do it for the love of higher consciousness. Do it for the love of God, do it for the love of service.
[00:22:53] Do it for the love of being, of service to others and helping others be happy. Because remember, the more we help others achieve what they want, the more they'll help us achieve what we want. That's just the law of karma.
[00:23:06] So this is something to really tune into, to have a deep desire to raise our level of consciousness for you to raise your level of consciousness for its own sake, knowing that it will lead to more sales, but not do it for more sales.
[00:23:34] So there's something to just be aware of. You might want to write this down. Think about it. Check yourself, because when it's sincere and nothing to do with getting anything from anyone else, but completely for the joy of enlightenment, if you like, then it has way more power and you won't get upset if it doesn't work out because you don't care.
[00:24:06] So what we're tuning into is we're here to serve others. We're here to give the best we can. We have a right to work. We have a right to shine. We have a right to share. We have no right for other people to say yes and give us what we want at all. There's no right to that, but we have a right to give. So we stay fully on our side of it. And whatever happens, we completely let it go.
[00:24:29] Completely.
[00:24:31] I am surrendered to the highest good of all.
[00:24:37] So how do we get higher levels of consciousness and joy? Well, the first thing is that the more we feel alive, the more you feel inspired personally, the more you can give to others in a powerful way. If you don't feel inspired, how do you expect to inspire others? So the question is, what lights up your soul? What is it that lights you up?
[00:25:02] There are many ways that we get inspired, and it can be different for different people, and there's no right or wrong. Spiritual practice, I think, is very important for all of us, because by connecting to a higher power, we are pulled up by connecting to divine will instead of our ego. Ego's will is very low consciousness. Me, me, me, me, me, me. Divine will is super high frequency. So we're tuned into a divine will that really pulls up the game and then doing other things, you know, like going on walks or dancing or listening to high vibe music or painting or music or whatever it is that you love to do that raises the vibration, has no negativity, no vices, no negativity involved. So super high vibe things, whatever it is, the more we do that, the more inspired we feel, the more enlightened we feel, the more joyful we feel, and then we can give back.
[00:25:58] The third thing that's important is to prioritize your inner state above anything else. The more your own good feelings.
[00:26:10] And giving good vibrations is the top priority.
[00:26:15] The top priority.
[00:26:17] The more all the other things will be easy.
[00:26:23] Whereas the more we try and do everything else first in order to feel good afterwards, the harder it is to actually get the other things done.
[00:26:37] Yeah, because high vibrations are much easier to just knock it out. Then when we're like, oh, I need to do all this other stuff first. I feel so terrible, because where does it ever end? You know, a lot of people, they spend their whole lives running around trying to feel better, but not doing the work on the inside, trying to line everything up on the outside. So when we flip it around and say the inner work is the most important, having high vibrations is most important, I'm going to focus on that. Top priority. Top priority. Top priority. Powerful thoughts, powerful vibrations, powerful meditation.
[00:27:10] Then everything else sort of takes care of itself.
[00:27:15] And the fourth thing is to take joy from helping others find joy.
[00:27:24] The more we personally develop the habit of helping people and helping them find what brings them joy, and not necessarily them joining a particular course or buying a certain product, we're just helping them. The more our interest is in, okay, here's a person.
[00:27:41] How can I be of service to them? How can I help them find joyous without impressing our beliefs or our desires or our wishes, that they do certain things on them. This is very subtle, right? The more we just say, look, here's this person. They're a unique individual. They have their whole destiny. They have their whole story. They have their whole experience.
[00:28:08] Who are they? What do they want? What do they need?
[00:28:12] Where are they coming from?
[00:28:15] And really tune into it and think, what is it that they actually need? What is it that's gonna really help them?
[00:28:26] And if it's a program that you're selling, then that's wonderful. If it isn't a program that you're selling, then they're fair enough, then you shouldn't sell it to them because it's gonna be a problem. So, in fact, we want to give them something else, give them a different thing, or recommend a book that will help them. But the bottom line is helping them have a breakthrough, helping them discover something, helping them feel good, just loving them. You know, one of the things, we were reading a book, R and I, from David Hawkins, and one of the things he did in his practice with a lot of mentally ill schizophrenic people, he had a practice in New York with a lot of people who were really out of it, and people had given up on them. And they were just like, you know, like type of people. In straitjackets, you can't talk. Grunting, really not no hope type cases. And what he did is he just realized that there's nothing he could do that would help them practically. But what he could do is love them.
[00:29:36] Love them, just love them. And that giving loving attention raised their level of consciousness and allowed them to experience freedom.
[00:29:51] Now, the people you're talking to are not like that. They're sane people who can talk back to you and, you know, much more capable. But still, the practice is the same thing. Having a loving vibration, having a sense of caring, you know, holding them in light, thinking of them as sacred beings, and just being interested in their highest good. And one thing to be aware of when it comes to offering things to people is that most of the time, you can. If there's something they need that doesn't exist in a current program, no doubt it could be created. We could create it.
[00:30:37] We could be an affiliate for someone else who has something that they need. There's all sorts of ways of helping them get something they need if it doesn't currently exist. In many cases, not in all cases, but in many cases. So we're just tuning into what do they need to, what could we give them? That's going to help them and coming from that space.
[00:31:00] So this is really powerful practices to give up any interest in outcomes.
[00:31:14] It's absolutely fine to hold a vision. It's absolutely fine to imagine people being successful and there being lots of money and loads of success and feeling that you've attained everything. That's all wonderful. And then when it comes to actually being engaged with certain processes and practices and work projects and everything just come completely service, service, service, service, and let go. And then let go completely. Whatever is the highest good. What? Really? Whatever is the highest good. If we're not supposed to do something, we're supposed to change something, supposed to let someone go, do this, do that. We're just open to service because we know on a deeper level the law of karma. The law of karma. Our job is to give good karma and then completely, completely detach and come back to the feeling that I've attained everything and I don't need anything. So when we get joy, when our joy comes from helping others, that we feel really good, that we helped other people and we're not, that in itself is so satisfying that it really doesn't make any difference whether or not anything happens after that, then we're in a really good space. So this is the aim that we feel so good that we did the best we could, and the joy of giving and the joy of sharing is so high in and of itself that that is the reward right there. Here and now we don't need anything else. And if anything else does come, it's the icing on the cake. It's extra icing on an already well iced cake. It's like, you know, icing plus extra icing and a little cherry and maybe some other bits of cream and whatnot. But you're already, you've already got the whole cake, you enjoy that. You already eaten a cake, you've had loads of cakes. You're filled with cake. So there's no need for any extra cake. And if you do get one, that's wonderful. So that's where we want to come from.
[00:33:16] So a quick recap. Aim to give happiness, not to get anything. Find out what brings you joy personally, so that you are in such a beautiful space that you feel you've come alive. Prioritize your inner state, generally speaking, more than anything else in your life all the time. This is a very high level thing to practice.
[00:33:37] And fourth thing is take joy from helping others and have so much joy about helping others, that in and of itself is profoundly satisfying.
[00:33:47] And we know it's going to lead to results, but we feel so good about the thing itself that that's enough for us. When you come from that space, people feel very safe. They feel actually quite amazed to have met somebody who's coming from that space, because extremely unusual and rare and special.
[00:34:07] And they'll be like, well, this, like everyone else is blatantly trying to get my money and con me into buying their stuff. With these people, they're just super good vibes, totally caring. They're just interested in what's the highest good for me. They're willing to do work things out and give me what I need and, like, come up with different, different ways of making it work.
[00:34:27] It's so unusual that, of course, it's gonna lead to a lot more sales, but only when that isn't the intention. And that's. That's the special secret. Art can be done. It just requires very high level inner work. But you're a great soul, and you can do it. It's already done, and that's why you're here. So success is completely guaranteed. We've already attained everything, and so it is.
[00:35:06] So thank you for listening to this. Hopefully this has been helpful.
[00:35:11] So much love and appreciation to you, and may you have infinite success in your joy now and in the future.
[00:35:19] Much love.
