Do you feel like the luckiest person in the world? If not, why not? Learn how you can create more luck in your life by following these practices shared by my guests, Gay Hendricks and Carol Kline, authors of Conscious Luck.
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About Gay Hendricks and Carol Kline
Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., has served for more than forty years as one of the major contributors to the fields of relationship transformation and body-mind therapies. He is a New York Times bestselling author and his books include Conscious Loving and The Big Leap.
Carol Kline has devoted her career to teaching, writing, and speaking about consciousness and personal growth. She is the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Happy for No Reason, Love for No Reason, five books in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Together, they wrote Conscious Luck: Eight Secrets to Intentionally Change Your Fortune.
About This Episode
This episode was an absolute joy to record. Speaking with and learning from Gay and Carol about what luck actually is and how to manifest more of it in your life was enlightening. First of all, they break down why exactly luck isn’t just about luck.
You’re likely familiar with the phrase, “you make your own luck.” And it’s true - to an extent. Luck is about being open to the great abundance of the universe coupled with living a joyful and grateful life.
So how can you increase the luck in your life? Gay and Carol share about the luck factor and some of the ways you can improve this in your daily existence.
One of the major aspects of improving your luck is to adopt a radical gratitude practice. They don’t mean you should force gratitude when you can’t see anything to be grateful for, but to try to look for something you can be grateful for in any situation.
By looking for things you can be grateful for, you actually train your brain to be more positive and see the good more often than not. Gay and Carol explain why this practice increases your luck - it’s all about raising your overall vibration.
Gay and Carol talk about other ways you can increase your luck: creating a luck-worthy goal. When you have a goal in mind that not only elevates you but other people, the universe will help you out. Another aspect of this is how much goodness comes when your head is in line with your heart’s desire to do good.
Lastly, Gay and Carol share some practices we can adopt today so we can start achieving our lucky goals. These are simple ways that help change our mindset into one more open and willing to accept luck and the joyful abundance of the universe.
Are you ready to create your own luck? What are you grateful for today? As always, you can ask me anything and let me hear your thoughts in the comments below. If you have questions, email team@drannacabeca.com.
In This Episode:
- Why luck isn’t just a matter of luck
- How you can improve the luck factor in your life
- Why you need to be open to receive support from the Universe
- How the power of radical gratitude can lift your vibration and increase your luck
- What makes a luck-worthy goal
- What happens when your heart and your mind are in alignment
- Some practices we can adopt to start achieving our lucky goals
Quotes:
“It really begins with an act of your willingness and your commitment to be a luckier person every day.” (11:17)
“What I think we’ve got to do is make your life an opening for magical things to happen. Because why not? What have you got to lose? Open yourself up to more magic and miracles and the appearance of spontaneous good things in your life.” (14:39)
“Luck is like a wind that’s blowing all the time. Conscious luck is finding your way of being with that so things come to you effortlessly.” (41:45)
Resources Mentioned
Buy Conscious Luck and Claim Your Free Bonuses!
Follow Conscious Luck on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Join the KetoGreen Community on Facebook
Buy Keto-Green 16
Transcripts
Dr. Anna:
Luck-worthy goals are something that most people don't realize could bring luck to them. We think of our goals not in a context of luck, but on a most basic level, if you were lucky, your goals would come true. You'd get to them faster. You'd have more support from people, from yourself, from your spouse, from the community, from the universe. And that's what our luck-worthy goals are about; when you give luck a reason to visit. When you have luck-worthy goals, luck chases you.
Dr. Anna:
Welcome, everyone. It's Dr. Anna Cabeca. I am the girlfriend doctor and it is my mission and my passion to help women live better lives before, during, and after menopause. So welcome to the Girlfriend Doctor Podcast; an intimate place for intimate conversation. And, hey, I'm here for you. You can ask or tell me anything. No shame, no guilt, no apologies. We've pulled back the curtain on all things related to sexual health, libido, PMS, menopause, women's health. I mean, you name it, we talk about it. Our goal is to shine a light on your overall wellness; mind, body, and spirit. So let's get started.
Dr. Anna:
Today, if you're watching this, you may notice that I am in a little different place than I usually am. I am in a barn outside of Dallas, Texas, where my daughter is doing her rodeo training. And it has been nonstop, lately. So accommodating my schedule a little bit in this crazy time period that we're in to make sure that I'm balancing home life, work-life, and everything else. So thanks for joining me here.
Dr. Anna:
And today, we're going to have a great discussion on conscious luck, based on the book called Conscious Luck: Eight Secrets to Intentionally Change your Fortune by Gay Hendricks and Carol Kline. I am thrilled to have them. They are both New York Times Bestsellers and they have just done an amazing job with this book in talking about how do we just plant the seeds of luck in our own psyche so that we can manifest what we want with faith, with trust, with prayer, and also to move at our own pace and also to practice radical gratitude? You know how much I've loved this and it makes such a big difference in our lives.
Dr. Anna:
So let me introduce you to Gay Hendricks first. He has a PhD and he has served for more than 40 years as one of the major contributors to the field of relationships, transformation, and body/mind therapies. He is a New York Times Bestselling author and his books include Conscious Loving and the Big League. Carol Kline has devoted her career to teaching, writing, and speaking about consciousness and personal growth. She is a number one New York Times Bestselling author and the co-author of Happy For No Reason, Love For No Reason, and five books in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. So I'm excited to have them on, to interview them, and to share their knowledge with us as we think about what is going to improve our health overall, what's going to inspire us, what's going to make us better, healthier, and stronger as life moves on. And this takes us one step at a time to do the best things for us at this time and having the best mindset.
Dr. Anna:
So let's talk about it with the experts today and join me. Here we go. Welcome, Carol, welcome, Gay, to the Girlfriend Doctor Podcast. This is a safe place to talk about pretty much anything. So I'm really thrilled to have you guys here with us today.
Gay Hendricks:
Really great to be with you. Thank you so much for inviting us on.
Carol Kline:
Yes, we're thrilled to be here with you.
Dr. Anna:
My pleasure and my honor because New York Times Bestselling authors, I mean, that is no easy feat. I'm two books in and still trying. I'm waiting, I'm waiting. I'm aiming for it. So tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you together to write about conscious luck.
Gay Hendricks:
Well, Carol and I both live in the same little magical town in Southern California called Ojai. Wonderful place to be and we bump into each other from time to time. And also, Jack Canfield is an old friend of mine. I literally helped Jack get his first book published, even in the pre-Chicken Soup days. And so I have a longstanding relationship with Jack and Carol had worked with Jack many times. And Jack was always singing Carol's praises. So when it came time, I'd written some of Conscious Luck, but I put it away and hadn't finished it because I got busy writing mystery novels, which is my other passion at this stage of my life. And so I was busily writing mystery novels and I kept sort of meaning to get back to Conscious Luck, but then I had a very lucky meeting with this young lady here, Carol, and you can pick up the story from there.
Carol Kline:
I will. So Gay and I actually wrote a book in 2005 together with Jack called You've Got to Read This Book, which is one of my favorite books that I've ever written. And I was so impressed and so delighted working with gay that I was thrilled when he sent me this manuscript to look at seven years later. And I told him I thought it needed more work with a kind of ... It had fantastic bone structure, but it needed editing, da, da, da. And he said, "Yeah, I'm going to do my mystery novels." So every time I saw Gay, I would say, "Gay, that book, Conscious Luck, it's haunting me." I have the icon of a Microsoft Word document up on my computer screen, so I saw it all the time. I'd say, "That book really ..." It just landed in me in a certain way that just would not let me forget it.
Carol Kline:
And Gay would just say, "Nah, I'm not going to do anything." And finally, in March of 2017, we met. We had that same conversation. I went home and I had this deep, deep desire to write that book with him. And I thought, "Oh, that's crazy talk. That's nuts. Why would he want me to do it? He could to it if he wants," but it wouldn't let me alone. So I called him and Gay, being the generous soul that he is, said, "Absolutely," because he knew he probably wasn't ever going to get it done. And he was just charming.
Carol Kline:
And so we set about and I actually kind of put it off for a while, myself. It must have some procrastination karma. But anyway, we got it done and it was one of the most fun books I've ever done. Gay is fantabulous ... Fantabulous, I just made it up, collaborator. He's a fantabulous collaborator and it's been a lucky journey from start to finish.
Dr. Anna:
That sounds lucky. It just sounds like it also had its, like you said, its own timing. I want to say there's no such thing as luck and luck favors the prepared mind and these types of quotes. So what are your thoughts on that?
Gay Hendricks:
Well, that's one of the main things we want to get across in the book, is that luck isn't just a matter of luck because a lot of people are going around with the misperception in their minds that luck is somehow more like something that happens for certain people at birth and something that doesn't. And it has to do with things that are mysterious, but we're kind of taking away the mystery, in a way and laying out eight things that you can do that actually improve the luck factor in your life. And I always tell my students it's a lot easier, a lot better to be lucky than it is to be good because being good is great, but I know lots of good people that aren't lucky and I want everybody on earth to feel like I do. I feel like I'm the luckiest human being on earth and that's the way I want to have everybody feel.
Carol Kline:
I want to jump on and just say that we're redefining luck. I couldn't agree with Gay more. And for me, this was a new idea. This sort of was birthed in Gay's psyche and Gay's mind. But for me, the two words together of conscious luck didn't make any sense to me. How could luck be conscious? Luck is something that's outside of your control. It's something that happens to you or doesn't happen to you. And then the meta shift that happened for me was that I read a quote. I read Gay's book and I still ... You know how it takes a little while for it to sink in? There was a meta shift I had when I read a quote by Tina Seelig, who is a professor at Stanford, and she said, "Most people think of luck as isolated and dramatic and random, like a lightning strike, when, in fact, it's more like a wind that's always blowing and it's up to you to build a sail to harness that wind."
Carol Kline:
And that was when the light bulb went off for me and the book all fell together because we are giving you eight secrets, four paradigm shifts, and four practices that you can do to build that sail and harness luck in your life and make it something where it's not an external force randomly happening to you, but something you create from inside, based on your attitudes, your actions, and your associations.
Dr. Anna:
Well, I can't wait to learn more about this. So by definition, what is conscious luck? So it's the utilization of your attitudes, your actions, your associations.
Carol Kline:
It's intentionally changing your fortune. It's intentionally taking the mystery out of it that luck has been, for so long, misunderstood and put in the realm of superstition and magical thinking. And it's not. Luck is basically another word for well-intended success and joy and abundance. And we're not talking about monetary. We're talking about abundance on all levels of life.
Gay Hendricks:
And it's much easier and better to raise your sail so that you catch the winds. Part of being lucky is being in the right place at the right time. And the wind always is in the right place at the right time, but we may be fighting against the currents. But in the book, we show you how to ride with the currents and let luck happen to you so that you're not arguing with it. One of the main things, in the first chapter of the book, we're talking about how to remake yourself as a VLP, a very lucky person. And we lay out a number of ways to do that, but just very simply. Just think about this. Change one little thought in your mind, from, "I'm willing to be luckier every day of my life." Just change one little thought, from not even thinking about luck as a conscious thing to now making it conscious, bringing it forth into your conscious, taking a stand for something conscious, and saying, "I'm willing to be luckier every day of my life."
Gay Hendricks:
So there, you've kind of come out of the realm of whatever you felt about luck before and made a conscious choice to open yourself to those winds. And once you do that, then we show you seven other ways of riding the wind current so that you really can enjoy it more and more, but it really begins with an act of your willingness and your commitment to be a luckier person every day.
Carol Kline:
And all of this that Gay is talking about, the four foundational shifts that you make and the four practices, have scientific underpinnings. Who knew there was a body of scientific literature about luck in the positive psychology world? And that was really fun to find the confirmation of everything Gay has found in his 40, 50 years of working with people and being one of the luckiest people I've ever met, his own personal experience. This whole thing of committing to being lucky is very correlated with having a positive mindset or optimism, learned optimism, which is absolutely going to be at the base. Self-identified unlucky people think they're going to be unlucky and they just bring that upon themselves often. And that's not something magical. It's pretty solid science.
Dr. Anna:
I love it and I love learning more about the science behind it, too. So, Gay, I'm just curious, what makes you the luckiest person in the world?
Gay Hendricks:
Well, several things. One is I'm just celebrating my 40th anniversary of having met my fabulous mate, Dr. Castland Katie Hendricks. I got my calculator out one day to figure out how many days we'd been married and it was something like 14,500. And I said to Katie, on our card, I was putting it in her present and I said, "Thank you for 14,500 days of making me wake up every day feeling like the luckiest man on earth." And so just for that reason, to have a person in my life that makes my eyes light up every time she walks in the room, one should ask for no other blessings from life than that.
Gay Hendricks:
But I also feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world because I seem to have been in the right place at the right time for the most unbelievable things to happen. Oh, gosh. I tell a lot of the stories in the book, but just walking into my office unexpectedly one day for five minutes just to pick up some stuff and it happened to be the same five minutes that my wife was talking to a young stockbroker that had this startup he was kind of pushing. And if she'd brought it to me at home, I would've probably said, "Oh, yeah, yeah," but this guy, I listened to what he had to say and we ended up investing and he brought us back a check for a lot of money a couple of years later.
Gay Hendricks:
It's just little things like that that let me know that being in the right place at the right time or this story I tell in the book about my first-class ticket where my plane had been late and I rushed across the airport to get to the place and the guy was throwing a temper tantrum at the kiosk because they wouldn't let him on the plane because it was already closed. And so he stormed off down the alleyway and I stepped up and said, "Hi, having a tough day, huh?" And the clerk said, "Oh, yeah, you wouldn't believe it." So just then, the other person ran out from the jetway and said, "We miscounted. We've got an extra seat in first class." And so, ah, I walk on the airplane and sit down.
Gay Hendricks:
So one minute ago, there's no possibility. The next moment, something opens up. So what I think we've got to do and what the book is really about is making your life an opening for those kinds of magical things to happen because why not? What have you got to lose? Because if you open yourself up to more magic and miracles and the appearance of spontaneous good things in your life, why not? And so the book has a lot of technical, great ways to do that and some very cool pathways and gateways to it, but a lot of it does hinge on your willingness to be supported by the actual natural laws of the universe.
Dr. Anna:
Yeah. I'm all in. I want to be the luckiest person on earth, just like you. I also know, from my medical practice, especially during my residency at Emory University, I was very upbeat, positive. The world had this silver lining. And my mom would say, "You look at life through rose-colored glasses," and it was that opportunities arise, that all odds were against me from one thing after the other. But I'll also say, in residency, I have this white cloud around me. I had other residents that had a black cloud, it seems like. A lot of trauma followed them, but for me, it was a white cloud, the right place at the right time until, in my life, and my audience knows my story that are listening when my son had his accident when we lost him. It was then spiraling into a continuous dark depth, a dark cloud. Instead of my white cloud, I had a black cloud and I was fear-ridden. It's very understandable, for sure, but it's been a journey to pull out of that. And I've recognized that it's at a vibrational level that we have to maintain.
Dr. Anna:
And something that occurred at the beginning of the quarantine, the pandemic, I felt myself sinking back into this lower vibration, this black hole, these bad habits, all of these things all over again. And it was very conscious, it was an awareness, to say, "Okay, I need to pull myself out to focus on the positive, to raise my vibration and allow love to lead me, not fear." And so that's been a tremendous amount of practice and teachings that I've given in to my community. So this feels like it's very similar, but another avenue to raise our vibration to allow, I think as Paulo Coelho says in The Alchemist, when you desire something enough, that the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it.
Carol Kline:
I'm really aware that it's easy to feel lucky when things are going well. And we do have a chapter, the last chapter in the book, The Practice of Finding Luck in Every Situation, is a really important place to raise one's vibration. And that's a whole nother discussion and I'm sure your audience, your listeners, know about that from all the work that you've shared with them. But one of the things that's really important is that lucky people are resilient. When unlucky people have trauma or tragedy or drama or just challenges that we all face, they shut down. They don't consider themselves lucky anymore and they don't look for any luck. They just want to avoid that hurt in the future, so they stop trying. They stop putting themselves out. And that will automatically ... It's a negative spiral, as you're talking about.
Carol Kline:
One of the things we suggest ... And this is very delicate and I want to make sure that your listeners understand that finding luck in every situation, gratitude is one of the most powerful ways to raise your vibration, your energy signature, but you have to make sure you are not, what I call, spiritual bypassing. I didn't coin that term, but where you're not trying to make yourself feel gratitude and suppressing how you really feel. It has to be authentic gratitude.
Carol Kline:
So in our book, we have something called radical gratitude where, when something happens, you let yourself have your feelings, whatever they are, negative, positive, mostly negative if it's something that's unpleasant or unwanted. And then, in the spirit of tremendously gentle inquiry, you ask yourself, "Is there something here I could be grateful for?" Not necessarily making yourself feel grateful, but having even that question will lift your vibration, will stop you from being sunk in your story. And you can appreciate yourself for even being able to do that if that's all that you can find, that you had enough consciousness, enough energy to ask yourself, "Is there anything about this situation I could be grateful for?" And enough practice in that, you'll find that, in fact, it will lift your energy and it's one of the ways to ... because feeling lucky is more important than being lucky. And that sounds funny, but people who feel lucky, it doesn't matter what happens to them, they feel lucky.
Gay Hendricks:
In my clinical practice over the years, I've worked with lots of people with various traumas, but I've probably worked with several hundred people that have lost children, which is a special type of trauma. And my wife and I use a prop that is this gadget that expands and contracts because one thing that happens in trauma is, for millions of years, the human nervous system, like a lot of other species, contracts, tightens up when we get traumatized from something without. And then, a lot of parents have asked me, that have lost children maybe 10, 12 years before, they will ask, "When will I ever get over this?" And I always say, "Well, it's not about getting over it. It's about expanding to embrace it and be with it and to find a way of breathing with it rather than avoiding the subject or staying locked in this kind of an experience."
Gay Hendricks:
And so I don't know if that fits with your teachings on the subject, Doctor, but that's the way I often explain it to people.
Dr. Anna:
I like that explanation and I think that to be expansive versus contractive, to open up, to be love-based versus fear-based, and that opening, that expansion. And it is something. I mean, I really like that visual to just that opening up and understanding the contraction. Right? We live in this contracted state. It's now fear-ridden. Everything shuts down physiologically, mentally, even spiritually. I mean, so many things shut down in that state. So it's that concept of, okay, how are we opening this up and, as you started, this willingness to be lucky, right? Willing yourself to start each day and just being lucky and having this fortitude and expressing gratitude. I think gratitude is one of the best forms of medicine and it increases oxytocin, the hormonal blood clotting, and connection. So all about expanding oxytocin in this world, in ourselves, too.
Dr. Anna:
I think what's really interesting is in this concept of what am I grateful for, even in this situation, is really powerful. And for some people that can't get there, and this is something I've used in some of my practice, I sometimes say, "If that was your six-year-old self or that's your six-year-old daughter, your friend's daughter, what would you say to her in this situation?" Because sometimes it's really hard because we feel like there is nothing good in our life. So if we go outside ourselves to say, well, if this was this person you're coaching that's looking up to you, what would you say to that innocent soul to be able to look for something that you're grateful for? Do you feel that's helpful?
Gay Hendricks:
Yeah. I also talk a lot about how to love yourself in difficult situations because, oftentimes when some trauma happens, it comes along with a thought about yourself that, "I'm not worthwhile," or, "I'm not lovable," or, "I don't belong here. I'm not worthy of a good life on earth."
Dr. Anna:
Oh, I can add. "I'm a bad mom. I'm a bad wife." Yeah, I got it.
Gay Hendricks:
All of those kinds of things. And they are all part of that contraction I was just showing you because those are the thoughts of contraction. And at some point, we need to let enough breath in to begin to expand again. And often, it beings with loving ourselves for feeling unlovable. And it sounds like a paradoxical thing to do, but the reason love is so powerful as a healer is it's one thing that can contain its opposite. You can love yourself for not being able to love yourself. So that gives you the power over whatever you... I don't think life ever gives us more than we can ever learn to love, at the time. And so sometimes, when you get a big blow, like the death of a dear one, it kind of knocks you into solidity for a while and takes a little while to begin to come out of yourself again and to admit space into your body again.
Gay Hendricks:
So I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying that love has that power. Once you can find yourself some love to love yourself for the unlovable that's occurring in you, that's a big shift in your consciousness.
Dr. Anna:
Yeah. I agree with that and I think it's like never give up, right? And you talk, in your book, one part that I really love is you talk about these luck-worthy goals. So setting luck-worthy goals because even in these dark crises, in these challenging times, things like things are maybe shutting down or shutting down around us, we're not going to let that happen. We're not social distancing. We're physical distancing, I'd like to clarify that, but this ability to now set some really substantial award-winning goals. So I would love for you guys to talk about that.
Carol Kline:
Lucky-worthy goals are something that most people don't realize could bring luck to them. We think of our goals not in the context of luck. But on a most basic level, if you were lucky, your goals would come true. You'd get to them faster. You'd have more support from people, from yourself, from your spouse, from the community, from the universe. And that's what our luck-worthy goals are about. When you give luck a reason to visit, when you have luck-worthy goals, luck chases you.
Carol Kline:
And so that whole concept of, wow, so what makes a luck-worthy goal? So you have goals, whatever they are. You need to ask yourself three questions. We call it the conscious luck sniff test for your goals. Are your goals meaningful to you? Do they bring a sense of purpose to you? Are they aligned with why you think you're here on the planet? Second, do they light you up? Do they bring you closer to doing what you love to do most? And third, this is the turbocharger luck-worthy goal, does it help other people or at least harm no one? Is your goal something that has benefit, has some altruistic quality? And if your goal has those three attributes, luck will chase you down. It's like a neon sign for your goals and yourself to have luck come and help you out.
Gay Hendricks:
From working with people over the year, I've found that human beings have enough juice in us to accomplish at least five big things in our lives. And if you want to go to medical school and get your degree in medicine and do your residency, that's one big thing. Okay. And if you're doing that, you probably are going to, if you want to go to school and get a Ph.D. in anthropology, that's a very different thing. You may have to do some picking and choosing there. Another big thing is if you want to have a really successful relationship in your life when you have a mate or have a family. That's a big thing. So I think all of us have enough power in us to generate at least five big things in our life.
Gay Hendricks:
So what Carol and I are recommending in the book is that you really choose carefully so that you've got your heart and your mind aligned because, if you've got those two things in alignment, you're really unstoppable. I always tell people that the biggest journey they will ever make is the 12-inch journey from here down to here because, once you get this and this lined up, then that makes you an extraordinarily rare and positive force in the universe.
Gay Hendricks:
In 1977, I had a turning point year that year that's affected me every day of my life since then. I sat down and actually thought about, consciously, what's the purpose of my life. What am I doing here? What do I really want to do? And it took me about an hour, but I refined it down to one sentence, basically, that occurs still in my book, The Big Leap, and other things I've written. And that is that every day, I expand it, love, creativity, and abundance, as I inspire other people to do the same. And in our training, we recommend that people develop what we call a one-out-breath life purpose, something that you could say in one breath. So you take a breath, "I expand every day in love, creativity, and abundance, as I inspire others to do the same." One out-breath that's got my whole life in it.
Gay Hendricks:
And the reason that's so important is that, in going through life, you're offered just tons of choice points every moment. And if you have a simple guidance system of knowing what your big purposes are for your life, it makes you steer through things so much easier. I always say, too, that your power in life grows not only from what you say yes to but also from what you say no to. I've had a billionaire businessman tell me that the best deals he ever made were the deals he didn't make. The things he said no to that, later on, turned into be disasters for everybody else, the things he said no to that really saved his life.
Gay Hendricks:
And so I think that we need to have a guidance system as we go through life. The guidance system we layout in conscious luck is a very natural one that fits well with how the universe actually works because, if you watch birds, they fly across the sky following an invisible pattern of some sort. And we get to conscious places in ways where we're supported by very unconscious forces. So we want to do everything possible to maximize our connection with those forces.
Dr. Anna:
Yeah. I know. I couldn't agree more. Can you say your out-breath saying again?
Gay Hendricks:
I expand every day in love, creativity, and abundance, as I inspire others to do the same. I highly recommend having a life purpose that has something for others and it's something that your life is about, other than just optimizing your own personal experience. I've had a great gift ... I saw my first client in 1968 and had my last therapeutic conversation on Zoom yesterday. And so I don't know how many years that is. My math is failing me here. It's probably 52. In those 52 years, I think I, at last count, I worked with about 20 thousand people.
Gay Hendricks:
And here's something that I was told in my first training with my first therapeutic mentor. He says, "The first thing you guys ..." Half of us were women, but, "The first thing you guys have to know is there's no such thing as a grownup human being. And once you understand that, down inside, we all have these little people that are still hungry for recognition, that are still hungry for love, that are hungry for connection, and that's what really drives us in life, you come to understand that, really, the life choice points are best guided by how much you're open to being loved and being more creative and being more abundant in every one of those choices."
Gay Hendricks:
And so I recommend that you also build in this possibility that your life could be about affecting others in a really powerful and positive way.
Dr. Anna:
Oh, I completely agree. And there's that balance there, right? Because some people will just do for others and not do for themselves because there's that lack of self-love. So how do we shift that?
Gay Hendricks:
Well, first, you've got to learn to love your inner martyr because many of us come equipped with a martyr persona that we've learned from somewhere else in the past, usually. We usually don't make these things up, ourselves, but when people tell me about their Jewish mothers, they sound exactly like my southern Methodist mother. And so I still have that voice in my head. And so I think that we all kind of are up against whatever our programming is. And I talk a lot about what I call the upper-limit problem where you get to a certain level of success with love and abundance and creativity and then usually create something that kind of knocks you back down. So life is often a kind of two-step forward, one step back proposition where we're always kind of coming up against our upper-limit beliefs, our negative beliefs about how much is possible.
Gay Hendricks:
And so I think we need to build that into life and understand the upper-limit problem so that you can see it happening and move beyond it all the time because your life is really defined probably after midlife and beyond, particularly after 40 and beyond, by how much you're open to being reborn in every moment, to dropping your old limiting beliefs and being ... We say here that every breath you take after 40 is a choice between creativity or stagnation, creativity, or stagnation. And so may we all learn to take those big opening breaths that propel us more into creativity and conscious luck all the time, as we mature.
Dr. Anna:
Carol, what are your thoughts on this?
Carol Kline:
Well, Gay and I have had long conversations about ... I would just mirror what he said a lot, but for me, I know that, for me, I grew up with a kind of Jewish upbringing that's called Tikkun Olam, which means to fix the planet, fix the brokenness of the world. And I have a very strong social conscience. So for me, my goals, actually, I had to adjust my goals to be more about what made me sing inside, what made my heart sing, what I liked to do. And so everybody is going to come from a different place.
Carol Kline:
I love the story we have in the book from Jack Canfield where he talks about he has muscle testing during his workshops. And he had a woman come up in front and she talked about her goals, what she wanted to create in her life. And he muscle tested her when she thought about just what it would do for her. And then he asked her to think, "How does this goal benefit other people?" And she thought of that and her arm had been sort of strong with the first way. I don't know what I said just a minute ago, but it wasn't so strong. It was rock solid when he did the muscle testing, which is really gauging how strengthening your thoughts are in your nervous system. It's kinesiology.
Carol Kline:
And what he found was it was very hard. So what that said to me, what that particular story says to me is that you can take any goal and find either what makes your heart sing or find how it helps other people to create a stronger, as Gay said, align your heart and mind for your goals. And that can't help but create more luck because you're going to have more of your heart and soul invested and you'll be open to more things. You'll be talking to people about it. Most people spend their lives just getting things done they have to get done. They put out fires. They do what's urgent. But if our book could help people in just even that small way, to look at what's important to them, to align it with their heart and mind and other people and the world, I think game changer.
Dr. Anna:
I think so, too. I want to read to you ... I was looking this up as I'm swatting flies here in the barn, for those who can't see me, but I received this email from Tammy in my Keto-Green 16 Challenge group. And she said, "I began this program with an open mind, open heart, and so much hope. First-round was incredibly successful. I lost 11.6 pounds by day 24 and hit those alkaline and keto on day 34. However, I'm losing hope. Since then, nothing. Zero weight loss. Off and on alkaline and never again keto. Haven't changed a thing. It's been 33 days, so 10 days difference, 33 days and I'm disappointed and freaked out. What's wrong with me? I follow this to the T." I think there's a lot in this message. Isn't there?
Gay Hendricks:
Well, we say here that the problem is never what you think it is. So in a situation like that, we need to open up and understand that human beings are these incredible parfaits of experience in there, where something like weight can also be hooked to something else in your life. And we work a lot with couples here and two of the most common problems that couples come in with are sex and money. And we say sexual problems are never about sex and money problems are never about money. And so we need to kind of look deeper there and say, "Hmm. Where might that block be coming from?" Could be from some old issue that you're kind of knocking on the door of opening up to, but you get there through wondering about it, not by beating yourself up about it, but opening your heart to yourself and, "Hmm." You ask yourself wonder questions, like, "Hmm, what might be contributing to this stagnation right now? Hmm, what might this be about?" So opening up to yourself in a spirit of wonder is really where the answers come from.
Dr. Anna:
Yeah. And for me, it was looking at this as, wow, 11.6 pounds, even over 33 days. That's huge in a post-menopausal woman. Right? That's huge for us. I'm happy with a pound a week. So it's the hardness on ourselves. Right? There's that inner hardness on ourselves, like, "See? It's not sustainable. I'm not good enough. Maybe it's luck, but it's different. I'm not blessed to achieve this or to continue this success." And I was wondering, I haven't had the conversation, but I was wondering those deep things. Like you said, It's something else underlying. So what are some practices that we can do to shift this mindset so that we're lucky, we're blessed, we're experiencing our lucky goals, we're achieving our lucky goals? I'm definitely so thrilled to have you guys share this with the community and your book, Conscious Luck. Thank you.
Carol Kline:
Well, I'm going to talk about the four practices we have in the book because I absolutely love practicality and I love this idea of something I can do every day. And one of them is to take bold action consistently, to get out of your comfort ... This happens to be my definite ... One of the practices that have made the most difference in my life is asking for what I want, even when it's scary. I call it my 20 seconds of insane courage that we find these windows of opportunity and we hurl ourselves through them. You can do baby steps in that, but bold action is one of the most important things, of getting out of your comfort zone. We have efficient, effective ruts that we also call comfort zones. And if you don't change them, your luck could actually stagnate, as well.
Carol Kline:
The second one is finding your lucky tribe, finding the people who support you, and spending time every day with people who are in your good luck conspiracy, who breathe good luck with you. The third practice is really paying attention to your energy PS, your intuition, your values. And Gay brings in this great concept of being in harmony with your body as you move through space. Gay calls it the essence pace, that you move at your essence pace. It can be fast or slow, but it's the pace you move through space where you have a sincere smile on your face. And you play around with that and you'll be so surprised. You want to get to the right place at the right time? Start moving at your essence pace. Start paying very close attention to your intuition, where it guides you, and also to stay so true to your guiding principles.
Carol Kline:
And the last one has to do with this luck inventory of finding luck, appreciating others. If you give those four practices a daily, maybe one a day or four every day, your luck will soar. I guarantee it. We guarantee it.
Dr. Anna:
Yes, I love it. I love those four principles and practices because it is the principles and practice that we're just opening up our energy and our vibration. And also, it's filtering the thoughts that come to us to shift them to this lucky, lucky consciousness. All right. Well, I am just thrilled. I know you guys have so much in this book, Conscious Luck, and I would love to know any last words of inspiration, motivation that we can give our audience and then also where they can get to your book.
Gay Hendricks:
Yes. Well, go to ConsciousLuck.com because, if you buy it there, you can buy it there through the various booksellers, but if you buy it there and leave your receipt there, you can also get all these cool bonuses that go along with the book, like a couple of guided meditations that are audio meditations, three-minute meditations you use at the beginning and the end of the day. And so if you go to ConsciousLuck.com, that's the best place because of all the different bonuses, but it's available everywhere. And if you're going to just compress one thing to take away from this, it's the idea that luck is like a wind that's blowing all the time and Conscious Luck is about finding your way of being with that so things come to you, effortlessly.
Carol Kline:
My takeaway would be, yes, you are a lucky person. No matter what your story is, no matter where you fall on the luck spectrum in your own mind, you have the capacity to be lucky, to create more luck in your life by your actions, attitudes, and associations. I also want to make sure people go to our Facebook page. We have a Conscious Luck page and a Conscious Luck global community where, even if ... We're all stuck at home right now. I don't know when you're going to be listening to this, but we're all stuck at home still and you can have your lucky conspiracy or lucky tribe around you, even virtually, and to keep supporting that mindset, supporting that feeling in you that all things are possible.
Dr. Anna:
I love that. I love that. Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing your time and wisdom with us. There's so much here and I think, just again, that openness, that willingness, and that gratitude for ourselves and inspiration that we can be to other people, how we can assist other people, essential to a quality of life that we can really be joyful over and be proud of, too.
Dr. Anna:
So I do one more question. I wanted to ask you guys this at the beginning and then I totally forgot. So this is a completely selfish question. Every once in a while, I'll ask a selfish question from my amazing experts. And this is here, as the mom of a daughter. I have four daughters. My youngest is 12 and it's why I'm here in rodeo country, in Texas [inaudible 00:43:31] country. And her goal is to be at the top in rodeo, in barrel racing and racing horses. So there's a tremendous amount of fear, as a mama, that comes with that desire for her. Not to imagine there's an expense associated, but there's a tremendous amount of fear because that turns and burns. Right? That's one of the most dangerous sports, I think, that's out there, rodeo, for sure.
Dr. Anna:
And so in giving her to ... She's always setting her goals, but helping our children have their conscious luck goals, these young, these youth that are in this time of transition, and how do you support them or how do you guide them into these conscious luck goals, like number one in the nation for barrel racing?
Gay Hendricks:
Oh, that's such a beautiful thing, though. I love how much passion you have for helping your daughter because it's such a rare, wonderful thing to dedicate yourself so much to providing opportunities like that for someone. And so take a moment to celebrate yourself for having a daughter like that. Wow. Just that one thing alone would make you wake up feeling like the luckiest human being on earth, and to support her also for having this kind of goal. I remember my daughter was glued to her horse from the time she was 10 years old until the time she was about 14. And even though, later one, she got into other things like sailing and that kind of thing, the passion and care for a horse is something that later on shows up in the passion and care for other things. And so it teaches a life lesson. So blessings to her for having that kind of a goal in her life.
Dr. Anna:
Oh, Gay, but let me tell you, I've tried to put tennis rackets in her hand and golf clubs in her hands. Let me tell you, I have tried to dissuade this child, so I am not all that amazing in this. But here we are.
Gay Hendricks:
Here we are.
Carol Kline:
Well, someone who is sitting in a barn right now supporting her daughter, I would give myself a few props, my woman.
Dr. Anna:
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I receive that.
Gay Hendricks:
That's what we want to tell you, Mom.
Dr. Anna:
Yeah. Got it. Thank you.
Carol Kline:
I would just like to echo that having your mother support you in a dream, whether it's a dangerous dream or a dream that you don't approve of or you don't think is a viable financial idea, my personal thought is that you're going to tell them how you feel, authentically, and then you're going to say, "And it's your life and I'm here to support you."
Carol Kline:
And because I think Gay gave you a ... Things can change from 12 years old. My goal at 12 years old is very different than what I became. And life can change. I wanted to be a research librarian, okay? Much safer, but also an extinct job. Everybody has, on their phone, has the Library of Alexandria. My daughter wanted to be an actress and I dissuaded her because it was like, who's going to make money as an actress? You crimp your children's wings when you don't support their dreams. So you're going to have to be authentic and tell her your worries and tell her how you wish she wanted to do something else, but since she wants to do that, that you want to have her tell you how you can support her best. That's my opinion. I was a parenting instructor for many years.
Dr. Anna:
I love it. Thank you for this free, unsolicited parenting advice, for solicited parenting advice. Thank you. Yeah, no. I appreciate that and I think that's it. It's recognizing, too, that we can be a wind beneath them or we can be a hindrance to them. And I think definitely saying, "Okay, timing's right. We were lucky to have this opportunity, absolutely lucky to have this opportunity, very fortuitous and everything has fallen in place in an amazing way." So I will keep you updated on our lucky journey in the equestrian world of Texas. And I'm so grateful for your works and all you've been doing here and for supporting our community. So again, I thank you. Thanks for being here.
Dr. Anna:
And for our listeners today, Conscious Luck from these two amazing bestselling authors available at ConsciousLuck.com. Get the bonuses. They also have a free download right there on that page that is brilliant, may I say. It is absolutely brilliant. And so I encourage you guys to check that out. And as always, know that I am your girlfriend doctor. Please email in questions you have for us so that we can address them in calls like this and my Facebook Lives. Be sure to join us in my Keto-Green community, getting my new book also, Keto-Green 16, and follow along so you can make the next right step in improving your body, improving your immune system, improving your fortitude as we move forward in this next season of our lives in this period of uncertainty.
Dr. Anna:
So we're going to create, as a tribe, as a community, as part of the Girlfriend Doctor audience, that we are going to create more conscious luck all the way around. So I am here for you and so happy to be your Girlfriend Doctor. Bye, until next time.
