Why Everything is Figureoutable | Marie Forleo

so i want to tell you about my mom she is this uh incredible firecracker of a woman she is about 5'3 she looks like june cleaver she has the tenacity of a bulldog and she curses like a truck driver she grew up in the projects of newark new jersey to two alcoholic parents and she learned by necessity how to stretch a dollar bill around the block like five times and my mom made a promise to herself she said somehow some way she was going to find a way to a better life one of my fondest

memories growing up as a kid in new jersey was sitting around the kitchen table with my mom cutting out coupons because she loved to teach us all the different ways that we could save money as a family that was really important to us and she also taught me about the fact that big companies and brands would send you cool free things like recipe books and cooking utensils if you saved up what were known as proofs of purchase do you guys know what those things are yes so one of my mom's most prized possessions in the

world was this tiny little am fm radio that she got from tropicana orange juice for free it was the shape size and color of an orange it had this red and white straw sticking out of the side that was the antenna and my mom's one of those moms who's always busy she's always doing something she's always working on something and i knew as a little girl i could find her somewhere around the yard or somewhere around the house by listening for music blaring out of that tiny little tropicana orange so one day i'm coming home

from school and i hear music playing off in the distance and i get closer to my house and i look up and i see my mom perched precariously on the roof of our two-story house with her little orange next to her butt and i'm like mom what are you doing up there are you okay and she yells down ree i'm fine don't worry about it the roof had a leak i called the roofer he said it would be at least 500 bucks i said screw that i'm doing it myself that's my mom another day i

come home from school and i hear this little music blaring from the back of the house so i walk to the back and it turns out my mom's in the bathroom i push open the door there's pipe sticking out of the wall there's power tools on the floor there's dust particles in the air it looked like an explosion went off and i was like mom are you okay what's going on what's wrong she's like really i'm fine she's like the bathroom tiles had some cracks in it i didn't want it to get moldy so i'm

re-tiling the entire bathroom now you guys got to get this is the 1980s this is a pre-internet pre-youtube pre-google world my mom is only high school educated but i never knew what she'd be doing but i knew i'd find her by finding the sound of that little radio so one day i come home from school and it's late you know in the fall when it's dark out and you have that eerie feeling outside i walk up to my house and it's completely dark and it's silent which for an italian american home that's not a good

sign i walk in and i had a pit in my stomach nervous about what i might find where's my mom where's the sound of that little radio all of a sudden i heard some clicks and clacks and i followed that sound and i discovered my mom in the kitchen hunched over the kitchen table which looked like an operating room she had a screwdriver electrical tape and then spread out in front of her was like a dozen pieces of a completely dismantled little tropicana orange radio and i was like mom are you okay that's your favorite

thing is everything all right she said oh ree it's fine the tuner dial was a little off and the antenna was busted so i'm fixing it and i stood there for a minute watching my mom work her magic like she always did and i finally thought the question to ask the question that i always should have asked which was this hey mom how do you know how to do so many different things that you've never done before but nobody's showing you how to do it and she put down her screwdriver she cocked her head to

the side and she looked at me and she said ray what are you talking about it's no big deal nothing in life is that complicated if you roll up your sleeves you get in there and you do it everything is figureoutable and i was like whoa that phrase was cool and it washed over me and it planted a seed in my soul that i swear to you has been the most powerful driving force in my life ever since so when i was in high school there were some years that i spent because i got kicked

out of my house and i was estranged from my family and it helped me get through that time i also found myself in the midst of a toxic and abusive relationship and that phrase helped me extricate myself from that when i got into college and i'm the first family in my family to go to college it helped me secure these rare work-study positions that i really needed in order to complete school after i got out of school that phrase helped me get every job i've ever had from bartending from waiting tables from being on the

floor of the new york stock exchange finance and wall street working in publishing then starting to teach hip-hop and dance and eventually becoming one of the world's first nike elite dance athletes and master trainers to having the audacity to start a business at 23 despite the fact that i had no clue what the hell i was doing i was completely insecure i was piles and piles in debt but i took that idea and i grew it into a global brand that i have today it's what inspired me to get myself out of debt eventually and

to take care of my relationships and my health when i was probably about 28 it inspired me to start making videos on my webcam which later evolved into an award-winning online show that has tens of millions of viewers in 195 countries and i'm not saying any of this to brag i'm saying this because i am certain in my bones that everything is figure out able now you guys might not believe that that's true right now how many people in here little skeptical not really so sure that everything is figuratible be honest anybody i see at

least one good good perfect perfect perfect i love this so let's talk about this this is good so when i was first starting to work on this book i was at to brunch with some friends and one of my friends had a 10 year old son that came to brunch with us and they said marie what are you working on i said i'm working on a new book what's the title everything is figuratible and the 10 year old was like no it's not nope absolutely not and i was like oh this is awesome tell me

young man tell me what you believe is not figure outable and he said well we human beings we can't grow working human wings out of our back so we could just fly away and i said well that's true but you do know about something called crispr right that might be coming down the road if anyone doesn't know what crispr is definitely google it because it's amazing i said but the fact is even though we don't have wings we human beings can indeed fly right and he said yes you're right okay what about this one we

can't bring my dog back from the dead the one that died like two years ago that i missed so much and in my head i'm thinking well that's some pet um cemetery ish right there but the truth is scientists are working on cryogenics and people have been cloning their dogs for a few years now and he was like you know what you're right so conversations like that really inspired me to take a look at this from a scientific perspective okay just because something hasn't been figured out up till now is not scientific proof that it

isn't figureoutable just that it hasn't been figured out yet what's an example 100 years ago we would have thought that human beings walking on the moon sounded crazy actually you would have thought someone would be a lunatic if they said that idea that's actually where the word comes from lunatic yet in 1969 we figured out how to do that you have to start before you're ready yes and it's a huge thing the people that i know and i want you to speak to it the people that i know that are successful have a lower threshold

in their mind of what they think they have to know before they begin and many people it's a blind spot you have this thing that you think you have to have a certain amount of preparation or knowledge and the people i know that win they will step into rooms into spaces that they are ill-prepared for and they figure it out to quote you when they get there so speak to that a little bit because it's so true absolutely i think one of the biggest ways that all of us can hold ourselves back is listening to

that nasty little lie inside our head that says i'm not ready yet i don't have enough experience i don't have enough credentials who am i to do x y or z and then we just delay delay delay and before you know it months if not years have gone by and we haven't made any real progress you know this was true for me you know when i started my coaching career one of the things i discovered was that i just didn't want to be a coach i've never really fit a traditional mode and from doing all

the personal development work to train myself to be the best coach i could be i realized i have other passions i love spirituality i love writing i love digital business which was very new in the early 2000s and i also love hip-hop and dance yeah and so when i was prop 25 i finally gave myself permission to go take my first official dance class i never had an official class as a kid i never took ballet or did any of that stuff i just moon walked across my mom's floor right and just loved hip-hop music

but starting in the dance world at 25 sounds odd but you're kind of over the hill yeah because most professional dancers have been doing it since they popped out of the womb and by the time they're 17 18 they're going on tour with the hottest artist of the day so the reason i'm telling the stories it relates to stark before you're ready so i'd finally gotten up the gumption to go start taking classes my teachers told me they're like you're pretty good you should try and teach and by the way this was in a gym

environment so crunch fitness in new york city that's where i was taking classes because i could afford it and uh i started becoming a substitute hip-hop dance teacher and again i don't know what the hell i was doing i just felt like i was out of place but here's what happened that's crazy one of my first dance classes that i ever taught solo when i got done with it this woman walked up to me and i was still sweating i was trying to catch my breath and she said you're really good i was like thank

you that's amazing she said you know i work for mtv and we're looking for a choreographer producer i think you should come in and meet my boss now ed in that moment i was so green in the dance world i didn't know what the hell i was doing so my brain was going i'm not ready for this yes why couldn't this opportunity come two or three or four years later when i know what the hell i'm doing i'm better prepared i could actually show up and maybe even land this gig but here's what i realized

in my mind i was like you're already 25 which is over in the over the hill in the dance world and the only chance you're ever going to have to see if this could actually be a viable career for you is if you do this so i remember standing outside of the viacom building in new york city wanting to throw up in the trash can because i was so nervous because i didn't feel ready but i pushed myself finally got up to that office i knocked on the door i just did my best in the

meeting and you know what i got the gig and here's the thing that one experience of being hired as a choreographer slash producer by the way i still didn't know what i was doing when i was working with dancers that had 10 times more experience than i did i was embarrassed because i didn't know all the terms i didn't perform at my i did the best i could do in that moment but there were a lot of things that i didn't know naivete did show however my growth and learning curve man it skyrocketed and that

one experience changed the entire trajectory of my career it led to me eventually becoming a nike elite dance athlete one of the first in the world it led to fitness videos choreographing commercials for nike and reebok and all of this stuff that would have never happened if i didn't start before i was ready so good yes so and i think i'm just curious just occurred to me by the way i know a ton of men that that's the case for yeah do you think is it any more prevalent for a woman to feel that way

do you think yeah i do i actually well so one of the things that i've discovered in my research up to 70 of humans suffer from what's called imposter syndrome so it's this feeling that we're fraud or that we don't belong where we are that that we're somehow a fake and that people are going to find us out yes now generally speaking this affects everybody but i find that women and people from marginalized communities tend to be harder hit by this because historically we haven't been seen in positions of power so if it's in the

boardroom and business right most of the time we've seen men and typically it's white men if it's in any kind of creative powerful position right we just don't see a lot of people that look like us so we tend to go back to well i'm not ready i need to over prepare so that i don't make a fool out of myself and i really can crush it when i get into that arena i think you're right one of the reasons i did the show when i first started doing the show i wanted to put on

people that had maxed out achievement but i also thought what if i could give face to in in many cases people that come from marginalized community or smaller communities just minority communities whatever that might be and give them a little bit more of a picture of examples of people that do that because i do i my sense is that that's true and you've confirmed kind of the reason why now you talk about in the book one of the reasons that people have that imposter syndrome and i want everyone to know this i have it yeah

i have it in there will be situations i find myself in where i'm like they have no idea who i really am right this is not a good way too right not in a good way no no i don't know certainly not in a good way you know whether i'm coaching somebody in a particular area and i'm thinking do they know you know i i still have that a little bit and i think it kind of is good in the sense that it does cause me to over prepare sometimes when i've got an opportunity but

one of the things i used to struggle with that i no longer do that you talk about in the book that is sort of a symptom of that disease is this concept of having to be perfect over making progress yeah i love this part of the book everybody because this is a major thing many of you have yeah perfectionism perfection is a huge thing yeah i think you know so many of us we want to do our best so we have high standards and all of those things are wonderful but there is a distinction between

having high standards and performing at your best and suffering from perfectionism which in the extreme can actually be deadly so there's some research out there and this is sad but it's it's important to know when they started talking to folks um who had a relative who recently took their own life they discovered that in over 50 percent of the cases without prompting the relatives described that person who's no longer here as being a perfectionist they could never meet their own standards they never felt like they were good enough and when that roots in on a

deep level you can understand how someone could feel that depressed and feel that lost and feel like nothing they ever do could ever match up so it's a real thing and for me you know i have strains of that and i'm so happy you know age and experience you kind of see the world in a different light but the thing that's helped me the most and what we focus on in the book is this idea of focusing on progress not perfection when that's your metric for success did i learn something today did i make an

inch of progress even if it doesn't look like progress so there's actually a a great graph in the book yeah i'll see if i can describe it here i love this so people imagine that progress kind of looks like this you start out here and you're just new at something and then you inch up an inch up an inch up an inch up an inch up an inch up and it's almost like this straight line to get to your goal when in reality progress kind of looks like this you start here as a neophyte and

then you maybe inch up and then you take five steps back and then you go way down and then you swirl around and you go up and down and it's just this incredibly squiggly line where there are setbacks you absolutely feel like maybe you've taken 10 steps back but that's still progress so true so when we're focusing on progress not perfection it's a really great way to keep your action in perspective and to keep moving forward because perfectionism really just keeps people spinning their wheels yeah i think it's a i think it's the number one

excuse not to get started and i i one thing everyone should know too because i i i love this part of the book let me say something to you guys you know that just staying after your dream is actual progress because so many people on the race to getting that dream just quit it the fact that you're just still in pursuit of it is a form of progress absolutely and i'm i'm blown away often by people i find i think my son was a good example of this even in golf he started i just naturally

didn't come to him yeah and i think if you watched him in the beginning you'd think my gosh he should probably choose something else right but that little boy just kept going to the driving range and hitting balls and hitting balls and hitting and it didn't get it would get a little better and then i was like oh my gosh it's worse yes it's actually worse but what was happening in there was some sort of progress in his muscle memory and his insights and his confidence that he just put the work in and this is

true in all these things then there was a day i remember showing up and he hit a ball and it made that sound it's supposed to make if you play golf and i went oh my god he's got that sound now yes and even after that he'd shoot an 88 or a bad tournament it's exactly the way it works in business in life it's exactly the way a relationship works that's right people think my relationship's this straight line too no it's not it has these huge setbacks and a big fight and they let you down

and maybe someone wasn't truthful once but it's it's the idea of staying in it if it's worth it to you that gives you progress i just i love that well that you hit upon something really big there staying if it in it if it's worth it to you i would love to circle back and talk about just in case anyone listening right now is going like okay you guys this is a cool idea right i get it everything is figureoutable it's very positive but i don't believe it i'm skeptical yeah so when i was first

starting to work on the book i was out to brunch with a friend who brought along her 10 year old son and they were like hey mary what are you working on new book what's it called everything is figure-out-able and the 10-year-old was like no it's not nope no it's not figurative there may be people listening right now who feel the same way and i welcome that and i said well tell me more young man what's not figureoutable and he said well we human beings can't grow working wings out of our back and fly away

and i was like well that's true but have you heard of crispr that might be coming somewhere down the line and we human beings can indeed fly and he was like oh yeah i guess you're right he's like what about this one i can't bring my dog back from the dead and i was like well that's some pet cemetery right there but i said you know scientists are working on cryogenics and human beings have been cloning dogs and he's like yeah i guess you're right so enough conversations like that inspired me to create a set

of rules which is really like a mental container that allows us to use this phrase and philosophy for its intended purpose which is to help us create change and then help us create positive change in the world around us so the three rules of the figure outable philosophy this is helpful rule number one all problems or dreams are figureoutable rule number two if a problem isn't figureoutable it's not really a problem it's a fact of life death taxes gravity certain laws of nature right guy my height can't dunk a basketball right without a trampoline rule

number three right you may not care enough there you go to solve this particular problem or reach this particular dream and that's okay find something you do care deeply about and go back to rule number one so as you're relating to your son right so anyone listening going well x y and z isn't figure out about it's like well you know it might not be figure outable as of right now but think about a hundred years ago thinking about a man walking on the moon wasn't figure out able yet 1969 happened all of a sudden

it is and then i would say the other quick thing again just because people we human beings have tough struggles in life and there may be someone watching right now who's thinking yeah but you know what about things like addiction or trauma or a life-changing or life-ending diagnosis are you telling me that that's figure-out-able and i'll tell you ed in the depth of my bones i am and here's why i say that with confidence the first time i shared this idea outside of my own platform was on oprah's super soul sessions it was like an

18-minute oprah ted talk and after she put that out on our podcast i started getting letters from people that i'd never met they weren't familiar with my work never worked with them but this phrase really triggered something powerful and one of the letters i got was from a woman named jen and she said marie i loved your oprah talk it's actually a lesson my mom has been trying to teach me and in fact i sat down with my mom we watched together it was awesome but then everything changed my beautiful mom who's like my best

friend on the planet was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and suddenly nothing seemed figureoutable she said but i took a step back and i looked more deeply and here's what i discovered i could figure out how to find nursing care for my mom who lived in a rural area i could figure out how to find foods that she could actually tolerate and then this was the big one she could figure out how to get medical equipment so that her mom could spend her last days and in fact her last five weeks on planet earth exactly where

she wanted to be which was in her own home so jen said i can say without a doubt that yes everything really is figure outable and thanks for sharing this small phrase that made a big difference to two women living on the other side of the world she's from new zealand yeah that just made a huge difference for lots of people listening to this yes i relate to that a little bit as i said to people my dad's sick right now yes you know to the extent of my dad's cancer i guess is probably unknown

yes but what's good about that well what's figurable about that to be candid with you it's helped me figure out a lot of my other personal relationships i think it's helped my dad figure out what's really important to him yes um these sometimes these very difficult things open up the figure outableness and other areas of our life i think he's starting to become more clear of his own mortality and what he really believes where he's going and his spirituality began to figure out these things as a result of this time in his life i've figured

out that the time with my dad's a whole lot more important than i used to think it was yes the time with other people i love and so there are hidden blessings these things that everybody says that i've been saying for 100 years that everything happens for you and not to you i really believe to be true ultimately if you believe in something beyond this life as well yeah but you say something in the book that i talk about all the time that i think is right down this alley of the pursuit of what really

matters to you finding happiness in your figure outableness yes so tell us what's happening and we will do our best to help you out oh my goodness um okay so i have been running my own business for the better part of the last three years um i guess two and a half years one of the first things that i did was sign up for b-school which was a really great experience it helped me build my website for my company i also in my accountability partner um found someone who encouraged me to write a book about

my business method which is called purpose power how mission driven leaders engage for change and i just felt like um you know in in thinking about your approach and your coaching and paying attention to all of your encouragement i've i've tried to let myself be open to opportunities that show up you know scan the radar be surprised by things um not hold ideas too tightly let them emerge and develop and say yes as much as i can um and a lot of the work that i have done here two years later you know i i

i struggle with feeling like i've i've sort of failed like like a lot of the things that i wanted haven't come true in the way that i hoped that they would and both trying to you know internalize some of that responsibility and actions that i could have done differently but also just feeling like the world is sometimes not a super forgiving and supportive place which isn't to say that i don't have friends and mentors and great people in my life but just sometimes it feels like swimming upstream um and now i find myself in a

place where my husband has been offered his dream job in um europe which is super exciting for him living in europe is something that i have dreamed about for a long time so there are a lot of things about that that are um you know a dream coming true for me but i'm also now in this position of sort of meeting to abandon ship and sort of close up all of the things that i thought i was building you know i felt like i was sort of building this garden and you know watering plants and

and trying to make things happen and now all those things that i thought i was trying to make happen um i need to sort of turn over a new page and and and do trying to figure out something new so i'm both sort of left with this feeling like all of this effort that i put out all the things that i that i worked really hard to create and do none of them really generated the success that i was hoping for and now i have to leave them and and go start from scratch this is

awesome by the way thank you so much for sharing so honestly and bravely with us um i have a question for you you said none of them turned out to create the success i had hoped for what's your measuring stick what was the success that you hoped for i'm just curious um well my measure i think was a couple of things um in running a business i was really hoping to get to six figures by my second year um you know not not half a million dollars but to but to surpass a hundred thousand dollars

in um in in being able to pay myself um and that never really happened you know i i was able to negotiate sell business and negotiate contracts but none of those things were um you know long term um none of them paid as much as i hoped that they would i wound up hiring people to work on those projects with me and so um in the process never really reached that profitability margin that i was hoping for in publishing in publishing a book um you know i i had sort of sold myself on this idea

that um you know publishing a book is one of the best things that you can do for your credibility and your authority and i found that the process of working with an independent publisher to be really really hard um and that you know there's not a whole lot of promotional support that's available so i'm really have to you know do a lot of that myself and i don't have the the sort of established platform that um you know a lot of publishers look for in an author and so it really feels like a lot of

the time i'm sort of spinning my wheels and maybe i wrote i wrote a book that's a that's an it's a good book but it's not the right book at the right time somehow or um and so not being able to gain traction in an environment where there's a lot of noise where there's a lot of resource scarcity you know nonprofits don't really have or are really cash trapped and so targeting nonprofits as a as a client base has been um felt really frustrating because it's it's hard to get those organizations to prioritize hiring outside

health as much as they you know seriously benefit from it um that's really clear that's what i would say yeah i'm going to jump in right there thank you by the way uh for being so precise so a couple things one thing that i highlighted which is common for all of us to experience these type of inner conflicts but one that really jumped out to me was the primary and first thing that you mentioned was around financial success and then you shared that you're focusing on non-profits and so we just know this right it's kind

of a fact that if you are going into that particular sector it is going to be more challenging to earn the type of money that i think you wanted to earn so sometimes having those kind of inner conflicts between those two goals for example i don't think that if you and i'm not saying that you do but if you wanted to earn like a gajillion dollars you wouldn't be like you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna start a non-profit there's just an intrinsic conflict point between those two ideas that it's clear based on what

you're telling us that you found to be frustrating so i think one of the most powerful things that you'll be able to do in this next chapter of your life is actually start to decide the metrics that actually matter to you what is the most important thing for you to do or to experience or who do you need to be in order to feel successful and if operating in the nexus of politics and social justice and non-profit is really where your heart lies i think a little bit of a reality check may be important not

to say that you can't earn six figures or multiple six figures in those categories but i do think it's understandable that that may take a little bit more time it's almost like this my love you're in the middle of a movie it's like if you were watching a movie and you went to the theater and you sat down and you're eating your popcorn and let's say the movie was two hours long and about 45 minutes in all hell breaks loose right there's a ton of conflict and things are really disappointing and the main characters seem

to be hitting a wall if you walked out of the movie at that point you might be like well those characters were failures they never reached their goals you know they were starting to do some things but they had this conflict point and then i left a theater because you know what it just all didn't work out so for you in many ways you know to hear that you've been at this for a few years by the way i commend you for that but in my experience over a few decades it takes much more than

a few years for any business to get really successful so that's one thing i want to share but more importantly i think it's crucial as you enter this next phase this next chapter of your adventure to really get clear on what is most important to you what are those metrics that matter if financial freedom if the kind of profitability of a business is the most important thing that lights you up and by the way there's no shame in that i don't want anyone listening or you to feel guilty about like i want to make a

lot of money it was actually a goal that i had for myself i didn't want to make it at the expense of people i never would or did do anything that violated my own morals or values or did anything out of integrity it was always about doing good and making great money right but i think that you need to get clear on your priorities and clear on your metrics for success so that you have a measuring stick by which you can evaluate your own goals and your progress and what you're working on so that you

feel good about them and if money is one of your top things i would encourage you to re-look at whether or not being active in the non-profit sector or wanting to go in on like grassroots political campaigns is actually the place that you want to devote your time and energy yeah i definitely appreciate the the question around you know getting clear on on the metrics that are important to me i i will say i didn't pursue this thinking that i would make a lot of money yep i haven't been able to make enough money for

it to be sustainable yeah so um you know it's not and and i've been fortunate to have a partner who's been able to support me so i don't have to you know take or sell business just to make rent once a month yep um but it's really been like the it that not like i have dreams of you know making making tons of money but that the viability um of just like the basic viability of it isn't there yeah and so this might be good news though you're like okay i went down this path and

rather than taking it as something that you actually failed there's a bunch of things that you didn't accomplish and now you can build off of them like you wrote a book that's amazing for anyone publishing a book i'll tell you i have friends uh people that have platforms that are established in their platforms and they still have trouble getting people to read their book it is it's an enormous amount of work anything that you do in the era that we're in right now where there's so many different places that people can look and put their

attention whether it's social media or online blogs or television or podcasts right so there's always going to be that battle for how do you get people to care and pay attention that's intrinsic for all of us but what i'm most interested in is you not looking at everything that you've accomplished as a failure but just as a starting point and a launching point for what's next and can you extract lessons that are valuable that will help you grow into this next chapter because i guarantee you yes okay good there you were like yes that's where

we kind of heard some life because rather than looking at this or feeling and i'm not saying that this is your viewpoint on everything but feeling defeated or feeling like wow the world is a really unfriendly place and no one's supporting me and everything's up an uphill battle it's like you know what the world is really challenging and in order for me to create a business and life i love i'm gonna have to get in there and be willing to be challenged and i'm gonna have to grow as a human and keep seeing things from

this perspective of like wow this is really difficult and you know what that means i need to get stronger this is really challenging that means i need to up my skill set wow what do i want to pay attention to what is important to me understanding in this landscape you know i only have 24 hours in a day what is the most important thing to me for me to achieve is it a certain amount of money in the bank account or is it something else and you're the only one that can answer those questions and

i think part of what's challenging about our world right now is that not enough of us are taking the time to define those metrics that matter and therefore we're just like a ping-pong ball being bounced around and we don't have any kind of chart for our own course something for us to set sail on so that we know that we're on track for us not success defined by society success defined by who we are and who we want to be yeah i think i i think i i i started a business for the wrong reasons

in some ways and and just in it you know in a weird way watching um avengers and game recently where thor at the end is like you know i'm not gonna be who i'm supposed to be who people think i'm supposed to be i'm gonna be who i am um in a weird way that really resonated with me because i think i i think i allowed myself to believe that i needed the authority that came with running a particular business in a particular way in order to do the things that i dream about yes um

and that i can maybe let myself off the hook from that to say instead how can i more directly how can i qualify myself not qualify in terms of credentials but um qualify in terms of you know being being suspicious of my own qualifications um less and think more about just getting directly to the heart of um what i want to do and the change that i want to create in the world start there the change you want to create in the world that's the most powerful position to build your dreams off of and to

decide what kind of work that you want to do and where is going to be the best place for you to devote your time your energy and your talents right yes good um i often when i describe those dreams to people they're like wow that's huge and ambitious and probably won't be achieved in your lifetime so i feel like part of my challenge is also like finding what is the what is the slice of the dream that you tackle first in order to feel in order to build towards the bigger dream well i think most

of our dreams won't be accomplished in this lifetime that means that we're playing a really big game and that's awesome my bet for you is to a go back to where we started is to de decide what are those metrics that really matter to you right how do you define success for yourself and then don't overthink this just get in and start doing the work i love that you've identified that you started a business for the wrong reasons that's awesome if i were you i'd also take some time to journal about what have these past

couple years taught me what are the lessons that i can extract for myself so that as i move forward i'm not making the same mistakes again and again but can actually use these experiences to fuel my growth yeah cool yeah great awesome thank you well we're excited for you and i'm actually really excited i love i just want to highlight again too you're like well you know my husband got this dream job in europe and uh but i actually really wanted to live in europe too it's like girl you need to start focusing on what's

working rather than putting so much attention and energy on what doesn't preach yes if you're ready to stop letting stress derail your happiness i've got a free gift for you you need to go to marielovsu.com stress log and i'm going to give you one of my favorite tools that i've ever created i promise it will help you melt that toxic stress away fast go download it now so that we get a little bit of framework yes i want people to understand what does it mean for everything to be figure outable and where did you come

up with that phrase so it was kind of interesting when we were creating the book and started selling it actually into foreign markets they're like well how are we going to define this word everything is figure out about because it doesn't translate into other languages and i was like okay it is achievable it means that something is possible we started playing with all these words but i think um to answer the second question of how this phrase came about i'm taking it back to jersey taking it back to the 80s and taking it back to

my mom who is like this interesting character so she's about 5'3 she looks like june cleaver and she curses like a truck driver she grew up in the projects of norc new jersey to two alcoholic parents and she learned by necessity how to stretch a dollar bill around the block like five times and she promised herself that when she got older she would find a way to a better life so cut to me growing up in this italian american home there's like you know plastic covered couches very working class and one of my fondest memories

was me and my mom sitting at the kitchen table and cutting out coupons so because frugality is her number one thing in life right she loved teaching me all the different ways that we could save money and she also introduced me to this idea of proofs of purchase do you remember those from yes so if you like save up um the fact that you bought x amount of boxes of cereal or whatever and you mailed in this little piece of the box that these brands would send you like a cookbook or utensils like good stuff

for free and one of my mom's most prized possessions was this tiny little orange radio like transistor am fm it had a little red and white straw sticking out of the side that was the antenna and she got it for free from tropicana orange juice and my mom is the kind of person who's always busy always doing something and so as a kid i knew the way to find her was to listen for the sound of that tinny little radio coming like somewhere from the yard or in the house so like one day i was

walking home from school and i heard the radio off in the distance and as i got closer it was coming from above which was a strange kind of orientation and i look up and we had a two-story house and my mom who's tiny is perched on the top of the two-story house like very precariously and when you're little and you're short it just everything is amplified and i was like mom i was like is everything okay like what are you doing up there and in her very jersey accent she's like uh ree i'm fine you

know the the roof had a leak in it i called the roofer he said it's gonna be at least 500 bucks i said screw that i went into the garage there was extra asphalt i'm gonna fix it and i was just like okay you know that's mom another time i came home and i heard the radio like blaring from the back of the house so i walked to the back of the house and i saw the bathroom it was like the door was cracked open and as i pushed the door open the whole room was

filled with dust particles there was like pipe sticking out of the wall it looked like a bomb went off i'm like mom what are you doing like is everything okay and she said you know the tiles had cracks in them and i didn't want the bathroom to get moldy so i'm retiling the bathroom now tom you gotta get this again is the 1980s my mom is high school educated this was pre-internet pre-youtube pre-google i never knew like where i would find my mom or what i'd find her doing but that radio was always my clue

so one day it was in the fall and in new jersey you know the daylight savings had already passed so it was dark and it was spooky and i went home and it was totally silent and the house was dark which is very odd for my family so i walk in and i have that pit in my stomach that you have when you're nervous that something's wrong and i start walking around the house and i didn't know where my mom was and i felt like something bad had happened then all of a sudden i heard

these tiny clicks and clacks and i followed the sound to the kitchen and i saw my mom hunched over the kitchen table it was like an operating room she had like electrical tape and screwdrivers and in a dozen or so little pieces her tropicana orange was completely dismantled i was like mom that's your little radio what happened are you okay is it broken and she said oh it's fine you know the antenna was off and the dial was not working right so i'm fixing it and that was the first time i thought to ask the

question that i really needed to ask all along which was how do you know how to do so many different things that you've never done before yet no one's showing you how to do them and she like put down her screwdriver and she cocked her head and she looked at me and she's like what are you talking about it's not that big of a deal nothing in life is that complicated you can do anything you set your mind to if you roll up your sleeves you get in there and you do it everything is figureoutable

and i was like like just in that moment and i will tell you this i don't know tom for sure whether she said those three words or that's what my childhood brain heard and translated because you know how we do that kind of thing but that phrase got embedded in my soul in such a deep level and i just said it over and over again and then i realized as i became an adult it's been the single biggest driving force of my life like from you know continuing to get rejected on like sports teams and

cheerleading and going again and again and like getting out of an abusive relationship when i was like my first love to like getting into classes in college to getting every part-time job i've ever gotten every full-time job i've ever gotten getting out of relationships into relationships building the entire business like i still use that phrase every single day and so i knew i needed to write this book but i think more importantly right now when we look around at what's happening economically environmentally socially politically we've got a lot of challenges that we're collectively facing and

my biggest hope was that if people pick up this book of course i want them to use it to help them build a better career or get their health back online or anything that is challenging for them personally but honestly i really really hope that once people unlock that possibility within themselves that people pick up this book and say you know what there's bigger problems that we can figure out and we need to do this together this is always risky because i could be misreading but you look like you're getting emotional from telling that story

i mean i believe in this so much like my friend toby who runs um a company called shopify i was writing the manuscript uh like writing okay let's be real i was like bleeding like oh i can't write this like you know just trying to pound out on my keyboard i am not an easy like everything flows kind of writer it's very torturesome for me and i was trying really hard to write the manuscript i saw my friend toby we said hi he's like marie how's the business what's going on what's happening in your life

and i said everything is great i'm working on this manuscript and he's like why are you doing a book he's like that's so much work and that's such a huge commitment and everything else seems to be going great it's not like you need to write a book and i said toby if i got hit by a bus tomorrow which could happen i don't want it to happen i hope i'm around for a very long time but if i got hit by a bus tomorrow this is the one idea that i would want to leave behind

that's it everything else i've done that's awesome it's beautiful i'm proud of it but if i can communicate this idea effectively and give people the gift that i was able to receive from my mom growing up like i could go on to the next adventure feeling very satisfied that thing in what you just said about it being in an idea that's worth telling and that could really last beyond you it comes out in the book so well and what one thing that i loved in the book is how you essentially use font to shout yeah

everything is figure out about everything is figure out i've ever thought and i thought that it's it's really so powerful are you only getting a fraction of what you want in your business in life are the things that you're looking to achieve taking way too long to come your way if so gabby bernstein may have your answer in fact she says that to manifest anything you want in your business whether it's career goals maybe it's relationships your health your happiness the real work is an inside job i am so thrilled today to bring you my

dear friend and best-selling author miss gabby bernstein can you believe you're on marietv i know this thing i was like on oprah today it's just like being an open this is awesome so manifesting is such a cool topic um it's something that a lot of people may have some resistance to if they think it's like a little too woo-woo and it's a little too passive and i know for me in my life i'm such a go-getting kind of driven girl that in the past i used to have my own resistance to it but as i've

become older and a little more mature i've opened my mind and i actually do consider myself quite a good manifesto so for our audience can you define what exactly is manifesting manifesting is acquiring the experience of what it is that you want to feel and being and living and believing in that experience and then allowing that experience to come into form so not only the experience like say wanting to go on a vacation but even if you want something like a new macbook air you can manifest a new computer or absolutely or being a published

author or having your business reach a certain level so everything falls into that everything falls into that category sometimes we manifest things far beyond our wildest dreams so sometimes if we have a vision of something it happens in a far greater way so we want to stay open yep so we can say i want that macbook air but maybe we get that macbook air that's a little bit bigger than we thought yeah or maybe it comes with an extra little gift yeah but allowing ourselves to be open this or something more cool so the way

that i think about manifesting too it's it's also it's involved in the process of of creation or creating you know i consider myself an artist and a creator do you see like a distinction between manifesting and creating manifesting is very creative it is the process of using your power energy and being in that presence of your high-powered energy and allowing that energy to co-create with the energy that's around you so you're vibrating at a high frequency i'm vibrating at high frequencies we've done a lot of work we've cleaned up a lot of our own crap

we believe in ourselves today and that that energy of believing in ourselves has attracted us together today and brought us into the space where we together are co-creating and teaching if i hadn't cleaned up my side of the street if i didn't believe in myself the way i do i would never have manifested being on marietv that's very true so i know i like to always believe that i'm co-creating with the universe because there i really believe there are no such things as coincidences and i've had too many experiences in my life where i'm like

oh my god that's what i wanted and it all seemed to line up and it was incredible so that's really part of what we're talking about here right is our ability to to play an active role but almost paradoxically a passive role in helping things that we want come into our life yeah there's a really nice line from a course in miracles which is the metaphysical text i teach and it is miracles occur naturally and when they're not occurring something has gone wrong that's interesting it's a good one right so what happens is that that

synchronicity that flow that effortless action that just sort of allowing oh i was thinking about that and it just showed up that's how life is supposed to be we get in the way our negative belief systems our fears our anxiety our our anger towards the past that future tripping and projecting all of that energy gets in the way of allowing all of the miracles to occur naturally so this is awesome so what i like to do on marietv which you know because i know you watch this every week is to take this an idea or

a concept and really break it down and make it super actionable so if someone has never heard of manifesting or maybe they have but they've been quite a skeptic and are like this is bs this stuff doesn't work can you break it down like how how to manifest like what's the first thing that we should be doing so the first type of manifestation is to get very very clear and you know if we're not clear about what we desire then we can call in some really funky stuff yeah this is big and i just want

to interrupt you for a moment because like one of the things that i say again and again when i'm working with clients i can help you get anything you want but you have to tell me what that is yeah that's it you know and the clarity is really it's that secret key because you're like a manifestation can opener if somebody gets clear about what they want that's really fun that's your new name oh that's not a new title of a manifestation can't over yes it's true because if somebody gets really clear about what they want

your work is just releasing all the blocks and all the disbelief yeah and so if you're clear first and foremost you must be clear yep and and you must be clear because if you are unclear you'll start to call in some things that are not really what you want you'll be confused uh the other piece is that once you're clear you can also then get clear about all the ways that you don't believe all of the limiting beliefs all of the negativity that might be blocking you oh this is good so let's use an example

let's take it from the top so i know for both of us this is something we share you're a published author i'm a published author and i know many people in the world it's one of their dreams to have their own book out on the shelf so i know you must have gotten clear at one point i am going to be a published author right so clarity step number one yes number two getting clear on everything that's preventing that right you're limiting beliefs so yeah tell us some of yours when you first had that clarity

well i often joke that i was a published author three years before i actually was a published author because i believed so deeply but of course there was disbelief and there was actually a period in my life where it was right when the recession hit my stepfather says to me i'm telling him all about my book that i wanted to bring into the world and he said to me well you know it's a really tough time it's going to be really hard because we've got resistors you know people just having a hard time with the

realities of the world and saying oh well you're gonna have a hard time getting your book published and i looked at him with so much conviction and so much faith and i said i believe in miracles i believe i am a published author one month later my first book was published so that faithfulness that that belief system is what allows it to come into the reality that we live but what we must understand is that i had done quite about a significant amount of work to release all of the limiting beliefs that i had been

holding on to a limiting belief i have eighth grade english i have never written anything beyond eighth grade yes i had to teach myself how to write yeah so the limiting belief which i'm not a writer i don't know how to write that was a major one for me to overcome so this is great so we have step one and step two it's getting clear on the thing that you want and then also having the courage to really look inside and see all the limiting beliefs that can be holding you back from that okay good

so and then clean them up and then clean them up okay awesome tell me so is that can that be as simple of as recognizing that it's a story you're telling yourself it's just simply doesn't have to be the truth yes the healing process of anything can just be the witnessing of okay that's not working that limiting belief is holding me back and when we wake up to that call of that's not working that's when teachers like you come into our life that's when books fall off the shelf that's when we land on marietv because

we're tooling around youtube right so we are led to what we need to heal so the first point is just to recognize how you are blocking yourself and trust that the universe will give you exactly what you need to heal those limiting beliefs awesome okay so we've got our two steps is there a third step so now we're in the process so we're healing we're healing our limiting beliefs we're active we're engaged we're aware we're getting into the no we're getting into the note okay so step three step three is getting into the no no

the universe has your back love that i think my mug says it the universe knows awesome tell me more about what that means so uh what happens when we get into the know is that we have released that we're working on releasing that disbelief and that's a daily process and the more we let go of that disbelief the more we begin to acquire the presence of what it feels like to be in that manifestation so the same way i was saying i was a published author i felt like a published author years before i was

a published author i felt abundant even when i was scrapping to get by i still felt the presence of abundance which has allowed abundance to come into my life and i think that's probably the hardest part for all of us and i can i can almost hear our audience members you know again we're in 188 countries around the world so some people are going like okay that all sounds cool but if i don't have any money right if i don't have any resources if people don't believe in me what can i do on a daily

basis is it just a matter of saying i really know this and just honestly having that leap of faith and saying i've got to stay in this state you cannot let your outside world dictate your internal condition the outside world will reflect your internal condition so if you are letting the outside stuff tell you i'm not good enough then you are manifestation mishap you are not allowing yourself to co-create so i'm gonna pause there just for a second a manifestation mishap which you guys know i love cute phrases for things um a manifestation mishap would

be uh thinking like oh i'm having this clarity i want to be a published author but what would the mishap be there if they were well but my outside experience is not reflecting that how am i going to get published i don't have enough and all of that is like really not supporting your desire got it so the most important point here is to not let the outside world dictate your internal condition your internal condition will support your external experiences so your work is to focus on the internal and i've done that in many cases

in my life like you know picking up quarters to pay my gas money and in that presence of not having a lot of money i still felt abundant i did all that work to release my disbelief and in that presence of believing in my abundance i've allowed a tremendous amount of buttons to come into my life so we gotta hold the energy and let the outside world reflect that amazingness inside okay so another piece of resistance that could be coming towards us right now from the audience from someone saying hey you know what i've manifested

before or i'm in this process but you know it's taken a long time i've been in the knowing i'm affirming but it's just ain't here yet what would you say to someone like that who is just going like when is it gonna come when is this really gonna happen the most important step in the manifestation process is patience and there's another beautiful line from a course in miracles which is those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and wait without anxiety i freaking love this i'm gonna make her say it again because

it was that beautiful gab say one more time those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and wait without anxiety love that so when we have that presence of being certain that certainty i am a published author that man is on the way i am abundant when we have that certainty we can allow we can be patient we can be in the know and another manifestation mishap when you're not patient is that you're controlling you're grasping you're manipulating and you're therefore blocking the natural order you're blocking the positive energy to flow towards

you because you're vibrating a frequency of negative energy because you're in fear you're controlling and manipulating love that so this is all really good stuff can you give us a quick recap again our little manifesting how-to for anyone out there who's this is all new to them first is clarity you become very clear about what it is that you desire so you don't call in some crazy crap love it the next piece is to be clear about all the limiting beliefs that are blocking you from believing and knowing that you are worthy of what you

desire and that takes some courage it takes courage it takes some time and that willingness you just wake up and say i am willing i'm ready to have that guidance come forward and you'll be led to teachers like marie and then the third step is to be in that presence in that energy of knowing that you are ready to receive that you are in that presence of believing and knowing i am a published author i am abundant i am exactly what you want and having the patience and then the final step is the patience to

be really relaxed released and allow and stay in the know letting the universe bring you exactly what it is that you desire it's awesome really really great stuff this is also a belief like everything is figure outable yes is like you're saying the master key belief in one sense of like believing that everything's figurable you you alluded to it earlier when someone hears that and go marie it's easy for some to say come on it's easy for you to say now that things have worked out or wait a minute you know i was at a

conference recently and someone stood up and asked me a question they were just like how does this apply to the kid starving in africa right like they said that to me and my response to them actually was like well if i was speaking to kids who are starving in africa i wouldn't be saying what i'm saying to you i was like this is to you this is audience specific yes right my advice that i was giving i was like i know who's in my audience if i was speaking to kids starving in africa i'd be

giving them something else that was appropriate appropriate and relevant and accessible to them at that point so but for us for everyone who's listening and watching right now tell us if someone's doubting you if someone and i know you know this but someone's doubting you someone's looking at you going marie that's easy for you to say easy for you to say oh that's a nice thought yeah but my position right now like the situation i'm in it's so bad like you have no idea that's right right okay so i want to dive into this and

peel it back in a couple of layers because it's so important so number one i am very clear that i have won what warren buffett has coined this phrase as the ovarian lottery right i'm a white woman in the united states by no effort of my own i was born into a family that gave me an education put a roof over my head i had running water i had electricity all of those things there are millions if not up to a billion people that don't have those same privileges or access to some of those resources

so i absolutely get that that's why it was imperative for me throughout the book to weave in stories far diverse from my own so folks from the developing world folks throughout history that don't look like me that did not grow up where i grew up with the same types of resources and privileges and advantages and they embody this spirit this notion that all of us have this innate power and wisdom within ourselves and when that awakens what we are capable of as humans is extraordinary so we have that all over the book we also have

dozens and dozens and dozens of reader stories right so folks that haven't won nobel peace prizes or that haven't done these extraordinary things i've been talking about this idea for two decades you know here's a story yeah i was going to ask you to tell me a couple because then absolutely and then i want to go to the rules because an eight-year-old actually challenged me when i was first writing this book and it came up with something brilliant so let me tell the story of jen you know a lot of folks are like well yeah

everything is figurable if you want to build a business or get your health back online or perhaps save a relationship but what if i'm facing something difficult and hard that isn't so a woman named jen wrote to us and i had first shared this idea with the world in a really public way um on oprah's stage she was doing a super soul one day event she had asked me to speak in it and the title of my talk was everything is figurative so oprah then put that talk online it's on her podcast and so folks

heard it that i had never met before so a woman named jen wrote to us and said hey marie thank you so much for your talk this lesson that everything is figureoutable is something my mom who i love so much had been trying to teach me forever but i kind of really heard it from you and then i shared the talk with my mom and she loved it too but then everything changed my mom who is the most important person in my life was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and suddenly nothing seemed figure-out-able and she said

but then i actually took a walk and i looked at it from a different perspective and realized it was for example i could find my mom nursing care that could go and attend to her even though she lived in this rural area number two i could figure out how to get my mom foods that she could actually tolerate number three i got medical equipment so that my mom could spend her last days and in fact her last five weeks on this planet where she wanted to be which is in her home and she said i

can tell you without reservation that yes everything is figureoutable and thank you so much for sharing this idea because it made a difference to two women on the other side of the world and so we have other stories of folks who have used this idea of facing addiction facing loss death grief diagnosis that are life-changing in terms of how long they will be on this planet and how they will exist on this planet so those are all embedded in there so i just want to share that if you've ever lost motivation because you're afraid your

dreams are just too unrealistic this one is for you today's question comes from bree who writes hey marie you're such an inspiration i so respect your advice thank you here's my situation my whole life i've had big dreams and lots of ambition then this little word started to pop up from people around me unrealistic for example i wanted to work in publishing i was told that was unrealistic there were so many obstacles and so few jobs however i now work for the second largest publishing company in the world but there's a new dream i want

to pursue and i can already hear the cacophony of voices in my head insisting this dream is unrealistic a certain level of realism is necessary but too much can create self-doubt so marie how do i handle not only hearing from others how unrealistic my dream is but also not let myself drown out my own desires thank you so much free i love this question so much brie every single one of us who both dreams and creates things faces voices of dissent both from people that we know from people that we don't know and very often

the most deadly comes from within and if we don't take a thoughtful conscious approach to taking on our unrealistic dreams they just ain't gonna happen but if you are up for the challenge and i think you are here are five steps that can help step number one is frame your dream and here's what this means we can't become what we can't envision so when i say frame your dream what i mean is i want you to take a picture of it in your mind's eye in vivid specific detail and then what i want you to

do is translate that picture into words meaning write down that big unrealistic dream and i know that you may have heard about the power of writing things down before but the truth is most people just don't do it which is so crazy because the research is conclusive on this there was a study done by dr gail matthews that shows that you are 42 more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down so what i want you to do is whip out your journal or hop on that keyboard and get writing step number two

is filter opinions and fend off negativity you've got to take responsibility for the energy that you allow in your life i want you to fend off negativity as much as humanly possible you know we know so much more about the brain than we did just 20 years ago neuroscience has taught us incredible things like that our brains are continuously shaped by our thoughts and our experiences and you know this to be true i mean negativity is one of the most toxic forces on the planet it's toxic for your brain for your nervous system and for

your ability to stay motivated so do me this favor okay do not solicit or listen to the opinions of people who are notorious for just being debbie downers the one mistake that i've seen people make consistently is they almost habitually talk to the exact person who is the most likely to shoot them down and make them feel like crap so don't do that and here's another key i want you to always always always consider the source meaning don't put a lot of stock into other people's opinions unless they're actually out there consistently taking risks and

being brave and actually making things happen i mean if you think about it let's say i don't know you wanted to climb mount everest would you ever take advice from someone who's never even attempted the summit no of course not that would be crazy so don't take advice from anyone unless you really think it through and i want you to ask has this person achieved an unrealistic or impossible dream are they taking meaningful risks on a consistent basis do you admire who they are how they live and what they contribute if not do not use

them as a sounding board for your idea step number three is flood yourself with positive examples so once you've removed the negative outputs as best as you can step number three is all about feeding your mind and surrounding yourself with positive stories on a consistent basis of other people who have achieved unrealistic dreams so think about helen keller for example who was blind and deaf by the age of two yet with the help of teachers she created this extraordinary literary career writing hundreds of speeches and essays and books and there are thousands of biographies at

the library or even on netflix and the great thing that i love about biographies is you also get a chance to witness other people's stumbles and their falls and all the failures that they experience along the way which of course stumbles and falls and failures those are inevitable for all of us and you know it's worth noting that just about anyone whose achievements are worthy of a biography or a documentary probably had an unrealistic dream so do this for me feed your mind examples of people who speak out and stand up for what they believe

in and make change happen step number four is fast forward so if you've watched the show for any amount of time you know this i love end of life studies and here's what we know for a fact when you're on your deathbed you couldn't care less about what anybody who says your dreams are unrealistic says i mean brawny ware's research tells us this very very clearly that the single biggest regret people have when they're about to pass is this i wish i had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others

expected of me so brie my friend stop worrying about what other people might think or say about how unrealistic your dream is it really does not matter the only thing that matters is what you do about it now step number five is focus on action so this my friend is the most important step of all action is the antidote to fear and you don't have to take perfect action you just need to take any action brick by brick inch by inch step by step that is how all great things are achieved and you know my

mantra i believe everything is figure-out-able and the best way to figure anything out is through action-based learning so one more thing before we wrap up free unrealistic dreams are totally where it's at that's where all the growth and the excitement in life comes from after all what other kind of dreams are there dreams like this marie you will not believe the dream i had last night so reasonable i'm shopping i'm getting all my normal vegetables but they didn't have avocados i asked the manager he brought me some from the back so realistic so inspiring wow

that uh sounds inspiring i mean you can do that i think i think you can make that happen soberi there you have it five steps to help you bring your unrealistic dreams to life and if you ever start to waiver remember this tweetable [Music] if someone tells you your big dream is unrealistic that's a sure sign you should go for it oh my goodness that was so fun now if you loved this episode you're gonna love this next one even more because it goes even deeper so enough talking click watch now and i'll see you

there all beliefs are a choice and choices can be changed right so every belief is a choice and choices can be changed if we are willing