Leisa Peterson — Embracing Financial Abundance Through Narrative and Self-Compassion

[00:00:00] Leisa Peterson: I think a nonfiction book would’ve been easier, but I wanted the emotional experience. I wanted people to feel like they are there, that this is inspiring them to think about their own relationship with money, and so I think it’s much easier to read.

[00:00:16] Leisa Peterson: Like I said, it bypasses the ego. It bypasses like the resistance, and people just go in. For the right reader, they go in and they’re like, I’ve gotta finish this. I wanna go back and read it again. I wanna journal the second time through, which is just making my heart sing.

[00:00:33] Intro: Do you think money takes up more life space than it should? On this show, we discuss with and share stories from artists, authors, entrepreneurs, and advisors about how they mindfully minimize the time and energies. Spent thinking about money. Join your host, Jonathan DeYoe, and learn how to put money in its place and get more out of [00:01:00] life.

[00:01:07] Jonathan DeYoe: Hey, welcome back. On this episode of The Mindful Money Podcast I’m chatting once again with Leisa Peterson. Leisa is an old friend in the industry. She agreed to be on the podcast before I had any live episodes.

[00:01:17] Jonathan DeYoe: You were my second guest two years ago. So you ended up being the second interviewee, many years ago. And I just wanna say thanks for coming back. And everyone can go and listen to that episode. We’ll cover her background a little bit more there. Uh, we’ll cover a little bit of it today, but go back and listen to episode two of the Mindfully Podcast. You’ll all about where she comes from and her history and all that kind of stuff there. We’re gonna talk about our book today.

[00:01:38] Jonathan DeYoe: Leisa’s a money mindset coach, author, financial educator who helps people transform their relationship with money.

[00:01:45] Jonathan DeYoe: She’s got over 25 years of experience in financial services. She founded Wealth Clinic to help people overcome financial anxiety—which there’s more of today than there was when she started, I’m sure— and build wealth from this sort of holistic perspective. She’s the author of The [00:02:00] Mindful Millionaire, which we talked about last time, and she hosts the Art of Abundance Podcast, which combines practical financial strategies with mindfulness practices. She told me just a second ago, she’s on the way to Hawaii today to meditate for five days, so she’s deep in that practice as well. I love having her on the podcast, and we’re gonna talk today about her new book, The Money Catalyst: Your Guide to Prosperity, Freedom and Living Your Best Life.

[00:02:23] Jonathan DeYoe: Leisa, welcome back to the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:02:26] Leisa Peterson: I’m so happy to be here, and I’m such a fan of your work. I think I was actually stalking you and then I reached out because you’re awesome and doing amazing things.

[00:02:36] Jonathan DeYoe: Thank you. I’m supposed to say that about you. You’re awesome. You’re doing amazing things. I, I love what you do. So just remind everybody, where are you calling from? Where do you call home?

[00:02:45] Leisa Peterson: Sedona currently, but from the Bay Area originally. So we’ve been in Sedona for nine years. My husband’s a general contractor, so we’ve built some houses. We have some Airbnbs here. We’re actually an escrow to sell one of our houses here. [00:03:00] So it’s a beautiful place to live. If you haven’t been.

[00:03:03] Jonathan DeYoe: And I, I see you on Facebook moving all over the place all the time, but you’re still, your, the base is in Sedona.

[00:03:08] Leisa Peterson: Yes, yes. My daughter just bought a place, her second place in South Lake Tahoe, so we’re spending the summer when I get back from Hawaii, we go to Tahoe. So it’s a really good life. Yes.

[00:03:19] Jonathan DeYoe: I have. Three sort of areas that I wanna talk about today. first I want to know, you may be able to answer this really quickly, but I’ll have some follow up. The first one is, I wanna know how much a admirable story is autobiographical, Second, I wanna talk about the writing of the book ‘ it’s not a direction I would’ve expected.

[00:03:35] Jonathan DeYoe: and then third, I want to talk about. You know, lessons catalysts and the awake process. So knowing us, we probably will go completely astray at some point Does this all work?

[00:03:45] Leisa Peterson: Yeah, it’s beautiful. Perfect.

[00:03:47] Jonathan DeYoe: start the beginning. How much of Maribel’s story is autobiographical?

[00:03:50] Leisa Peterson: A lot is autobiographical. You knew? Oh my gosh. I wish it wasn’t, but I’ve been doing this work for a while [00:04:00] and there’s always new opportunities for discovery. I had a book launch party not too long ago, and Jenny, who inspired the character of Lela in the book, she was on the call and we were talking about this trip to Paris that we took exactly two years ago, May of 2023.

[00:04:19] Leisa Peterson: And she has always struggled with money, and yet she has a very abundant mindset and we, I took her to Paris as a thank you for inspiring the mindful millionaire. And a couple hours into the trip, the personalities of Lela and Maribel already came into play, whereas I was doing some scarce things and she was totally abundant.

[00:04:45] Leisa Peterson: And, yeah, it just went, I should say uphill, but I’ll say downhill because I was going to learn some really big things that would lead to me writing this book as a result of spending 10 days in Paris with, I wanna say Lila, but Jenny.[00:05:00]

[00:05:01] Jonathan DeYoe: So what did you learn in, what was the trigger in Paris that set things off?

[00:05:04] Leisa Peterson: It was little things where I was counting euros and Jenny was like, wait, you are very wealthy and successful and here you are like paying attention to these very small things that mean nothing. And she called me out a few times, but. What really did it was, I’ve been to Paris many times and there’s quite a beautiful thing that happens when you’re with people like Jenny, where she has a very childlike wonder and seeing Paris for the first time, I.

[00:05:41] Leisa Peterson: Really woke me up to the fact that every day could be like a first time, like a first time experience. And it was all about being in the present moment. And so all these years of meditating and reading and I was like, okay, here we go. And I didn’t know it was transforming me as much until I was. [00:06:00] Flying home first class on Polaris, which I had never done before.

[00:06:04] Leisa Peterson: I splurged, and this movie comes on Living with Bill Nighy and it was nominated for an Academy Award a few years ago. And he’s living this very scarce life. He gets this death sentence, and I kid you not like the whole thing. All of a sudden came into reality where it was like. I thought I had this figured out and I actually don’t, and I’m just sobbing.

[00:06:30] Leisa Peterson: People probably thought I needed a therapist on the plane ’cause I couldn’t stop crying. But it was, it was like I had seen a whole other life that I could live easily, but I needed to change my mind in order to do it.

[00:06:45] Jonathan DeYoe: I didn’t think we’d veer off so quickly, but, but we’re, we’re gonna do it. So, I have a bunch of friends that I admit, and I, I am among my friend group, like the one who built a company and sold a company. I’ve got more means I am in a great shape. I’m also the one [00:07:00] that’s the most nervous about spending money and Will, will pinch pennies and will.

[00:07:04] Jonathan DeYoe: Well set my thermostat at 67 instead of 71. Like I’m still that guy and I can’t get rid of it. We did the same thing in our first conversation where we were like, how do we, I do the work too, like I know Scarcity’s there. I can’t get rid of it. I can’t shake it. I can for a moment, turn a corner and say, okay, I’m gonna take this trip.

[00:07:23] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m gonna fly first class. I’m gonna stay in a nice place. I’m gonna eat at great restaurants, and if I plan it all out, I’m fine. But in the moment. Jonathan, do you want to go to this hole in the wall or do you wanna go to this white tablecloth restaurant? I choose the hole in the wall almost every time. Like why is that? Like, where does that come from?

[00:07:41] Leisa Peterson: it starts really early in life, right? Like there’s so much data about it, and I’ve had to really. Embrace the love of that part of myself and also realize that I’m the only one here that can change it, and it’s probably gonna [00:08:00] be work for the rest of my life. I didn’t believe that before.

[00:08:03] Leisa Peterson: I really did think that it was just gonna fly away, you know, the more money I had or. Or that I would just reach this utopian place in my mind, and I’m like, I’m in a really good place in my mind and that I’m still counting those euros. So it’s funny. You have to laugh. You have to laugh. I do a lot.

[00:08:23] Jonathan DeYoe: it was just there, it was on the ground for somebody to pick up. , You used the word scare city as Maribel’s starting point. And I’m like, it’s perfect scarcity. It’s like a perfect, what is that? A, a, a, it’s not a palindrome, it’s an, I don’t know, I looked up the etymological foundation of the word scarcity, thinking, is it scarcity? Is that where I come from? Not at all where it comes from, but it’s perfect. And I, I’ve never did you did that or did see that

[00:08:48] Leisa Peterson: I don’t know. It was just came through this whole thing of writing a fictional book. Literally was like the most creative thing I’ve ever done. And so things would come and I’m [00:09:00] like. Is anybody gonna believe this? You know? And then the more I wrote, it was like scare city. That’s it. That’s where we live.

[00:09:08] Leisa Peterson: That’s where we don’t wanna live anymore. And I had a lot of fun with that because you read that, it’s funny, a little generational thing. There were some changes. Originally it was like Rod. Sterling kind of narrating his voice like, you’re trapped in this rod Sterling. and then I, I realized my character’s 34 years old, nobody’s gonna know what that is.

[00:09:27] Leisa Peterson: So I changed it to like doom scrolling, you know, through your apps, but it’s still that like, sort of voice in the back of your head, like, here we are and we’re here again, what do we do? Because it really sucks, but we can’t get out of it. You know, like that was what was coming through.

[00:09:44] Jonathan DeYoe: Did you come up with the phrase, scare city or the transition from scarcity to scare? I’ve never seen it before. I’ve read a lot of personal

[00:09:51] Leisa Peterson: Yeah. I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know because I’ve never seen it written in a

[00:09:58] Jonathan DeYoe: Leisa, [00:10:00] take credit.

[00:10:02] Leisa Peterson: Well, I came up with it. I mean, just it feels like there’s no new ideas. I don’t know.

[00:10:08] Jonathan DeYoe: I’ve literally never read it before and I was like, it’s been there on the ground the

[00:10:11] Leisa Peterson: Okay, I’ll

[00:10:11] Jonathan DeYoe: could have picked it up. Anyone could picked it up. You picked it up. Good stuff. I’m wondering are there any, um, In terms of the autobiographical content, are there any lessons that come outta here that are just like right out of your heart that this is, you know, this is something that I maybe was afraid to share, but I’m sharing Boom.

[00:10:27] Leisa Peterson: A ton of ’em. But I will say, and I’ll drag my husband into this because he was really pivotal in this relationship between Maribel and Ethan. He and I have been together since college, so like 38 years, and this book changed our relationship for the better because I think I was giving him messages, like things that Ethan.

[00:10:51] Leisa Peterson: Was doing that we still had problems with in our relationship. And when he read it, he is like, are you trying to tell me [00:11:00] something? I’m like, maybe like maybe. But the relationship dynamics of control and releasing control and questioning if somebody should have that much control over your life and what’s.

[00:11:13] Leisa Peterson: Fascinating to me is the feedback, especially from folks like us that really do pay a lot of attention or therapists in and, and work with couples a lot. They’re like, whoa, you know, this is going deep into things that they’re seeing all the time with their clients. So we’re not alone. But I was willing to bring it there and there would be days where.

[00:11:35] Leisa Peterson: I was just sobbing because I didn’t even know that there was a better way to do even our relationship.

[00:11:44] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I mean, we, we know what we know. We don’t know what we don’t know. Like it takes that moment of, you know, to, to really awaken to, oh, I’ve been doing this a weird way this whole time. Not necessarily wrong ’cause you do your best, but, you know, I could do better. I can always do

[00:11:58] Leisa Peterson: Totally.

[00:11:58] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m, I’m curious about [00:12:00] the decision to write a fictional narrative instead of a traditional, like how to, Were you worried about this choice? I mean

[00:12:07] Leisa Peterson: I had a book deal on the table. My publisher, St. Martin’s had asked me to write a book about abundance and non-fiction book, and they wanted me to workshop it with my, community. And so I started workshopping it and I. Kind of got stuck in the beginning ’cause I just didn’t wanna write something about abundance that everyone had read before.

[00:12:27] Leisa Peterson: And I went back on a trip, we were on a road trip and I, I was like, well, what’s the most abundant thing? And then I remembered the trip to Paris. ’cause this was a year ago that I started writing this book. And I wrote the short story, but with Maribel and Leela, but inspired by Jenny and I, I wrote that short story of just the trip in Paris and I gave it to the community thinking it would be a great entree to a nonfiction book.

[00:12:52] Leisa Peterson: And the community was like, oh my gosh, what happens next? And I was like, well. That’s the story, you know? And they’re like, no, [00:13:00] no, no. There’s something here. Like you’re actually really good at writing this fictional thing. And I didn’t totally believe them. And for a while I just kept writing and they’d read it and give feedback, Simultaneous. There were these journal questions that I was giving everybody after I gave them the chapter and it was real time. Like I’d send ’em a chapter, we’d all meet, they’d fill out the journal questions, and then I’d start to write the next chapter, like that’s how this book came to be.

[00:13:26] Jonathan DeYoe: Hmm.

[00:13:27] Leisa Peterson: And people started having breakthroughs from those journal questions that I had never witnessed in the past 10 years of doing this online coaching and working with people like.

[00:13:38] Leisa Peterson: Huge breakthroughs. I was like, what’s happening with a fiction story? It is changing people in ways that nonfiction doesn’t. And so I started getting pretty keen on it at some point, maybe a month and a half in, people were like, don’t even write a nonfiction book. Just write a fiction book. So I go back to the publisher and they were like.

[00:13:59] Leisa Peterson: [00:14:00] Maybe, but probably not. Like it just is a much harder book to sell. It’s not as marketable. , Even though Bob Burg and the Go-Giver, he’s a good friend of mine and he was telling me it’s possible. It’s possible. It was like, yeah, but not necessarily for a person who’s never done this before. And so I ended up parting ways and saying, I’m gonna do this for better or for worse, because I think that this could make a bigger difference in the world.

[00:14:25] Jonathan DeYoe: and Bob Berg would know, like he’s published how many.

[00:14:28] Leisa Peterson: Yeah.

[00:14:29] Jonathan DeYoe: Like I’m wondering if it was, I mean, there’s some of the money psychology when you read it in sort of an academic how to nonfiction kind of a place. it gets kind of judgy and dry and, and I’m wondering if the narrative actually just opens it up and it’s maybe easier to write, but also just easier to hear in a narrative format.

[00:14:48] Leisa Peterson: Yeah, I wouldn’t say easier to write, but I would say easier to hear. I kid you not, I just spent a year working on this book without really working much because it needed to [00:15:00] be rewritten like 150 times. So I think a nonfiction book would’ve been easier, but I wanted the emotional experience. I wanted people to feel like they are there, that this is inspiring them to think about their own relationship with money, and so I think it’s much easier to read.

[00:15:20] Leisa Peterson: Like I said, it bypasses the ego. It bypasses like the resistance, and people just go in for the right reader. They go in and they’re like, I’ve gotta finish this. I wanna go back and read it again. I wanna journal the second time through, which is just making my heart sing.

[00:15:38] Jonathan DeYoe: are you hearing people that say, yeah, I read it, it was great, but I didn’t, I didn’t do the journaling.

[00:15:41] Leisa Peterson: Not yet. If anything people say. I wanna go back. when I did it with the workshop, I have about a thousand pages of journaling. ’cause people had accountability. And I think that I probably at some point will do some of that. Where people do like to know that I’m waiting for their assignments.

[00:15:59] Leisa Peterson: Like, [00:16:00] okay, I’ll do it. We’re just, that’s human nature. So, they did do it when I was waiting.

[00:16:06] Jonathan DeYoe: Can you talk about the. I dunno if this is intentional or if, this is just something I, I thought of. Is the Mindful Millionaire kind of a workbook for the Money Catalyst? Is that kind of how they work together?

[00:16:16] Leisa Peterson: exactly. the perfect world, the Money Catalyst would be first and then

[00:16:22] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:16:22] Leisa Peterson: the Mindful Millionaire, I. You come in and you use it to like dive even deeper. one supports the other. Now I’m having people, obviously a lot of my community has already read The Mindful Millionaire and they’re coming to this I think out of a sense of enjoyment and pleasure and reading a story, but they’re also having a lot of fun in like uncovering new things that they didn’t even know was part of their money story.

[00:16:48] Jonathan DeYoe: It sounds like this was a little bit more ch because of the, you know, narrative, nature of it. It sounds like it’s more challenging to write. Was there anything that was emotionally challenging to write, emotionally difficult to put on the page since it, since it is so autobiographical.

[00:16:59] Leisa Peterson: well, [00:17:00] so let’s just talk about like what’s happening in the world and and this book. So when I first wrote it, it was written from a white woman’s perspective, right? Born and raised in the Bay Area, I have a lot of diversity in my friends and my community, but I had never written a fictional book before, so I didn’t realize.

[00:17:19] Leisa Peterson: That there was a problem in the first draft. And thankfully, people in my community, namely black women, I noticed something about their journaling that was very different than white women journaling in the book. And I’m like, what is going on? Like, I, I didn’t understand. That was my naivete, I guess. And I went to a few of my clients and I was like, can you please tell me what’s happening as you read this book?

[00:17:42] Leisa Peterson: Because your journaling isn’t going very deep and I feel like I’m missing something. And, I got an earful and I went through a very much of a dark night of the soul as a result of it because. I realized that when you’re writing fiction, if you don’t have [00:18:00] diversity in those characters and diversity in what’s going on in that story, it’s gonna be like my what rich white woman’s experience of like what this looks like.

[00:18:11] Leisa Peterson: And so I went to my community and I got help in creating the character of Tanya and. It changed the whole dynamics of the book because she is just like a close friend of mine that I’ve grown up with. But I needed to have these conversations of diversity and inclusion and things that are super central to my life and my heart.

[00:18:35] Leisa Peterson: I needed to bring them into the book. The problem is, is that when I went to try and write Tanya. the reason I fell apart is at first there was gonna be some antagonism, like Tanya was gonna be more provoking to Melle. And in the middle of the night after I wrote the first draft of it, I woke up and I was like.

[00:18:54] Leisa Peterson: In this messed up society that we live in, Tanya can’t provoke [00:19:00] Mirabell without backlash. It’s not allowed. And it just broke me. Like I, I was lucky my husband was gone because I think I just sobbed for like six hours straight because I just, my whole life was flashing before me trying to write this character and realizing how easy I’ve had it and how much harder other people have.

[00:19:20] Leisa Peterson: I will also say that when that second draft got written, I went back and workshopped it with my community and there were white women in the community that didn’t like that character

[00:19:31] Jonathan DeYoe: Didn’t like the rewrite.

[00:19:32] Leisa Peterson: didn’t like, they didn’t see the first version. These were new people that they were like, kind of what’s happening in the world right now, depending on your political beliefs.

[00:19:43] Leisa Peterson: If they were in one camp, they felt like. oh, she’s trying to get a handout. And I was like, oh my gosh, the world that we live in, like you can’t win. And it again taught me a lot about the struggles of making sure that I was writing a book that was [00:20:00] reflective because here’s the point, nonfiction books. They meet you where you are at because it’s a prescriptive, like, here’s what to do, or here’s what I’m thinking, or here’s this, , they see you as the author and them as the reader, but when you’re bringing people into a fiction book, you want them to feel like they’re right there alongside of the characters connecting and relating and understanding.

[00:20:23] Leisa Peterson: if I couldn’t do that, then I didn’t wanna write a fictional book.

[00:20:26] Jonathan DeYoe: So is Tanya, creative or was Tanya from the experiences you’ve heard about and worked with other women on that don’t, you know, present like you?

[00:20:36] Leisa Peterson: she is a collection of the feedback that I got from my clients and back and forth where I’m like, am I portraying this character in a way that you feel like you’re included here? It’s not about the color even, you know, of your skin or like none of that matters, and I don’t highlight that. But there needed to be room for that.

[00:20:58] Leisa Peterson: Mm-hmm. And that was all that [00:21:00] I, I, I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface on this, but I’m sharing this because I do think it’s really reflective of like, the differences that we take. We, we just don’t know oftentimes.

[00:21:12] Jonathan DeYoe: it’s the emotional sense of it,

[00:21:15] Jonathan DeYoe: right? And, and it’s, it’s easy to say, you know, prescriptively, point a, point B point C, you do this, you do this, this, you’ll be set, you save, you invest, you’re good. But all the, like, how does that work in life? you know, on the ground, very difficult

[00:21:26] Leisa Peterson: And I really always wanted to make sure, because this is a central message in what I teach, that it is not the same for every one of us. Like I. Even if I’ve come from the wrong side of the tracks and I’ve worked really hard and I’ve built wealth, like that looks one way, but other people have had different experiences and to assume that we all have the same ramp is not fair, it’s not helpful, and I wanted to bring that in.

[00:21:52] Leisa Peterson: And so Tanya gave me the ability to bring in a more open conversation of like. well, first of all, [00:22:00] let’s not focus on anybody but ourselves. Like let’s focus on our own experiences. But sadly, people do, you know, compare constantly when it comes to money with each other. And I was like, well, this is a great opportunity for me to be like, let’s just focus on you and realize that we can have more compassion and be more conscious of the world around us at the same time.

[00:22:20] Jonathan DeYoe: It is too much of a measuring stick, just dollars. Too much of a measuring stick.

[00:22:24] Jonathan DeYoe: I want to dip into the, dip a tone into the book a little bit in Catalyst four. Nurture your inner wealth. You sort of guide Mirabell through a process of identifying her emotional triggers around money, particularly during a conversation with her mentor.

[00:22:38] Jonathan DeYoe: So why have Mirabell revisit a childhood memory at this point? How do you see this exercise shifting like a reader’s relationship with abundance?

[00:22:48] Leisa Peterson: It is back to those early money stories. Maribel hires Maya to help her understand what would that journey to abundance look like. And so multiple conversations that they [00:23:00] have are diving into, first of all, Maribel’s relationship with herself. Her relationship with money and scarcity and abundance, and then also with the people in her life.

[00:23:13] Leisa Peterson: And so she goes backwards into these experiences because she needs to uncover the guilt, the regret, the resentment, the lack of forgiveness that she’s holding in her heart before she’s able to move beyond those things. And having done this kind of work, you know, especially this past 10 years as a coach and working on mindset I do not see people make material changes in their life until they go back and have some sort of forgiveness process in their practice. And there’s lots of different ways we can get there, but this has been the one that has been most effective, you know, between me and my clients. And I wanted people to see what that looks like.

[00:23:59] Jonathan DeYoe: Are you [00:24:00] both Maribel and Maya in that?

[00:24:02] Leisa Peterson: Pretty much

[00:24:04] Jonathan DeYoe: Okay.

[00:24:06] Jonathan DeYoe: if you had a money coach or if you have been your own money coach.

[00:24:10] Leisa Peterson: I have not had a money coach. interesting enough, I have had spiritual teachers all along the way, and so, one of my teachers, Holly Riley, back in 2015, and I’ve been on this spiritual journey since 1999, but in 2015 she worked with me to really open my heart. Buddhism kind of opened the crown chakra in the upper, but.

[00:24:34] Leisa Peterson: Holly helped me move into the heart. Interesting enough, the reason I’m going on retreat is I’m now exploring the lower chakras in a very ugly way, but that’s a whole other conversation. But the heart, Holly helped me and parts of May are definitely inspired by Holly Riley. I.

[00:24:51] Jonathan DeYoe: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. so another, thing is inside the book you offer the journaling prompts throughout, Sort of as a way to explore our own [00:25:00] financial beliefs in real time, as you’ve just mentioned. So in, Catalyst six, amplifier finances, Uribel reframes her approach to budgeting after a setback.

[00:25:09] Jonathan DeYoe: there’s a setback. She comes back after the setback and reframes this approach to budgeting. How does that, how do you think readers will apply this?

[00:25:15] Leisa Peterson: Yeah. I’m hoping that by the time they reach this part of the process, they’re thinking to themselves like. It’s time to look under the covers. It’s time to look at the practical aspects of my experiences with money. And I love doing that after the mindset work. So it’s a buildup to that place where in this case, she’s looking at her own situation, but she’s really.

[00:25:43] Leisa Peterson: Learning probably more by, and this is how I learn too. I like to teach others like I learn while I’m teaching. And so she’s showing her mom how to do it better. And in the course of it, learning how to manage money [00:26:00] in, in a more responsible way, without relying just on Ethan to tell her what to do.

[00:26:05] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, so just as you’re talking is this whole idea of mindset comes first and then practical application comes second. I totally. Absolutely and totally agree. But is the mindset work and this, I think this brings in the DEI piece as well. I have always viewed the mindset stuff as get your mind right so that you can follow the prescriptive steps.

[00:26:28] Jonathan DeYoe: Right? I think you’re coming at it differently than I have come at it, and I think you’re coming at it with this. You need to embrace whatever mindset you have. Love on yourself, forgive yourself, and then you’ll be enabled. You have to trust that you’ll be enabled to make better decisions and be a more authentic and all this kind of stuff.

[00:26:47] Jonathan DeYoe: I don’t know if it’s a gender difference or if it’s a, a dominant culture, diff I don’t know what the, what the difference is, but I’m like, okay, this is what I have to do to get there. Boom, I’m gonna do this and this and this and this. I’m gonna get up early. I’m gonna work really hard.

[00:26:59] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m gonna, all [00:27:00] these kind of lessons. You are saying something a little different that I think if I, pursued, I think I would be able to better get past some of those scare city issues that keep coming back because I turn away from that in my own life. I need to turn towards it and love on it a little bit.

[00:27:16] Jonathan DeYoe: That’s what it sounds like. Is that fair?

[00:27:19] Leisa Peterson: I think so, you know, the awake process is this really simple process, right. Introduced in the book and, , I kid you not like, it came to me as I was writing the book. I had not used it before. I was like, wow, this is really powerful and I’ve used it since then. Well, the other day I was having a total meltdown, like my toddler moment.

[00:27:39] Leisa Peterson: something had happened with the book. It just shut down. It wasn’t available even though we had just done this launch and I was like. I’m gonna go onto Instagram and I’m gonna film myself going through awake. And I have no idea if I’ll be deleting it at the end, like, because I don’t know what’s gonna happen.

[00:27:55] Leisa Peterson: And so awake is like become aware of the problem, become willing to [00:28:00] look at the problem from a very open and curious perspective. Accept, feel grateful for whatever’s happening. And then it’s an acronym, right? And then Kindness. This is the. Fourth step in the five step process. I had no idea that it was not gonna be until I got to kindness that I completely lost it and it went back to my childhood.

[00:28:24] Leisa Peterson: I had a father who wanted great things for me, and I mean, I’ve done well, but when I made a mistake, instead of hugging me and being compassionate and loving on me and saying it was gonna be okay, he’d be like, you need to do better next time. I.

[00:28:38] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:28:39] Leisa Peterson: And so when this happened with the book, it was all on me.

[00:28:42] Leisa Peterson: I totally made a mistake and I got to kindness and I was like, I can’t, what? You know, like, okay, I can be kind to myself, you know, I’m trying to be kind to myself. And, after I did the process, you know, the last step is embodiment. Like, can you embody [00:29:00] these parts of this, experience and this part, these parts of you that are coming forward.

[00:29:05] Leisa Peterson: I forgot about it. Like it was like the problem just totally went away. And I’m using that to answer your question because here’s what I’ve learned over 58 years on this planet is that it is really easy for me and probably other people to give ourselves a hard time, especially when we’re down and life often has more.

[00:29:26] Leisa Peterson: Trips and fails, then we care to admit. And so this idea of being kind and generous and loving on ourselves has been the most difficult lesson and the most productive lesson because if I can get there, I am instantly in an abundant state of mind. But if I can’t, I am my own worst enemy.

[00:29:49] Jonathan DeYoe: So I’m a, I’m a mindfulness teacher now. I’ve been doing that for like, I’ve got two months under my belt, three months under my belt now. So I love it. But one of the most difficult things to teach is self-compassion. ‘ we do not do that [00:30:00] well. it’s very interesting because, you know, RAIN, the

[00:30:01] Leisa Peterson: Yeah, Uhhuh.

[00:30:02] Jonathan DeYoe: recognize, allow, investigate, and Tara Brock changed it.

[00:30:06] Jonathan DeYoe: It used to be non-identification. Now it is nurture. So Tara Brach added kindness. but before Tar Brock and before like modern, you know, Western mindfulness, it was more like prescriptive. It was, don’t identify with that. So I would always pursue that, and that makes a lot more sense to me.

[00:30:23] Jonathan DeYoe: Nurture seems squishy to me. It seems like, of course you want kindness, but that’s because I’m no good at self-kindness. None at all. it’s cultural. This is a deeply cultural thing.

[00:30:33] Leisa Peterson: Yeah, but it does change everything. I was blown away that the process worked as well as it did, and I’m so excited because I have a feeling people will like start using it more and more and they’ll come back and be like, okay, it worked. Like it totally works.

[00:30:48] Jonathan DeYoe: All we gotta do is love ourselves. So

[00:30:50] Leisa Peterson: Yeah.

[00:30:50] Jonathan DeYoe: So. So there’s a, there’s an enormous amount of noise out there. and I wanna help people make practical decisions, but also good psychological [00:31:00] choices. So what’s one specific practice from the book that a reader can do out of the gate that’s gonna lead to better personal financial success from both a practical and a psychological standpoint?

[00:31:11] Leisa Peterson: So a lesson learned from my 27-year-old entrepreneur daughter, which is highlighted in the book when we get into the practical stuff, is become very comfortable with no. And what I mean by that is my daughter has built this incredible content creation company over the past couple years. She’s making really great money.

[00:31:31] Leisa Peterson: She’s living her best life and. When she started negotiating with all these brands, she at first had no clients, had no experience, had nothing, and yet she would wait until she heard no, to know that she was at the top of what she could charge the company for a real, or for a story or for something else.

[00:31:56] Leisa Peterson: ’cause Instagram is her big platform. And watching [00:32:00] this over a couple year period. Has not just doubled or tripled or quadrupled, but like something in the power of her being able to be so comfortable with no, whether that be with a vendor and what they’re paying her with a vendor who’s like.

[00:32:19] Leisa Peterson: Absolutely not. You do not fit our brand. I don’t care how much money you throw at us. The answer is no to, no to people who, don’t agree necessarily with what she’s doing or what she is all about. And I am seeing that lead to very quick wealth building. Incredible confidence. She’s really good at business and it’s all because of her feeling comfortable with a word that, in my generation, was not something that women were told to like, feel really good about. and I know I’m not alone. Like I’ve had this conversation with hundreds of women. and I’m sure men also feel this, but like.[00:33:00]

[00:33:00] Leisa Peterson: I’m totally guilty of that. So the lesson is become comfortable with no, understand that you will win some and lose some, but that you won’t know if you’re actually being paid in your job at the top level that you want to be paid. If you don’t reach that point of no and become okay with hearing it, you haven’t done anything wrong.

[00:33:20] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. No. In terms of we don’t wanna do business with you. No. In terms of we’re not gonna pay that much. yeah, you gotta push the limits. The only way you know the limit is there is if you hear, no, that’s fantastic. Learn to accept. No, learn to or not accept it, but hear it. ’cause you’re gonna hear it. Everyone’s gonna hear it. Lots and lots and lots of no. okay. So that’s, that’s what to do. focus on accepting or or understanding that no is part of it.

[00:33:39] Jonathan DeYoe: What’s one thing that listeners probably already doing, you know, maybe they’ve been told to do, that they should stop doing that would lead to better outcomes?

[00:33:47] Leisa Peterson: I think stop thinking that you’re right all the time.

[00:33:53] Jonathan DeYoe: Hmm. Humble. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That has been showing up inside of this book [00:34:00] and the lessons that I’ve learned over and over again that we get very righteous about our relationship with money. We think we’ve got the answers. We think we’ve got it figured out, but I. Granted, I have no idea if this makes you richer or poorer, but I will say that when you approach life from a more beginner’s mindset and get curious about what people know, what people think, what you think, you’re going to live a lot happier.

[00:34:32] Jonathan DeYoe: the outcome can be as different as you want, positive or negative, but the path will be easier for sure. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. just before we get to, uh, sort of something called a, you know, a wrap here at the end, I’d like to go back to personal.

[00:34:42] Jonathan DeYoe: As you know, can you name a place you visited that really had a deep impact on you today and what was the impact?

[00:34:49] Leisa Peterson: Of course Paris, but I’m gonna add another one. right after Paris, three months later, I got invited to speak at a retreat in Bali, and I [00:35:00] did not like Bali when I first got there. It was total chaos. It felt like I. Fish swimming. I’ve never seen people like riding motorcycles on the sidewalk and like chaos everywhere.

[00:35:10] Leisa Peterson: And I was like, these people are insane. I thought I might ride on the back of a motorcycle. There’s no way. I have a motorcycle license. I’ve had it for years and that’s my first impression. So a week into Bali, I got invited to go out with a group of motorcyclists on our scooters in Bali. Like I would be on my own bike and.

[00:35:31] Leisa Peterson: I was like, I’m probably gonna die. And I’m okay with that because I am so freaking scared of what I’m about to do. But I’m gonna be in the middle of the pack and there will be people in the front. I can follow them and people behind me. maybe I’ll survive. So we go out and we did this day of traveling all over, the island.

[00:35:48] Leisa Peterson: And at the end of the day, well I lived, first of all ’cause yeah, I wouldn’t be here, we end up out in these rice patties and the sky could not have been like [00:36:00] more perfect. And these it was just like this fog, which was probably smoke and the sun and people wearing those hats and people getting off of work I felt like one of those moments where you just like put your arms out, but I wasn’t gonna let go of the steering wheel, but it was like.

[00:36:16] Leisa Peterson: This is my life and I just face death to have it, and I am so grateful that I am here and getting to see this experience because this is like right out of a picture that I never thought I would ever have in my life.

[00:36:32] Jonathan DeYoe: I hear it. There’s a, there’s a few themes that are just kind of, we’re gonna to the end, but there’s some themes, like one you cry a lot. Two. Two, you’re very grateful, and you also maintain this curiosity, this, this beginner’s mind, as much as humanly possible.

[00:36:45] Jonathan DeYoe: So those, those three things I think you could, you’re sharing just by being, which is awesome. So we’re gonna make sure all that stuff is in the notes. How do people find you? How do people connect with you?

[00:36:54] Leisa Peterson: So a great way is to go to moneycatalystbook.com. we’ll give them a secret [00:37:00] passageway ’cause they listen to this conversation. So even if you haven’t gotten the book and you wanna check it out, you wanna start reading it. you can go to that page right in your name, your email, put in zero one, and that will get you all the free bonuses that come with the book.

[00:37:14] Leisa Peterson: You’ll get the beginning of the book meditations. You’ll get a journal, but I feel like that’s the best way to kind of see if this is something that you wanna explore. And yeah, you’ll get some goodies.

[00:37:25] Jonathan DeYoe: Thanks, Leisa. I appreciate it once again. I always love having a conversation with you. You brighten my day and everyone else’s day, I’m sure. Thank you so much.

[00:37:32] Leisa Peterson: Thank you.

[00:37:33] Outro: Thanks for listening. Full show notes for each episode, which includes a summary, key takeaways, quotes, and any resources mentioned are available at Mindful Money. Be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. And if you’re enjoying the content and getting value from these episodes, please leave us a rating and review [00:38:00] ratethispodcast.com/mindfulmoney. We’ll be sure to read those out on future episodes.