The Stories We Tell Ourselves with Carl Taylor

In this Episode

• • [00:39]Stephan introduces Carl Taylor. He has walked the entrepreneurs’ journey, starting, buying, building, and selling businesses. After financially retiring at 31, his focus shifted from self-security towards contribution and guiding others through his books, speaking, and businesses.
  • [07:22]Carl talks about the cause of his spiritual awakening and relates it to his fascination with metaphysics when he was just a young teenager.
  • [14:02]Carl explains why letting go of your ego-mind is the number one thing to do as a human.
  • [21:22]Carl and Stephan discuss the experience of having their spiritual awakening and how they can’t fully describe or name the feeling.
  • [28:12]Stephan expounds on why we as humans don’t see the gift of life that is happening for us.
  • [34:27]Carl tells the story of how he was given a bracelet for luck by a monk he met in a temple in Thailand and how it impacted his life.
  • [41:49]Stephan shares what he learned about money being energy, and spending money is an energy exchange.
  • [48:36]Carl shares how he regularly offers the day to the Highest good for himself, his partner, and the people he cares about for trust and guidance.
  • [55:25]Carl explains the concept of Becoming Bulletproof.
  • [67:43]Follow Carl Taylor on his social media accounts and visit his website at carltaylor.com.au to check out his books and learn more about him.

Jump to Links and Resources

Carl, it’s so great to have you on the show.

It’s a pleasure to be here. That sounds pretty cool. I hear that bio, and I go, wow, that guy sounds impressive. I’d like to meet him.

Well, I love that you’re a guiding light. How can our listener get a sampling of some of the guiding light stuff that you do out there in the world?

One of the best places would be through my books, I guess. More recently, my latest book, Becoming Bulletproof, is probably what’s far more near and dear. In my first book, as you mentioned, I was 24 when that first came out. I still read my books regularly, Red Means Go!, my first book, and the one that I wrote in 2019 I think it was, Becoming Bulletproof. 

Ten years difference between writing them, sitting in the same chair writing them at my parent’s place. I can see there’s a big growth difference. That’s a good starting point really. Becoming Bulletproof is probably what I’m most passionate about right now. Otherwise, follow me on different social media, Instagram, Facebook. I post lots of stuff. That’s a good place to go.

What does it mean to become bulletproof?

I’ll give you a bit of background. To become bulletproof—I’ve always loved Superman. Everyone usually has some sort of superhero that resonates with them, whether you’re geeky like I was as a kid, or whether you just see Marvel things. There’s always usually some sort of a superhero that’s cool. I wish I had that superpower. 

For me, I’ve just always loved Superman. It may have started as a kid, my name is Cal or Carl. I used to think when my parents call me that it was maybe more Kal-El, which is the actual name of Superman. For those that don’t know the mythology, Superman’s Kryptonian name is Kal-El, so I’ve always had this affinity. 

The idea of becoming bulletproof is not about the fact that you don’t get shot at. It’s that the bullets just bounce off you. That no matter what life may throw at you, no matter what circumstances may be, this understanding that you can just keep moving forward. You can just keep rolling, and some people say rolling with the punches.

The concepts in where Becoming Bulletproof came from were in 2019, I had a long-term relationship come to an end. For me, it was quite unexpected and sudden. There had been things happening. I was literally weeks away from buying the ring to propose, and then this relationship just broke down. It put me in a real spin. It’s when all of a sudden, 10 years of growth and life experiences culminated to this point of what I call a spiritual reawakening where I had to come face to face with all these thoughts I’d had.

The biggest insight is understanding. I think that you’re familiar with this, Stephan, as well. Everything that we call life is completely made up. It’s all a story. Life is a story. Our life is the story that we tell ourselves it is. I was face to face with this thing that I had thought the mind was offering me these thoughts that my life is over, it’s not worth living. I wasn’t quite to that point of suicidal thinking, but I was devastated as many people are if you’re listening and you’ve been through a divorce or a long-term relationship breakdown. 

I had to come face to face and go, okay, hold on. This is all about what I choose to tell myself it is. All my story of, it should have been like this, I don’t know that to be true. I don’t have the grandest scheme. The key principle behind Becoming Bulletproof is understanding that life as we know it—who we say we are and what we say happens to us—is all a story. I go through examples in my book about things like Christmas. Whether you’re religious or not, Christmas and Easter—these religious or now more popular holidays—the history of all that, most people don’t even know the history of it.

What do chocolate bunnies have to do with either the pagan festival, which is really what Easter was originally about? This then had the Christian overlay of the resurrection of Jesus. There are all these stories and life is just filled with stories that we just don’t question. We just live our lives and go, this is how it is. Back to your question, the core of what is becoming bulletproof is understanding that every moment is a story, and the person who is the narrator of that story is you.

That’s really powerful. Just a small variation on that theme is that life is a movie. We are sitting in a movie theater. We’re seeing these two-dimensional projections of who we believe to be our loved ones, our friends, and our enemies, but we only see a sliver of who they are and all their infinite possibilities. We don’t remember that these things that we’re experiencing that are in our movie are there for a reason.

Our life is the story we tell ourselves. Click To Tweet

My coach tells me to ask myself, why is this particular thing, person, or event in my movie? Why is this in my movie? Why is the breakdown of this long-term relationship that you had in my movie? It would be a very powerful question. I’m curious, what’s the answer to that for you?

Well, it is a very powerful question. It’s one of those things you can always look back and go, ”If only this happened” or “If things went this way I would be this,” but the reality is you wouldn’t. We are who we are today. I am who I am today because of every single thing that has happened and every single thought that has crossed my mind up to this point. I don’t know this to be true, but without that relationship coming to an end, I don’t think I would have had the spiritual reawakening that I’ve had. From a young age, I was fascinated. I don’t know if you’ve ever read The Celestine Prophecy.

I love that book. I’ve read it many years ago.

Maybe 10 or 11 years old I’ve read The Celestine Prophecy and I was so excited. I remember my grandfather passing away not long after I’d been really into Celestine Prophecy. I remember everyone around me was really sad. I was in the hospital room and he passed away. In my mind, I was like, “No, he’s just turned into the energy. He’s just ascended like the ninth insight.” I was just in this really interesting phase.

I went through a phase of being interested in witchcraft and spells as a young teenager as well. I’ve always just been fascinated by the idea of metaphysics, spirituality. I just didn’t know it until a lot later. I went into a, what I would call now, more ego-centered. Well, I got more into success. I must have money. I must have a business. I must earn my right to be successful. I must earn my place. I must earn love. I went through all of that through building businesses and how do I make myself have more money and security.

Then ultimately, with the relationship breaking down and just reemergence of all this like, actually, you know what, I’m enough as I am. The people who come in and out of my life don’t matter. That’s the biggest purpose. What it served for me was a shift and a change, a deepening of my own understanding. It’s been an invitation that’s opened deeper relationships with my family. Obviously, I moved back and lived with my parents for a while. We had deep conversations that we hadn’t had in, basically, 30 odd years.

From there, I took eight months out of my business. It gave me 100% evidence that my business would work fine without me. I’ve been saying it for years, my business works without me, but I actually took the time out. It’s like, you know what, it’s still here eight months later and I haven’t done a thing. Even the best news, it’s then opened up and I ended up meeting someone else. I went to a workshop on relationships, happened to meet someone there. We stayed in touch and we’ve been together now for a little over a year now, I think.

I know that you’re familiar with Tony Robbins. I went to a Date with Destiny before the relationship had broken down. One of the things I came away from that was, I’d set the intention. I was going to have the most passionate, loving, intimate relationship I’ve ever experienced by May 2020. 

In May 2020, there I was in the most passionate, loving, intimate relationship I’d ever experienced where it’s a relationship of there’s drama and ego. We trigger each other in many different ways, but there’s this underlying beautiful unconditional love of just you are you, I am me, and we’re here in this relationship for the betterment of ourselves and for others. I can’t even put words to it. It’s such a new experience for me.

That’s wonderful. It reminds me of a story that I just heard recently from my Kabbalah teacher. Actually, he was my first Kabbalah teacher about five or six years ago when I first started studying Kabbalah. He just shared this story of Rabbi Akiva. Incidentally, I’m not even Jewish, but I love Kabbalah. I love studying this ancient self-help movement. 

You mentioned Tony Robbins and if you could go back in time thousands of years, who are you going to study, how are you going to study, something along the lines of Tony Robbins, it would be Kabbalah.

The story of how this rabbi and his colleagues were seeing the temple destroyed. All the other rabbis were crying, and he was laughing. The rabbis turned to him and were like, “Why are you laughing? This is tragic, terrible, and really sad.” His answer was very profound. This means that the temple is going to be built again, that the prophecy will be fulfilled, that it is in process. You don’t see time as something that is agonizing. Time is a gift. It’s something that we experienced so that we can understand more fully the law of cause and effect.” 

Whatever his exact answer was really helped comfort and changed the perspective of those rabbis. When everybody else is crying and you’re laughing because you see the gift in it, you see God’s hand in absolutely everything. That’s when the magic really starts happening. Life happens for you, not to you, as Tony Robbins says. It is more profound than you can possibly imagine.

Life happens for you, not to you.

That’s what I’ve come to experience in just my very early parts of this journey that I’m taking. I feel like I’m a little baby crawling through life, trying to figure out this whole spirituality thing with the reawakenings and all that that I’m experiencing too. What of that resonates for you?

So much. I mean, I’m not super familiar with the Kabbalah. But I’m a big believer and I’m a big fan of Byron Katie, who I believe was the person who first said the concept of life happens for you, not to you. It just comes back to that story of it is all a story. I talked about this in Becoming Bulletproof that there are effectively two core types of stories that we tell ourselves regularly. Similar to what you’re talking about in the movie structure, you’ve got identity stories. I am this, I am like that, or you are this, you are like that.

At this moment, the perception you are having of me is your story that you are creating. The more data you hear based on other experiences you had, you’re creating a story of who is Carl. In the same experience, as I’m talking to you, I’m creating more experience and stories of who I am. The ego-self is saying, “He’s who I am,” and I’m making the same stories around who you are based on the more we talk. There are these identity stories of “I am this, I am that.”

We can shift those stories and we can reaffirm, slowly transition, change our behaviors, and change who we are. You can also just drop all of that and just remember who you really are. You’re the presence that is witnessing this thing called life. That’s really who we are. If you strip the ego completely away, it’s like you step back. For me, it’s a physical feeling of it stepping back into my body. It’s just, I’m just a pure witness of life happening.

Who are you really? You are the presence that is witnessing this thing called life. Click To Tweet

The second type of stories that we talk about is incident stories. This thing happened to me or this thing happened to you. The experience at this moment, this happened to you, this happened to me. You did this to me, I did that to you, whatever. It’s the same thing in each of those moments as you shared there. They’re all devastated that this temple is burning. He’s saying that, no, this is beautiful. It’s a rebirth. There’s an opportunity. This is the core secret to me of what I think this journey, a human experience of life, is about.

The ego-mind constantly wanting to say, this is who you are, this is what life is, this is what happened. This balance of a more spiritual side of going, well actually, none of that’s true. You’re just it. You’re just in this vessel, this meat suit here experiencing. I don’t know it to be true, but I think part of that is learning to let go of the ego is the number one thing that we humans are here to do. We’re all at different stages of that. It’s learning to be able to go, that’s just a story, that’s just stuff.

I’m curious, what do you see as the purpose of the ego? As the Kabbalists say or I guess all Jews would see this at the core of their teachings or the wisdom that the hand of God is in everything. Where does the ego fit in this? Why do we have an ego to even fight against and to have to experience that ego death? What’s the whole point?

Learning to let go of the ego is the number one thing that we humans are here to do.

What’s the point of it?

Yeah.

It’s a good question. I wouldn’t say I have a great answer for it. For me, I feel like evolution. I come from a science background. My mother was a high school science teacher. I’ve always been very sciencey. The idea of evolution does not discount spiritual evolution. If it’s all energy and we’re able to continually vibrate at different energies, I feel there is some journey. If you believe in reincarnation, that we’ve lived many past lives and we’re just here in this life. Time, at the end of the day, it’s all an illusion. Everything’s happening all at once. Time is just how we’re perceiving it while we’re here.

There’s a journey, and I think it’s a collectiveness. The way I like to think about things is, some people think about the idea of a soul being this individual thing. I think that’s even the ego in itself trying to attach the identity of my identity will continue with me. Even the idea of past lives, I was Tutankhamun in a past life or whatever that some people choose to believe. Even in that, to me, if you think of consciousness, oneness is this vast ocean. You get a cup, you scoop out a glass of consciousness, and you put that in a body. That could be the soul that is Stephan right now.

When this being dies and that consciousness goes back into the ocean if you were to get another cup and scoop out again, would you get the exact same amount of water again? Would you get exactly the same liquid from the ocean that you took out, then poured back in and you scooped in again? It was not going to be exactly the same. There might be fragments and pieces from that original. That’s how I like to think about it. Until there’s science in various ways, maybe we’ll never know. I don’t know any of this to be true, but it feels true to me.

It’s almost like it’s all part of this. You’re all me, I’m me. Everyone around me—at the end of the day—is we, not even me. The ego is how we try to identify while we’re in this earthly plane with each other. We try to create separateness. We try to understand our awareness. It’s the human mind, I guess. I choose to believe that on a spiritual level, I don’t fully know the purpose. I think it’s there to help challenge us and grow and help us continue to evolve. 

Do I know the ins and outs of it? I’m just still making all that up, as we all are. What about you? Do you have thoughts? I would be curious to know your thoughts.

I believe that the ego is an incredible gift that gives us something to push against. We grow and we appreciate things because of contrast. If every day was sunny and there’s no rain, there’s no inclement weather, we wouldn’t appreciate the sunny days. We’d be bored with it. The contrast is what gives us the ability to appreciate. 

By having the ego, we can appreciate those awakening moments and the spiritual evolution that we’re all going through, and see that “Wow, that’s really profound.” This is something that I was able to rise above, accomplish, achieve, or whatever the word is that resonates for each one of us. It’s something that we can compare and contrast before and after. 

That’s my view on it. It’s like The Hero’s Journey on Joseph Campbell. Imagine how those stories would have evolved differently if ego didn’t exist. Would those stories even have existed? I don’t think so.

No. Exactly. I mean, that’s the whole idea because the ego is that identity of, there’s a struggle that something’s not as it should be and must overcome that. There’s the hero who will come and conquer things.

The call to arms. “Get off the couch, save the world.” Going full circle back to the beginning of our discussion talking about Superman, what if he didn’t have the crystals that helped him to see his past and create an identity that was larger than his current self at the time?

I think that’s part of the conundrum that many people go through. I know I did and there are many in my world that have. If you’ve come from a business background or maybe a very success-oriented background, “I will have success and I must do, I must do, do, do—very masculine energy. I must achieve, I must do these things.” Then you start to have all of that start to crumble away and you move more into some of these spiritual elements.

You learn about the power of you, and you don’t actually have to do anything to be deserving. You are enough as you are. You are fully loved. I don’t know what your audience or listeners are like, but you don’t have to be religious to believe these things. 

You get to this point, I’m curious whether you did too, where you’re like, “Well, hold on. Everything is perfect as it is.” Therefore, what’s the driving striver? It’s this blending of the masculine and the feminine. You go, “Alright, the being and the doing, I don’t need to do anything.” But there’s that element, and it’s an interesting dynamic where many of us are still figuring out. I definitely am.

I am too. I mean, this is all pretty new for me. I was agnostic up until age 42 until I had my first spiritual awakening experience in India, which happened to be on a Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership. A monk touched me on the head, gave me what they call a Diksha—a oneness blessing, and he zapped me. I felt so peaceful, calm, connected, cared for, and loved unconditionally.

I went outside and everything was just technicolor, like an LSD trip, not that I know what an LSD trip is like. It was so extraordinary, so otherworldly, so out of the ordinary. An extraordinary experience that shifted everything in me. Not just my story changed, but my experience of what life is completely, not shifted but evolved, expanded. I became not just the water in the glass but the entire ocean, at least for a little while.

That’s so true. For most people, you experience it. I know for me, you have this experience and you can’t necessarily fully name it and describe it. Words don’t fully comprehend how to describe it. The way you view the world and the way you see things is just fundamentally different. It’s not even seeing, it’s how things feel. 

Then life happens and stresses come back, various things happen, and you’re maybe not as present, not as centered as I like to think of it. You always still have this memory of what that experience was like. You’re like, “All right, I want to get back to that. I know what that was.”

Interestingly enough, we were talking about The Celestine Prophecy. I’ve just recently started to read some of the later books. I’m not a huge fan of The Tenth Insight, which was the sequel. But The Secret of Shambhala, I’ve been reading that recently. It’s exactly the same concept of, you’ve had the taste of the experience, life happened, and now you’re coming back to find that balance.

I love hearing about your experience with the blessing. I think that that’s a profound thing where everyone has that moment, at least once. For me, I don’t even remember the exact moment of what I read or what triggered it. But all of a sudden, it was very much I was really delving into Byron Katie’s work at that time of just reframing—The Four Questions. If you’re not familiar with Byron Katie’s work. Check it out.

I am. I love her work. By the way, listener, there is a fantastic episode, where I interviewed Katie on this podcast. I was a subject of the process. There’s a sensitive topic in my life, it’s still happening with one of my daughters who doesn’t talk to me. She’s in her 20s and she doesn’t talk to me, she doesn’t talk to my wife and hasn’t even shown any interest in her half-brother, our little baby. I actually now see the gift in it in a way that I’ve never experienced before. It’s not painful anymore.

That process of going through The Four Questions, is it true? Can I know with absolute certainty it’s true? How does this thought make me feel? What would life be like if this thought didn’t exist? Then turning that around and doing the opposite of the thought. Then maybe there’s another opposite of the thought and running that through the four questions. I did that in the interview with her and it’s so powerful. It’s a game-changer. She has multiple books. Loving What Is, I mean, that says it all. Love what is.

This is what is, just love it. So true. That’s amazing. I’m so glad to hear that you’ve had that episode. You should definitely check it out if you haven’t heard it if you’re listening to this episode. It’s just such a profound way of whenever the story of your thought that you’re stuck on that’s causing suffering, you look at all the different angles and you start to realize and just dissolve. It was in one of those (she calls it) meditation.

Time is an illusion. Everything happens all at once. It's a tool to help us perceive things while we're here. Click To Tweet

It was in one of those meditative thoughts, which there was just this huge wave of relief, as you said, bright colors—everything was brighter. For me, I was very lucky. It lasted for months. I was in the most present state that I’d been. I was moving slowly. I could tell everything was present. I still know how to access that now, but I had months of just living in it.

Taking eight months out of your business does help do that when you don’t have to worry about other things. Getting back in, when I started to bring myself back into business mode, stress things, and other things, the ego-mind pops back up and it latches on to things. Even though you know the tools, you’ve got the tools at your disposal to get back to those types of states.

Breathwork is another way of getting into that type of state. I’ve never taken any illicit drugs, but breathwork has gotten me and I’ve been with many people who have a past of various drug use. They talk about breathwork and how that’s similar to the highs that they’ve achieved through drugs. It’s incredible what is available to us and yet, as I say, life gets in the way. We let life get in the way. Has that been your experience?

I think it’s not life that gets in the way, it’s our rigid belief systems. Life is actually happening for us as Katie says and as Tony Robbins says, and we don’t see it. We don’t see the gift. We just see the pain or we just see the surface-level experience of it. We miss the whole point, the whole lesson that we then have to, I think. We experience the pain another time, maybe in another lifetime in order to finally get what the whole lesson was.

100%. Good stuff.

I have to tell you how I was called to interview you and we’ll talk about the story. I saw your post on Facebook. We’re Facebook friends together. I saw this beautiful post about luck, this string, and the monk flicking water on you and stuff. I’m not going to tell the story. I’m just going to give those little clues to pique people’s curiosity and let you tell the story.

That experience that you had really spoke to me. It’s like, we’re kindred spirits. When I read that, there is no coincidence in me seeing that story on Facebook. I’m not spending very much time on Facebook these days. I saw that and I knew I was meant to see that, and then I was meant to take action. That action was to invite you to be on my podcast, so here we are. Can you share that beautiful story?

I love that, absolutely. Before I get into the story, it’s funny, you say that you don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook to have seen that. I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook these days to have even posted that. I think it was the last thing I posted and it’s been a while since then. I shared the story that I was in Thailand. We’ve already talked about the relationship that came to an end. Afterward, I had some friends in Thailand and this is before COVID. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to jump on a plane. I’m just going to go and hang out with some friends.”

I always wanted to do a bit more of the digital nomad lifestyle of living in other countries and lower the cost of living. I thought I’m going to spend some time. I got myself a nice little unit there in Thailand, and I was like hanging out here. My mindset coach or spiritual coach—whatever you want to call her—that I’ve been working with for years happened to be there as well. It was perfect. She was able to support me through this process I was going through. One day she goes, “Hey, I’m planning on going to this temple. Do you want to come?” I was like, “Great, love to go.”

We climbed up to this temple, kept climbing, climbing, climbing. We’re just taking a look, taking photos, looking around, and just enjoying ourselves. We went into one of the little temples. There’s a bunch of people there meditating, and so we sit down and we meditate for a while. We just sit and meditate. This was before I had my real spiritual awakening. This was probably a few weeks, maybe even a month before.

Just before we did the meditation, my coach had even said to me, you’re looking at all the statues around. She’s like when you take a look at that statue of Buddha, what do you see? I was so stuck in my head and I was like, I see gold and I see this. She’s like if you just slow down and really look. She was inviting me into my presence. I got a bit more present, but nowhere near what I can do now. I sat and I meditated.

Then there was this monk over in the corner and I saw some of the other tourists, I guess, would sometimes sit with him or talk to him. He was a bit loud at times. He had his rules that he couldn’t touch women and he would sometimes quite loudly in his awkward English be like, no women. It caught my attention. I was like, I’m curious to see what he’s about. I stood up slowly and silently while everyone’s meditating, I went and sat down in front of him, and just said, “Sawatdee khrap.” He’s like, “Sawatdee khrap.” which is hello in Thai for those that aren’t familiar.

I just sat there with him, he put his hand over some water, splashed this water in my face, and started doing a little prayer. He looked at me, we had a bit of conversation in broken Thai. I don’t really remember the conversation now. Then I was getting ready to go. He reaches over and he grabbed this piece of string, this little rope, and he’s like, “Put hand out.” I put my hand out, he put it around my wrist and tied it up. Then he splashed more water in my face and did another little prayer. 

He goes, “Look at it, for luck.” I was like, “Okay.” It was just perfect timing. I was still very shaken by my relationship breakdown. I was going in and out of thoughts of peace and happiness and I was like, “Yeah, for luck because that’s what’s going to happen from here.” At the time, when I got that, I actually thought the luck would be that I’d get back together with my partner. That was the first thought. I was like, “Luck, I’ll get back together with my partner. Good, I’m glad I’m going to have some luck.”

I stood up, thanked him, walked away, sat back down with my coach, and just sat and did some more meditation. I eventually left. That was on my wrist for—I can’t even remember now how long it was. I would have mentioned it in my post, but it was over a year. It would have been almost coming up to two years of time that that string around my wrist stayed there. I had people ask about it all the time. What’s that? I was like, that’s just something I got in Thailand. It’s for luck.

Anytime I felt really bad, I’d be, “That’s right. Luck’s on my side. I’ve got this beautiful blessing.” People even were like, “Why aren’t you taking it off?” “Why would I take it off? It’s been blessed for luck. Why would I take this off my wrist?” I just laughed in general. I just continued to wear it. Throughout that time that it was around my wrist, a short answer for you if you’re wanting to pay attention is that it’s no longer around my wrist. It fell off, it broke eventually—naturally, I didn’t take it off.

I happened to be in a state where my current partner is, she has a family in this state. I was meeting them for the first time. We’ve been together for almost a year now. But due to COVID, in Australia, they closed a lot of borders. I wasn’t able to go over and meet them. We’re finally over there meeting them for the first time. We’re at their house, one day all of a sudden, I just noticed it on the ground. I’m like, “Oh, it fell off.” I’m just like, “How beautiful that it got to witness my spiritual reawakening that happened about a month after it.”

It got to witness the writing of Becoming Bulletproof and it to become a bestseller. It got to witness me meeting Liz, my partner, and our new relationship starting. It got to witness the stress of COVID. But that same stress of COVID, if you want to call it that, I was in Texas at the time when COVID really got crazy. I had to rapidly get back to Sydney, go into a 14-day lockdown, and then there was talk of borders and some of our states closing. My partner was living in another state, so then I quickly had to get down to her state. We ended up moving in together far faster than we’d planned because of COVID. 

All these beautiful things that then unfolded, she then left her job and came and worked with me, and then now we’ve moved again. All these beautiful things happened under the witness of the bracelet, the string of luck. The thing was that when it broke, I had the thoughts coming up and I had people being like, “Does that mean you’re not lucky anymore?” 

Again, it comes back to what we just talked about at the start, we’re the narrator of our movie, of our story. We write the script. When it breaks, you have two choices or multiple choices really, but I could have gone, “Okay, my luck’s run out. It was fun while it lasted. Now we’ll just see what happens.” Or you can find a more empowering story for the exact same incident. This is what it is. This is an incident, it broke. I get to choose what that incident story is and what it means.

The contrast is what gives us the ability to appreciate more of what there is. Without the bad, we wouldn't appreciate the good. Click To Tweet

I choose that it means that for that period of time, maybe I needed a little bit of extra boost. I needed the monk’s luck and maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was all in my head anyway, but I needed a little boost for a while. The moment I no longer needed that boost, its job was done. It let go to make space for me to have that knowing that you’ve got this now. You don’t need the string anymore. You don’t need the extra luck because you’ve always been lucky. That’s how I choose to see it. It’s such a beautiful experience.

Well, you know what, the eight months that you had of that beautiful connection, that’s the same thing. That was a gift for you while you needed it. It wasn’t that it was taken away from you and now you have to chase after that same feeling again. That was the string that you got to have as training wheels.

I love that. Thank you. So true.

I think words are important and they create reality. When people ask me about how I’ve been able to manifest so much luck in my life, how lucky I am, and they’re just commenting about how lucky I am, I always change the terminology from luck to fortune/fortunate. Even now, more precisely to being blessed because I am blessed. That comes with a great deal of responsibility that I’ve come to realize because you’re either given a lot of hardship in order to grow.

Words are important and they create reality.

The coal under pressure becomes a diamond. On the opposite end, you’re given all these blessings and you’re meant to share all that good fortune, all that blessing, and not just keep it to yourself, hoard it, and revel in it. It’s one or the other. For me, I’m getting so many blessings and such a charmed life I need to share. I’ve been stingy in the past. I’ve been very miserly, frugal, and so forth. That’s a lesson for me to grow beyond that and share, and share, and share until it hurts, until it feels like, “Ouch. That’s a lot.” What are your thoughts on that?

There’s something you said in particular. I mean, everything you said I love, but there was one thing that really just started to resonate. When you said that you’d been stingy, it reminded me of 2019, Date with Destiny. One of my epiphanies at that event was just a realization of what I labeled how selfish I’d been. I don’t want to grow my company anymore because that would mean I have to take on more staff, which just creates more headaches. It was like, “Well, that’s all about Carl in making Carl feel better. What about the impact of people who don’t get jobs, fewer clients being served, less value being created?”

In my relationship at that time, I’d realized that I’d been really selfish and focusing on what I was getting rather than what I was giving. All these different elements around how I spent money, I was stingy or frugal with my money spending because I was like, “No, I don’t want to spend money. I want to be financially free.” At that time, to be financially free is to have more passive income than I do in expenses. The easy way to do that is to lower your expenses while you build your passive income.

I got to this point and I walked away with a realization of shifting. I talked with my friends about being the rising tide because it’s realizing that the more money I spend, the more I’m actually contributing to this machine that we call capitalism, economy, and stuff. The more I’m spending, if I’m spending more on a house, the old me would have been like, “That’s crazy. That’s egocentric, don’t need to do that.” Let’s say I upgrade to a more expensive house and I’m putting more money out there, or I go and buy something from a store that maybe I wouldn’t, that’s helping put food on that person’s table and keep people in jobs, employ them.

Money is simply energy and spending money is an energy exchange.

It’s this constant—not even trickle, I won’t use the word trickle effect because that thinks to trickle-down economics. But it’s this continual effect of contributing. It shifted. It shifted me from thinking spending money is taking something from me to spending money is a contribution. It’s a form of contributing to society. That was a huge epiphany for me that completely shifted. It was more than money, but money is what I’ve focused on. In so many areas of my life, I started to go like, it’s all been about me and making sure I’m okay.

What about others? How do I focus more on contribution and how I’m contributing to others and just trust that the more I get, the more I can contribute. The more I contribute, therefore, the more that will be blessed to me to be able to contribute more. Unless there’s a lesson that I need to learn, I will then learn that lesson. That’s something you said that just really, when you said that, it just reminded me of that lesson that I had.

Beautiful lesson. One thing I’ve learned about money is that money is simply energy and spending money is an energy exchange. If you don’t value the exchange, you miss the whole point. Also, if you don’t value the energy inside the money, you miss the whole point. 

For example, if you’re at the gas station, the petrol station and you throw a small coin into the jar—in the US, they have penny jars or the collection of pennies. People don’t want pennies, they don’t value them. You can use some pennies if you need a little extra change. If you’re paying with cash if you get some extra cashback that has some pennies in there. Nobody wants to put that in their pocket, they just throw that into the jar.

When you honor and respect money, money will honor and respect you. Click To Tweet

Similarly, you walk down the street and you see a penny. You don’t bother to pick it up, you just walk over it, step on it perhaps. You’re not valuing the energy in the money. The thing about the energy is it’s the same quality of energy. It’s just in different denominations. The size of the vessel is different between a penny and a million dollars, but it’s still the same spark, it’s still the same energy, just in a different quantity. If you’re disrespecting the penny, you’re disrespecting all that energy. You’re essentially pushing the money and the prosperity away from you. I learned that from Kabbalah and that’s been a game-changer.

I love that. It reminds me of many, many, many, years ago—probably 10 odd years ago—I did T. Harv Eker’s training on the Millionaire Mind. It was like that. Even picking up a single penny, 5 cents, or 10 cents here in Australia and being able to be like, “I’m a money magnet. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Actually thanking the universe for bringing this blessing in front of you. Actually, when you honor and respect money, then money will honor and respect you. That clearly comes from Kabbalah teachings that I just wasn’t aware of. I’m going to definitely check that out after this.

Now you said something that sparked something in me. You just said, “Thanking the universe.” I just learned this distinction, and I don’t recall who I learned it from. It was in some sort of book, article, podcast, or something. I remember now, it was Kim White. My wife, Orion, interviewed Kim White and I was listening to that podcast episode on her podcasts, Stellar Life, which I highly recommend. Listeners, please subscribe to her show. That episode, which is very recent, is amazing. So please check it out.

I also interviewed Kim White, so you can listen to that one too after you’ve listened to hers. Listen to Kim on my show, on this podcast, but first, listen to hers. In that interview, he addresses this thing of talking to the universe, thanking the universe. You’re asking the universe, right? Dangerous, and here’s why. 

The universe has duality in it. If you ask or thank God, you’re going straight to the source.

The universe has duality in it. It has the light and the dark, it has the positive and the negative. Whereas if you ask God or you thank God, which is the source of everything, and not the duality of the universe, you’re going straight to the source. Fewer side effects than asking the good and the bad for whatever you’re wanting in your life.

I know some people use the word ‘universe’ because the word ‘God’ isn’t something that they ascribe to. I can imagine that you could replace the word God even to love. I’m asking love, I’m inviting, I’m thanking love. I like that. Understanding of there is the duality component. Wow, I really love that perspective.

Whatever resonates in terms of languaging for you, if it’s universal intelligence if it’s the Divine, the Creator, the Higher power, whatever works for you.

Highest self. For some people, it’s their highest self.

I’ve recently learned some distinctions around that, actually, that I find quite fascinating. I think this was from the medium, Michelle Whitedove. I was reading one of her books, and she was describing how the soul is essentially in two pieces that are connected. Our soul is connected to our physical body through the silver cord. The higher self is the part of the soul that’s still up in the heavens, in the higher realms, the higher dimensions, the higher sefirot to use Hebrew term in Kabbalah.

If we ask our higher self for answers, we’re actually asking the part of our soul that is bathed in unconditional love that’s in the ether. “Hey, give me some guidance.” You can also ask your angels. You can ask God directly. You can have a very intimate one-on-one relationship with God without any intermediaries, without asking angels, your higher self, or whatever. You can just directly ask God, make it more conversational. Instead of just pray, pray, pray, ask for things, and that’s just a broadcast. Stop and listen.

We talked at the beginning of the episode about meditating and how the process that you learned from Byron Katie is a form of meditation. When you meditate, you quiet the monkey mind, you allow yourself to hear the answers, and you can converse. It is bidirectional. It’s not meant to be just one way. Pray, pray, pray, and then hopefully things show up in your life.

How about praying and then waiting for the answer? Quiet the monkey mind, the answer comes not in meditation, usually, but later because you have to put yourself into a receptive state. Then you can continue the conversations like, “Okay, thank you for that guidance. Now, what do I do next? How do I best serve you and my journey to become my best self?” Those are some thoughts. I’m curious what’s resonating for you from that?

Firstly, I love so much what you shared. The thing that popped for me and came to mind was, I don’t know if you’ve explored much around the Tantra philosophies and Tantric philosophies. One of the things that I took away from Tantra was this idea of offering up to the highest good. Something that I do quite regularly is just having a shower. I’ll be having my shower. In the end, I’ll just close my eyes, feel the water running down my body, and be like, “I’m offering up today to the highest good. It’s the highest good for myself, the highest good for my partner, for whoever comes to mind, to be honest.”

If I know I’m going to be dealing with work people, I might talk about people. It’s just the highest good, and then I’ll go to the highest good for humanity, for society. I’m just going to offer the day up. Often, it’s a surrender process of, I trust that today is going to go exactly as it needs to go. I’m offering it up to guidance that, hopefully, channeling in me will be, and certain times when I need it, it’s going to be for the highest good. That there’s going to be the messages received in the moments that I need it to ensure that the actions, the words, and everything said will be in the highest good, not just for me, but for all of humanity, all of life, all of reality.

That’s something that came to mind as you were sharing, and I really love that principle. It’s something that has been really helpful. I also, in part of my personal development, self-healing journey, have been through a 12-step program, the Alcoholics Anonymous. But I wasn’t an alcoholic, I went through for something else, that same journey. 

It’s introducing the idea of serenity and surrendering and some of the beautiful—I don’t know if you’ve been through any of those programs. I won’t spoil it for people who haven’t necessarily gone through them, but there’s a lot of beautiful spiritual. I didn’t know it at the time that there’s quite a spiritual component to those 12-step programs and learning to surrender and offer up to the highest good as well.

A couple of things on that. One is, remember, words are important. What if you replace the word hoping to knowing? Sort of I hope that I’m going to get the highest good out of today whatever happens. I know. I know with absolute certainty. Certainty doesn’t exist in this physical realm that we’re living, but we can ask our higher power for access to the certainty that does exist in the higher dimensions. 

If I have the access to that absolute certainty. Certainty beyond logic is what it’s called in Kabbalah—certainty beyond logic. If I can access that, then I know with absolute certainty that my highest good is going to be looked after. Even if something tragic happens, it will lead to something amazing for me, for everyone around me, and for humanity. That’s one thing. 

Then the other is, you mentioned the 12-step program, a lot of spiritual lessons. I have not gone through the program, but I do know that there is a serenity prayer that is very powerful. It helps you to differentiate the things that you can change, the things you can’t. The prayer goes something like this, “God, please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

That’s blown up on my wall. In our living room, we have that blown up. We designed it in Canva, just got it printed, and put it up on the wall. It’s absolutely profound.

It is. Now, I want to share something with you. I think I might have shared it in a past episode. Listener, if you’re hearing this again, know this is for Carl and for you too to hear it again. 

Speaking of the connection to your higher self, there is a beautiful soul, but when he lived in a body 100 years ago. His name was Edgar Cayce. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but he was a clairvoyant who was able to channel his higher self. Actually, he was a medium and clairvoyant but he could channel his higher self, which is pretty unusual.

From what I understand, when you’re channeling if you’re a medium, you’re typically channeling other souls and perhaps even channeling angels. I interviewed Sheila Gillette who channels 12 archangels. Yes, she’s the absolute real deal, I have no doubt about it. He channeled his higher self, that part of his soul that was up in the heavens. The most profound things came from him, and also prophecies too. 

We are attracted to another person at a soul level, not because that person is our unique complement, but because by being with that individual, we are somehow provided with an impetus to become whole ourselves.

If you look at the prophecies of Nostradamus, you look at the prophecies of Edgar Cayce, they’re not the same prophecies, but the accuracy is astounding. So I’m going to share this with you, Carl, and I think you’re going to resonate with this. 

He defined a soulmate as an ongoing connection with another individual that the soul picks up again in various times and places over lifetimes. We are attracted to another person at a soul level, not because that person is our unique complement, but because by being with that individual, we are somehow provided with an impetus to become whole ourselves.

I do like that because I genuinely do not overly resonate with the idea of a single soulmate or even the concept that we must connect with the twin flame theory that some like to hold dear. We’re not whole and complete. I personally feel like we are, that is our being is to realize that we are the balance of the masculine and feminine. We are whole and complete in ourselves. I do love that resonation of individuals that we connect with that are inviting us.

I would share that in my current relationship, and even in the one that ended unexpectedly for me, I can see that. I can see that unfolding massively in my current relationship. But even if I look back at even further past relationships, each one, there was an exchange of value of helping each other to offer to grow and expand. That’s beautiful. Edgar Cayce, I’m going to check that out. I really appreciate the share.

I know we’re already at an hour, do you have a few minutes to do a quick lightning round or do we need to wrap up?

Absolutely.

Awesome. There are a few things that I had written down during our conversation that I wanted to circle back to and get your thoughts on. One is this concept of, if you are becoming bulletproof, it isn’t just resiliency that you’re after, it’s antifragility. 

If you’re familiar with the concept of Antifragile from the book by Nicholas Taleb, the idea that systems that are antifragile actually thrive in chaos, and they need that in order to fully grow like economic systems and immune systems. Well, what if our soul is also requiring those kinds of chaotic expansive inputs and challenges in order to fully experience and grow through this lifetime? That’s something I wanted to get your thoughts on.

I 100% resonate with that. I think you look around at most people, but even if I look at my own experience, my biggest growth comes through the biggest challenges. It’s usually, as I say, in our darkest hour, in our biggest challenges, that’s where we most tap into the parts of ourselves that we didn’t yet realize we had or we have breakthrough certain thought beliefs and patterns. We don’t always maintain it, but there’s so much growth that comes in that element of chaos. Absolutely, I give that a tick of approval of 100%. That resonates with the stories that I’m going to take on.

Have you read the book Antifragile?

I have not. That was the first I’d heard of it. The Antifragile. I love that.

It’s a big bestseller. He’s written books like The Black Swan. That’s one of his series. I recommend it. Okay. My next question for you is what do you take out of the story of the Golden Buddha? 

In Thailand, there is a huge Buddha that was golden. But in order to protect it from getting ransacked when the country was being overrun by whoever was doing the ransacking, they covered it in concrete or something like that, that made it look like a regular stone Buddha. Of course, they left it not realizing that there was a lot of value underneath that stone.

Then there was one point where somebody saw a crack in the statue many, many years later after the warring nation had left. Everybody had forgotten that it was actually a Golden Buddha underneath. Then they took all the stone off and brought it back to its shimmering, beautiful, original nature. Have you heard that story before? Regardless of whether you have or not, what do you take out of that?

I had not heard that story before. The Golden Buddha I’d been looking at was definitely not real gold. Well, I don’t know that to be true, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t real gold. I hadn’t heard that story. There’s a number of things that really pop in that. I thought it was a beautiful metaphor for life and reality. It’s so easy to feel like, well, it’s concrete. There’s no value there, to take that first glance look. Then for the idea of like, there’s a little crack and you start to see beneath the surface and go, there are some really good things there.

The value of that statue, whether it was the concrete or the gold, is absolutely still exactly the same. For you as the believer, what you get from going to that statue—whether it’s made of gold or stone—is actually irrelevant to the value that you receive from it, and that is life. Then even the other part of all the people had forgotten that it had gold underneath. That’s the society that we live in. We have so many customs and ways we do things now that no one really stops, or very few people stop to take time to understand the origins of that custom. 

Things like marriage. I’m not against marriage at all but the origins of marriage are very different to how we perceive marriage today. Weddings, engagement rings—it’s quite more popular now. Most people know about the De Beers Company in the 1940s of diamonds are forever, creating the idea of engagement rings, and continuing the illusion that diamonds are rare. Diamonds aren’t rare. They’re forced—manufactured to be rare and expensive.

These are things that people are just like, it’s an engagement ring. You’re going to get a diamond ring, of course. They don’t stop to think or even remember the origins of where these things came from. That’s what really resonates in that story. It feels like a beautiful metaphor for so much of how life is and how we as humans show up around what life is.

There is a lot of baggage associated with the marriage institution. I just recently read an article about how Oprah and her soulmate decided not to get married in the traditional sense, but they are absolutely spiritual partners. Then she got that concept of having a spiritual partner from Gary Zukav and his book, The Seat of the Soul. How he has a spiritual partner and not a “wife.” Interesting.

One last thing that I’ll share. Actually, two other real quick things. I don’t know if you’ve heard this quote from Joseph Campbell, but it came to my mind when you were talking just a couple of minutes ago. Let me share this quote with you. I heard this from—gosh, who was it? I want to give credit to the person—Jonathan Fields.

Jonathan Fields told me about this beautiful quote that made a huge difference in his life and it’s from Joseph Campbell. It’s about a cave. It goes something like this. “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” It goes on so there’s a little extra bit here.

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damn thing in the cave that was so dreaded, has become the center. You find the jewel and it draws you off.” Have you heard that quote before?

I have not. It’s beautiful.

It’s profound. It made a huge impact on Jonathan Fields’ life because he was suffering from tinnitus. The ringing in the ear didn’t go away. It made him, at one point, even suicidal. That quote and meditation saved his life and brought him to peace.

I love that. The cave you fear to enter holds the jewel, I can’t remember the exact quote you said, but it holds the treasure that you’re looking for. I love that.

The last thing I want to hear your thoughts on, I just recently got a distinction that if you get reliant on that string that’s around your wrist, the talisman, or lucky whatever it is, for me, I have a red string around my left wrist. A lot of people who study Kabbalah do this. The string was wrapped around the matriarch Rachel’s Tomb here in Israel seven times. It’s protective. It also is a reminder of my connection, but you can get a little too dependent on it.

Eventually, it falls off in the shower or just when you’re wearing it because it’s just a string, it’s just yarn. But it does provide some protection against evil eye and so forth. Evil eye, what the heck? It sounds like a crazy superstition. If people can pray for you, cause you to feel better, and regain your health, or whatever the challenges that you’re going through, can’t negative prayers also have a negative effect if you haven’t put up shields and boundaries energetically? 

It’s not superstitious to think about evil eye, people envying you, and wishing that they had what you had as a negative prayer that you need to protect yourself from. But relying on the red string, the lucky bracelet, or whatever you have is a form of a false god.

100%. Well, it reminds me of—we talked about Katie’s work, and you could take that thing of this string around my wrist. In my case it creates luck, in your case, it’s protecting me against evil eyes. Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without that thought? This goes back to that core principle of becoming bulletproof. When you can understand everything, when you truly realize it, everything in our life is made up. Either someone else made it up, told us it, and we believed it; or we made it up and we believe it.

The real power lives inside you.

Money is a collective story that we’ve all bought into that this is how it works. Religion, same thing. The collective story, not saying it’s true, not saying it’s not true. This is how it works. This is what happens. Putting the string around the wrist is a collective story and you believe it. I think there is a lot of power in using these tools, using them to serve you. But also understanding if you ever find they’re not serving you, reminding yourself, as you said, it’s just a string. The real power lives inside you.

That’s beautiful. This goes to not just talismans, but also to gurus and the messengers that we might put up on a pedestal—from Tony Robbins to Byron Katie to whoever. If instead, you focus on the message, and the messenger can actually come to you in any form. Even your worst enemy can give you a message from the Creator, from your higher power. If you’re open and receptive to the message and not holding up in such high regard the messenger that you look to them for your answers all the time, knowing that the answer is always within and throughout. I think that’s an important distinction.

It reminds me of, I don’t know if you’ve read Katie’s book, A Mind at Home with Itself, or you’ve done some of the Buddhist work around the Diamond Sutra. But in the Diamond Sutra, the realization, the understanding of—as I alluded to earlier—the idea of it’s all we. When we go and we’re putting, let’s say Tony Robbins or Katie up on a pedestal for doing what we do as humans, it’s us. It’s just a reflection of us. 

Focus on the message, and the messenger will come to you in any form.

Who Tony Robbins is, who Katie is at a spiritual—if you take the Diamond Sutra teachings—at the end of the day, it’s all we, it’s all me. Who Tony is or who Katie is a projection of who we believe them are. It’s ultimately ourselves. Whatever we learn from them, whatever we believe they gave us, it was really ourselves giving it to us.

Beautiful. Well, this is a great place to end this. This first part of our journey here with this episode, I just loved everything. Every rabbit hole we went down was enlightening, beautiful, and inspiring. Your story is inspiring. Your journey is inspiring. Thank you so much for being a guest.

Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Again, for folks who are interested in learning more from you and reading your books, following you on social media, all that good stuff, where should we send them?

You can send them over to carltaylor.com is a good place to go. You can find books. I’ve got a Facebook group for entrepreneurs. It’s just a good place, and you can find my socials and things from there.

Amazing. Thank you, Carl, and thank you, listeners, and we’ll catch you next week.

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About Carl Taylor

For more than two decades, Carl has walked the entrepreneur’s journey, starting, buying, building, and selling businesses.

He started his first business at the age of 15 and went on to sell 3 businesses and author a #1 business book all before turning 25.

After financially retiring at 31, his focus shifted from self-security towards contribution and being a guiding light for others through his books, speaking, and businesses.

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