Hello everybody, welcome to the Power and Purpose
Mastin Kipp:
Hello everybody, welcome to the Power and Purpose podcast. I'm your host Mastin Kipp, and I am here with a soul sister of mine. We have a hometown in common, Lawrence, Kansas. We are both Lawrenceans. And we have a publisher in common, Hay House Publishing. I think we also have heart, and soul, and care, and lots of other cool things in common. But Pam is a number one New York Times bestselling author. And she's written some books you've probably heard of, 'E-Squared', 'E-Cubed' 'Thank and Grow Rich', and her most recently released book, 'Art and Soul, Reloaded', and the subtitle is 'A Yearlong Apprenticeship for Summoning the Muses and Reclaiming Your Bold, Audacious, Creative Side'. Pam! Welcome to Power and Purpose.
Pam Grout:
Hey! So glad to be here. I don't know if you remember, but I interviewed you one time for a magazine.
Mastin Kipp:
I remember.
Pam Grout:
For a Lawrence magazine, do you remember that? Think it happened three or four years ago, something like that.
Mastin Kipp:
I totally remember that. Not only do I remember that, I remember that you had been writing for a long time, and you have had a craft for a period of time. And you are the ... for me, you're like my role model and spirit animal when it comes to thinking about writing because I feel like ... you know, you've had such incredible success, but this is your craft, and you do it with such integrity and I get a sense that it's because you love it, because you don't write as many books as you've written without loving the craft of writing. And I've just been thrilled to watch your whole career sort of take off in the last few years. But what I love about it, there's been really deep seeds planted in the process, I really feel like that is. So yeah, it's fun. It's a full circle moment, for sure.
Pam Grout:
Oh, that's great. You know, it's so true, what you just said. I do love it so much. In fact, I believe everybody [inaudible 00:01:45] if they just do what they want, that would just solve problems. You know, everybody's thinking they have to do all these things that they don't like, that they have to, but you know if we'd all just follow our passion, that's what we're good at, that's what we love. So anyway, yeah I'm totally [crosstalk 00:01:57].
Mastin Kipp:
Yeah, I agree with that.
Pam Grout:
So thank you for saying that.
Mastin Kipp:
Oh yeah, well no worries. One of the things I like about your books is that they're all sort of framed with action, sort of intended. It's not just concepts, it's experiments, or it's apprenticeship, or, you know, it's a ... Thank and Get Rich, it's a 30 day process. I'm really big on implementation. Why ... what is it that inspired you to make yourself more actionable because, you know, the woo-woo category, which I think we would be considered to be in, tends to be very airy-fairy, love and light and consciousness and all this stuff, but you bring it right down into reality. What was your intention behind that?
Pam Grout:
Well, you know, we've been hearing about these concepts forever. So yeah, you can theorize about them all you want, but unless you can see them with your own two eyes, so I figured let's just try and experiment. I'm not trying to tell anybody what to do, I mean I'm still trying to be the boss of me, let alone be the boss of anybody else. But here's some ideas, some experiments that you can try. So it's like they're all easy, they're like 48 hours, or some of them are 72 hours, or even a month long thing I think, and the urge is just like, give it a try. What do you have to lose? In the whole span of your lifetime you just have a teeny little ... And then, you know, it's like, if it works, great. If it doesn't, discard it, that's okay, you haven't really lost anything. So I'm just asking people to give it a try. And then what ends up happening is they end up emailing me with something like "Oh my God, you're never gonna believe this!" I mean, people get so excited. My little thing is "Well, duh!" You know, this stuff really does work.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that. What was the inspiration to get you to direct people to try things out? Because I think ... I mean I'll say it the way that I notice it. I notice a lot of teachers teaching concepts, and what I would call spiritual candy, where there's kind of a little dab of something, and most of the room is like "I don't really know what you're talking about, but I'm gonna play along like I do."
Pam Grout:
Right, exactly.
Mastin Kipp:
And there's some confusion. Was there something that was like ... what made you wanna take this into action? Because I love action. I love imperfect action, which is what you're talking about. So what was the inspiration? Because you could've written very conceptual books, but all of your stuff has a lot of implementation in it. And I'm just kind of wondering why you chose to do that. Was there something in your life that you're like "You know what, it's time to put this into reality." Was there something you were seeing in [inaudible 00:04:18], was it something else? What was it about implementation and action that was so attractive to you? The last few books that you've put out have all been really focused on implementation.
Pam Grout:
Well they're all about, you know, adding a fun little dimension to your life, so I always believe that if it's not fun it's not sustainable. So I want it to be sustainable, so I make them kind of fun. I sort of trick people into trying these things. But I do think it's really important. Again, we've been sitting around theorizing about this stuff forever. What good is a
theory unless you, like you said, put it into action? This is a way to kind of trick people, "Oh wow, I'm gonna try a little experiment. I'm just gonna give it a try, what do I have to lose?" I'm not asking a lot of them, it's just a matter of changing your perception, changing your awareness, and just looking because as you know, we get into our life whatever we put our attention upon, we animate it into our life. So if you start putting your attention onto the great things that are going on, or the blessings and the miracles, you start seeing that. So really I just sort of trick people into seeing this amazing thing is always there. All this guidance, all these blessings, all these things that are constantly there, but people miss them because they're so invested in this other story, and this other frequency. Mastin Kipp:
Yes.
Pam Grout:
So once they start experimenting with it they find out "Wow, she's right! There really is all this cool stuff." Because they're looking for different things.
Mastin Kipp:
Totally. Well what I love about it too is it doesn't like ... when people get into personal growth work, they get all serious, like "Okay. I gotta do it." The perfectionist comes out, and it's like "I gotta do it perfectly." Versus the idea of an experiment, which sort of has a lightness around it, where it could work or not work, and you're not necessarily claiming it's a perfect thing, which I love. One of the things that I was, as I was looking and preparing for this interview, one of the words that you use in the subtitle of your most recent book, which is "reclaim," right? My whole thing is claim your power. So you talk about reclaiming a creative side. Why have people either lost it, or why would they need to reclaim it, and can we talk a little bit about that, because there's sort of subsection of questions I have around that. Because I'm very curious what your take is, if we reclaim something we've lost it.
Pam Grout:
Exactly. Well we're all born creative. You know, we're all born wanting to follow our curiosity. Little kids just know to follow their curiosity, "Oh look! There's a ladybug! Oh look! There's a ... look at that dew dripping off the tree." I mean they're just curious. So they follow their [inaudible 00:06:37], they follow that curious thing. But then there's all these rules that come in, "Well you need to do this, and you need to do it this way." And once all these rules start, we get so busy trying to follow these rules that we forget about that creative, innate part. But all of us are creative. You know, I have a little test in the booK, I have a little test in my little TED Talk ... it's a creativity test. It has one question. You know, there's the LSAT about law school, there's the MCAT for med school, but here's my test for creativity and it has one question, are you breathing? And if you answer yes to this question that means you are highly creative, because all of us are so creative. In fact, a lot of us use our creativity to create a big drama in our life, instead of using it to create really beautiful things.
And you talk about that thing about just actual steps, I talk a lot ... one of my little chapters in the book is called 'Dare to Be Mediocre' because that takes away that whole perfectionism thing. I mean it's like, we're afraid to start anything because it has to be perfect, but if you give that up and you just dare to do something, it's amazing what can happen. Because it's just taking that first step, and you have no idea what's going on, that's perfectly okay. But as you keep moving, just slowly taking those baby steps, all these answers come rushing in, all these ideas come rushing in. So it's really important to take a little bit of action. I mean, for every little step you take, all kinds of amazing things are gonna come back at you. It's just remarkable. And once you start doing it, you realize "Hey this is really true." You know, you hear that, again that's a theory, you've heard that theory before, but once you do it you realize "Hey it really does work. It really does." That's the way it is. Mastin Kipp:
Totally. So I'm always curious what brings people on to the spiritual path, or the path of self-awareness, or the path of co-creation, or the path of just healing yourself. And what I've seen, pretty much 100% of the time has been that something not so good happened, so that you kind of start to focus. You know, when you win, you party, when you sort of lose or get hurt, you ponder. And typically we're not paying attention to certain things and we create more and more sort of drama, as you say in our lives, and it kind of brings us to our knees. What was going on in your life that kinda made you make the switch into paying attention to spiritual principals, co-creating your reality, this infinite possibility that we're in, the fact that you're creative. I haven't met anyone yet who was just sort of born that way. Well, maybe born that way, but we all have that original wounding or trauma that kinda makes us not that way anymore.
Pam Grout:
Right.
Mastin Kipp:
So was there a time in your life when you were not reclaiming your creative side and not co-creating your reality, doing experiments and kind of trying to figure it out? And how did you get into the woo-woo world? Because I'm always curious how people get in.
Pam Grout:
Yeah. Well I truly have always been creative. I've always thought of myself as creative, but I definitely did have that obstacle to overcome. In fact, I still overcome obstacles every day to a certain degree, I just don't see them as obstacles. But when I was seven months pregnant, I had left Lawrence, Kansas. I've lived in Colorado for a while, I lived in California for a while, I've lived in Connecticut. It's kind of weird, I've lived in all the states that begin with a C, not on purpose but it just happened that way. Anyway, I was seven months pregnant and I was driving across the country with all my possessions stuffed in my little Toyota, not knowing where in the world I was gonna go. And I knew about the Course in Miracles, but you know, at some point you have to actually take it seriously.
Mastin Kipp:
Yes.
Pam Grout:
You have to [crosstalk 00:09:52] like you said. So as I was driving cross country going "Obviously the way I've been doing things isn't working. Obviously my little pea brain, this is not going very well. I'm a single mom, I'm driving across the country, I don't know where I'm gonna land, I don't know what's gonna happen." So anyway, at that point I thought "I'm gonna try this Course in Miracles. I'm going to do exactly what it says. I'm going to give up my way of thinking, my way of perceiving the world, and try to ask for a different way to look at the world." So basically at that point. I think I was down on my knees. You know, where am I gonna land? I'm seven months pregnant, I'm driving across the country. I mean, I was sort of tentatively heading for Breckenridge because a friend of mine had a house there ... they were trying to sell it but it was just nobody was living there while they were so I was kind of heading there. And then I got back to Kansas, you know, where I had grown up. It was like "You know, this feels pretty comfortable." So I ended up staying there, and all the time I was writing. But again, I was really kind of struggling financially anyway, and just really said "I'm gonna practice these Course in Miracles principals." And I just started turning everything over. I would forget from time to time. I still forget from time to time. But of course it became a priority for me at that point. Because obviously the way I was doing it wasn't working.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that. One of the things that I see, because I spend a lot of my time coaching people from out of the life that they're in into the life that they want to be, and kind of helping them get started, which I think is always one of the hardest points. It's like, when you have momentum, like what you're doing now, where you're at in your career ... I'm not gonna say it's easier, because it's new level, new devil, but it's definitely a different type of challenge, versus nothing is there, what am I creating? And I've really noticed people who will say that they're doing A Course in Miracles, or that they're reading the book or doing the experiments, but it's not quite working out. And I'm kinda curious, why do you think ... how about, er ... ask this question properly. Was there a way in which you implemented that was maybe different than what you've seen? Because I know that you've obviously been approximated to a lot of folks who probably ask you a lot of questions and see different trappings. I'm always looking for tips for people on how to get that jump start, because either they think "Well it's not going to work for me. Maybe it's an experiment, but it's only gonna last a period of time." You know, it's not a long term thing, this is sort of a momentary coping thing, it's not a long term thing. So what was it about the way that you practiced A Course in Miracles and maybe even today that keeps that momentum going and kind of keeps you in that creative zone, that zone of your purpose? Because, you know, a lot of people kind of start and stop and then never start again.
Pam Grout:
Right. Well one of the things I always say, like retraining your mind, which is what you do in the Course in Miracles, you retrain your mind to be more at peace. And I compare it to housebreaking a puppy. You know, you gotta keep taking it back outside and showing it a different reality. I mean, when you begin you're gonna go "Holy Spirit, help me see this differently." That's one of the things you say, I call it the Field of Infinite Potentiality, "Help me see this differently." And as soon as you start into your old ways of "Oh, woe is me, blah blah blah," then you have to take that puppy back outside and retrain it. So it really is like housebreaking a puppy. [crosstalk 00:13:00] and it's a moment by moment thing. And then it does get easier, you know, but if you are committed to doing that. But anyway, that's one of the things I say.
Mastin Kipp:
Oh my God. I gotta tell you ... I've heard ... that is probably one of the best descriptions I've ever heard about what it's like to get someone started. Because it is. They're like "Squirrel!" And they're off, and it's like "Come back, stop peeing all over the carpet, come back over here, ask to go out." That is so, so, so funny. So when did you kind of switch from "Okay, I'm practicing this, I'm reading this, I'm saying it but not really believing it." Was there a moment in time where it became a knowing versus an understanding?
Pam Grout:
Well I still work on it as a knowing. I still consider myself aspirational. I write about what I wanna do. But it certainly does get easier. It's like any muscle, as you exercise it, as you practice it, it does get easier. I used to take the puppy outside maybe every five minutes. Now I only have to take that puppy outside maybe ... well I start it out in the right direction in the morning. That's really big, is starting your morning off with an expectation of ... you know, I say that thing "Something amazingly awesome's gonna happen to me today." I mean I [inaudible 00:14:07]. I've gotten sick of saying "amazingly awesome" because I did it for so long, so now today I said "something epically extravagant." Or epically something, I don't know, but I went through the alphabet and I did all the ... whatever. So I set the intention from the very beginning that something really cool's gonna happen to me, and I start that way. So my mind's kinda pointed in that direction to begin with. And then when I notice myself heading astray, you know, you just have to kind of ask for a little tonic, "Hey, help me say this differently." I literally ask for help from this bigger thing to help me see it differently.
Mastin Kipp:
That's cool
Pam Grout:
Because anytime I'm not at peace, obviously something has gone wrong. I mean, if I'm not at peace, if my mind is in its little hairball thoughts, it's making me its bitch, then obviously I am doing something wrong. So I have to do a little tonic to get it back doing the direction I want.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that. Let's talk about that for a second. Because I work with a lot of people who have trauma, and significant traumas. Well all trauma is significant, and the brain can't tell the different between ... a lot of people don't even know that they have it because they suppressed it for so long that it just kind of exists as low level anxiety or depression. And then they take a pill and they think it's gonna go away but they haven't resolved it. One of the things that I'm always curious about, and that I always will always ask this question to anyone I'm in proximity to who has a spiritual lens they're looking at the world through, is how do you look at trauma, the bad stuff, what's happening in politics, what's happening with racism and xenophobia, misogyny in the world today, which is all traumatizing stuff, war ... through the lens of like "I'm grateful for today," or "Something awesome is gonna happen." I can see people waking up and saying "Well the way the President's running the country is not so awesome today." Or "The way that the economy is going is not so awesome today." Or "The way the cop treated me today is not so awesome." Or "The way that my boss looked at me at work today was not awesome." So how do we kind of merge those two experiences? Because on the one hand I don't think we want that spiritual bypass where we're just kind of Pollyanna, and at the same time you don't wanna just go off into negative story land, but like, where's the line between creating your reality and denial? And how do you get into that ... because you're a practical person, so how do you make it practical?
Pam Grout:
Well okay, so Elizabeth Gilbert, I don't know if you've ever interviewed her or met her, but she has a tattoo on her arm that says "Stubborn Gladness." And it comes from a poem by Jack Gilbert, who's her famous poet, and he says that "Even in the furnace of the chaos, I am going to be stubbornly glad." Because here's the thing, yes, all these things are happening. We've got this crazy president, we've got ... nobody can deny the newspaper, what's going on there, but there's also other things going on. So where do we want to point our lens? I mean, seriously? Compared to what's happening ... I mean, right now, at this moment, the President has absolutely no bearing on my life whatsoever. I mean, I could get all focused on that, so you really do have to put everything into perspective. In fact, I say rearrange the pie chart differently. Maybe 1% of your life isn't working, or 5%, whatever it is, but we spend 95% of our time obsessing about that 5% that isn't working. So if you start to rearrange the pie chart and spend more of your time thinking about the 95% that is working, then that other part kind of takes care of itself.
Mastin Kipp:
Yes.
Pam Grout:
So I'm not at all into denial, but into still looking for that ... again, stubborn gladness. Because it's always there, there's still a beautiful story going on. And no, I can't be grateful for every single thing, but I can be grateful in every moment. There's a whole big distinction.
Mastin Kipp:
Totally. Tell me more about that, what's the difference?
Pam Grout:
Well, I mean, you could say "I'm not grateful for this president," for example, but there are things that I can be grateful for in this moment that has nothing to do with that.
Mastin Kipp:
Ah.
Pam Grout:
So in every moment there are things to be grateful for. There are always things to be grateful for. It doesn't have to be a specific thing. We can't be grateful for war, we can't be grateful for, you know, trauma or things like that. But we can learn to accept it, we can learn to surrender to it, and we can particularly learn that it is a tiny little piece of our big life. I mean, if we look at our big life, say our life's this big, the trauma really is only probably this bit, but we just keep replaying it over and over and over again. So in some ways I really think that what's happening now is all the rats are coming up from the basement, so we can heal everything.
Mastin Kipp:
Amen.
Pam Grout:
So I think it's really an exciting time even though appearances might not always look that way. I really do think we're bringing up all that stuff but we've got light to shine on them, and that's what we have to do is shine light. Nothing can live ... no darkness can live with the light being shined on it. So everything's coming up, all this hidden racism, all this hidden crap that we've had in our country. I mean if we're just talking again about the political situation, it's all coming up there. So it's like a light can shine on it. And it's getting those of us that are wanting to spread those molecules of light and those molecules of joy, it's got us working overtime.
Mastin Kipp:
That's so true.
Pam Grout:
We're responsible to keep that other story going because there are infinite possibilities, there truly are. So we can focus in on that one or two things that aren't working, or we can focus on the bigger picture. Because there are so many good things that are still happening.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that. It's sort of ... Joseph Campbell has a quote and he talks about "You can't cure the world of all its sorrow, but you can choose to participate joyfully in the sorrows of the word." Which is kind of what a hero, or heroine does. I mean, if you think about ... my favorite film is The Lion King. Simba literally comes back to the wasteland, and he's not like "Hey, what's going on here? This is awful!" He just like, brings it back to life. So I think that's amazing. What is it about gratitude that's so important? Because I know that Oprah talks about gratitude, you know, reference A Course in Miracles, Marianne talks about gratitude, Wayne Dyer, I mean everyone talks about gratitude, and I feel like it's become a little bit of a punchline. But on a real, practical level in your life, in the middle of maybe a turnaround, a crisis, the growth spurt, maybe a hard time in a
relationship, or even when things are going good, why would you say gratitude is so important? Pam Grout:
Well, I mean there have been so many studies out there that people when they're in a grumpy mood, they cannot see things. You miss 50% more when you're in that grumpy frequency. So for one thing, it makes your vision better, to be happy. But it's really more the truth about the world. I know what you're saying, a lot people think "Oh, gratitude, that's really Pollyanna-ish." However you say that word. But you know, to me it's really reality. To me the beauty and the glory that's happening out there is so real, and it's the true story. I think what happens is we've got this hologram that we've created with our story, "Something needs to be fixed. This can't be. I've gotta run. Ah!" All that story is creating this hologram of problems and doom and gloom, but there's so many other great things happening. I mean, because it literally changes your neural pathways when you get into the gratitude frequency. It opens up all kinds of things. And to me, it's spiritual truth. Spiritual truth is when you can see that beauty in every moment, that is there.
Mastin Kipp:
That's right. It's funny ... in being a coach and working with people so closely, it's funny, I'll teach something similar about gratitude or some of the basic fundamentals. And they'll come to me like a week or two later and they go "Okay, so what else you got? It's not working." And I go "What do you mean?" And it's like "Well, are you really practicing it?" And almost 100% of the time the answer's "Well, no." So there's this ... I don't know what it is, but there's almost this escapism fantasy where it's like "No, no, don't make me do the basic work, there's gotta be some other secret thingamajigger that does the actual work that's gotta be way easier." Have you seen that? How do you reconcile this sort of magical wish for how they ... like kind of bypass, or quick fix versus the daily reps, the daily practice, or something like a gratitude practice and doing it for real?
Pam Grout:
See, I think that's a good point but I would kind of turn it the other way around.
Mastin Kipp:
Yeah.
Pam Grout:
People don't think it's gonna be easy, and so they don't wanna do it, "Oh it can't be that easy." To literally focus on gratitude, to set that intention. But I mean, again, I'm not saying it's true, I'm saying try it for 30 days. If you do this gratitude practice I talk about in the book for 30 days, your entire life ... you won't even recognize your life. You'll look back and go "Wait, who was that person 30 days ago?" But again, people go "Oh it can't be that easy." So you're saying that they want something easier, I'm thinking they want something harder. I think most people want something harder than that. They can't believe that something that simple, a two step program, could actually work. So I think ... because we all want those seven steps. We want those seven
steps. We want to slave, we want to put our nose to the grindstone, I mean that's our culture. I mean right in this moment, everything we could possibly want is right here. The divine buzz is in this right exact moment. But nobody's seen it because they're so busy with following that step two or three, or whatever step it is they think they need to do to get where they wanna get to. So I would argue that rather than they want something easier, they want something harder. They wanna work harder because it can't be that simple. They're not doing it because they don't take it serious. Mastin Kipp:
The fundamentals, yeah. Why do you think we do that? It's funny, I remember one time I had a client ... I was watching two clients talked, and one client was getting the result, financially, the other one wasn't and she was like "What are you doing? I don't understand." And literally, the other client was like "I just did what Mastin told me to do." Why do you think we ... I think we make it harder than it needs to be. Do you think it's because of like, maybe the education system of the study and the masters, and the PhD, and the hierarchy of the more complicated is more valuable? What do you think it is about that that makes something that's practical, that gets results maybe perceived as less valuable than what it really is?
Pam Grout:
Yeah, well one of the things Course in Miracles says is this way of living life is not difficult at all, it's just very, very different than the way we're used to living life. And that's the hitch, you know, it's so different than how we're used to it. We're just used to focusing on problems, looking for problems, finding things to fix. The whole entire world is focused on problems. If the whole entire world would look around at how beautiful ... like, it was raining here in Lawrence yesterday, and it's like, I always go "Man, there's free liquid falling from the sky. Free liquid that I don't have to pay a penny for is falling from the sky. The Sun came up this morning. My heart keeps beating." There's just so many things to be grateful for. We have this day to be alive, to do amazing things, to create amazing things. Truly, we've just forgotten about this, we're just "Oh no, I better go fix my weight problem." Or "I better go fix some issue that I have." I just think we put way too much attention into what's wrong instead of just really living in the moment. It all comes back to just living in the moment. Because in this moment, there are no issues, there's nothing.
Mastin Kipp:
That's true.
Pam Grout:
But everybody is away from the moment. They're spending their time elsewhere.
Mastin Kipp:
It's so funny you said that. I remember early in my getting sober days, I would hear Eckhart Tolle talk about living in the moment, and I was like "What the hell are you talking about?" And then I couch surfed for two years, and the first like, year of that, it was literally hand to mouth, every single day, I didn't know where money was gonna come from tomorrow. And then I was like "Oh! This is the moment! Because I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow, and yesterday's over thank God,
but right now, I've got everything I need." And that whole moment never changed. Even though there was a two year period of uncertainty, in every single actual moment, I was forced to pay attention to the moment because there was nothing else to pay attention to right? I need food, right now. I need water, right now. I learned that. It also seems like that's probably one of the more simple things to do, but why do you think it's sort of ... I mean being present is probably one of the hardest things to actually do because there's so much distraction, trauma, emotions, stress, squirrel, shiny pennies and stuff like that. Why do you think it's so hard to be present? Pam Grout:
Well first of all, we think it's hard. And because there are a lot of other messages. I think that quiet mind is our natural state. I really do believe that, but we're so used to thinking. I mean, from the moment we're born we're measured and weighed against all the other babies in the nursery. It just starts the minute we're born. We're measured, we judge, we analyze. We're constantly thinking about comparing, that's the state of the mind. But the big thing is we take it way too seriously. If we just let those things ... if we put a period at the end of those thoughts. I had this experience last week where I had to speak to these New Thought teachers from all over the country, it was like 100 New Thought teachers, they were of a New Thought Alliance, and there were all these ministers, they had these congregations, so I was so nervous, I'm like "What do I have to say to these people?" But what ended up happening is with my thought about it, I started adding all this stuff "Okay, I shouldn't be having these thoughts," or whatever. So if I would just put a period at the end of that sentence, it's like "Okay, I'm having a thought. Big deal, let it pass right on through." But I turned it into a big drama. I turned it into this thing, and I kept adding all these clauses to it. "I'm nervous to speak." That's all I needed. But no, I had to add all the other stuff to it too, and I think that's what we do. You know, our thoughts mean nothing, they're really just a crazy little thing that who knows where they come from. But we start investing in them, we start believing in them, we start building shrines to them.
Mastin Kipp:
So true.
Pam Grout:
When instead we can just go "Oh, that's a thought." And just observe it. That's kinda what being in the moment is, is just sort of observing those thoughts.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that.
Pam Grout:
Not trying to mend anything, not [inaudible 00:28:19] anything, just noticing them.
Mastin Kipp:
Yeah. One of my first experiences of that was at a Vipassana meditation retreat where ... I remember getting there thinking there was gonna be
some fireworks, or spiritual fireworks, and I just sat in this room at 4:00 in the morning and I was like "What have I gotten myself into?" Pam Grout:
Yeah.
Mastin Kipp:
But, you know, it's interesting how uncomfortable it was to be still. And after that I noticed a quote, which is like "Most of the world's problems would be solved if we could just sit quietly in a room alone, peacefully." That would basically solve most of the issues. So I wanna be respectful of time, I have a couple more questions. Have there been any surprise stories that you've seen in the release of E Squared, E Cubed, and the rest of your books, of things that happened that you were like "I couldn't even imagine that happening." Like happy surprises or stories that you've heard? Because one of the things that I really care about is, you know, the person who reads the book or listens to the podcast or consumes the course or whatever it might be, and I just love talking about stories of what happened to people because it's one thing for a teacher to be talking to another teacher explaining stuff, but when you hear cool stories ... and I mean, when you go on Amazon, E Squared had 3300 reviews or more and they're all almost five stars. There's so many cool stories in there, like "This is amazing!" And I think that's phenomenal. I'm just kinda wondering, have you heard of things where you were just like "Whoa, I never saw that one coming."
Pam Grout:
Well you know, I hear them literally every day. Just yesterday for example, I read an email from a guy who had moved from Miami to LA. He was an actor and he thought the world was against him, was kinda depressed. His agent, you know, he's an actor, his agent says "Here, you need to read this book," gave him E Squared. He read the book, he said it completely rocked his world. He's now got a part on a series. He got a regular part on a series, and he's gotten the book in Spanish to send to his Mother. He said it's just completely changed his perspective on everything. I literally get emails like this, everything from these amazing manifestations, from like ... one woman wrote to me and talked about this hundred thousand dollar gift she got totally unexpectedly, I mean things like that. Some people really love the big, you know, gee whiz fireworks kind of manifestations, and I do get a lot of those. But I kinda like the ones where some relationship got healed, or somebody on the other side came and gave them a blessing, or something like that. But I mean literally ... that's one of the reasons I feel so ... this book has been so much fun for me because I get these emails literally every single day. E Squared came out four years ago, and to this day I still get, you know, dozens every week of these stories. So I feel so blessed because if I ever had a nagging doubt that this stuff doesn't work, all I have to do is go through and read my emails, because I get story after story after story. Sometimes they'll be funny stories, like this one guy decided he wanted to manifest a red ball. One of them's like pick a specific thing. And it didn't happen, it didn't happen and he was feeling kind of grumpy, you know "That didn't happen." About a week later he's driving in an
intersection and out of nowhere ... out of nowhere this red rubber ball bounces into the intersection, it was a small rubber ball. So he wrote on there, I can't remember, something like "E Squared, or Field of Infinite Potential," and he took a picture of it and he sent it to me. But that was kind of fun, where people that ... you know, they might get discouraged and then later, out of the blue, something will turn up for them. Or the ones where ... like here's one that's kind of fun. There was a woman that was looking for white feathers, or made the intention to have white feathers. And these are kind of the baby step ones where you ask for a certain manifestation, but what happens is you realize if you can ask for that, you ask for more. This story's kind of like that. So anyway, one of the things I say, just put it out there, let the dude take care of it, don't put your own brain on it, because our brains have got that crazy stuff going on. So anyway, she [inaudible 00:32:20] with her family, she's driving home, the traffic slows down. I mean literally to where she couldn't move. And all of a sudden her daughter goes "Mom, look! Somebody must've killed a chicken!" And lining the highway for four miles were white weathers, I mean the traffic had slowed down, four miles. Finally the four miles go by, the traffic clears up, and they drove on home. She gets home, and on her welcome mat was one white feather. Mastin Kipp:
Wow.
Pam Grout:
And she said, you know, I guess the message, she said the message for her was that the universe can give you as much as you want. The one white feather or all the white feathers lining the highway. She wasn't trying to manifest that, I mean who really needs a white feather. She just made that intention, and that was the gift she got from the universe. That's just kind of a fun, freaky story.
Mastin Kipp:
Yeah.
Pam Grout:
There's so many! There's so many, in fact a lot of people, "You need to write a book." Because I do, sometimes on my blog post, I'll post a couple. And people go "Oh, I love these stories, you should write a book." And I could, I could write a whole dictionary of books.
Mastin Kipp:
That would be awesome. Well, because-
Pam Grout:
An encyclopedia of books.
Mastin Kipp:
You know, one of the things that I've dedicated my life to, and we could probably have a whole other conversation about this, but I dedicated my life to helping personal development be marketed and displayed in a way that people understand what it is, and they see the value not just in it, but in themselves. That's a whole other conversation, just most people would do for others what they wouldn't do for themselves.
Pam Grout:
Right.
Mastin Kipp:
And what's amazing about it is that ... what basically is social proof of story after story, after story, after story, after story, after story, and I mean there's probably different categories, you know, weight, relationships, money, so it's almost like a Chicken Soup for the Soul, the offshoot of all of the things that happen. But I think that would be amazing because, again, one of the things I've found is that telling other people's stories is probably one of the most aspirational things you could do, because it's a crazy sense of possibility for them, which once something's possible, that's most of the work, right? Is getting to possibility.
Pam Grout:
Exactly.
Mastin Kipp:
So that's amazing. So speaking of possibility, last question, and I've wanted to ask you this question for a long time ... to get it on the record too. So you have written ... you have a great catalog of books, and E Squared was not your first book. I've done four or five Writers Masterminds in Bali, where a lot of aspiring writers who wanna be published by Hay House or Balboa and kinda have a similar career to your career arc, my career and sort of have that relationship. I'm just kind of curious what your advice is to people who are writing, or people who are doing this type of work, with a specific context: the difference between instant success and a career. Because I feel like a lot of people are so focused on "How many likes did I get, how much did this, how much money, how much, how much, how much." And it drives me a little mad because their focus is off of service and helping people, and more on themselves and what they're not getting or what's bigger than somebody else. I mean, a lot of people who wanna be in this game for fame or whatever, which is not the reason to be in it. So I'm just kinda curious what your thoughts are to people who are wanting to write, wanting to be published, wanting to release books and kinda have a career, what advice you have for someone who is just getting started about the long game.
Pam Grout:
Well the long game's really important. Again, if you wanna be a writer, you have to love writing, because that's what being a writer is. A lot of people associate it with all the fame or the best on the list or all that. Writing is the writing, anybody can do that. And as you do it, you get better at it, just like anything else. So if it's something you love to do, you can't wait to do it, like, I love to write. I mean, sometimes if I'm in a bad mood, I'll just go write something and it perks me right up, it's taking my puppy back outside. I mean I love it, it's so much fun. So first of all, people need to really enjoy it. They need to do it because they like it, not because they think they might get on the bestseller list or they might make a career out of it, you have to do it because you love it. And we all do have a story to tell. That's what this new book's about. But you might dance your story, you might write a poem about your story, you might write a book. I mean, everybody's writing a book. I probably think maybe more people than even need to be writing a book are writing a book.
But you know, one of the things I like to say too, the only book that will ever really change your life is the book you write yourself. That's the only book that will ever really change your life because it's your story. Now whether anybody reads it or not, that's a different story. That's more about the marketing and the likes and that kinda stuff. But the reason you need to write the story and it'll change your life, because it gets you in touch with all those things that a coach will get you in touch with, or some book will get you in touch with. You writing your story, you expressing your truth ... I mean, I write partly to find out what's going on with myself. That's kind of my therapy in a sense. So to me it's a beautiful practice no matter whether anybody reads it or not. And that whole thing about service, too. You know, we all have gifts to give to the world. I think by writing, by doing any creative thing, we're giving our gift to the world, so I think it's really important. And I think, you know, when you talk back about politics, politicians aren't gonna save the world, corporations aren't going to save the world, individuals like you and me and everybody else giving of their gifts, that's what's gonna save the world. It's such an exciting time now because of all these digital tools. We can reach millions of people from a coffee shop ... I'm here in little Lawrence, Kansas and I've got millions of people that have read my book. You can really make a difference by doing that. So I just think it's really important that people give up their gifts. But the long game is really important, that was your actual question. You just keep writing and keep writing and keep writing. That's what I've done. E Squared was my 16th book. Mastin Kipp:
Exactly.
Pam Grout:
It become, you know, giant, 40 languages, number one New York Times, but it was my 16th book. Now I've made a full living as a writer before that because I've written for People Magazine, I've written for a lot of magazines and all kinds of different things, and I wrote three books for National Geographic, so I made a living. But not a great living. Again, I was a single mom raising my daughter on my own. But I made enough, you know, plodding away. But again, I was doing what I loved. So to me I was wealthy all along. Even before the book.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that.
Pam Grout:
You know, hit the big time, I was wealthy because I was doing what I love. I never listened to my Mom's advice, she said "You should be a computer programmer." Or whatever, be practical. Like you said you think I'm practical. Well I think I a practical, but to me it's practical to follow what you love. To me that is practical, to do what you love. Because again, you're gonna be good at it, and you're gonna get better and better at it.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that because ... when I look at, especially younger people coming up, there's massive comparison culture. I mean, teen suicides are up because of social media comparison.
Pam Grout:
Yep.
Mastin Kipp:
And there's so much pressure. And you know, I'm like "Guys, how many likes you get doesn't matter. What matters is are you serving." I love that because I believe in the long game, I practice the long game, and I think you're such a beautiful example of that because 16 books, I mean that's tenacious! I've written two and I feel like I'm good, it was enough. I have more to write but they're sort of traumatizingly joyful to write in a certain sense. I notice that what I write about I tend to get the lesson, so the next one's gonna be all about how to get everything you want perfectly without any lessons, and no hardship, you know what mean? But like, 16, that's incredible.
Pam Grout:
Actually, Art and Soul is the 19th.
Mastin Kipp:
No, I was talking about before there was sort of a leap. What I love about it, and what I wanna highlight is the dedication, and it was the craft and it was the love of it. It wasn't for the success. One of my friends, Michael Fishman says that when you do things for service, and when you do things because you love it, that's the certain ... if you're supposed to be on the New York Times, that's the best path to get there. Because the New York Times doesn't matter, I've had friends sell 25 thousand books their first week and not make it, so it's completely subjective. And if your whole thing is about that, then it's like who are you, and the let down. So I just wanna highlight that because there's a lot of people who are listening who are just getting started and the idea that this is a long game and a marathon, and that you have embodied that. And now, you know, 16, 17, 18, 19, four books later, or keep going ... it's a real inspiration to me and to everyone who's listening because you are tenacity embodied.
Pam Grout:
Well thank you! I've never strived, is that the right word? To be tenacious, but I'm glad you think that I am. I'm tenaciously following my bliss, so to speak.
Mastin Kipp:
Yeah, but that requires a ... you know what, I'm gonna offer up maybe you have a little bit of a blind spot how awesome you are in that department. Because there is a level of tenacity involved with having to create ... I mean, butt plus chair equals pages, but getting there is so hard. It's tenacious. I've read the biographies of many writers, I don't care if it's Agatha Christie or whoever, getting the pages is still hard for everyone, you know.
Pam Grout:
Yep.
Mastin Kipp:
And so I just think it's awesome, and I'm just super grateful that you took some time today to be on the podcast. And I'm super excited to talk about your new book Art and Soul Reloaded and to help people
reclaim their creativity. I think it's a really amazing companion piece for Claim Your Power and I believe you can get the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and also pamgrout.com. That's P-A-M-G-R-O-U-T dot com, and then on all the different social media pages is where people can follow you I assume, Facebook et cetera. Pam Grout:
Right. Pam Grout. If you know my name you can find me.
Mastin Kipp:
That's right. There's a website called Google.
Pam Grout:
[crosstalk 00:42:07], Instagram, whatever, I'm out there with my name. Just my name.
Mastin Kipp:
Awesome, awesome. So I'm gonna wrap this up with the question that I ask all of our folks, which is this, what is purpose to you?
Pam Grout:
You know, purpose to me is being able to be generous, and being able to give of my gifts.
Mastin Kipp:
I love it.
Pam Grout:
That is my purpose. In fact, I have four main intentions, and one of them is that I have a real strong sense of purpose, that I am on purpose. I really wanna be on purpose. I want to be sending those molecules of love out there, that's what I want to be doing. And that's what I try to do every day.
Mastin Kipp:
Amen. Well Pam, thank you so much for your time today. Guys, make sure to get Art and Soul Reloaded and all of Pam's books. I can't recommend it enough. As always, this is Mastin. Remember to get out there, take action, and make it real. See you soon.
Hello everybody, welcome to the Power and Purpose podcast. I'm your host Mastin Kipp, and I am here with a soul sister of mine. We have a hometown in common, Lawrence, Kansas. We are both Lawrenceans. And we have a publisher in common, Hay House Publishing. I think we also have heart, and soul, and care, and lots of other cool things in common. But Pam is a number one New York Times bestselling author. And she's written some books you've probably heard of, 'E-Squared', 'E-Cubed' 'Thank and Grow Rich', and her most recently released book, 'Art and Soul, Reloaded', and the subtitle is 'A Yearlong Apprenticeship for Summoning the Muses and Reclaiming Your Bold, Audacious, Creative Side'. Pam! Welcome to Power and Purpose.
Pam Grout:
Hey! So glad to be here. I don't know if you remember, but I interviewed you one time for a magazine.
Mastin Kipp:
I remember.
Pam Grout:
For a Lawrence magazine, do you remember that? Think it happened three or four years ago, something like that.
Mastin Kipp:
I totally remember that. Not only do I remember that, I remember that you had been writing for a long time, and you have had a craft for a period of time. And you are the ... for me, you're like my role model and spirit animal when it comes to thinking about writing because I feel like ... you know, you've had such incredible success, but this is your craft, and you do it with such integrity and I get a sense that it's because you love it, because you don't write as many books as you've written without loving the craft of writing. And I've just been thrilled to watch your whole career sort of take off in the last few years. But what I love about it, there's been really deep seeds planted in the process, I really feel like that is. So yeah, it's fun. It's a full circle moment, for sure.
Pam Grout:
Oh, that's great. You know, it's so true, what you just said. I do love it so much. In fact, I believe everybody [inaudible 00:01:45] if they just do what they want, that would just solve problems. You know, everybody's thinking they have to do all these things that they don't like, that they have to, but you know if we'd all just follow our passion, that's what we're good at, that's what we love. So anyway, yeah I'm totally [crosstalk 00:01:57].
Mastin Kipp:
Yeah, I agree with that.
Pam Grout:
So thank you for saying that.
Mastin Kipp:
Oh yeah, well no worries. One of the things I like about your books is that they're all sort of framed with action, sort of intended. It's not just concepts, it's experiments, or it's apprenticeship, or, you know, it's a ... Thank and Get Rich, it's a 30 day process. I'm really big on implementation. Why ... what is it that inspired you to make yourself more actionable because, you know, the woo-woo category, which I think we would be considered to be in, tends to be very airy-fairy, love and light and consciousness and all this stuff, but you bring it right down into reality. What was your intention behind that?
Pam Grout:
Well, you know, we've been hearing about these concepts forever. So yeah, you can theorize about them all you want, but unless you can see them with your own two eyes, so I figured let's just try and experiment. I'm not trying to tell anybody what to do, I mean I'm still trying to be the boss of me, let alone be the boss of anybody else. But here's some ideas, some experiments that you can try. So it's like they're all easy, they're like 48 hours, or some of them are 72 hours, or even a month long thing I think, and the urge is just like, give it a try. What do you have to lose? In the whole span of your lifetime you just have a teeny little ... And then, you know, it's like, if it works, great. If it doesn't, discard it, that's okay, you haven't really lost anything. So I'm just asking people to give it a try. And then what ends up happening is they end up emailing me with something like "Oh my God, you're never gonna believe this!" I mean, people get so excited. My little thing is "Well, duh!" You know, this stuff really does work.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that. What was the inspiration to get you to direct people to try things out? Because I think ... I mean I'll say it the way that I notice it. I notice a lot of teachers teaching concepts, and what I would call spiritual candy, where there's kind of a little dab of something, and most of the room is like "I don't really know what you're talking about, but I'm gonna play along like I do."
Pam Grout:
Right, exactly.
Mastin Kipp:
And there's some confusion. Was there something that was like ... what made you wanna take this into action? Because I love action. I love imperfect action, which is what you're talking about. So what was the inspiration? Because you could've written very conceptual books, but all of your stuff has a lot of implementation in it. And I'm just kind of wondering why you chose to do that. Was there something in your life that you're like "You know what, it's time to put this into reality." Was there something you were seeing in [inaudible 00:04:18], was it something else? What was it about implementation and action that was so attractive to you? The last few books that you've put out have all been really focused on implementation.
Pam Grout:
Well they're all about, you know, adding a fun little dimension to your life, so I always believe that if it's not fun it's not sustainable. So I want it to be sustainable, so I make them kind of fun. I sort of trick people into trying these things. But I do think it's really important. Again, we've been sitting around theorizing about this stuff forever. What good is a
theory unless you, like you said, put it into action? This is a way to kind of trick people, "Oh wow, I'm gonna try a little experiment. I'm just gonna give it a try, what do I have to lose?" I'm not asking a lot of them, it's just a matter of changing your perception, changing your awareness, and just looking because as you know, we get into our life whatever we put our attention upon, we animate it into our life. So if you start putting your attention onto the great things that are going on, or the blessings and the miracles, you start seeing that. So really I just sort of trick people into seeing this amazing thing is always there. All this guidance, all these blessings, all these things that are constantly there, but people miss them because they're so invested in this other story, and this other frequency. Mastin Kipp:
Yes.
Pam Grout:
So once they start experimenting with it they find out "Wow, she's right! There really is all this cool stuff." Because they're looking for different things.
Mastin Kipp:
Totally. Well what I love about it too is it doesn't like ... when people get into personal growth work, they get all serious, like "Okay. I gotta do it." The perfectionist comes out, and it's like "I gotta do it perfectly." Versus the idea of an experiment, which sort of has a lightness around it, where it could work or not work, and you're not necessarily claiming it's a perfect thing, which I love. One of the things that I was, as I was looking and preparing for this interview, one of the words that you use in the subtitle of your most recent book, which is "reclaim," right? My whole thing is claim your power. So you talk about reclaiming a creative side. Why have people either lost it, or why would they need to reclaim it, and can we talk a little bit about that, because there's sort of subsection of questions I have around that. Because I'm very curious what your take is, if we reclaim something we've lost it.
Pam Grout:
Exactly. Well we're all born creative. You know, we're all born wanting to follow our curiosity. Little kids just know to follow their curiosity, "Oh look! There's a ladybug! Oh look! There's a ... look at that dew dripping off the tree." I mean they're just curious. So they follow their [inaudible 00:06:37], they follow that curious thing. But then there's all these rules that come in, "Well you need to do this, and you need to do it this way." And once all these rules start, we get so busy trying to follow these rules that we forget about that creative, innate part. But all of us are creative. You know, I have a little test in the booK, I have a little test in my little TED Talk ... it's a creativity test. It has one question. You know, there's the LSAT about law school, there's the MCAT for med school, but here's my test for creativity and it has one question, are you breathing? And if you answer yes to this question that means you are highly creative, because all of us are so creative. In fact, a lot of us use our creativity to create a big drama in our life, instead of using it to create really beautiful things.
And you talk about that thing about just actual steps, I talk a lot ... one of my little chapters in the book is called 'Dare to Be Mediocre' because that takes away that whole perfectionism thing. I mean it's like, we're afraid to start anything because it has to be perfect, but if you give that up and you just dare to do something, it's amazing what can happen. Because it's just taking that first step, and you have no idea what's going on, that's perfectly okay. But as you keep moving, just slowly taking those baby steps, all these answers come rushing in, all these ideas come rushing in. So it's really important to take a little bit of action. I mean, for every little step you take, all kinds of amazing things are gonna come back at you. It's just remarkable. And once you start doing it, you realize "Hey this is really true." You know, you hear that, again that's a theory, you've heard that theory before, but once you do it you realize "Hey it really does work. It really does." That's the way it is. Mastin Kipp:
Totally. So I'm always curious what brings people on to the spiritual path, or the path of self-awareness, or the path of co-creation, or the path of just healing yourself. And what I've seen, pretty much 100% of the time has been that something not so good happened, so that you kind of start to focus. You know, when you win, you party, when you sort of lose or get hurt, you ponder. And typically we're not paying attention to certain things and we create more and more sort of drama, as you say in our lives, and it kind of brings us to our knees. What was going on in your life that kinda made you make the switch into paying attention to spiritual principals, co-creating your reality, this infinite possibility that we're in, the fact that you're creative. I haven't met anyone yet who was just sort of born that way. Well, maybe born that way, but we all have that original wounding or trauma that kinda makes us not that way anymore.
Pam Grout:
Right.
Mastin Kipp:
So was there a time in your life when you were not reclaiming your creative side and not co-creating your reality, doing experiments and kind of trying to figure it out? And how did you get into the woo-woo world? Because I'm always curious how people get in.
Pam Grout:
Yeah. Well I truly have always been creative. I've always thought of myself as creative, but I definitely did have that obstacle to overcome. In fact, I still overcome obstacles every day to a certain degree, I just don't see them as obstacles. But when I was seven months pregnant, I had left Lawrence, Kansas. I've lived in Colorado for a while, I lived in California for a while, I've lived in Connecticut. It's kind of weird, I've lived in all the states that begin with a C, not on purpose but it just happened that way. Anyway, I was seven months pregnant and I was driving across the country with all my possessions stuffed in my little Toyota, not knowing where in the world I was gonna go. And I knew about the Course in Miracles, but you know, at some point you have to actually take it seriously.
Mastin Kipp:
Yes.
Pam Grout:
You have to [crosstalk 00:09:52] like you said. So as I was driving cross country going "Obviously the way I've been doing things isn't working. Obviously my little pea brain, this is not going very well. I'm a single mom, I'm driving across the country, I don't know where I'm gonna land, I don't know what's gonna happen." So anyway, at that point I thought "I'm gonna try this Course in Miracles. I'm going to do exactly what it says. I'm going to give up my way of thinking, my way of perceiving the world, and try to ask for a different way to look at the world." So basically at that point. I think I was down on my knees. You know, where am I gonna land? I'm seven months pregnant, I'm driving across the country. I mean, I was sort of tentatively heading for Breckenridge because a friend of mine had a house there ... they were trying to sell it but it was just nobody was living there while they were so I was kind of heading there. And then I got back to Kansas, you know, where I had grown up. It was like "You know, this feels pretty comfortable." So I ended up staying there, and all the time I was writing. But again, I was really kind of struggling financially anyway, and just really said "I'm gonna practice these Course in Miracles principals." And I just started turning everything over. I would forget from time to time. I still forget from time to time. But of course it became a priority for me at that point. Because obviously the way I was doing it wasn't working.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that. One of the things that I see, because I spend a lot of my time coaching people from out of the life that they're in into the life that they want to be, and kind of helping them get started, which I think is always one of the hardest points. It's like, when you have momentum, like what you're doing now, where you're at in your career ... I'm not gonna say it's easier, because it's new level, new devil, but it's definitely a different type of challenge, versus nothing is there, what am I creating? And I've really noticed people who will say that they're doing A Course in Miracles, or that they're reading the book or doing the experiments, but it's not quite working out. And I'm kinda curious, why do you think ... how about, er ... ask this question properly. Was there a way in which you implemented that was maybe different than what you've seen? Because I know that you've obviously been approximated to a lot of folks who probably ask you a lot of questions and see different trappings. I'm always looking for tips for people on how to get that jump start, because either they think "Well it's not going to work for me. Maybe it's an experiment, but it's only gonna last a period of time." You know, it's not a long term thing, this is sort of a momentary coping thing, it's not a long term thing. So what was it about the way that you practiced A Course in Miracles and maybe even today that keeps that momentum going and kind of keeps you in that creative zone, that zone of your purpose? Because, you know, a lot of people kind of start and stop and then never start again.
Pam Grout:
Right. Well one of the things I always say, like retraining your mind, which is what you do in the Course in Miracles, you retrain your mind to be more at peace. And I compare it to housebreaking a puppy. You know, you gotta keep taking it back outside and showing it a different reality. I mean, when you begin you're gonna go "Holy Spirit, help me see this differently." That's one of the things you say, I call it the Field of Infinite Potentiality, "Help me see this differently." And as soon as you start into your old ways of "Oh, woe is me, blah blah blah," then you have to take that puppy back outside and retrain it. So it really is like housebreaking a puppy. [crosstalk 00:13:00] and it's a moment by moment thing. And then it does get easier, you know, but if you are committed to doing that. But anyway, that's one of the things I say.
Mastin Kipp:
Oh my God. I gotta tell you ... I've heard ... that is probably one of the best descriptions I've ever heard about what it's like to get someone started. Because it is. They're like "Squirrel!" And they're off, and it's like "Come back, stop peeing all over the carpet, come back over here, ask to go out." That is so, so, so funny. So when did you kind of switch from "Okay, I'm practicing this, I'm reading this, I'm saying it but not really believing it." Was there a moment in time where it became a knowing versus an understanding?
Pam Grout:
Well I still work on it as a knowing. I still consider myself aspirational. I write about what I wanna do. But it certainly does get easier. It's like any muscle, as you exercise it, as you practice it, it does get easier. I used to take the puppy outside maybe every five minutes. Now I only have to take that puppy outside maybe ... well I start it out in the right direction in the morning. That's really big, is starting your morning off with an expectation of ... you know, I say that thing "Something amazingly awesome's gonna happen to me today." I mean I [inaudible 00:14:07]. I've gotten sick of saying "amazingly awesome" because I did it for so long, so now today I said "something epically extravagant." Or epically something, I don't know, but I went through the alphabet and I did all the ... whatever. So I set the intention from the very beginning that something really cool's gonna happen to me, and I start that way. So my mind's kinda pointed in that direction to begin with. And then when I notice myself heading astray, you know, you just have to kind of ask for a little tonic, "Hey, help me say this differently." I literally ask for help from this bigger thing to help me see it differently.
Mastin Kipp:
That's cool
Pam Grout:
Because anytime I'm not at peace, obviously something has gone wrong. I mean, if I'm not at peace, if my mind is in its little hairball thoughts, it's making me its bitch, then obviously I am doing something wrong. So I have to do a little tonic to get it back doing the direction I want.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that. Let's talk about that for a second. Because I work with a lot of people who have trauma, and significant traumas. Well all trauma is significant, and the brain can't tell the different between ... a lot of people don't even know that they have it because they suppressed it for so long that it just kind of exists as low level anxiety or depression. And then they take a pill and they think it's gonna go away but they haven't resolved it. One of the things that I'm always curious about, and that I always will always ask this question to anyone I'm in proximity to who has a spiritual lens they're looking at the world through, is how do you look at trauma, the bad stuff, what's happening in politics, what's happening with racism and xenophobia, misogyny in the world today, which is all traumatizing stuff, war ... through the lens of like "I'm grateful for today," or "Something awesome is gonna happen." I can see people waking up and saying "Well the way the President's running the country is not so awesome today." Or "The way that the economy is going is not so awesome today." Or "The way the cop treated me today is not so awesome." Or "The way that my boss looked at me at work today was not awesome." So how do we kind of merge those two experiences? Because on the one hand I don't think we want that spiritual bypass where we're just kind of Pollyanna, and at the same time you don't wanna just go off into negative story land, but like, where's the line between creating your reality and denial? And how do you get into that ... because you're a practical person, so how do you make it practical?
Pam Grout:
Well okay, so Elizabeth Gilbert, I don't know if you've ever interviewed her or met her, but she has a tattoo on her arm that says "Stubborn Gladness." And it comes from a poem by Jack Gilbert, who's her famous poet, and he says that "Even in the furnace of the chaos, I am going to be stubbornly glad." Because here's the thing, yes, all these things are happening. We've got this crazy president, we've got ... nobody can deny the newspaper, what's going on there, but there's also other things going on. So where do we want to point our lens? I mean, seriously? Compared to what's happening ... I mean, right now, at this moment, the President has absolutely no bearing on my life whatsoever. I mean, I could get all focused on that, so you really do have to put everything into perspective. In fact, I say rearrange the pie chart differently. Maybe 1% of your life isn't working, or 5%, whatever it is, but we spend 95% of our time obsessing about that 5% that isn't working. So if you start to rearrange the pie chart and spend more of your time thinking about the 95% that is working, then that other part kind of takes care of itself.
Mastin Kipp:
Yes.
Pam Grout:
So I'm not at all into denial, but into still looking for that ... again, stubborn gladness. Because it's always there, there's still a beautiful story going on. And no, I can't be grateful for every single thing, but I can be grateful in every moment. There's a whole big distinction.
Mastin Kipp:
Totally. Tell me more about that, what's the difference?
Pam Grout:
Well, I mean, you could say "I'm not grateful for this president," for example, but there are things that I can be grateful for in this moment that has nothing to do with that.
Mastin Kipp:
Ah.
Pam Grout:
So in every moment there are things to be grateful for. There are always things to be grateful for. It doesn't have to be a specific thing. We can't be grateful for war, we can't be grateful for, you know, trauma or things like that. But we can learn to accept it, we can learn to surrender to it, and we can particularly learn that it is a tiny little piece of our big life. I mean, if we look at our big life, say our life's this big, the trauma really is only probably this bit, but we just keep replaying it over and over and over again. So in some ways I really think that what's happening now is all the rats are coming up from the basement, so we can heal everything.
Mastin Kipp:
Amen.
Pam Grout:
So I think it's really an exciting time even though appearances might not always look that way. I really do think we're bringing up all that stuff but we've got light to shine on them, and that's what we have to do is shine light. Nothing can live ... no darkness can live with the light being shined on it. So everything's coming up, all this hidden racism, all this hidden crap that we've had in our country. I mean if we're just talking again about the political situation, it's all coming up there. So it's like a light can shine on it. And it's getting those of us that are wanting to spread those molecules of light and those molecules of joy, it's got us working overtime.
Mastin Kipp:
That's so true.
Pam Grout:
We're responsible to keep that other story going because there are infinite possibilities, there truly are. So we can focus in on that one or two things that aren't working, or we can focus on the bigger picture. Because there are so many good things that are still happening.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that. It's sort of ... Joseph Campbell has a quote and he talks about "You can't cure the world of all its sorrow, but you can choose to participate joyfully in the sorrows of the word." Which is kind of what a hero, or heroine does. I mean, if you think about ... my favorite film is The Lion King. Simba literally comes back to the wasteland, and he's not like "Hey, what's going on here? This is awful!" He just like, brings it back to life. So I think that's amazing. What is it about gratitude that's so important? Because I know that Oprah talks about gratitude, you know, reference A Course in Miracles, Marianne talks about gratitude, Wayne Dyer, I mean everyone talks about gratitude, and I feel like it's become a little bit of a punchline. But on a real, practical level in your life, in the middle of maybe a turnaround, a crisis, the growth spurt, maybe a hard time in a
relationship, or even when things are going good, why would you say gratitude is so important? Pam Grout:
Well, I mean there have been so many studies out there that people when they're in a grumpy mood, they cannot see things. You miss 50% more when you're in that grumpy frequency. So for one thing, it makes your vision better, to be happy. But it's really more the truth about the world. I know what you're saying, a lot people think "Oh, gratitude, that's really Pollyanna-ish." However you say that word. But you know, to me it's really reality. To me the beauty and the glory that's happening out there is so real, and it's the true story. I think what happens is we've got this hologram that we've created with our story, "Something needs to be fixed. This can't be. I've gotta run. Ah!" All that story is creating this hologram of problems and doom and gloom, but there's so many other great things happening. I mean, because it literally changes your neural pathways when you get into the gratitude frequency. It opens up all kinds of things. And to me, it's spiritual truth. Spiritual truth is when you can see that beauty in every moment, that is there.
Mastin Kipp:
That's right. It's funny ... in being a coach and working with people so closely, it's funny, I'll teach something similar about gratitude or some of the basic fundamentals. And they'll come to me like a week or two later and they go "Okay, so what else you got? It's not working." And I go "What do you mean?" And it's like "Well, are you really practicing it?" And almost 100% of the time the answer's "Well, no." So there's this ... I don't know what it is, but there's almost this escapism fantasy where it's like "No, no, don't make me do the basic work, there's gotta be some other secret thingamajigger that does the actual work that's gotta be way easier." Have you seen that? How do you reconcile this sort of magical wish for how they ... like kind of bypass, or quick fix versus the daily reps, the daily practice, or something like a gratitude practice and doing it for real?
Pam Grout:
See, I think that's a good point but I would kind of turn it the other way around.
Mastin Kipp:
Yeah.
Pam Grout:
People don't think it's gonna be easy, and so they don't wanna do it, "Oh it can't be that easy." To literally focus on gratitude, to set that intention. But I mean, again, I'm not saying it's true, I'm saying try it for 30 days. If you do this gratitude practice I talk about in the book for 30 days, your entire life ... you won't even recognize your life. You'll look back and go "Wait, who was that person 30 days ago?" But again, people go "Oh it can't be that easy." So you're saying that they want something easier, I'm thinking they want something harder. I think most people want something harder than that. They can't believe that something that simple, a two step program, could actually work. So I think ... because we all want those seven steps. We want those seven
steps. We want to slave, we want to put our nose to the grindstone, I mean that's our culture. I mean right in this moment, everything we could possibly want is right here. The divine buzz is in this right exact moment. But nobody's seen it because they're so busy with following that step two or three, or whatever step it is they think they need to do to get where they wanna get to. So I would argue that rather than they want something easier, they want something harder. They wanna work harder because it can't be that simple. They're not doing it because they don't take it serious. Mastin Kipp:
The fundamentals, yeah. Why do you think we do that? It's funny, I remember one time I had a client ... I was watching two clients talked, and one client was getting the result, financially, the other one wasn't and she was like "What are you doing? I don't understand." And literally, the other client was like "I just did what Mastin told me to do." Why do you think we ... I think we make it harder than it needs to be. Do you think it's because of like, maybe the education system of the study and the masters, and the PhD, and the hierarchy of the more complicated is more valuable? What do you think it is about that that makes something that's practical, that gets results maybe perceived as less valuable than what it really is?
Pam Grout:
Yeah, well one of the things Course in Miracles says is this way of living life is not difficult at all, it's just very, very different than the way we're used to living life. And that's the hitch, you know, it's so different than how we're used to it. We're just used to focusing on problems, looking for problems, finding things to fix. The whole entire world is focused on problems. If the whole entire world would look around at how beautiful ... like, it was raining here in Lawrence yesterday, and it's like, I always go "Man, there's free liquid falling from the sky. Free liquid that I don't have to pay a penny for is falling from the sky. The Sun came up this morning. My heart keeps beating." There's just so many things to be grateful for. We have this day to be alive, to do amazing things, to create amazing things. Truly, we've just forgotten about this, we're just "Oh no, I better go fix my weight problem." Or "I better go fix some issue that I have." I just think we put way too much attention into what's wrong instead of just really living in the moment. It all comes back to just living in the moment. Because in this moment, there are no issues, there's nothing.
Mastin Kipp:
That's true.
Pam Grout:
But everybody is away from the moment. They're spending their time elsewhere.
Mastin Kipp:
It's so funny you said that. I remember early in my getting sober days, I would hear Eckhart Tolle talk about living in the moment, and I was like "What the hell are you talking about?" And then I couch surfed for two years, and the first like, year of that, it was literally hand to mouth, every single day, I didn't know where money was gonna come from tomorrow. And then I was like "Oh! This is the moment! Because I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow, and yesterday's over thank God,
but right now, I've got everything I need." And that whole moment never changed. Even though there was a two year period of uncertainty, in every single actual moment, I was forced to pay attention to the moment because there was nothing else to pay attention to right? I need food, right now. I need water, right now. I learned that. It also seems like that's probably one of the more simple things to do, but why do you think it's sort of ... I mean being present is probably one of the hardest things to actually do because there's so much distraction, trauma, emotions, stress, squirrel, shiny pennies and stuff like that. Why do you think it's so hard to be present? Pam Grout:
Well first of all, we think it's hard. And because there are a lot of other messages. I think that quiet mind is our natural state. I really do believe that, but we're so used to thinking. I mean, from the moment we're born we're measured and weighed against all the other babies in the nursery. It just starts the minute we're born. We're measured, we judge, we analyze. We're constantly thinking about comparing, that's the state of the mind. But the big thing is we take it way too seriously. If we just let those things ... if we put a period at the end of those thoughts. I had this experience last week where I had to speak to these New Thought teachers from all over the country, it was like 100 New Thought teachers, they were of a New Thought Alliance, and there were all these ministers, they had these congregations, so I was so nervous, I'm like "What do I have to say to these people?" But what ended up happening is with my thought about it, I started adding all this stuff "Okay, I shouldn't be having these thoughts," or whatever. So if I would just put a period at the end of that sentence, it's like "Okay, I'm having a thought. Big deal, let it pass right on through." But I turned it into a big drama. I turned it into this thing, and I kept adding all these clauses to it. "I'm nervous to speak." That's all I needed. But no, I had to add all the other stuff to it too, and I think that's what we do. You know, our thoughts mean nothing, they're really just a crazy little thing that who knows where they come from. But we start investing in them, we start believing in them, we start building shrines to them.
Mastin Kipp:
So true.
Pam Grout:
When instead we can just go "Oh, that's a thought." And just observe it. That's kinda what being in the moment is, is just sort of observing those thoughts.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that.
Pam Grout:
Not trying to mend anything, not [inaudible 00:28:19] anything, just noticing them.
Mastin Kipp:
Yeah. One of my first experiences of that was at a Vipassana meditation retreat where ... I remember getting there thinking there was gonna be
some fireworks, or spiritual fireworks, and I just sat in this room at 4:00 in the morning and I was like "What have I gotten myself into?" Pam Grout:
Yeah.
Mastin Kipp:
But, you know, it's interesting how uncomfortable it was to be still. And after that I noticed a quote, which is like "Most of the world's problems would be solved if we could just sit quietly in a room alone, peacefully." That would basically solve most of the issues. So I wanna be respectful of time, I have a couple more questions. Have there been any surprise stories that you've seen in the release of E Squared, E Cubed, and the rest of your books, of things that happened that you were like "I couldn't even imagine that happening." Like happy surprises or stories that you've heard? Because one of the things that I really care about is, you know, the person who reads the book or listens to the podcast or consumes the course or whatever it might be, and I just love talking about stories of what happened to people because it's one thing for a teacher to be talking to another teacher explaining stuff, but when you hear cool stories ... and I mean, when you go on Amazon, E Squared had 3300 reviews or more and they're all almost five stars. There's so many cool stories in there, like "This is amazing!" And I think that's phenomenal. I'm just kinda wondering, have you heard of things where you were just like "Whoa, I never saw that one coming."
Pam Grout:
Well you know, I hear them literally every day. Just yesterday for example, I read an email from a guy who had moved from Miami to LA. He was an actor and he thought the world was against him, was kinda depressed. His agent, you know, he's an actor, his agent says "Here, you need to read this book," gave him E Squared. He read the book, he said it completely rocked his world. He's now got a part on a series. He got a regular part on a series, and he's gotten the book in Spanish to send to his Mother. He said it's just completely changed his perspective on everything. I literally get emails like this, everything from these amazing manifestations, from like ... one woman wrote to me and talked about this hundred thousand dollar gift she got totally unexpectedly, I mean things like that. Some people really love the big, you know, gee whiz fireworks kind of manifestations, and I do get a lot of those. But I kinda like the ones where some relationship got healed, or somebody on the other side came and gave them a blessing, or something like that. But I mean literally ... that's one of the reasons I feel so ... this book has been so much fun for me because I get these emails literally every single day. E Squared came out four years ago, and to this day I still get, you know, dozens every week of these stories. So I feel so blessed because if I ever had a nagging doubt that this stuff doesn't work, all I have to do is go through and read my emails, because I get story after story after story. Sometimes they'll be funny stories, like this one guy decided he wanted to manifest a red ball. One of them's like pick a specific thing. And it didn't happen, it didn't happen and he was feeling kind of grumpy, you know "That didn't happen." About a week later he's driving in an
intersection and out of nowhere ... out of nowhere this red rubber ball bounces into the intersection, it was a small rubber ball. So he wrote on there, I can't remember, something like "E Squared, or Field of Infinite Potential," and he took a picture of it and he sent it to me. But that was kind of fun, where people that ... you know, they might get discouraged and then later, out of the blue, something will turn up for them. Or the ones where ... like here's one that's kind of fun. There was a woman that was looking for white feathers, or made the intention to have white feathers. And these are kind of the baby step ones where you ask for a certain manifestation, but what happens is you realize if you can ask for that, you ask for more. This story's kind of like that. So anyway, one of the things I say, just put it out there, let the dude take care of it, don't put your own brain on it, because our brains have got that crazy stuff going on. So anyway, she [inaudible 00:32:20] with her family, she's driving home, the traffic slows down. I mean literally to where she couldn't move. And all of a sudden her daughter goes "Mom, look! Somebody must've killed a chicken!" And lining the highway for four miles were white weathers, I mean the traffic had slowed down, four miles. Finally the four miles go by, the traffic clears up, and they drove on home. She gets home, and on her welcome mat was one white feather. Mastin Kipp:
Wow.
Pam Grout:
And she said, you know, I guess the message, she said the message for her was that the universe can give you as much as you want. The one white feather or all the white feathers lining the highway. She wasn't trying to manifest that, I mean who really needs a white feather. She just made that intention, and that was the gift she got from the universe. That's just kind of a fun, freaky story.
Mastin Kipp:
Yeah.
Pam Grout:
There's so many! There's so many, in fact a lot of people, "You need to write a book." Because I do, sometimes on my blog post, I'll post a couple. And people go "Oh, I love these stories, you should write a book." And I could, I could write a whole dictionary of books.
Mastin Kipp:
That would be awesome. Well, because-
Pam Grout:
An encyclopedia of books.
Mastin Kipp:
You know, one of the things that I've dedicated my life to, and we could probably have a whole other conversation about this, but I dedicated my life to helping personal development be marketed and displayed in a way that people understand what it is, and they see the value not just in it, but in themselves. That's a whole other conversation, just most people would do for others what they wouldn't do for themselves.
Pam Grout:
Right.
Mastin Kipp:
And what's amazing about it is that ... what basically is social proof of story after story, after story, after story, after story, after story, and I mean there's probably different categories, you know, weight, relationships, money, so it's almost like a Chicken Soup for the Soul, the offshoot of all of the things that happen. But I think that would be amazing because, again, one of the things I've found is that telling other people's stories is probably one of the most aspirational things you could do, because it's a crazy sense of possibility for them, which once something's possible, that's most of the work, right? Is getting to possibility.
Pam Grout:
Exactly.
Mastin Kipp:
So that's amazing. So speaking of possibility, last question, and I've wanted to ask you this question for a long time ... to get it on the record too. So you have written ... you have a great catalog of books, and E Squared was not your first book. I've done four or five Writers Masterminds in Bali, where a lot of aspiring writers who wanna be published by Hay House or Balboa and kinda have a similar career to your career arc, my career and sort of have that relationship. I'm just kind of curious what your advice is to people who are writing, or people who are doing this type of work, with a specific context: the difference between instant success and a career. Because I feel like a lot of people are so focused on "How many likes did I get, how much did this, how much money, how much, how much, how much." And it drives me a little mad because their focus is off of service and helping people, and more on themselves and what they're not getting or what's bigger than somebody else. I mean, a lot of people who wanna be in this game for fame or whatever, which is not the reason to be in it. So I'm just kinda curious what your thoughts are to people who are wanting to write, wanting to be published, wanting to release books and kinda have a career, what advice you have for someone who is just getting started about the long game.
Pam Grout:
Well the long game's really important. Again, if you wanna be a writer, you have to love writing, because that's what being a writer is. A lot of people associate it with all the fame or the best on the list or all that. Writing is the writing, anybody can do that. And as you do it, you get better at it, just like anything else. So if it's something you love to do, you can't wait to do it, like, I love to write. I mean, sometimes if I'm in a bad mood, I'll just go write something and it perks me right up, it's taking my puppy back outside. I mean I love it, it's so much fun. So first of all, people need to really enjoy it. They need to do it because they like it, not because they think they might get on the bestseller list or they might make a career out of it, you have to do it because you love it. And we all do have a story to tell. That's what this new book's about. But you might dance your story, you might write a poem about your story, you might write a book. I mean, everybody's writing a book. I probably think maybe more people than even need to be writing a book are writing a book.
But you know, one of the things I like to say too, the only book that will ever really change your life is the book you write yourself. That's the only book that will ever really change your life because it's your story. Now whether anybody reads it or not, that's a different story. That's more about the marketing and the likes and that kinda stuff. But the reason you need to write the story and it'll change your life, because it gets you in touch with all those things that a coach will get you in touch with, or some book will get you in touch with. You writing your story, you expressing your truth ... I mean, I write partly to find out what's going on with myself. That's kind of my therapy in a sense. So to me it's a beautiful practice no matter whether anybody reads it or not. And that whole thing about service, too. You know, we all have gifts to give to the world. I think by writing, by doing any creative thing, we're giving our gift to the world, so I think it's really important. And I think, you know, when you talk back about politics, politicians aren't gonna save the world, corporations aren't going to save the world, individuals like you and me and everybody else giving of their gifts, that's what's gonna save the world. It's such an exciting time now because of all these digital tools. We can reach millions of people from a coffee shop ... I'm here in little Lawrence, Kansas and I've got millions of people that have read my book. You can really make a difference by doing that. So I just think it's really important that people give up their gifts. But the long game is really important, that was your actual question. You just keep writing and keep writing and keep writing. That's what I've done. E Squared was my 16th book. Mastin Kipp:
Exactly.
Pam Grout:
It become, you know, giant, 40 languages, number one New York Times, but it was my 16th book. Now I've made a full living as a writer before that because I've written for People Magazine, I've written for a lot of magazines and all kinds of different things, and I wrote three books for National Geographic, so I made a living. But not a great living. Again, I was a single mom raising my daughter on my own. But I made enough, you know, plodding away. But again, I was doing what I loved. So to me I was wealthy all along. Even before the book.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that.
Pam Grout:
You know, hit the big time, I was wealthy because I was doing what I love. I never listened to my Mom's advice, she said "You should be a computer programmer." Or whatever, be practical. Like you said you think I'm practical. Well I think I a practical, but to me it's practical to follow what you love. To me that is practical, to do what you love. Because again, you're gonna be good at it, and you're gonna get better and better at it.
Mastin Kipp:
I love that because ... when I look at, especially younger people coming up, there's massive comparison culture. I mean, teen suicides are up because of social media comparison.
Pam Grout:
Yep.
Mastin Kipp:
And there's so much pressure. And you know, I'm like "Guys, how many likes you get doesn't matter. What matters is are you serving." I love that because I believe in the long game, I practice the long game, and I think you're such a beautiful example of that because 16 books, I mean that's tenacious! I've written two and I feel like I'm good, it was enough. I have more to write but they're sort of traumatizingly joyful to write in a certain sense. I notice that what I write about I tend to get the lesson, so the next one's gonna be all about how to get everything you want perfectly without any lessons, and no hardship, you know what mean? But like, 16, that's incredible.
Pam Grout:
Actually, Art and Soul is the 19th.
Mastin Kipp:
No, I was talking about before there was sort of a leap. What I love about it, and what I wanna highlight is the dedication, and it was the craft and it was the love of it. It wasn't for the success. One of my friends, Michael Fishman says that when you do things for service, and when you do things because you love it, that's the certain ... if you're supposed to be on the New York Times, that's the best path to get there. Because the New York Times doesn't matter, I've had friends sell 25 thousand books their first week and not make it, so it's completely subjective. And if your whole thing is about that, then it's like who are you, and the let down. So I just wanna highlight that because there's a lot of people who are listening who are just getting started and the idea that this is a long game and a marathon, and that you have embodied that. And now, you know, 16, 17, 18, 19, four books later, or keep going ... it's a real inspiration to me and to everyone who's listening because you are tenacity embodied.
Pam Grout:
Well thank you! I've never strived, is that the right word? To be tenacious, but I'm glad you think that I am. I'm tenaciously following my bliss, so to speak.
Mastin Kipp:
Yeah, but that requires a ... you know what, I'm gonna offer up maybe you have a little bit of a blind spot how awesome you are in that department. Because there is a level of tenacity involved with having to create ... I mean, butt plus chair equals pages, but getting there is so hard. It's tenacious. I've read the biographies of many writers, I don't care if it's Agatha Christie or whoever, getting the pages is still hard for everyone, you know.
Pam Grout:
Yep.
Mastin Kipp:
And so I just think it's awesome, and I'm just super grateful that you took some time today to be on the podcast. And I'm super excited to talk about your new book Art and Soul Reloaded and to help people
reclaim their creativity. I think it's a really amazing companion piece for Claim Your Power and I believe you can get the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and also pamgrout.com. That's P-A-M-G-R-O-U-T dot com, and then on all the different social media pages is where people can follow you I assume, Facebook et cetera. Pam Grout:
Right. Pam Grout. If you know my name you can find me.
Mastin Kipp:
That's right. There's a website called Google.
Pam Grout:
[crosstalk 00:42:07], Instagram, whatever, I'm out there with my name. Just my name.
Mastin Kipp:
Awesome, awesome. So I'm gonna wrap this up with the question that I ask all of our folks, which is this, what is purpose to you?
Pam Grout:
You know, purpose to me is being able to be generous, and being able to give of my gifts.
Mastin Kipp:
I love it.
Pam Grout:
That is my purpose. In fact, I have four main intentions, and one of them is that I have a real strong sense of purpose, that I am on purpose. I really wanna be on purpose. I want to be sending those molecules of love out there, that's what I want to be doing. And that's what I try to do every day.
Mastin Kipp:
Amen. Well Pam, thank you so much for your time today. Guys, make sure to get Art and Soul Reloaded and all of Pam's books. I can't recommend it enough. As always, this is Mastin. Remember to get out there, take action, and make it real. See you soon.
