It’s time for another Podcast! I’m so loving these conversations with the amazing Claudia and Tony Scimeca from Going Home With Tony. In today’s conversation, we cover a whole host of topics (see a point by point summary below), including why we shouldn’t, and don’t need to settle for what we have (even if we already like it!). So sit back, relax, listen in and enjoy the ride!

If you missed the previous podcasts, you can hear them here:

Podcast 1 – Going Home with Tony Show

Podcast 2 – Overcoming Fear and Suffering

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Topics Covered on the Call

• Why do we worry about the past?
• What stories are we telling ourselves when we worry about the past or future?
• Do we use the past to learn lessons?
• How does the Law of Attraction tie into the decisions we make?
• Why are we prepared to settle instead of going after awesome?
• How can we forgive ourselves for the past decisions we made?
• Is it ok to want more or should we settle for what we have?
• What is “awesome” and is it just subjective?
• How are relationships changing and evolving?
• How can energy coaching help you to receive the happiness that you want?
• Do our beliefs shape our identity?
• Does time really exist?
• Why do we get so anxious about knowing what time it is?

Audio Only:

(Copy link into your browser): https://deliberatereceiving.s3.amazonaws.com/audio-files/podcast-dec-10-2015-should-we-settle.mp3

TRANSCRIPT

Tony:  This is The Going Home with Tony Show, and they woke me up just to be here! My name is Tony Scimeca, I’m the host and Claudia is our lovely co-host and engineer who gives me all these social cues that I’m not very good at!

Claudia: In life also!

Tony: Melody, can you write a book called “Social Cue Receiving!”

Melody: I don’t know if I’m even up to that task Tony! I think you might have to go it alone! Hehe.

Tony: I’ll be the before character!  Right, we have Melody Fletcher here today from Deliberate Receiving. Claudia do you have a few comments about Melody before we dive right into this?

Claudia: I do!  Melody Fletcher is an expert in the Law of Attraction, who doesn’t believe that Spirituality or Personal Development have to be so darn serious all the time.  She helps people who are tired of not being happy to figure out what they truly want, why they haven’t gotten it so far, and then teaches them what they actually need to do to realize their dreams.  Her blog, a humorous, no holds barred, no B.S. look at how the Law of Attraction works, and how to actually apply it to real life situations, appeals to an audience of intellectuals who don’t take life too seriously and appreciate her direct honest approach, as well as her ability to generate rapid life changing results.

Melody is also the author of the fabulous book, Deliberate Receiving: Finally, the Universe Makes Some Freakin’ Sense!  And of course, you can read more about Melody on her website: www.melodyfletcher.com

Tony: Wow, what a great introduction!  Melody, in the interest of full disclosure, do you mind if I tell you what I think about you?

Melody: Sure, go ahead.

Tony: My interpretation (now we’ve never met in person, but we’ve talked several times on the air), and my perception of you is that you are the kind of person who is going to be walking down the Ramblas in Barcelona, laughing out loud by yourself because something reminded you of a joke, or you remembered some funny thing that happened. You know the punch line, and you are walking around with this joke in your head; not that you keep it to yourself, but you seem to be your own best audience.

Melody: Yes, that does happen; I don’t want to make it sound like I’m walking down the street laughing like a manic constantly, or anything like that, but it does happen. It happens quite a bit. I do live in my own reality, and I do that quite deliberately and quite consciously.  Yes, I do entertain myself quite a bit.

Tony:  Are you an only child?

Melody: No, I have an older sister, she’s actually my business manager and works with me at Deliberate Receiving and she’s begun coaching as well.

Tony: Are you younger?

Melody: I’m the youngest, yes. I love to observe life, and observe people. I look for the beauty and the awesomeness, as well as the funniest in everything.  I don’t really get bored easily if I’m out and about and I have things to look at.

Tony: This is going to step into what I want to talk about this morning and it’s about the unknown and fear. Let’s pare the things down – past, present and future. Do we ever worry about the past?

Melody: Obviously people do worry about the past but I don’t think there’s a lot of value in doing that, because what you have to remember is: Whether you are worrying about the past, or worrying about the future, you are still doing it right now, in this moment. There really is no other moment except for now and for all intents and purposes, there is no past and no future; there is only right now.

When you are worrying about the past, you are telling yourself a fictitious story; it’s always a fictitious story because you have a very limited perspective of what happened.  Anybody else who was in the room when that thing happened will tell a different story of what happened.

It’s even more of a fictitious story when it’s about the future, and as I tell my clients: when you know you are telling yourself a fictitious story, why not go ahead and tell yourself one that is fun and good? If you are remembering the past, or you are thinking about the future (its two sides of the same coin for me), look for that which was fun, or will be fun. This, by the way, is the exact opposite of what most people do. They look to the past and they tell themselves the same story over and over again about something that happened that wasn’t good; it didn’t make them feel good, and they are using that as an excuse to feel bad, right now.

Tony: That’s easily said, but how do we take it in and change one’s life?  My interpretation of past, present and future is: I don’t think we worry about the past, but we have a tendency to, possibly lamenting about what we could have done differently or if things could have gone our way.  We also look at the past as the thing not to do in the future. For example, not marrying that type of girl again, but instead marrying a different type of girl, maybe later in the future. So we keep living backwards and forwards, but we never live in the present. There’s no question about it; we only really have the present, and everything that has happened, has happened, and everything that is going to happen, will happen. Tomorrow is yesterday’s future and today is tomorrow’s past. So why do we do that?

For example, when we were kids and we were going on vacation, we would be so excited, we would count down the minutes; we’re going in the car and drive to California; everything is going to be so cool.  What happens when we become adults and we say, “OMG, what is the traffic going to be like? I hope it doesn’t snow and what are we going to do if we have a flat? What if the baby acts up; I just don’t know what I’m going to do.” Why do we become so doomsday-ish?

Melody: It’s because we decided to follow the models that were given to us by our parents. They were worriers so we became worriers.  We were trained to look at the negative, the “just in case” scenario. We do this because we feel safer knowing all the possibilities that could go wrong, so that we can steel against them.  We also have this thing called life experience, and again this ties in perfectly with the statement that I made about it being a very selective experience. If we look at all the bad things that have happened to us, we can try to protect ourselves from that happening again. But that just keeps our focus very negative. We could do the same thing with awesome, for example: the last time I left the house it was awesome so I expect it to be awesome again.

As a kid you have less of that experience to draw from and so you haven’t yet learned to be as negative; and yes, it is a learned behaviour, absolutely.

Tony: You said earlier to “steel against”.  That’s such a cool expression; what does that mean?

Melody: It means to protect yourself; to create a protective barrier against things that could come in. For example, if you are anticipating that something bad is going to happen, then hopefully you are going to be aware of it before it comes to you; therefore you can protect yourself from it. In that moment you are already focused on the negative. Something like: “I bet the parking lot is going to be crap.” You can actually work with that if you realise you’re having that kind of thought.  But we never take it into the positive, and try shifting it by saying, “Is that what I want? No, that’s not what I want. So what do I want? I want a parking space right by the front. OMG, that feels a lot better to me to think about having a space right up front.” It’s that turning it around, saying what you don’t want then using that to figure out what you do want instead, and then focusing on that. People just don’t realise how powerful their focus is.

I also wanted to touch on the really good point you made: Do we use the past to learn lessons? When we look at the past and remind ourselves that last time something happened in a situation, we try to prevent that situation from happening again. For example, I’m not going to marry that kind of woman again, or I’m not going to take that type of job again.  So you logically try to think your way into a better situation.

The problem with that is that we do it the wrong way and we discount why we made the decision that we did. We often use that information to beat ourselves up and call ourselves stupid, saying that’s why we made that decision. We think we were just blind and that’s why for example, you married a person who ultimately turned out to be a douchebag.  But the thing is you didn’t know they were a douchebag when you married them or got into a relationship with them, or another example, you didn’t know the boss was a tyrant. You didn’t logically know that, and could there have been signs that you saw, in hindsight? Of course! But you didn’t recognize them at the time. We only ever make the best decisions that we can at the time. We had a manifestation and we can learn from that manifestation by looking at it. Not in the way that most people do in terms of logically figuring out how to protect themselves against this situation, by rather by asking yourself: “Why did I make the choice that I did?”

Here’s an example: I might have gone out with a guy who turned out to be a douchebag.  On the very first date he might have said something that could have really rubbed me the wrong way, but in hindsight I can see that I decided to just gloss over that because he is so cute, or because he has this and this on paper. He has his own job, he doesn’t live with his parents, and I’m lonely and I just want to get out of the house. So he may have said this thing that may have rubbed me the wrong way, but I’m just going to let it go. Things just get worse from there, until it gets so bad that I decide that this guy is an actual douchebag and I can’t do this anymore.

You see, the signs were there. You want to take a look at yourself at that point but not in terms of blaming yourself by saying you are so stupid, but rather, “Why was I willing to put up with that and why did I just gloss over that?  What do I want to do instead so that I will not be willing to do that in the future?”

Claudia: Would you then tie that into (from the conversations that we’ve had in the past), the Law of Attraction?  You made that decision, even if you had a couple of cues that you choose to ignore. However it was a vibration that was right for you at that time and you needed to be with that person.

Melody: Absolutely, because there’s a reason that the douchebag showed up, in the way that he did. He also had to have a lot of good things going for him, because if he was a total A-hole right from the beginning you wouldn’t have dated him. He had to be good enough to have something that attracted you, so that you could date him and he could get in. But the only reason that he came in was because you have a willingness to make that decision, a willingness to say that something bothers you but it’s not a big enough deal for you to honor yourself, or do anything about it.

Your thinking is: “Let me go ahead and subject myself to more because that’s not really important enough for me to do anything about.  It was kind of disrespectful but not so disrespectful that I have to do something about it. I am willing to put up with some disrespect in my life.” If you have that willingness, that will be mirrored back to you constantly. That is the only reason he came in; to get you to challenge yourself and for you to finally make that decision and say, “No I am not going to put up with that anymore.”

The Law of Attraction can be your best friend, like a bouncer who stands at the door and filters out all the crap, but only if you have set that filter first and you say you are not willing to put up with this crap in your playground.  Somebody coming into your playground must be this kind, must be this nice, must be this intelligent, must be this fun; somebody coming into your playground must be awesome. It’s about creating a list about what you want, whether it’s a job or a person in a relationship or whatever.

What most people do though, when they create that list, is they create their bare minimum list – This is what I would be willing to put up with.

Clients will say things to me such as, “I don’t really want much in a relationship, as long as he has a good job and he is kind to me”.  My response is: These are the bare minimum requirements! If he doesn’t have those things he is out the door; period. He doesn’t have a job; are you kidding me! Are you really going to support some guy? That is not your wish list, those are the bare minimums, those are the absolute deal breakers, and I say the deal breakers have to be bigger than that. Whenever someone says they don’t want much; they are lying! They are lying to themselves! We all want a lot and we should all want a lot. The only reason we ever say we don’t want a lot is because we don’t think we can have it.

Claudia: Or we don’t want to sound greedy.

Melody: Right­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­, because it’s wrong to want more. (Not).

Tony: I remember as a kid I was complaining to my mother about a vacation (I wasn’t speaking from personal experience before about the vacation, because we never went on a vacation, but it’s cool, I go on them now), and about how dad doesn’t want to do any of that stuff? She said, “What do you want me to do, divorce him? At least he doesn’t hit me!” It was so profound, with that being the baseline that they stayed married. I thought, ok that’s true, I take it all back, everything’s cool.

Melody: Right, what more do you want?!

Tony: Right! She was born in 1920; there never was any domestic violence, except on me.  My view was, except and expect the bare minimum. Then everything else will be beyond your expectations.

You said something earlier, and it really hit me.  As you know, before I married Claudia, I had a practice wife; now I have a perfect wife. The practice wife, she was and probably still is, an Artist. I knew even then while we were courting that I wanted to be an Artist, and I knew I wasn’t an Artist, but the best way to be an Artist once removed, was to hang out with an Artist. Once I hung out with the Artist, then I took the blinkers off and I realised the things that I wasn’t seeing, and that became unacceptable to me. She wasn’t going to be able to play in my playground anymore. But what drew me to her, what the attraction was all about, was this kind of Bohemian carefree, let’s go and paint on the sidewalk for fun attitude she had. That was never who I was. Is that where you are going with that?

Melody: Yes, and you’ve touched on a really good point there because it is a way for people to let themselves off the hook about their past, because you wouldn’t know what you know now, without having had that experience.  So you thought you wanted to be with an Artist because that experience really drives your energy, and you realised more about yourself, you created a finer definition, a more poignant definition of your desire. You realised you wanted to be an Artist but you didn’t necessarily want to be with this energy that she was projecting. There were things about this that actually bothered you. There were other things that you wanted that you didn’t know you wanted in that way, until you met this woman. That helped you to define it and it’s always our experiences that teach us more about what we want.

For example: You would not know that you aren’t willing to put up with somebody who is boring, until you have a boring partner. Up until then you may have been dating men who were not boring but who were really quite negative. From that point of view, boring sounds great. He’s boring but he doesn’t hit me, he doesn’t do anything bad, he doesn’t gamble all the money away; boring would be nice. Then when you are in the boring relationship you think that this isn’t fun either, and that is when people get trapped; they think they are not allowed to want more. They have mediocre, they have neutral; it’s not bad!

One of the big passionate speeches I give a lot is: Not bad is not even close to the same thing as good, and certainly not awesome.  The analogy I use is: The absent of poop is not the same thing as the presence of chocolate.

Claudia: Right, exactly! I think society creates a lot of pressure with relationships and as to why men and women settle. There’s this societal pressure to connect with somebody and to commit to somebody. Although I think it is getting less and less that I’m happy to observe happening; it doesn’t seem to be as strong. I do think it’s one of the reasons why we create this: Oh well he is better than nothing, or she’s better than the last one, plus I don’t want to be alone; I don’t want to look funny; my friends are all in a relationship; this acceptance to settle attitude.

Tony: Or what if I have a medical emergency, who is going to take care of me?

Claudia: Right, or maybe I want to have children, then shouldn’t I be in a relationship? These are all messages from when we grew up. But also what makes it really difficult is when society and our family tell us to not be greedy; don’t expect too much; only aim high-ish.

Tony: No, its aim low and don’t be disappointed.

Claudia: And anything else is better!

Melody: Right, but what you have to remember is that people can only give us their perspective, and so if your parents, god bless them, didn’t have a very positive relationship, maybe not a horrific negative one, but not an awesome one, they are not going to, generally anyway, be able to mirror back to you the belief that an awesome relationship is possible. You know, there’s a reason why they weren’t in an awesome relationship!

Tony: Do you not think that’s subjective though because you, Claudia and myself, what we may call awesome, my mother may have said something different (in the end she outlived my dad by about 20 years), but she was totally appreciative of how he did the heavy lifting for her so that she never had to pick up anything heavier than 5lbs.  She was more of a thinker; so she was happy.

Melody: Yes, that’s absolutely fine and yes it completely and totally is a subjective thing.  Other people cannot tell you what to want, and people cannot tell you what your limitations are. It requires a level of awareness for you to figure out what it is YOU really want and to not just focus on what you are willing to put up with. It requires a level of awareness to know what you really want and not take on the thought of: “Well this is what my parents had and therefore it’s good enough for me.”

When people use the term “good enough” you have to be very careful because it’s a dangerous thought (not scary woohoo),  because you might be missing out on some real awesomeness. What is awesome for you, might be scary as hell for somebody else, or might sound completely off the rails for another person. It is a very personal thing, but you have to remember that we are always evolving.

The relationships that sound awesome to us may sound out of this world to our parents and certainly to our grandparents, who were still coming from an old paradigm.  You have to understand that we are moving into a new paradigm now (which I’ve talked about before, two podcasts ago), on the spectrum where we are moving from the old world paradigm into the new world paradigm. The Old world paradigm where we are being motivated by pain minimization – making the less painful choice, to the New World paradigm of pleasure maximization – making the better feeling choice, the more awesome choice.

In your mother’s, grandparents and great grandparents generation they often, especially women, were with men who were abusive and super controlling, and not very caring.  There was a lot of danger for women if they got left, they really didn’t have anything. It was not that long ago that women were considered property, but now we are moving out of that, it’s not the case anymore today; that’s not part of our decision making process, although in some people’s belief system it still is. So the statement from your mother, well he doesn’t beat me, so what more do I want, was the better feeling choice for her but it isn’t the better feeling choice for you. We want to always acknowledge that there’s been an evolution.

Tony: Claudia doesn’t beat me by the way!

Claudia: I do not! So when you are dealing with your clients it must be initially scary for them to break away from their lifelong patterns. They come to you because they want to be happy, they want to know how to create happiness in their lives and they are having a difficult time doing that. They come to you because that is what your strength is, you can work with them by showing them and teaching them how to make these changes in their lives. However they come to you with a lifelong habit of whatever crap they are dealing with and it becomes like meatballs and mashed potatoes; it becomes comfort for them. How are you going to help them change their lives? Do you find that they have to be uncomfortable first before they can re-establish a path toward happiness?

Tony: Do people change?

Melody: Yes, people do change but here’s the thing: When somebody seeks me out it’s usually because they are in a place of discomfort and the discomfort has become so great that they are not willing to put up with it anymore. They’ve already had that catalyst moment where they are saying that they don’t know how to fix this, and this or that isn’t working for them anymore; they can’t put up with this anymore. Generally, they’ve already had that moment of awareness, and I’m just there to help them to get the tools so that they can move into the direction of what they want.

Sometimes that means defining what it is they really want and then owning that, but also giving themselves permission to do that. We then look at what it is that’s standing in their way, we look at the old patterns and at how they’ve always done things and what they now want to break away from.  It’s a desire to break out of those patterns that they’ve already brought to the table.  If somebody doesn’t have that desire or awareness, I don’t work with them because that wouldn’t be fun for me.

I’m not in the habit of looking at people’s lives and saying, “Hey, did you know that your life is screwed up?” There’s no benefit in that.  Somebody has to have had that realization for themselves because again this is a subjective thing. For example, “I don’t like where I am and I don’t like where I’m going, and I want somebody to help me to figure out where I want to go and how to get there.”  That is where I come in.

Claudia: I guess I understood that, I figured that would be when they’d reached out to you, however because of the lifelong patterns that they want to get out of, do you find that there’s a certain amount of comfort there because that is where they live?

Tony: Is there a comfortable/uncomfortable couch, they know where the bed cushions are and they’ve got used to it?

Melody: Yes, and people have to have a certain amount of comfort… you have to be comfortable with the discomfort; you have to make peace with the discomfort. A lot of what I teach is about stepping into the negative emotion, not trying to run away from it, not trying to avoid it anymore.  This makes me a little bit different from a lot of other Law of Attraction teachers that just talk about feeling better. That’s great if you can do that, but if you can’t, then go 180 degrees into the other direction and actually step into the negative emotion and make peace with the discomfort.  People are afraid though that they are just going to stay there, but actually what happens is, they move through it to the other side and to where the awesomeness lies.

You have to have a willingness to take a look at those patterns and what coaching can help them with is the whole self blame thing. For example, “How could I have been so stupid to have done that again and again and again?” This is where people often are when they come to me and we move them out of that because it’s not helpful when you are blaming yourself.  As I’ve already said, you can use certain perspectives to let yourself off the hook by saying, you did the best that you could and knowing that at the time, you were choosing between bad and worse; but now you’re choosing between bad and good. It’s a different decision that you’re making now, it’s a different option that you’re seeing now which you didn’t see before, so of course now you’re going to make a better feeling choice.

Tony: Do people see that and do they do it?

Melody: Yes, of course they do it! Otherwise this wouldn’t be fun at all, but everybody goes at their own pace.

Tony: Yes, I understand but do people change?

Melody: People do absolutely change.  This is profoundly changing work, and that’s the fun part about it because people start to change themselves, they start to change their energy, and it’s so much faster than psychotherapy (I’m not disparaging psychotherapy, because everything has its place), because you are changing the energy underneath. Then your behaviour, which is just a manifestation, automatically changes.  Making those choices is no longer something that you do out of willpower – “I have to choose this better feeling thing” – you do it automatically.

Tony: Like breathing.

Melody: Yes and the way that I always put it is: If somebody puts in front of you a shit sandwich and a McDonald’s burger, of course you are going to eat the McDonald’s burger because no way are you going to eat the shit sandwich. But if somebody puts in front of you the finest chocolate known to man, do you really have to make that decision with willpower, or do you naturally just go for it.

If that option wasn’t visible to you before, you didn’t know the chocolate was available to you; of course you went for the McDonalds. If somebody has created a 3 Michelin Star meal when you see the meal, it isn’t a hard choice to make.

Tony: So why don’t we take the path of least resistance like water?  Why do we always go for the low hanging fruit?

Melody: It’s because we make the best feeling choice we have access to. A lot of this work is about opening up the perspective so that you can see those better feeling options that you didn’t even know where there, and that other people did their best to discourage you from looking for.

Tony: At what point is it not about the wife, the husband, the son, daughter, mother or father but it’s just about us in our own universe, flying through this sealed bubble of water and rock called the Earth?  Not everybody can or will rule out all the people in their lives and get them out of their playground; you do have to co-exist in the world. What advise can you give our listeners so that they understand that they are in this by themselves, and it’s up to them to make it as good as possible?

Melody: I work with people where they are and for some people the message that they are just in a holographic room by themselves and nothing else really exists, it’s all just a hologram, is scary as hell.  They can’t accept that.

Tony: Why is it scary?

Melody: It defies too many of their beliefs in that moment.

Tony: Does that mean there’s too much responsibility on them, so they stop blaming?

Melody: No what it does is, it shakes your identity too much. Your belief system shape your identity, and this is what people talk about when they talk about “Ego Death.” Your ego doesn’t actually die but your mind thinks your identity is being killed off.  Your mind has a problem with death so it thinks it is dying, and it will fight very hard against that. There’s no reason to do it in such a hard core way, although some people really enjoy that. Some of us are hard core.

You have to understand that your identity comes from how you think the world works, how you fit into this world and how you can function in this world. If you defy that too much it becomes very scary. I lead people into it and take them as far as they want to go. Some people don’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole; they just want to know how to have a pleasant life.

Tony: How to get through the holidays?

Melody: Yes. But some people do want to get deeply into it and get into the: “There is no separation between me and anybody else, and we are all just one, and I can totally see myself in everything. I actually created everything and it’s all just beautiful; it’s all perfect. I can look at all the darkness in the world, and it’s all beautiful and perfect and it’s all my creation; I am God.” If you want to go to that level, fine; if you don’t, fine. You can go as far down this rabbit hole as you want; there is no right or wrong in it. There is only what you want and how far you want to go.

Tony: There is no right or wrong; it just is!

Melody: Yes. I work with people where they are and the belief system that they have.  I like to work with people where we do profound and very quick work, but we do it as gently as we can and as gently as the person needs it to be because there’s no reason to create a psychotic break in somebody.

Here’s an example: Time doesn’t really exist, it’s an illusion (a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their head around that), but everybody has had the example of being so immersed into an activity that time sped up. They thought 20 minutes had passed, when in fact it was 5 hours. We’ve all also had the experience of thinking, OMG, 5 hours must have gone past but in fact its only 20 minutes later!

Time really is quite fluid; it’s an illusion, but it’s a really useful illusion for things to be linear. I had an experience when I was in a San Pedro ceremony in Peru where I left consciousness, I blacked out and I expanded to all that is, much further than my conscious mind could allow. When I came back, I came back out of time sequence. The things that happened to me first where the things that came after the things that happened to me next.  It was profoundly disorientating.

Tony: Wait! I got lost in time there for a minute! Did you think that what had happened hasn’t happened yet?

Melody: I experienced a moment, if I was to put a timeline on it, I experienced 3:15, and then I experienced 3 o’clock.  I then experienced 3:45 and then 2:30. It just jumped around like that; it was profoundly disorientating. I was able to handle it for that particular moment (I have no idea how long this lasted because time had no meaning in that moment), but it gave me a glimpse of what it is to be out of time. I’m now profoundly appreciative of the fact that normally my life is quite linear.

I get up in the morning and time seems to pass, and then noon comes along, and then the sun goes down and then it’s evening; I’m not ready to live my life out of time.

Tony: Do you know every day what day it is?

Melody: I forget a lot!

Tony: Does it matter?

Melody: No.

Tony: Why are we so hung up on the days of the week? Why does it matter? If the wind doesn’t know, why does it matter?

Melody: It’s a useful tool, because if you want to get together with somebody and you are both not in this conscious place where you can simply say, when the timing is right, we will both be inspired to be in the right place at the right time then we will meet. It’s really useful to say, lets meet on Monday, at 2 o’clock.

Tony: I can understand the arrangement thing, but in our head, we live in 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days approximately, 365 days in a year, unless it’s a leap year. We put so much emphasis on benchmarking time. Are we a slave to this myth that we have created?

Melody: I think most people definitely are, but we absolutely don’t have to be.

Tony: Do you wear a wristwatch?

Melody: No, I haven’t worn a watch in years.

Tony: I really thought that was a big break for me was to stop wearing a watch.

Melody: Yes and I definitely want to finish this thought.  Back in my corporate days, I was scheduled right down to the last 15 minutes. If I had to pee I was late for my next conference call; my day was so scheduled. When I stepped out of that I pretty much got rid of everything. I wasn’t wearing a watch then, but there’s computers and cell phones; a watch is a single function device; why would you carry that around; what a waste! For me, I enjoy not needing to know what time it is all the time; particularly when I’m away. When I’m on my computer I know what time it is; I can check it anytime. But when I’m away I like the timelessness of that and just letting myself drift and be relaxed about it.

I think that most people don’t know the luxury that is that timeless feeling unless maybe they are on vacation. We can live our lives like that where we simply allow ourselves, ok maybe not 24 hours a day or 365 days a year, like I said, there is some benefit to noticing schedules, but there is a lot of benefit to deliberately creating times or even entire days where we let ourselves just float.

I have days where I work but I don’t have any coaching calls because my coaching calls are scheduled obviously, where I do whatever it is I’m inspired to do. I don’t care how long it’s going to take me; I don’t check the time; I eat when I’m hungry; I don’t care if it’s lunchtime; I go to bed when I’m tired; and I don’t care what time in the day it is. If I want to take a nap, I take one; it’s all very free flowing like that. I appreciate that so much, and I do believe that people could create more of that than they do, because we’ve become so rigid about it, and we think that we have to be because we think everything will fall apart; we won’t get everything done.

I talk to parents who think they have to be structured with their children; the children have to go to bed at a certain time every night for example.  And yes, maybe a little bit, or maybe they are holding onto it a little bit too much. Maybe they are giving it just a little bit too much emphasis.

When you hear people saying “There’s no time! There’s no time!”, and they are constantly under this stress, you can see them actually creating situations where they are creating the situation of “no time”.

Tony: They are squandering their time.

Melody: Yes.

Claudia: We had a number of house guests this weekend for our Thanksgiving and one of the guests asked me where were all our clocks? They said they needed a clock but they couldn’t see any clocks anywhere. I realised we really don’t have that many, there’s one on the stove I think.  Anyway this person was really concerned and said that they live by the clock and they needed to know what time it was, but we have no clocks, and I prefer it that way.

Melody: There’s actually an anxiety that comes up in people when they don’t know what time it is, and if you become aware of it, you can start to ask yourself what am I afraid of?  You step into that discomfort, you allow yourself to actually feel it, instead of running away from it or saying, let me just find out what time it is so that I don’t have to feel this feeling. You actually allow yourself to feel that feeling. Then you say to yourself, “Ok this is making me feel uncomfortable to not know what time it is; what an arbitrary thing to feel uncomfortable about. But why am I feeling so uncomfortable, what am I actually afraid of; what might actually go wrong if I don’t know what time it is?”

You might figure out that it’s totally a ridiculous fear, but you’ll never become aware of it until you are actually willing to feel that discomfort and question it.

Tony: Do you think that the whole time hang-up is possibly from thinking that the next minute will be better, or wondering about what am I supposed to be doing in the next minute?  We never look at the clock to see what time it was.

Claudia: Yes, maybe it has to do with that living in the future. I’m wondering if people who are obsessed with time are more of the future trippers; yes that’s it, I think you are right, that they are  thinking the next moment is going to better?

Tony: Let’s ask the expert Melody Fletcher!

Melody: Definitely, they are not living in the moment; they are living in the future. For most people it’s not thinking that it could be better, but rather they are thinking that something will go wrong. They won’t get it all done and they have to fit it all in; thinking oh no, it 5 o’clock and I’m still meant to this, this, and this and I should be doing that instead and so on. It’s a fear; it’s a real fear, which is why, just as with your house guest, it’s an anxiety that comes up around time.  A lot of people have a tremendous amount of anxiety around time.

Tony: I just had a major breakthrough with, believe it or not, television. We are getting rid of our television programming and the programs they want us to watch when they want us to watch them. With this new programming and its different services, you can watch anything you want, at anytime. I just felt, OMG, now it’s up to me to take control over what I want to watch, when I want to watch it, and if I want to watch it. In the past I could only watch what they wanted me to watch when they wanted me to watch it. So do you know what I find myself doing; watching nothing!

I haven’t taken on the responsibility of decision and choice that I can watch whatever I want when I want to watch it. It is so disconcerting that it’s on me now that I’m now not interested in watching it anymore. So, what’s up with that?

Melody: Rather than being disconcerted about it, I think it’s absolutely beautiful because before you may have been watching things that you didn’t even what to watch, just because you were afraid that you’d miss out on them.

Claudia: Right!

Melody: What if you wanted to watch them later but can’t and now you can watch it anytime you want, you might be discovering that you don’t really want to watch most of that stuff.

Tony: The only thing that I can watch in real time now is CNN and it’s just the same old regurgitated stuff. It’s a great conundrum!

Melody: Yes, but it’s a freedom.

Tony: Responsibility and freedom is scary!

Claudia: If you were to predict the future, and let’s say that everybody gets that Melody Fletcher knows what she’s talking about here and they all understand The Law of Attraction, they understand Deliberate Receiving, they are on this track, do you see that there will be this timelessness that will happen to us as humans if we evolve in that direction? Will we experience what you experienced in Peru, when you had that out of time experience? Do you think that all humans are capable of it? If we live this life of making choices and of being happy and creating timelessness for ourselves, is that going to be where we can be?

Melody: To tell you the truth, I think we are a long way off because for me personally, there is great value in linear time. We can definitely get to a certain point, but I have no idea when as a whole for humanity. Everybody can direct this for themselves and decide that this is what they want to move into, and then they can start moving into that direction. I think as a planet we are moving more and more into that direction, and you see that as evidence by the fact that people are starting to make choices in their programming or, for example, their work schedules.

A lot of people are starting to work from home, working with schedules that are their own, creating their own hours; that’s happening more and more. I think we will move towards a space where it is going to be all about trusting your inspiration and meeting up with people, not because you’ve made an appointment, but because it’s just the right time and you just happen to meet. You go to a cafe and there’s your friend, and now you have a great conversation. Musicians coming together and suddenly there’s a concert spontaneously and people are drawn to it. That is what I see happening more, rather than us moving into a space where time has no meaning.

I have experienced it and I’m not sure how I would ever use it. I think that was a teaching moment for me, not necessarily a state I want to live in. I’m not sure how useful that would be to jump around in time. We can place our focus on different points in time and we can jump around that way but I’m not sure how useful it would be to live life like that. Maybe that’s just my own limitation, because maybe there are people on this planet right now who can very much see that in a useful way.

Tony: Well, we don’t have watches but we have run out of time. This has been The Going Home with Tony Show with Melody Fletcher at Deliberate Receiving.  We could start taking these lessons and putting them into real time, but there’s one thing we cannot deny and that is that we have had this conversation, and the foundation of change starts with speaking about it.

Melody we really want to thank you for your time because we know it is valuable. We are really very deeply appreciative of you.

Claudia: We want to remind our listeners that Tony and I, at the end of each episode that we are with you Melody, we talk about it for days and days. You are so inspirational and eye-opening. You allow people to really think about other possibilities. I really believe that our listeners will gain value from you.

Tony: And us.

Claudia: I would highly suggest that people go to Melody’s website: www.melodyfletcher.com You can also find her on Facebook as well. Her blog on her website is fascinating; you just never want to stop reading it. You learn, and you see people asking questions and she’ll answers these questions. You can go to her You Tube page and watch her videos where she answers readers’ questions and she’s just fascinating.  And Tony is right; we are really grateful for you.

Tony: You’re a cool girl Melody!

Melody: And I am grateful for you guys! Thank you so much.

Tony: Love you.

Melody: Love you too.

Tony: Wait, you didn’t say it back, you said you too! Hehe.

Melody: I did! OMG Tony; needy much! Hehe. Love you!

Claudia: And next time we get together we are going to talk about being needy! Hehe.

Melody: There we go! Hehe. “Love Me!!” Hehe.

Claudia: Thank you Melody; that was awesome.

Melody: Thank you guys, that was great.

Claudia: Bye Melody.

Melody: Bye.