Colette Baron-Reid | Transcript
Nancy Rush
Welcome Colette. I'm so excited to have you here. Let me briefly introduce you before we jump into our conversation, which is going to be fabulous. I already know that it's going to be great. I was dancing to your music. I love it. We had to get something sort of upbeat, but kind of set the tone.
So there are moments in our journey when we sense the edges of what we've known, and beyond them, the field of possibility that calls us forward. And today, we're going to step into that field together. Our guide is somebody whose work has touched millions, weaving intuition, creativity, and the unseen currents that shape our lives. She is a visionary, a teacher, and a bridge between worlds, inviting us to create from alignment rather than from effort, from soul rather than strain.
Please join me in welcoming Colette Baron-Reid as we explore what it means to rewire for success and step fully into the energetics of manifestation for soul-led business growth. So excited.
Well, to kick us off, I'd love to talk about rewiring for success, especially for leaders who've been taught that more effort equals more results. What does that mean?
Colette Baron-Reid
Obviously we know that hustle culture is something we've all been indoctrinated and conditioned for, right? So we are conditioned for more, we're conditioned for productivity, and we're actually set up that way. There's very little like rest. Who rests, right? It's been almost like a badge of honor to say "I'm too busy."
And when it comes to business, and especially for entrepreneurs - because that's been my specialty is working with people who are entrepreneurs - there comes a point where you actually lose sight of the essence of what you're actually trying to create. And so we've reached a point where now the discussion is, it's now in the zeitgeist that actually hustling isn't the way. And it is a very masculine... And again, when I talk words like masculine, feminine, I've got no attachment to any kind of ism, right? It's just true. Like feminine is receptive and it's intuitive and it's cyclical and organic, and masculine is driven. It's forward motion. We need both, right?
But if we're only doing this and expanding, then there's no space for cultivating or for incubating when we actually need space in that movement in order for us to actually have access to what the next thing would be, for example. Because if we keep doing what we did, we're going to get what we got, we're going to burn out. We don't want to tell anybody because that's also a shameful thing, right? "Oh, you can't burn out. It'll never happen to me. You can't burn out. Look at them." You know what I mean? There's a sense of, "I don't do this. This will happen." There's consequences.
So we can't really change what has been so built in to a system that is doing its own thing right now. So this is one of the reasons - and you were in my DreamQuest mastermind, so you know that we talk a lot about "both and." Understanding and recognizing the integrity, even of something that doesn't work, and say, "Okay, I get you're there. I get you exist. I get that. But over here is something else. And how do I bridge the gap between this and that, right?"
And so that's really where all the stuff that I do comes in, where oracles come in, where art comes in as a bridge maker, as an opportunity to actually rewire. Because the brain is a receiver as well as it's a transmitter. So we can talk more about that in a second, but I think that's something worth diving into to understand why we talk about rewiring and why it's not just an organic blob of tissue in your head, that there's something much more going on.
Nancy Rush
You put some really amazing things in there and just for shameless self-plugging for you, DreamQuest was an amazing adventure, completely life altering. I would highly, highly, highly recommend it. I just had to say that.
But I love this idea that the idea of slowing down and creating spaciousness, because I think people are so conditioned to just go, go, go and especially in business when it does lead to that burnout, to that stress. And I love this idea of that doing less can actually create more, which kind of guides me into this idea here which leads a little bit into your book which I can't wait to see when it comes out.
You know, visionary leaders, they know manifestation conceptually, right? But applying it in business can feel a little slippery. Where do they lose alignment and how can they return to that creative flow?
Colette Baron-Reid
First let's talk about why the word slippery is accurate, right? Because there's also an expectation that when we talk about visionary leaders and we talk about business, we typically put the woo in the closet or we're... unless we can dress it up like, well, quantum physics or neuroscience, which I'm a total nerd. So I travel between all those. I always say that I live at the corner of fringe and main.
But you know, so I think that when we lose the track, it's still because we are trying to control an outcome. Manifestation is something that people are attracted to initially because they need certainty. Let's actually just go there because everybody does that.
You know, I teach another class, I don't think you ever took it, called The Spirit of Your Business, right? So it's a very successful class that I launched a few years ago just because I'm an animist and I'm like, "Well, what if we talk to the business and see what it did?" And then I started coaching. I only coach founders of companies now. And we talk about, "Okay, well, you've lost touch with the fact that this is a living organic thing that you are in partnership with, right? You can't force it to go somewhere or create an outcome."
We lose the plot, all of us do, when we think that we're going to be outcome driven and that manifestation is about thinking our way or wishing our way or grabbing our way and demanding our way into an outcome that we think is the correct one. And then when we've set something in motion, because intention is everything, and then all of a sudden we're on a detour, we immediately get scared or we get angry or we get like, "Wait, this isn't what I expected or wanted." And we're led somewhere else. But the essence of where we're being led is exactly what we're asking for.
So we lose the plot mostly because no one has taught you or talked about this at any length. And that's where I really started going last year about like, "Well, none of us..." Even when we do artistic collages or whatever, like everybody knows what a vision board is and don't poo-poo it because they work. Don't poo-poo the woo-woo, right? But they work in ways that are strange because it might show up for you years later because you're still thinking about the form of that one thing, but the essence of it comes tomorrow and it's staring you in the face, but you won't recognize it because you're so hung up on the form that you think is the right form.
So it's about learning to be in a dance of start with desire. It's okay to have a form. We have to see something. We want an outcome. "I'm going to make this much money in this" or whatever it is, "serve this many clients, make my business this."
I'll tell you something years ago... You know, I had a bestselling book called The Map and it was in 27 languages. It was number one for three whole days. I took pictures and then it just died. It just didn't go anywhere. But I have the pictures. But anyway, so...
And I had come to a place in my own life where I was starting to look back on what worked, what didn't work. And I had been so - I'll use myself as an example - I'd been so doggedly pursuing a career in the arts. You know, I'd always been an artist, in this case, a recording artist. And I chased that one thing, including the name of the record company. I wanted it to be Capitol Records. And I saw this whole thing about getting the deal, blah, blah, blah. And I literally chased that thing for my whole life.
And my day job was the easiest thing. And I had a huge chip on my shoulder. I didn't want to tell anybody. I'm university educated. I was in law school. And a singer-songwriter is cool, but psychic is weird. You know, don't offend anybody. My parents, you know what I'm saying. So I'd be like, "That is..." It's super French because I've been doing it for 36 years, right? So it's a long time. Back then, this was not okay. Now it's mainstream. But anyhow, I digress.
So that was just the thing I kept doing. And I would tell people, "I don't really do this. I'm really a singer. Don't come back next year." And they're like, "I won't be here." And of course, I was still there. And I kept failing miserably at music, thinking that I was a failure. And yet, I was flown all over the world. Somebody actually flew from Ireland to my house because they needed an in-person session with me. People gave them my phone number out. I had clients in 29 countries when there was no internet. People gave my phone number out in like dinner tables and airports, like "over here, this person." And I literally counted that. And that's not what I wanted.
But of course, thank God I wasn't that stupid. I kept saying, "Well, okay, I'm not going to do anything to make this happen." And it happened. I was doing it for six years. There was no internet. We didn't even have cell phones. This seriously... So this is no bullshit. This is what happened. And I kept getting the door slammed in my face, but that was the only thing I was chasing. And I thought was valuable. That was the validity of my life was there. And this thing that was happening in spite of me with all the chips on my shoulder that could build a whole mountain, you know, whatever it is... it was just the most natural thing. And because it wasn't a hustle...
I came from European parents that were immigrants, that you worked hard. And if you aren't working hard, it doesn't have value. And if you're not busting your ass and becoming a professor or a doctor or a lawyer, you don't have any value. So I'm like, "Well, this is too easy. This is like, forget this." You know what I mean? So meanwhile, I'm a walking proof of two entire...
Now, that said, I quit music and then got a record deal when I didn't want one. And it was Capitol Records, which was actually EMI Music. I got absolutely everything I wanted. 20 years later, while I was 40 years old, I had recorded a New Age thing, meditation CD that went to number one in Canada because there was nothing like it. And my partner at the time, Dina Mullen, was an incredible marketing person. And we got it to number one in Canada. It was bizarre. And head of Universal Music heard it, told the head of EMI, I got invited there and they offered me a record deal. It was like that. But guess what? I hated it.
Nancy Rush
Did you?
Colette Baron-Reid
Oh, when they found out how old I was, because I look really young. I'm 67, right? So I looked when I was 40, I looked 22, right? And then when they found out how old I was, that was all the music business talked about. "EMI Music takes a risk on a mature artist" because if you're over 28, they won't talk to you. So the whole thing...
You know, anyway, here's the point that I'm trying to make. We don't really know what's best for us. What we need to break down is the feeling. So going all the way back to the question that you asked me, I am going to get to the point. When you said, like, where do you get misaligned in some way? It's because you don't know how you want to feel, right? Like, you've got to drill down to, like, if this thing that I say I want is... What is it that I want to... how do I want to feel as a result of receiving it or building it or making it or having it or whatever? And that's the thing that we rehearse. Not the lack. Because lack will cause a lot. We will send the ripple out into the field and the universe goes, "Oh, they want more lack. Let's give them that."
Nancy Rush
Oh, my gosh. I'm seeing this pattern over and over and over again. I think that was one of the most powerful things that I learned in DreamQuest, which was this idea of letting go the attachment to the timing and letting go to the attachment to the specific outcome. And it took away... because I'd be up in my head making decisions. I remember you...
Colette Baron-Reid
Right.
Nancy Rush
And efforting. I know you remember I would be doing all of that. And then as soon as I finally got it and it did take me a while to really embrace that concept, it was like "Okay, now I can put it out there but I don't... I'm not so fixated on it and sometimes something even better would show up."
Colette Baron-Reid
Yes. Possibly. In vision, right? I have now what I show people how to do on the vision boards is we do everything by drawing now, which is my new thing. I had broken my foot and I had to figure some kind of artistic thing to do because I am a visual artist. I painted all my last oracle... I didn't paint for 30 years and one day I woke up and got obsessed with the paintbrush and off I went again. But anyhow, so after making a living at it when I was in my twenties.
But so I ended up learning this line technique and then, you know, doing all these different things like a class for seven year olds on YouTube and all this stuff and I'm like "Wait a sec, you can actually do a vision board with this." And what I realized was we need to focus on... and again I'm talking about a piece of art but in your life... what is your zone of synchronicity? We know what your zone of genius is, right? But the zone of synchronicity is in partnership with that. So you need to acknowledge that I don't know what's best. I think I know and I have a goal and there's nothing wrong with having a goal, but the intention is something much bigger than that. What are you serving?
Like when I ended up after The Map, which is very psychology based because I'm a total nerd and I read... science is my jam and I talk to dead people on the side, what can I tell you? That's my main gig, that's actually my... But the point that I'm trying to make is that I decided one day, I was like, "You know, my obsession since I was in my late teens was divination. I think I'm going to completely focus on that. And who makes a living on that?" And I just said to my husband, "I just know that that's the thing, this tiny little sliver. I believe that if I can bring in the intersection of all these ancient traditions, I could find a modern version of this that could really help people navigate their lives." And he's like, "Well, okay."
And then I ended up building a multimillion dollar brand off of that one idea. But I, again, I didn't set out to do that. I set out to... I listened to my calling and I followed it without any attachment. But then my husband got involved, ran the business, and then he became... he's the businessman. Like I... but it was just...
I only say that... And I say that it's a multimillion dollar business, not to toot my own horn at all. Because I still wake up going, "How the hell did this happen?" It's because I want your listeners or your viewers here to remember that whatever it is that is calling you, it is yours to communicate with. And if you listen to it, it will talk to you. And if your business needs something from you, learn how to listen to it. There's a pulse in it. It's a living thing that you are stewarding.
So, you know, I believe that we are here as emissaries of a conscious universe, right? Some, if you're spiritually inclined, you can say, spirit... we're here to allow spirit to experience itself in form because it doesn't have a form. It doesn't have a beingness. It's a consciousness. It needs a person to have an experience. It needs lots of persons, right? And then it gives us free reign to make whatever kind of mud pie we want. But half the world is making some serious mud right now, right?
Rather than stare at all that and wring your hands, listen to the pulse of what you're in alignment with and say, "What do you need from me?" And it may often say, "I need you to go take a break. I need you to slow down. I need you to stop chasing the people" and saying "they're not there." Like canceling something.
I had a... many years ago when I had my first school, the Master Intuitive Coach Institute was back in 2011, I think 2010. Anyway, long time ago. And I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. I attracted a load of people. You know, I'm a... Anyway, bottom line is one day because my book was a bestseller, too, because The Map had come out. And I thought, "Oh, I'm hot stuff, right? People are going to come. They're going to..." And so the woman who had invited me in Maine, we were living in New Hampshire at the time. And we just left Sedona and she said "Come on now. I think we can get 150, 200 people. You've got to come out."
Well, she calls me the day before and says "We have 12 people."
Nancy Rush
Oh my gosh.
Colette Baron-Reid
Okay, so I would a) make no money, b) it was snowing like crazy outside and I was going to say absolutely not, I'm not going for 12 people. But something went inside me said "You go. You go there and you be there with these people. You show up for them. Doesn't matter. You're not going to be..." And sure enough, it was one of my best workshops. And 10 out of the 12 people signed up for an $8,000 coaching program. I didn't even sell it to them. I just mentioned it. "Oh, by the way, I'm doing this thing." And they all signed up. Well, actually, not everybody signed up for the full thing. But at the end of the day, it ended up going from "It's going to cost me to get there" to being... you know what I'm saying... to not changing lives because those people changed other people's lives as a result of coming.
It's not about the money. That's the other thing. It can never just be about the money. It has to be about "I'm here to serve. Let's surprise me. Surprise me, universe." And when you can do that, wow.
Nancy Rush
I love that. I love so much that you talk about the business as a living entity, because that's something I speak about a lot in my work and having that experience of really inviting that co-creation in. A, it's so much more fun because you're not doing it all by yourself. And you have a partner in crime, so to speak, you know, so I like that a whole lot better. But this idea, too, of being in service, like really...
Like when I started this company three years ago before I was a solopreneur, as you know. And then I started this company because I wanted to have an environment where people like me could come and thrive and flourish and let our woo hang out. And it's still really grounded and still... But the thing that's been so profound is that from the get-go, not that I wasn't in service before, but it's like one of our guiding principles is...
And it's been... it's the thing that's gotten me through the bumps. You know what I'm saying? Like when the clients haven't been coming in or money's been a little tight or there's been something that's happened with one of our platforms, you know, it's like that holding that vision and then just trusting the process as I go through it so that... and listening to when it's like, "Hey, you need to take a step back and slow down. It's like now is not the time to push more" like all the things you just said, all those insights that you gave us.
Colette Baron-Reid
Right. And I love that you brought that up too and I love that you're doing that. Boy oh boy, I know it sounds like I'm your mom but I'm so proud of you. It's so exciting for you to see this. You have no idea.
But, you know, you're right. And the other thing is when we get offline, we will all fall asleep at the wheel, and that's the other thing. There is no perfection in this game. You are going to fall asleep. You are going to fall prey to spiritual narcolepsy. You will forget that hustling doesn't work or pushing against something doesn't work because we are constantly, constantly barraged, especially now with the way algorithms work, like how the entire world is served up to us and our agency is being sucked out of us for the most part. And I'm not a conspiracy person, but I just need a pair of eyes to see it and some maturity as an elder. What's happening to those young people? Right?
But the truth is, is that it's okay because you know, "Oh, this other thing really worked for me. I want to just... I'll sneak a little hustle in there." "Ah, it didn't work. Okay, for sure. There we go back again." And we don't stay there long. So it is a dance and it's not a perfect dance, but we know... we're so uncomfortable in the old way. When we go back there, we get out like a hot potato. We're off. But it's good for us to be reminded that this is a daily... we get a daily reprieve one day at a time. You know what I mean? Like when we are at it and in one... and during the day, you might just get super overwhelmed.
Like I remember in June, all this stuff around... and I'm not... I'm very apolitical when it comes to groups. My mastermind has like half and half. Nobody knows who the other one votes for. Everybody signs the NDA. You're not allowed to tell each other because there's a lot of Americans in there. And they all get along like a house on fire. And I happen to know who's who. And I know that that's a social experiment that works.
So why did I even say that? Okay, so what was I saying just before that that was important? Oh yes, okay. So when all this stuff about Gaza came up, so that's what I mean. Like I typically don't talk about hot button issues, you know, when we're in groups, because everybody has opinions. But I mean, come on... like I see these pictures of these kids that are starving, you know, and so I'm in... at the time I was in Europe for two months and I was beside myself. I just couldn't snap out of it. And I realized that there was nothing but the ability for me just to be present and to recognize that my powerlessness was true and that there wasn't anything. And it was a complete ego thing for me to think that anything that I may do or say is going to make a difference. I had to find a way to make a difference.
And in the end, what happened that day is I went into the town, and we were in this tiny town in Portugal, and I saw a street person. I'm like, "You know what? This person here I can feed." Do you know what I'm saying? It's like when you think of things on behalf of the whole, and then you don't feel like you have no agency. Because everything that we see reminds us that we have no power or agency or sovereignty. Because we're saying, "See that? You can't do anything about that." And we're sitting there, we know. It's devastating. But we have to bring ourselves back. Where can I be of service? So our business is the same. Where can I be of service? You can't be all things to all people.
Nancy Rush
No, I think that's such a relevant and really valid point to bring up because we are witnessing many situations like what's happening with Israel and with Gaza and all of that. And there are many other things happening in the world. And I know myself as well, and many of my clients have the same reaction, which is we feel powerless to help or to support. But for me too, what I have found is that looking for the places where I can serve, where I can support... And I trust in that ripple effect because you do not know... like you don't know the extent of your ripple effect.
So there's a movie called The Old Guard. I don't know if you saw it.
Colette Baron-Reid
Yes. I love that. Right.
Nancy Rush
So the very short premise of the movie, if you haven't seen it, is that they are immortal. And every time they get killed, they come back to life. They're basically killing all the bad guys and they get killed and come back to life. But the whole premise of it is, is that there's a gentleman that researches her whole life, like hundreds of years. And he's mapped out all the ripple effect that she's had. And she's at a point where she feels like it's futile. You know, it's useless what she's doing. And he's like, "No, he's like, look... this person that went to third generation and became a doctor that invented, I don't know, penicillin and so on and so forth."
And I just love that because it's like, we don't know what our ripple effect is, but every step we take to embracing that ripple effect and just taking action, it's like, how could it not? And because we're part of a collective, how could it not affect things, right? And I think that going back to... now you are...
Colette Baron-Reid
Something is echoing. Oh, did you change it? Okay.
Nancy Rush
So when we go back to the conversation we started with, which is around manifesting in terms of your business, for example, right? And you want certain outcomes, et cetera. You know, we can become... we don't realize that even the temporary emptiness is there because we think "I'm not going to get that thing done, that won't get..." but we don't realize that maybe that day where you didn't have clients, that you went out and smiled at somebody who was about to commit suicide and then you wouldn't have gone there. Like, you know, like you wouldn't have done those things. Like, we don't know.
We have to... I really feel like I've stopped second guessing it. I... you know, like I get... I still get frustrated when something doesn't happen the way I want it to. That's, I think that's just human nature. Plus my Mars is in Aries. I have a terrible... my astrology chart... I got Cancer. I got... oh, where are my... where's my blankets? Where are my people to love? You know, there's a sense of, right. You know, like what is... what's available, what's coming instead of this then? What do I need to be aware of as I step forward? As I step into this, where am I being called?
That doesn't have a... because business is about making a living. You are making a service that provides you with money. Money pays for your... this is the system we live in. You can't deny that. Right? And so it's part of the conversation and part... like how are you going to... you've got to pay the bills and feed your family and do all of that stuff too. But...
We don't know when that's going to come from. Like yesterday, I got an email. I was just saying to my husband, "Oh," I said to him, "We're $1,000 short on this thing. Oh, well, I was off by this and whatever." And don't I get an email from EMI Music... from... is now Universal Music. Seriously, from 2014. I didn't cash these checks. I borrowed these checks from my first album in 2001. We had $674 for me in U.S. bonds, which in Canada is $1,100, right? And it was like... So it was just kind of like, "Okay, those are my little God shots." Right? It's just we always get what we need.
And when it comes to our businesses, we have to... they are not different. They are our vehicle to bring our potential in real form to others. And it's going to have an organic life. And sometimes the span ends and it's time for something new. And you have to know when that is. But it'll be so obvious to you. It's not going to be just a few clients that things slow down. The pivot comes when you're going to know. And you have to trust the pulse that you... if you don't learn to listen to it, you won't know.
Nancy Rush
Well, that's what I was going to say to that point was if you're in co-creation and consciously actively talking with the business, the business is going to be bringing you signs, if you will, that, you know, things may need to pivot or maybe this is... you've completed this particular journey and there's something else. Right? But if you're not listening and you're focused on efforting...
And I think a lot of people, when stuff starts to kind of not be aligned, they just start to push harder. And I know that. Right? You need to step back and come into rebalancing, recalibration. Like what is really the business and you, you know, where are your... where's your passion?
Colette Baron-Reid
You know, I love that in my... the Spirit of Your Business training course that I have. One of the things that we do is we ask for the spirit of the business to show up in a boardroom. Right? And in they come and I... And the people come up with the wildest things, wildest things. Right? And they'll go, "Oh, my God, it was this thing. And then this happened and that happened." And I'm like, "Okay, and then what happened?" And then they'll say, "Well, like in my case, I had mine told me to basically burn down my business." I was like, "I didn't want this before I started teaching." And I'm like, "Oh, my God, I can't teach this to people. This is scary. What is this? This is all wrong."
Sure enough, because then I sat with that, going like, "What's it saying to me if I'm willing to let all this go?" And that's exactly what I did. I ended up with... I had a 20 person team. I had gone to Hay House just to ask them... ask them for their guidance about finding a partner who could run the business for me, like a management team. But I said, "You know, you guys would be the perfect partner, but you would never do something like that." And they're like, "Wait a second. Well, maybe we would." And sure enough, they took over. Right? And then that was what I had to do. I had to burn it down, let it all go. Right?
So I was like, "I got to teach people how to do this because this is manifesting on steroids." But you have to listen. And the wildest stuff will come up and you have to learn how to interpret it. Right? So it's like, "Okay, what is this? What... this... what could this mean?" And you won't know right away. Sometimes it'll take you two to three weeks. The business will tell you, "I need you to do this. This isn't right. I need you to do this or I need you not to do..." Right? So it's a very wild thing.
And it sounds to me like you're already doing something similar. But, you know, there is... if you treat your business like it is your partner, the spirit of the business is your partner and you're not doing it by yourself.
One of the... actually people in DreamQuest, two DreamQuest ago, had done the... because everybody goes to Spirit of Your Business as well as part of the mastermind. And she was really scared to offer what she was, you know, this new business. And so when she talked about it in the room, I'm like, "Okay... you're really choking up here." And so I said, "Let's bring spirit of the business into the room and let it stand on stage and talk to the people in the audience about you." And it was like, "Oh my God." And I said, "Well, where do you think the spirit of this business lives in you too? Like you... you can let it through your mouth."
Nancy Rush
That's beautiful.
Colette Baron-Reid
Your life. Right? So it's the way in which we make relate... I relate to how we... and that actually rewires your brain. So I want to go back again right to the very beginning. We talk about rewiring. Right? So why is everything we've talked about helpful in rewiring the way we see the world?
So one very specific part of the brain, which was a huge piece in the research that we did for The Art of Manifesting, which is my book that's coming out September 23rd. And it's about a drawing practice. And that anybody can do. You don't have to be an artist at all. It actually looks gorgeous even if you think you can't draw. It's actually great at the end. You'll be so shocked. Everybody makes something nice. But anyway, so what happened was, you know, the reticular activating system of the brain is the sorter, right? Is the sorter.
And I first learned about it from my colleague, Dr. Bruce Lipton, in his book, The Biology of Belief. And because he said, you know, there's so much stimuli in the outer world, we would go mad if we were processing everything that we could possibly experience or tune into. There's just one part of the brain whose job it is, is to confirm what you believe to be true by taking your eyeballs and lighting up the world and going, "See that over there? See that? You've been rehearsing that in your head. I'm going to show you. You have a relationship to the outer world, this and that."
And we don't realize that if we're constantly in fight, flight, freeze and looking for potential threats, we're going to keep seeing the threats, threat, threat, threat. But if we're looking for co-creation and if we are... if we are calmer and we're curious. And he said, "Oh, I wonder." And I'm holding space for the truth that spirit is my partner. My business is my partner. And the universe is active through me that for the highest good, it's going to show me what my next step will be. And sure enough, it'll light up the runway.
And because it... It's a two-way street. Whatever you feed it and rehearse it with, that part of the sorting system goes, "Oh, they only want to see that. We're just going to like, okay, we're going to scan and we're going to enter synchronicity too because synchronicity is the meaningful coincidences." It may not be directly around the corner from you, but you are now in alignment with that energy and you are broadcasting to the universe through your thoughts because the brain is a receiver and a transmitter like a radio and then the sorting system, the reticular activating system of the brain is going to take your eyes and go "only look here, look over here" and...
When you draw a symbol, and again, it can be rudimentary. This is what my book talks about is that just by making circles and wavy lines and deciding and making the intention that when I take my arm and I make a scratch here, and I say that represents something else, it's the ritual of making something from nothing. Right? And then the brain goes, "Oh, okay. They put the intention into this page, this piece of paper, and they are making it mean that" just like on the cave walls, those... you know, the pictograms and all of that. That was the pre-hunt pictures. They asked, they called in a successful hunt. They called the rain to manifest. They did the picture before, right? So it's like, "Oh, I make this symbol before." That's what a sigil is. A sigil is a magical... which we taught you how to do too in the book. It's like you make a sigil. This thing becomes like magnetic. It's like you say, "Ah, this is what this means." And even if it's two, three years later, this thing is going to happen because everything starts to shape itself around it. Then you see it. Then you see the outcome, but the essence, not necessarily the... like they may have wanted 10 stags, but they got four lions, a baboon, and a stag. You know what I'm saying?
Nancy Rush
Well, it made me think as you're talking about it earlier when you made reference to it's the feeling that is most important when you were talking about manifesting. And I remember doing those sigils. I remember the first, because I cannot draw. I'm terrible. And, you know, you and Jill and everybody else would be creating these beautiful sigils. And I'm like, "Yeah, I think that's a spiral, I think." But it was more the feeling of what I was creating. Even though it wasn't, in my eye, it wasn't exactly beautiful. It didn't matter because I was encoding it with the frequency.
Colette Baron-Reid
Yes. Oh... coding it, that's exactly right. So why can't it be great? It doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing to have meaning and have a code in it, right? And you know, it just doesn't... it just needs to be there. It just needs to exist as a symbol of the other, right? It's a metaphor, a symbol. It's a symbol. It's a ritualistic thing that we do to create a symbol that matches something in a... you know, if you call it a different dimension or in the invisible, because everything is created in the invisible before it's created in the visible. Even like, even this fabulous Crate and Barrel desk I'm on had to be thought of by somebody, right? Somebody had to think about that and get the idea for this beautiful thing. It's like, "Oh, what if I did this?" So it's like it had to come from somewhere. And it's not generated always by the memory, especially when you do something new. That's received. It's not generated from in here. It's received through here.
Nancy Rush
Yeah, because it's like if you're creating from the past, you're just going to get more of the past, right, versus receiving something new. And I'm curious, you mentioned the word invisible. Is that akin to the quantum, taking this a little bit...
Colette Baron-Reid
The invisible is the quantum. So well, actually, quantum is not woo at all. Actually, quantum is science. The woo is spirit, right? So yes, it is the quantum and it's measurable. Don't forget, there's an entire huge swath of science that... I mean, so many prominent scientists have signed the Manifesto for Post-Materialist Science, which talks about consciousness as being fundamental to all of life, right? So there's a huge section of the scientific community now that sees this whole thing as not woo, right? Materialism is old, right? It's post-materialism, right? They just haven't figured out exactly what it means. But yeah, it is the quantum.
So if you imagine that the quantum field is filled with kind of like invisible maps of potentiality and you're pulling one down from there and then it can be created into form and you receive it. It's like you download the map.
One of the things that I want to bring up now is like for people who are using ChatGPT in their businesses, or thinking that they're having these great spiritual conversations with these AIs, which I'm here to tell you you're not. They're just very, very good at sycophantic spiritual language and knows everything that's going to make us want to go, "Ooh, you're special." But it is an artifact of us. We have recreated ourselves. Everything that we already know, it's nothing new in us. So if you are cycling through that, use it only as a jumping off point for new ideas and not as the end result or not, "Oh, I'll let ChatGPT do all of this" because it's really important.
And I am not anti-AI. I have trained in AI like for months and my husband's an AI fanatic and we really get what this is and what this is not, especially when people are just starting out using it and they use it in business. So just remember, it's only going to show you what's already there.
Nancy Rush
Yeah. It's a great distinction because it's really true. And if you think of it as all of humanity's experiences as this collective. It's like AI represents, because it draws from all the collective experience, right? And the only way it gets anything new is if somebody inputs something new.
Colette Baron-Reid
That's right.
Nancy Rush
But if somebody's just co-creating and relying on chat, well, then, like you said, nothing new is getting created. There is truly no uniqueness about it. And even though you think it's new...
Colette Baron-Reid
Right. So just again, because I'm pretty sure, you know, you've got all these people here that have businesses that have either started or have been doing it for a while or thinking about using it. Just know that it's a tool, but it's not the thing that's going to give you any sense of innovation. It's going to be... it'll be a great springboard, but it's not where you're going to get it from. And so... and so right now, where we are in terms of business, in terms of the quantum, in terms of... we need a human being as the intermediary, right? You need yourself, you know, you need to tune in and receive not from a machine, but from a download that may come to you. You say to your business, "Okay, I don't know what to do now." And it doesn't show up as a vision. You go and you wash your dishes and you go for a walk and you're in the shower. And two days later, you're in another shower and all of a sudden, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom in the shower. Right. That's what we need. We can never... don't forget the shower.
Nancy Rush
It's so totally valid. I love it. It's so true. I think that it can be a useful partner because it can aggregate information really skillfully. And at the same time, it doesn't replace that unique creativity, that brilliance that human beings bring to the field. Right? So I think that's a good point.
Colette Baron-Reid
One of the reasons that this line art... and it's interesting because there's a lot of these meditative drawing practices out there. Zentangle, there's Intentional Creativity, there's Neurographica, there's Neurodoodles, there's all kinds of neuro arts because this is under the auspices of the neuro arts... like how do we use music, sound... hand... like hand to paper or anything that is artistic to... it works as a way for us to download and receive information because we get into a different zone. Even if the thing that we're making is... we think afterwards, "Oh, that's so ugly." Right? So it's the movement of the arm and the intention that you set down when you say "This paper represents the universe. This is what I'm... this is..." and I'm going to draw the... I'm going to scratch out my intention into the field, into the quantum, and it's now representing the quantum. You'll be so shocked.
I did this drawing... I'm dying to jump... I can hardly wait to... so I did this drawing... these are just little happy faces. This is party... we teach this in the book and I did this for Oracle School and if you look at... if you count all including the tiny little faces in the wings and whatever, there are 511 little circles. We had 507 people sign up and then... And then five more signed up to be... right? I'm like, "No, next time I got to do double the amount of circles." Like so uncanny.
Same thing. I did a drawing around a new apartment and... because we wanted a place in the city. And I mean, I'm just drawing it. I'm like, "Okay, the perfect place is in our lives. Thank you universe." And we kept seeing what we thought were perfect places. And we have incredibly... super clean... Like my business is robust. I have like really high... I'm like my realtor was saying "This is a ridiculous credit score" because I've never been late for a payment in my life. I'm neurotic. And then it's like... and we kept getting turned down. We saw three units that were fantastic.
And then I'm like "Screw that." So I'm like... I keep... I realize that you know I haven't really finished the drawing and so I kind of made this little thing and then I put a sun and the sun was... interestingly I put it in the east of the drawing like in that... this... so... because that's where... if I... if I see a lake because I saw water in front... sun over there... well that would mean it would be east where we are. Sure enough, I get a call out of the blue from a friend I haven't talked to in forever. She tells me about a building that's under construction. I'm like, "I'm not going to go to a building under construction." She goes, "No, no, no, it's almost finished. It's half of it's occupied. It's so cool." I said, "I never thought of going there." Sure enough, we walk in there. There's the unit. No one's lived in it. Thank you, universe. And then all of a sudden, kaboom, I see the lake, full, unobstructed view of the lake. Sun in the east. Of course. And then I had drawn a boardwalk and in front of this place, isn't there a boardwalk? And I didn't know there was one here. I'm like, "Wow, this stuff works." But I had to get very frustrated thinking... So these things can actually help you and have fun. The other thing is to have fun with your manifesting, have fun with it. It'll show up in the form that's right for you. Like, would I have left $675,000 from the universe from that? But I got $675 dollars. Right. Right. I'm happy. I have to be happy with what I got. Right. You know...
Nancy Rush
What's great about this is that to me, as you're kind of talking about it, how, you know, you're efforting and trying to find this perfect apartment and then getting turned down and you went back to drawing. And in my mind, that's like you're disconnecting the mental wheel. You're bypassing it altogether. There are times our intellect does not serve us. And you went completely into the form of creation and allowed, you know, short-circuiting the brain, so to speak, went into the form of creation. And then, of course, it manifested. Like, of course it did. And so I think this is what you actively teach in the book, right? I know you have like seven different pillars.
Colette Baron-Reid
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's kind of like a step by step guide of, you know, first also understanding what you're actually symbolically doing and getting over the need to be perfect or even an artist. No, you do not need to be an artist at all, not even vaguely to do this. Zip, nothing, right? You just go do it. And it's really cool. You know, like you can... you start to see like, "Oh, okay, well, you know, I made this thing and it doesn't matter that I made the thing. It's how I felt about it." Because we have a... and actually I'm going to give something for all you guys to do. So the simplest, most easiest thing to do is called gratitude circles.
And the idea is to get stupefied by gratitude. So I'm going to start by showing you this drawing, right? So the idea is that all you do is take a pen and fill a small thing with circles and they do not need to be perfect. As a matter of fact, they shouldn't be because you get... you get to make all these really cool things inside it after you just fill up the paper and when you do it you just say "Thank you." You pick the thing you want in advance. Just say "Oh my god, thank you so much."
Now, some people have a hard time because they think there's a disconnect because they don't believe that the thing is available to them, right? So I say... so what I do is when I get into that headspace, I remember what it felt like because I had lost one of my dogs to brain cancer. And the next little dog that I got, I didn't realize how heartbroken I was until I saw her. And when I went to pick her up, it was like two hours... it was like a long way to go. Anyways, she was right there and when I smelled her little puppy breath and she kissed my face and I smelled her head, I was in this awe like "Ahh" and I know parents feel like they want a newborn baby. So puppies, kittens, newborn babies, whatever it is, remember the feeling and then say "Thank you for that" and say, "This feeling represents this." So since I don't want to think about getting the thing, I'm just going to keep saying thank you for this experience. And that will match this. It's an amazing thing.
So all you do is draw, draw, draw. And then you make tiny little bubbles between the bigger circles. And those are what's called gratitude bubbles. And you just keep going even in like... see, these are like imperfect circles, right? So you want to put these little round things in between and ends up looking like cells, right?
Nancy Rush
It does. You know what I love about it is you don't have to... like somebody like me that really cannot draw, I can draw a circle and I can draw circles within the circles. I look at them like I could do that, right? So... or is it just basically that because like you said if you're thinking of something that brings you that happiness, it's a frequency, right, that you're emitting?
Colette Baron-Reid
Yes. Okay. And you... you're tuning into your... you're emanating, you're telling the universe "I want this. Whatever matches that in the subject that I want to get going on. That's how I want to feel that." Right? And I'm like... and we do it until we get stupefied in gratitude and you get high doing this.
Nancy Rush
Yeah.
Colette Baron-Reid
Completely gazooed. And it's like, and you're like, "Where's my stress again? Like, what am I worrying about? Oh, whatever." And then you come back and then you get a phone call and something happens and it's the most uncanny thing. And to be honest with you, I'm not 100% sure how it works, but it just does. Right? I mean, I do know all the science behind it, but I am... I'm just as stupefied by the quantum as the scientists who study it. And, but I know it's real.
Nancy Rush
Oh, yeah. Yeah. You'll get a kick out of this. My son majored in... for his master's. He did quantum physics. And so he's perfect. He's working for a startup company now, but doing quantum for them. And it's like he brings me these concepts and tries to explain them to me. And I'm like, "I get the frequency of what you're saying. I have no idea intellectually what you're talking about, but I get it from that perspective." Right?
Colette Baron-Reid
I know I took a course from Nassim Haramein. He's really... don't hold it against him for anybody, but I shouldn't have said that, but poo poo poo. But anyway, he's this quantum scientist and I had to quit because it was too hard. Like I managed to get through the first two sections of the class. And then afterwards I was like... I was with all these like super smarty pants and they're talking over my head. And I'm like, "I have to go now. I can't do this. I don't want my money back. One day I'll come back." But he's done it. Him and Gregg Braden work together a lot on things. And anyway, I have digressed in so many different arenas now. But that's okay.
Nancy Rush
And I love that you gave us something tactical that we can actually put into practice. I think that that's such an easy thing because you're so right. The frequency is everything. And whatever you're putting out into the universe, you're asking for it to come back. So it's... and I think sometimes getting us out of our minds just by the simple act of drawing... it's funny because, you know, all those years that I did DreamQuest with you and we did the sigils and I must have had like 50 sigils by the time it was done. And even though I'm not much of an artist, the resonance that they have... they were so much a product of my desires in my... you know, my higher frequencies. And I loved to look at them. I mean, as we moved, but I mean, I loved looking at it because every time I'd be like, "Oh," and you know, you had us writing all the thank yous and all the gratitude in there. And so it was all that beautiful little coding in there. So, but to me, the circles are like an easy, easy way to get out there.
Colette Baron-Reid
Yes. And uncannily, it works for everybody. It just works. It just works.
Nancy Rush
I see an art notebook in my future.
Colette Baron-Reid
Good, I'll get you one. And by the way... What's really exciting for me is that we had all these interviews lined up for the book. You are the first one that I've done. I'm super excited because it's very meaningful for me, especially since I've known you for a while, and to see where you got to from when you started in DreamQuest. I mean, you worked for it, though. Let's be honest. I mean, you did the homework. You did everything. And then you let yourself be led and then creating all these incredible things for people. It's just... I'm in awe and I'm so grateful to have been invited into your world.
Nancy Rush
Oh, well, my gosh, we were thrilled to have you for sure. And I mean, you know, I've expressed it before, but I will forever be grateful for that experience of getting to work with you. And I remember being terrified. I remember Mark being like, "Okay, are you in or are you out?" And I was terrified to make the commitment. But holy crap, I was so glad that I took that leap of faith and just did it because it was... it was...
Colette Baron-Reid
Masterminds are pricey. They're $20,000, right? I mean, I joined one that was $50[,000] that I joined. Right? And I was... participating in like... it's a... it's not for the... people... It's for somebody who's going to invest in themselves and their future and are really serious about it. And that's right. You're not going to not do your homework. Well, some people don't do their homework and they still do that, right? But you know, you're going in there and you're doing the work and look how you flourished. And you were such an asset to the group too. Like we have... we have incredible groups every year. People come back and stuff like one woman's been there nine times. Can you believe it? Paula's been there every year.
Nancy Rush
Wow, that's amazing.
Colette Baron-Reid
Yeah, amazing. Yeah, but anyway, thank you for having me.
Nancy Rush
Oh my gosh, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. And I think everybody, the viewers are going to get so much out of this because we did kind of ping pong a little bit, but in a beautiful way. So I think that was really fantastic. We will post the links and stuff that you gave us so people, if they want to have more of a conversation with you or they want to investigate DreamQuest or the book, they can have access to all of that.
Colette Baron-Reid
Excellent. And I hope we get to have a coffee together sometime soon.
Nancy Rush
Yes, let's do it. Let's definitely do it. Wyoming and Canada. And Ontario. Well, you never know. The stars might align like it did when we were in Oregon together. So you never know.
Colette Baron-Reid
Yes. How cool was that? That was so fun. Anyway, everybody, thank you so much for listening to us both. I want to say to you all, you can do it. If you have been called and you're sitting here now and you're called to your business and you're confused about it, it's okay. The calling is real. And even if it's taking you on a tiny bit of a detour, or even if you're at the top of the mountain, it's an organic journey. And the journey itself is the thing that's going to create the sense of becoming, that you are becoming someone new as a result of the gift of being partnered with the business that you're in.
Nancy Rush
Yeah. Love that. Love that. Love that. Thank you.
