Audiobook Connection is your place to learn about the audio book creative process in discussions between the authors, narrators, producers and post production teams that bring them all together, as well as guests who have listened to the audio books and have questions for the creative teams. This podcast is sponsored by Pro Audio voices helping great stories come alive through audiobook production and marketing.

B: Today we have with us Michelle Masters, the author of Money Magic: Clearing Your Path to Money, Time, and Happiness. Michelle has been a teacher, speaker and transformational facilitator since 1996. She’s based in the U.S. but I know that she works with people all over the world in live workshops. I have attended one of those myself, as well as online in groups and also in private sessions. Michelle recorded her own audio book here in the Pro Audio Voices studio.

Welcome, Michelle.

M: Thank you. It’s lovely to be here.

B: So I want to jump right in and ask you about the audiobook production process and how that was for you. I know that when we first talked, you were very clear that it was important that you be the one you’d be the voice for your book. So could you tell us a little about that decision and why that was especially important for this book?

M: There were a couple reasons why. Some simple reasons were you know, a lot of this was stories about my life. And it would be it just seemed odd to have somebody else telling stories about my life, like it happened to them – that seemed odd. But also because when you’re communicating on multiple channels, and for me this book does, all of it needs to communicate on multiple channels. And so the words are only a very small part of the communication. There’s the tone, there’s the emphasis, and then there’s the vibration behind it.

Even when editing the written book, that’s hard for me because when they change the word, they change the vibration. And the vibration, although we not always aware of it, it communicates on very, very deep levels. So I will have people who tell me about the audio book, they say, they’ll put it on, you know, before they go to bed every night so that they have they have my voice in their head. But it’s not my voice. It’s the feeling they get. And so the feeling they get has a lot to do with the vibration. B: Beautiful. I know that first session felt like it was challenging in some ways.  You want to tell us about that?

M: Yeah, I was a little nervous and so I had a little trouble breathing. So, but after a while I kind of settled in.

B: Yeah. Breathing is good.

M: Yeah, breathing is such our friend. And I wish I’d had the stamina to redo the first part. But, you know.

B: No, it’s great. It’s great. One of the things that when you were talking about the vibration, it makes me think about one of the pieces of this audio book. That is, I almost hesitate to use the word “particularly” because it is ALL so transformative. But these change patterns that are in the book, could you tell us, first of all, what a change pattern IS? And then a little bit about some of the ones that you’ve included? M: Right. Well, unfortunately, most of the things that people do when they want to change or grow their life, their business their money, or change something in their life – most of the things people do to try and change things don’t work. Like a lot of people use willpower, they use effort or they try to change their behaviors. This does not produce a lot of results, it usually produces a lot of frustration, and we make ourselves really wrong.

But what the change patterns alone allow us to do is change the patterns, the automatic things that are both creating the problems you don’t want and keeping you from having the things you do that’s almost all unconscious. Because if it were conscious, you would have changed it already. Right? And so, so when we can change those patterns, then people start to have the experience that they want, almost naturally without having to work harder without having to try to be different or without having to remember, like the most common thing I hear from people is “Yeah, my income went up and I don’t feel like I did anything differently.” So that’s because we put in these change patterns.

There are exercises that I take you through that are designed to both reveal some of the unconscious blocks that are in the way, and also start to revise them kind of like rewriting software. You know, when you rewrite software, you don’t have to keep rewriting it. Right? You don’t have to do affirmations, “You are powerful software,” right? When you rewrite it, it’s done. And so this starts to rewrite some of that software.

So having some of those change patterns, otherwise, I just be talking about the ideas, but people wouldn’t necessarily get any change out of it. So in my live workshop, we have a lot of change patterns. I couldn’t put them all in the book, but I did want people to have something where they could start to change things.

B: Yeah. So again, just sort of for the moment, at least, coming back to the production piece of that. We made the decision to use some music in those change patterns to support that process. Can you say anything about that decision and how that felt in terms of finding the right piece that that was supporting that work?

M: Well, the change patterns – as I wrote them, they have a lot of hypnotic language triggers in them. Those are ways of talking more directly to your unconscious, because that’s the place where the stuff that’s in the way is mostly stored. And so having music that has theta waves, which theta waves help to integrate both of the conscious and unconscious learnings and access more directly, some of those unconscious areas of the brain. So having that music in the background, along with the change pattern and hypnotic language, I feel like really upped the efficacy even more, allowing those patterns to go in really well.

B: Yeah. Nice. Thanks. I would love to have you share some of the stories The results that maybe some of your clients have had, because some of them are so extraordinary – in such exciting, wonderful ways, because they really demonstrate that this work that you’re doing. You know, so many of us are used to trying to make these changes, just like you said, and we’re working at it and working, you know. It’s such a grind to make progress. If you could share some of these some testimonials or just stories about what kinds of results your clients have had. That’d be great.

M: Yeah, yeah, well, there’s a ton of them there’s and often when I share them, they sound like hype, but these are things that people have told me. And so they come in a couple of different categories. There are ones where when somebody’s belief changes, especially like that belief that you have to work hard. When that changes, what happens is like people find you like they “crawl out of the woodwork” is the phrase I hear most often. And “out of the blue.” “Out of the blue,” “these people called me out of the blue,” “I got this race out of the blue,” “I got this contract.” And actually when the beliefs change, well, we often don’t even notice it’s changed. So this time of year, when people start doing your taxes, I get a lot of very cheerful emails from people, when they discovered their income is like doubled. And they didn’t realize because they didn’t feel like they did anything different.

B: Right, right.

M: Their income doubled but they weren’t working harder. And there’s another piece around worth because worth is a big thing that’s in people’s way. So my online classes one woman, she did the worth exercise from the online class. And she said, within a week, her business five went up 500% and she said, “I was just at home in my pajamas and people kept calling.”

B: That’s the way to do it. Right.

M: Yeah, right. So those are the kinds of stories I love.

B: Wonderful, wonderful. One of the exercises, I think it’s the first one in the book is the emerging experience.

M: Yes.

B: Would you be willing to share a little bit about that exercise? And how that works, as best you can explain.

M: Yes, it was originally a change pattern designed by Robert Dilts. He’s a brilliant guy. He designed a lot of NLP change patterns. He called it the Belief Chain. And what it does is it is designed to set up a sequence for your brain, and you so you start with where you are. And then you get a sense of where you want to be. And it puts a couple of steps in between. But these aren’t actually action steps. What it is, is it’s like laying railroad track from where you are to where you want to be. But again, it’s not about action. It’s about “So this is where I am now.” And then you take a step forward and notice, what’s the first change on your way to getting there? Again, not something that you have to DO, but how does it FEEL when the first thing changes?

And then Okay, what’s it feel like when you’re halfway there? And what’s it feel like when you’re mostly there now? What’s it feel like when you’re there? So this pattern that was like laying down railroad tracks, then we have people go through it again and again and again, faster and faster and faster. Because what you’re doing is you’re teaching the brain a sequence like this, you start here, which is where you are, and you end up here.

B: Yeah.

M: And when you do that enough times and do it fast, it’d be like for your brain, it’s like, “Oh, okay. So that’s where we’re going.” It’s, it’s as easy as letting the train roll down the tracks, as opposed to having to create it every step of the way, once the neurological pathways have been laid down in your brain, right?

B: Yeah. Yes, I’m reminded of this in the workshop. I got to go through many of those and I have definitely been experiencing many, many changes. You know, it’s the one of the cool things is you, you do it and then you, you don’t have to remember, as you said, I don’t have to, like, keep reminding myself of stuff.

M: Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the workshop, people will often say, “Well, what do we do now?”

“Go home. Let it do its magic and see what happens, right?

B: Yeah, that’s great. And you have you have people who will go through the workshop many times, right?

M: You know, it’s a little like taking a workshop once was just kind of like lifting weights once, right? Because every time you take it, it lays down more pathways to what you want. It makes your foundation more solid. It makes your sense of worth even more solid. Yeah, I have people who take it every time because every time they take it, their income goes up. The experience gets better.

Not just that the money goes up, but they get happier. It gets easier. That gate opens up all kinds of doors they would have never guessed. Because the money doesn’t – if you’re not happy – the money doesn’t matter. It’s important that you have both. It’s important that we be able to pay our bills. Poverty isn’t making anybody happy or you know, more spiritual. It’s important that we be able to take care of ourselves, but it’s also important that we be happy and have a good life and create the way that we came here to create. So every time you do this, you get you get more and more of that experience.

B: Yeah. I love that idea of listening to you listening to the audiobook before going to bed every night. I’m going to start doing that. That’s great. Let’s take a moment to listen to a piece of the audiobook:

The Glasses You Don’t Know You are Wearing

-or-
How to Spot Your Core Beliefs

“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

—Talmud

Once upon a time in Circuit City

Some years back, a friend of mine wanted to buy a CD player. It was that long ago). There are few pleasures that compare with buying electronics for me, so I very cheerfully offered to help

her. I suggested we go to Circuit City (this chain of stores closed a while back, but at the time they had a wide selection of all things technologically inclined.) I had been to Circuit City many times and had always had good experiences there. The salespeople were friendly and helpful, and I always found what I wanted at a good price. So, I was surprised when my friend said to me, “Oh no, not

there. Their service is terrible.” But I assured her that it would be good–that I went there all the time and we could find her a good CD player. She reluctantly agreed and off we went. We entered the store, and for the first time in my experience, there was not a soul in sight. It was like one of those scenes in a ghost town in an Old Western; it was deserted and silent. I half expected to see tumble- weeds blowing down the aisles. It took us 10 minutes to find anyone who worked there, and when we did, they were surly and unhelpful. So, we left. I couldn’t believe it. This had never happened before. A month or so later, I wanted to buy something else electronic and thought about going to Circuit City, and then almost changed my mind because of the last experience with my friend. But I decided to go back once more and give it a try. I walked in and was immediately greeted by several cheerful salespeople, one of whom helped me find just what I needed, and within 10 minutes my new electronic friend and I were on our way home. The difference was so striking. Every time my friend went to Circuit City she had a bad experience. Every time I went, except when I went with her, I had a good experience.

So, which one of us was right? Which was the real Circuit City? And the answer was both. She got her version of reality, and I got mine. Circuit City was a screen we were both projecting our reality (beliefs) on.

B: Okay, so Michelle, I love this story about what happened in Circuit City and the RAS filters. Could you tell us a little more about what that is all about.

M: Yes, our friend the Reticular Activating System. It’s a system in your brain that acts like filters. And it is designed to allow in what you’re already looking for, and filter out everything that you are not already looking for. And so when we have a belief, let’s say we have a belief that you have to work hard to make money, then your reticular activating system will allow in all information that confirms that you will see things hear things feel things that that are in agreement with that. It will literally filter out or screen out all other evidence to the contrary. It’s like a photographic filter. A photographic filter is designed to allow in certain light or certain effects and literally screen out everything else. And so one of the most common things that happens when people’s beliefs change, is the filters change, and all of a sudden, they’re literally seeing different opportunities or meeting different people or the same people respond differently to them. Because their system is now filtering for more of what they want.

B: Sounds a little like we need to sort of like the changing the filters in your HVAC or your car.

M: You really, really need to keep those get those things cleaned out. Yes, because it affects everything we see in here and do it and feel. Yeah, and most of them were in place by age three, and all of them pretty much by six. So they are not selected necessarily in our best interest.

B: So they’re not also things that we should be blaming ourselves for.

M: Correct – or others.

B: Right, right.

M: And so getting those changes is a huge, huge thing because it allows our lives to change without us having to try harder or be different.

B: Yeah. I think it was at the workshop, you told the story about how you found the home that you moved into.

M: Yes.

B: I love that story. Could you share that?

M: Sure. Yeah. Well, I had to have been renting a really tiny place for many, many years. And that was fine. And then we went to a couple of different places while we were teaching in Australia, in New Zealand, we stayed in nice, spacious places. And when I came back to my tiny little place, it was like, enough, I’m done. Right? So I said, tomorrow, I’m going online, I’m going to start to look for a place in Sebastopol. And so Monday, that was the day I was going to go online and look ,and I think I did, but while I was looking a voice in my head said, drive down Elphick road. Now, Elphick Road is a road in Sebastopol, I had driven down 20 years before and even then I thought this would be a nice place to live. So that was Monday.

So, um, Tuesday, I took a drive down Elphick Road. I came around a corner and I saw For Sale sign. So I thought, okay. So I pulled in the driveway, there’s like nobody’s there, but they had one of those boxes was sheets listing all the things the property had. And it had all these things I wanted – even things I wanted that I didn’t think I could afford, like a separate 20 by 20 building to see clients in, it had a workshop which I was so happy about. It had open area for a garden, it had mature tree like, right down the list. And I was so naive, I called the listing agent from the driveway to ask about the house. I didn’t know I was supposed to have my own agent. I was so naive about the whole house buying process. And the agent said, “Yeah, we don’t know what’s going on with that house. It’s been on the market for a month with no activity.” Now this never happens in Sebastopol. Yeah. And she said, “It’s such a sweet house. I even thought about getting it.” And as she was saying that I thought, I think it’s because it’s my house. So I got an agent. We made an appointment to come up the next day. We were supposed to go look at another place. But my partner said, “What’s the point we’re just going to be living here.” Went back to my rental place and 20 minutes after we got back from looking at the house, they called and dropped the price of the house $25,000.

Now I didn’t know it at the time. I found out the next day. That was exactly the amount I needed the price to come down to easily qualify for financing because I’m self employed. Yeah, so that was Wednesday. So I saw the house on my drive on Tuesday, Wednesday we looked at it Thursday, I applied for financing. Friday was approved. We bartered over the weekend about the closing date because I didn’t want it to close what we were going to be away in Europe. On Sunday, while I was teaching a Money Magic class. The class counted me down. I signed the documents online, done. Seven days.

Well, they told me buying a house is stressful, right? But it was all handled. It was all taken care of. I still get my neighbors saying we don’t know how you got that house at that price.

B: I love that.

M: Yeah.

B: Wow.

M: Like a year later, I was telling that story in a Money Magic class. And this lady raised her hand and she said “I was the listing agent on that house.”

B: Ah, that’s great. And it expands – the ripples. That’s beautiful. So you’re doing workshops around the world you traveling quite a bit these days. Is that right?

M: Yeah. Well, we’re trying to kind of consolidate it. But we’ve been doing workshops in Australia and in Asia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei and in Europe, Switzerland and UK and Scandinavia, as well as the US.

B: Okay, great. And so, the size of these groups, what are the group sizes like? Are you talking to 10s of people, hundreds of people, thousands of people or what? Give us a picture.

M: Depending on the place, it could be 10s to hundreds.

B: Do you find that with the larger groups it is any more or less transformative?

M: I actually like the larger groups because the collective energy as things start to shift, it feels like it carries everybody a little further. You would think it would be harder work when it’s a bigger group, but it’s actually harder work when it’s a smaller group.

B: Interesting.

M: I mean, it’s nice, it’s personal, you have a lot more one on one interaction. So they both work. But the bigger the group, as the consciousness – as the patterns start to shift, it creates almost an amplifying effect for everyone.

B: Wow. That’s cool. And so your audio book is available on all the major audio book retail channels. And you also have it in print.

M: Yes.

B: And ebook as well or no?

M: Yes. And Kindle. But even people without a Kindle can use the Amazon reader.

B:  Right. Where would people best find out more about workshops, online classes, other opportunities to reconnect with you?

M: Right, my website has information because I have other workshops as well. The websites being redone should be done by the time you hear this. So it’s MichelleMastersNLP.com.

B: Great. So let me just circle back to that because we didn’t touch on NLP. Would you tell us just a little bit what it stands for? And, you know, some listeners may not know about NLP yet, but tell us just a little.

M: And some of the ones who do know about it have heard from the really bad stuff. NLP is a collection of tools. And some of those tools have been misused, but they are tools to create change. They weren’t based on theory, what the people who originated the work, they started watching people who got better results either as therapists or as you know, motivators or teachers or whoever was doing something that nobody else could do. They watched these people and everything they did and said, to see if they could figure out what they were doing that was different. So it’s actually not based on a theory it’s based on watching stuff that seems to consistently work to get changes for people. NLP is has stolen from some of the greatest people in our time and before. And so they took work from therapists from teachers from motivators from salespeople.

And there’s also a man named Bert Hellinger. He worked on family systems work, which is sort of noticing how generational limitations can be passed down. And so he came after they originally created the tools, but he’s one of the kind. He’s the kind of person that we watched because he was doing something nobody else could do. So I’ve also incorporated his work for calendars as well as NLP and also some quantum tools I learned from Richard Bartlett of Matrix and Melissa Joy of Matrix Energetics. So it’s not just NLP, it’s everything I found that seems to work combined in a package to help people get the shifts they want – sort of supercharged change. Yes, NL P stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. God awful name. I don’t know what they were thinking. National Socialist Party apparently was already taken. It’s an awful name for some incredible tools.

B: Well, I would like to thank you both for the time that you’ve taken today, but also for this work that you’re doing and changing the world. That’s certainly what we’re about at Pro Audio Voices – changing the world one story at a time, but you’re out there changing the changing the world en masse.

M: The better it gets for each of us, the better it gets for all of us.

B: Right. Yeah, that’s, that’s a great place to wrap it up. Thank you so much.

M: You’re welcome, Becky. Thank you.