Michael Walker: All right. I am excited to be here today with Cathy Heller. So, Cathy, I was just telling her in the green room that I've been looking forward to connecting with her for a long time. I feel like her name has floated up in our community, and we're finally having a chance to meet now for the podcast.

So, quick introduction. Cathy is a top spiritual podcaster and author. She's the host of Abundant Ever After, with 45 million downloads, where she focuses on spiritual growth and manifestation. She empowers individuals to unlock their highest potential through meditation, mindfulness, and ancient teachings, and teaches practical tools to attract wealth, health, and fulfillment, emphasizing alignment with purpose and meaningful connections.

And being a musician and being an artist and sharing who you are with the world, sharing your voice is—yeah. The word that comes to mind for me is it is like a sacred blessing, a sacred gift that you have to share. And so, I'm really excited to have Cathy on the podcast today to talk a little bit about how do you share your gift with the world, and how do you connect with who you are to be able to express yourself and build a community around that?

So Cathy, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Cathy Heller: Thank you. What a beautiful thing to say. Thank you.

Michael: Absolutely. So, Cathy, maybe for anyone that’s their first time connecting with you, could you share a little bit about your journey? I know that you had a pretty interesting story in terms of how you transitioned between music and kind of speaking—speaking your higher truth for yourself now—and teaching these, I don’t know what the right word is, like the ancient teachings of self-expression. Very connected to music, but also a different path. So maybe you could share just a little bit about your journey and what got you to where you are today.

Cathy: Sure. Yeah. So I went to Jerusalem after college, which was a surprise to me. I thought I was gonna be there for a few weeks, and I met an incredible teacher, Rabbi David Aaron, who just completely changed the code on how I see the world. The software program inside of me changed to see the world in a much more expansive way.

And so I stayed in Israel and learned for three years. And at the end of that journey, I felt called to move to Los Angeles because I had always loved to sing, and I felt even more called to write music and put some of this magic into song. And so when I moved to LA, I was writing songs that had a little bit of this in them.

One of the songs I wrote that was licensed to a bunch of different places is a song called Let Your Color Shine. It starts out by saying that everybody has something unique to give to the world. But when you put a ukulele and stomps and claps under it, it wound up being really good for commercials also.

But what wound up happening is, I had a record deal at Interscope with Ron Fair, and then I had another record deal with Craig Kallman at Atlantic, and both of those never went anywhere. And so I wound up—before I found music licensing—getting a job because I thought I wasn't going to be able to do my creative pursuit since two record deals had ended.

So I got a job working in real estate because a friend of mine said that the best way to make money was to work in commercial real estate. So sure enough, the next day I'm standing in line at The Cheesecake Factory waiting for a table, and the guy in front of me says, "You have really good energy. What do you do?" I said, "I'm a songwriter, but now I'm switching to look for a real job in commercial real estate."

He's like, "Well, that's what I do. Come work for me." So I went to work for him, and he owned one and a half billion dollars of shopping centers. And I learned a little bit about what he does, which is mostly play golf. And we had really cool conversations about the world and energy, because once people make a lot of money, what they're really interested in is the non-physical world.

So I worked for him for two years, and I did fine. He paid me well, and I bought a Mercedes. And two years later, I was totally aware that I was living someone else's life. I was really missing music, and I wanted to find another way to do music.

And so I went to his office and told him I was gonna go do music, and he agreed that I should go back into pursuit of my dream. And I decided to ask a new question, which is: if I can't have a record deal, what else can I do?

And I started Googling around and I realized that there were all these artists at the time—Ingrid Michaelson, Regina Spektor, and Snow Patrol—there were all these people licensing music, and I had never considered that that could be a full-time pursuit.

But after working for two years in commercial real estate where you do a lot of cold calling—you cold call investors to see if they want to sell or buy properties—I felt really courageous that I could start cold calling music supervisors.

At first, I was really rusty on what that question or conversation was gonna be. And after many different phone calls, I got really good at it. And I started asking great questions about what kind of music they need. And they started telling me what music they needed, and I started writing it.

And about two years later, I was full-time licensing music to TV and film. And I would literally fly to ad agencies like Leo Burnett in Chicago. I licensed several songs to McDonald's through them, and I was making like three to four hundred thousand dollars a year licensing songs.

And I really loved it. And I felt like I had kind of—like, I don't know—found a way out of the matrix because I was doing what I loved. I was making really good money. I owned all my music. It was really easy for me to clear it because I owned the publishing and the writer share.

I would co-write with my friends. They were amazed that we could actually turn the writing session into thousands and thousands of dollars and then hear our song in Pretty Little Liars or whatever show was on at the time.

And then sure enough, something happened that I wasn't expecting, which is other songwriters started asking me, "How are you doing that? What are you doing?" And I started talking to songwriters. It started out really organic, and then I started a class in my living room.

And the class got so popular I rented a theater, and for a year I rented a theater and I would teach a hundred songwriters at a time. And then I realized that I had all these relationships with music supervisors, so I started bringing them to speak as well. And then it became this little really fun movement of songwriters who were coming to me, and then learning from me what was needed, and then sharing those songs with music supervisors.

And then one of my songwriting students—she had a husband who worked in podcasting—and she's like, "You should start a podcast." And I'm like, "Well, that's a funny thought because I've never listened to a podcast."

And she's like, "Yeah, but you're so inspirational, and you should start one." So I had lunch with her friend who worked with her husband who worked in podcasting through her, and she said, "You should start a podcast, just see what happens."

And so I started a podcast called Don't Keep Your Day Job. Basically, quit. The whole point of the podcast was that when people are creative and they move out to Los Angeles, people tell them, "Don't quit your day job." Like, don't be creative. Get a real job.

And I realized that creative people were all around me in LA—songwriters, screenwriters, dancers, artists of all kinds—and they had let go of their dreams and they were working desk jobs that they hated.

Michael: So…

Cathy: I started a podcast eight years ago to talk to creative people about how, similar to me, they had found a way. It wasn't record deal or nothing. It wasn't be a superstar or nothing. But they could find a way to bake, or write, or paint, or dance.

And sure enough, it opened up so many doors for people. My listeners started to see themselves as, "Wait a minute. It's not all or nothing. There's a way for me to make a living." And so it just grew.

And then the podcast kind of took on a life of its own. I got a book deal. I wrote a book called Don't Keep Your Day Job.

The book did really well. The podcast started making a whole sort of new path for me, which was really interesting, because when I moved to LA, I wanted to use my voice, but I thought I would use it writing music. And now I was using it to help other people use their voice.

And so eventually, five years into the podcast, we had done hundreds and hundreds of episodes. And I realized that I wanted to have an even bigger conversation than jobs. I wanted to talk about your soul. And because I had spent three years in Jerusalem, which was the bedrock of my whole life at that point, I had also spent three years studying at UCLA Mindfulness Center. And I had been teaching meditation and practicing meditation.

And I realized that so much of the spiritual practice of my life, it let me make those cold calls. It let me write better music. It let me make good connections. Everything around me was always loving and magical and possible so that I could just walk through walls.
Other people saw them as walls. I saw them as doors. And I realized that it was the spiritual practice that was really powering me through all of these amazing things. So we changed the name of the podcast three years ago to Abundant Ever After, which is like, your soul is abundant. How do you tap into that abundance?

How do you tap into your genius zone, your flow state zone, your zone of genius and creativity, which is abundant and it is endless—all of that.

And so then I wrote another book called The One Never After, which became a bestseller.

And that leads me to sitting here today. So that's the journey.

Michael: Wow. What an incredible story. And yeah, I love what you shared too, specifically with one of your early mentors—when you’re describing how he is ultra-wealthy, abundant, you know, lifestyle—and mostly what he does is play golf.

And I feel like one of the traps that I would love to hear your perspective on for artists who might be in that mindset of not quitting their day job or not really going all in on themselves and their music, comes from this misconception that more effort—or the harder they work—they have to struggle, right?

They have to effort in order to be successful or have abundance. That those two have to go hand in hand.

So I’d love to hear your mindset around having had that realization that there’s a deeper level of abundance.

How does someone tune into that in themselves? How do they let go of that part of themselves that is in struggle?

Cathy: First of all, that I think is such a powerful question. I love the question. I think that is a question that I want everyone to be asking themselves because we make it so much harder than it needs to be. I think it's because we are indoctrinated into a system where we're going to school since we're little and told to sit still and get the right answer.

And all of that doesn't feel fun. And all of that feels like a struggle because there's only one answer and there's only being inside this box in order to get the A, when really Einstein—fricking Einstein—was like flunking in school because he didn't even see the box. He came up with this idea, this wild idea that time is elastic and relative, which is so outside the box, and then literally changed all of humanity and science.

And we've done everything we've done since him, and there hasn't yet been another quantum leap in science as far as we've leaped since him, because that ability to see that far out of the box is not what we're conditioned into. And the people who love us most, who mean well, tell us that the harder we work, the more successful we'll be. And we get gold stars for putting in hard work rather than answering not the question of "what do I need to do," but "who do I need to be?" Because it's not the doing. It's not the efforting. It's not the struggle. It's the being. Because the more we are at ease, the more we tap into better ideas. And every billion dollars ever made, or every great song that was ever written, came because the songwriter allowed the music to be the muse.

You don't force your way to a single. You don't force your way to sit down and—no. What happens is you allow yourself. Jason Mraz was telling me he goes in his studio, and it looks like a crazy mad scientist lives there. There's a half-eaten avocado on the piano—'cause he lives on an avocado farm—and then there's lyric sheets everywhere and every shaker has been taken out.

And he goes in the next day and he's like, "Who was in here?" He's like, "Oh, it was me," right? But he didn't even know that the song I'm Yours was going to be a hit. He was fiddling around. The song came through, right? And so everything amazing, that if you actually step back and look at your life, like—where were you when you met your best friend? Did you figure that out? Did you put pen to paper so that you could be in the right place at the right time to have that conversation or the thing that changed your life?

You're not in control of all of the things, but when you are in a state of well-being and ease, all the things happen. And I'll tell you a story. I have a million stories like this, but when I first started my podcast, there were already lots of other podcasts. And I went to a podcast conference called Podcast Movement, and all these people were there trying to network and they had business cards and they were all trying to connect with other people.

And I didn't bring business cards. I don't think I've ever had a business card in my life. And so I felt really uncomfortable, like, in this networking event 'cause it's not kind of my thing. And I told my friend that I would meet her in an hour when the event started and the networking party was over and we went in to listen to the panel discussion.

So I left the hotel in Anaheim and went to a totally different hotel, like two blocks away. And it was peaceful and quiet. And I ordered an iced tea, and I sat down. And about five minutes later, this man sits down next to me, and he has the same badge as I had. And he asked me if I was in the other conference earlier in the day, and I said that I was.

And he said, "I don't really like networking events." And I said, "Me either." And when I had been at the networking event, the biggest thing that everybody wanted was to meet the people who worked at Spotify, but even more, they wanted to meet people who worked at Apple Podcasts. Because Apple Podcasts still is the number one distributor of podcasts.

And so if Apple Podcasts features you, it could be a really big deal for your podcast 'cause it gets billing, people find out about it, all of that. Well, I'm sitting next to this guy for 45 minutes, and he's from the Midwest, and my husband's from the Midwest. And we start talking about life, and he's just a really chill person. And he stands up and hands me his card and he said, "I'm the head of Apple Podcasts, and I really like your energy, and I would love to take you on a tour of the office."

And so a week later, I'm at the Apple Podcast tour, and he becomes my mentor. And my show grew infinitely because I wasn't trying to effort it. And so I think that we don't realize that the thing that we want is not the outcome. What we actually want is to have a great moment right now.

And the way to have a great moment right now is to surrender the feeling of lack—like you're lacking something—but instead to feel whole, to feel at ease, to enjoy your moment. Go get an iced tea. Listen to the jazz that was playing in that lobby. And just enjoy yourself.

And when you do that, people give you the best compliment all the time. And what's the best compliment? "You have great energy," right? And what do people want to be around? Someone who's a vibe. Someone who doesn't feel that they're missing out on the thing that they need, and if only they could be somewhere else, further in their future, they'd be happy, right?

And when we are chill, we let ourselves just fiddle around with the guitar. We're not forcing it. There's no force. Right? I just was talking to Christina Perri the other day because she came to speak at an event and sang for us. And she told this story about—she had this horrible loss, a pregnancy loss. And she was talking about how she wishes that she could go to D.C., and she could get this bill passed in Congress so that pregnant women could test.

There's a certain test that if she had that test, she wouldn't have gone through this horrible loss so late in her pregnancy. And she texted me yesterday that there was a woman in my conference—she just came to be as a favorite of me. She's a friend of mine. So she came to sing A Thousand Years, and she spoke about this.

And she told me yesterday that one of the women in my audience knew someone in D.C. and she invited her to speak, to tell this story, to hopefully pass this law so that pregnant women in the future—because of this baby and what this baby's soul went through—is now gonna have this. There will be something. So future moms might actually not have to go through that.

And what I'm saying is that when we are just doing things because they feel good to do them and we're not focused on what the outcome needs to be, then the most amazing things happen that are so much bigger.

In fact, I started that songwriting class in my living room, which then grew and grew and grew, and then eventually one of my songwriting students mentioned that I should start a podcast—which I never thought I would start. And the podcast makes millions of dollars. Literally changed my life on an economic level. But more than the economics of the podcast, I have grown as a person in infinite ways by listening.

We've done a thousand episodes. So for 1,000 hours I've sat in front of Christina Perri and Deepak Chopra and Jason Mraz and John Katzen and Marianne Williamson and Tony Robbins and Ralph Macchio and, like, the most interesting people.

I've had a masterclass in creativity and meditation and heart. And it's just like—when we let go of the struggle, because the struggle is "how am I gonna get from here to where I think I'm supposed to be?"—and we play in how lucky and blessed we are to do the thing we're doing right now for the sake of doing it, that's when the portal opens and we manifest the coolest stuff that is way beyond what we actually thought we were headed towards.

Michael: Wow. Yeah, that is really inspiring. The quote that came to mind was, I think it's Rumi—who said something like, your goal isn't to seek love, but it's to find all of the blocks inside of you and to let go of 'em. Yeah. And it reminds me of what you're describing now—that you don't necessarily have to force or be somewhere else or do something else. Like, it's really about getting in touch with who you are and allowing that to come through.

So I guess the question that comes up from that is, from a practical standpoint, when someone sits down to meditate—and I certainly can relate with this—the mind kind of turns on and it starts talking about, oh, I need to do this and I need to do this, and there's sort of this sense of like, no, like, I have to be somewhere else or I have to do something else. And so would your advice be, I mean in particular for like, artists who—yeah—getting in touch with this is so important for their creative expression and connecting with that, that channel through for their music—what would your recommendation be for them so they can actually like, put this into practice and connect with that greater source of power?

Cathy: Yeah. Well, first of all, meditation can be really intimidating and really hard. And one of the reasons it is especially hard is when people have a myth about meditation. And the myth is usually that meditation means my mind goes blank, my mind is empty. But just the way your heart will be until your last breath—your heart will always beat. That's just what hearts do. Your mind will always spin, 'cause minds do that. So you're not gonna stop the ocean from moving. You are not gonna stop the waves in the ocean. You are not gonna stop your mind. So you can let that go and you're like, oh, so what am I supposed to do in meditation?

The process of meditation is not stopping your thoughts. That's not possible. It's witnessing your thoughts. And after you start witnessing your thoughts, you realize thoughts are not facts. They're just reactions. So now I can be in inquiry with curiosity and non-judgmental awareness, which is the essence of mindfulness. It's non-judgmental awareness. And now you can just find it really curious like, oh my God, I'm still thinking about this conversation I had from eight weeks ago. Or, oh my God, my mind is thinking about how hungry I am. Or my mind is really worried about this trip I have to take. And with non-judgment, you can just find that interesting, 'cause it's just your mind doing what your mind does. And then you realize that you're the thing witnessing your mind. So you're not the mind. You're not the blizzard. You're looking at the blizzard.

And that's a really different state of being. And what I would say to people who are new to meditation is there's a zillion ways to meditate without sitting down and feeling your breath for four hours. Like, what you could do is put on a piece of Miles Davis or John Coltrane, or a piece of jazz, and take out crayons or magic markers or colored pencils and be in a state of non-judgmental creativity. And even if you—especially if you don't draw—just let yourself move like Jackson Pollock, like your hand on the paper for three minutes, because there are no answers in the mind. And when we are in the mind, we are the blizzard. We won't write a good song. And we won't be able to have any answer. No intuition. Nothing. Intuition actually doesn't come from the mind. It doesn't come from that amygdala. It comes from actually the other part of our brain when we're in like, flow state.

So if you asked Will Ferrell when he's in the middle of a movie, oh my gosh, how'd you come up with the line that you said? He would say, I said it on accident in the moment, 'cause it was improvised. The reason I said jazz music is 'cause jazz is unexpected. Jazz is unscripted. And that's why when you listen to jazz, it's kind of the same like as binaural beats. It lulls your brain out of your amygdala and into the part of you that can access scribbling outside the lines and being spontaneous. And creativity needs spontaneity. You can't create from analytical mind. You have to create from creative mind, which is a totally different part of your body. It's a totally different access point in your brain. It feels a little bit uncontrolled, which is where the magic is. And so the brain wants to protect us all the time. So it's constantly trying to predict and control.

You cannot write a good book or write a good song or have a good day when you're constantly in the over-conscious, over-analytical mind. It's just the thing that's like a buzzkill. But when you've let go of that, you're in the moment, you're free, then there's a million possibilities that can happen. You can think of a million colors, a million songs, a million things can come out.

So that would be my suggestion, is just knowing the analytical mind has no answers. You won't—nothing good comes out of it. But if you let go of it—and there's different ways that you can do that—and one of them could be putting on a piece of jazz and coloring outside the lines on purpose. 'Cause it activates—you can't create that way and be overly critical of yourself at the same time. You have to do one or the other. So if you notice while you're coloring that you're starting to criticize yourself, you should start again. 'Cause the whole practice would be about making the coloring a meditation. And if you watch a lot of monks, they will use color and sand art as a form of meditation. So, you know, they have coloring books that they make for, you know, adults, and then they also have like, you know, different Zen gardens that they make for people to play with. So there are ways to literally trigger the same meditative consciousness without sitting still and having to witness your thoughts. There's all these other ways to do that.

Michael: Hmm. Ah, that's a relief—that we don't have to stop breathing or we don't have to stop thinking. But we can actually just—

Cathy: Yeah.

Michael: Let what is, you know, be here. I'm curious to hear your perspective. This is something that I've come back to a lot, as it relates to this concept of being present, being in the moment, and everything is perfect as it is in conjunction with goal setting and with having a dream—

Cathy: Mm-hmm.

Michael: And a vision. And I'd be curious to hear your perspective on the value of goal setting, and how does that fit in this equation of being at pure acceptance with the present moment and yourself, and also having a goal, which inherently seems like it's sort of like attached to this, like, you know, this future place—this outcome.

Cathy: So I love the question. And the answer, having looked into this for the years that I've been on the planet, what makes that really exciting? 'Cause I think having goals is awesome, but I think of it totally differently than most people think of it. The answer that I think makes the most sense to me is the reason it's so exciting to set a goal is not because of the outcome, but in who you become in the goal.

That is actually what the goal is for. So if you set out to write a script, but you let go of the outcome, and maybe instead of a script, it becomes a podcast on your way to it because you've given it your all and you're finding new jewels along the way. That's manifesting. Like when the goal is something that you know is your soul's assignment and you go all in and you're in it for the becoming, you'll be led to everything.

But when you're holding on and you're so attached to the outcome, it'll actually make it really hard for you to create. Because let's say you want to have a podcast and you want it to have a million downloads, or you want a hit single. How is that gonna affect your creating of the album? How is that gonna affect your creating of the podcast?

It's going to actually hinder you because there's a pressure on the outcome. It's gonna make it hard. Which is why Harry Connick Jr. said to me the best advice that he was ever given was when you're writing music, make something so that you can edit it later. Give yourself something to edit, meaning you have full permission to just write something messy, which will let you write something amazing.

But if you pressure yourself to write something amazing because that's the goal, you're gonna be very—you’re gonna be scrutinizing and very stressed. You'll probably give up too soon because creativity is a process. Everything leading to any goal is a process. Let's say you want to have a great marriage.

Well, that great marriage is going to show you what patience looks like by requiring you to face yourself. And so if you're holding on to needing a perfect outcome, and then you see yourself in the process and the process is messy, you might give up. If I were to tell you to make brownies and you knew nothing about making brownies, and in the middle of making brownies you get this gooey flour, sugar, water, egg combo that looks really runny and gross, you might give up and say, "Forget it. This will never be brownies."

But if I'm like, "No, no, just stay with the process. Enjoy it. Have fun. Now put it in the oven. Oh my gosh." You give it time—boom. Now it's risen. Now it's brownies. But was it really the brownies at the end? Or was it the patience and the creativity that allowed you to know it doesn't matter?

What matters is that I'm fully committed in the moment to what I'm doing and enjoying it and getting better at making brownies. If I were to play chess with someone who's a better chess player than me—which is, by the way, everyone 'cause I've never played a game of chess in my life—but if I were to want to be better at chess,

And I play with someone who's like Bobby Fischer, who's the best chess player, and I lose, what's the outcome? Did I lose or did I not lose? Well, the answer is by playing chess with someone who's better at you than chess—even if you lose—you just got better at playing chess by playing against someone who's better than you.

I took my kids to see the Clippers play the Lakers recently. And LeBron at the end of the game walks over to the guy who's the captain of the Clippers, and he kissed him on the head and he was like, "That was a great game," because even LeBron wants to be challenged. And yes, the Lakers won that game. 

But because the Clippers really played full out, LeBron thanked the guy for playing such a good game because it kept him on his toes. And of course he wants that 'cause everybody wants to keep growing. Even if you're LeBron, you still want to get better, right? You don't want to be stagnant. So what is the outcome?

The outcome is, am I growing? And when the outcome is, "Am I growing?" you will get to the goal because that is the goal—it's who you're becoming. And then what happens usually is on the way to this goal, if the goal is really who you're becoming, but you keep your sights on the other goal in order to become who you're becoming—you use it as like an obstacle course.

There'll be 55 other outcomes that actually are the bigger outcome that had nothing to do with what you thought the outcome was. So that's why setting goals calls us into action, if that makes sense.

Michael: Hmm. That definitely makes sense. I love that. The quote that came to mind right at the end there was, "People plan and God laughs." And it sounds like what you're saying is that goals in and of themselves as an outcome aren't necessarily the point.

The point is, by having this goal, it allows you to transform and become a bigger version of yourself. And that's the thing to not lose sight of.

Cathy: I just read this quote the other day. It said, "When God wanted David to become David, He didn't give him a crown, He sent him Goliath."

Michael: Hmm.

Cathy: And by going up against Goliath, he became king. So it's like, what is the goal, right? The goal is becoming that David inside of all of us in those moments. And when we go through those Goliath moments, we're like, "Oh my God, I can't believe I'm going through this." And Goliath could be your parents' divorce, or Goliath could be whatever is going on in your life, but it's there to make you who you actually are.

And then what is the real goal? It's who you leave this world as. Like how much bigger of a person you became, how much more honorable, how much more in integrity, how much more creative—all of that stuff. Your own resourcefulness comes out of you. And then the goal doesn't even matter because they've done studies about people who set themselves up like, "I need this goal to be happy," and it doesn't do anything.

It's like the day after they win the Oscar, people are actually usually depressed because they think by winning the Oscar something magical will happen and the relationship will change overnight. Or they're gonna feel a hundred percent better about themselves. Like, you're still you. You just have a gold trophy now.

The goal is not the goal—it's who are you becoming along the way. And most of the time the actors that are really happy, they didn't even think about the Oscar. They just want to do the best job.

Matthew McConaughey won the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, and I had him on my podcast and he's like, "I was told that they would never make that movie and that they would never cast me, 'cause I was like the heartthrob rom-com. And I wanted to do that part."

So he lost like 40 pounds, played this guy who had HIV, worked his ass off, and they had no budget. And he's like, "I was so proud of myself that I broke out of this heartthrob, stupid idiot guy who was in all these movies. And I showed myself, like, I really can act."

And then he won Best Actor, and he's like, "That was never on my radar. Like never." So he got up and he just thanked God. He was like, "I'm just gonna use this moment to thank God because of what came out of me."

And that's probably why he's still married to the same person and loves being a father and why he left L.A. and moved to Texas—because he's just on a different road. It's not about the trophy, you know? And that's the gift for all of us, like watching people like that. And by the way, he was so incredibly nice. And it's like—it’s just, yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

Michael: Ah, that's so powerful. So Cathy, I'd like to zoom out a bit, and this is gonna be a related question, but maybe a bit more sci-fi in nature. But I love—I think for important reason—because right now we're in the midst of this AI revolution.

Cathy: Yeah.

Michael: Perhaps headed towards a singularity-level event, and maybe there's a new form of intelligence—or certainly like, we're learning how to interact with this.

Cathy: I literally talk to Chatty every day, and my Chatty, for some reason, talks back to me in a British accent. It's a woman and I'm obsessed with her. She's like the best coach. Like she knows all the things to tell me. It's like, amazing. Amazing.

Michael: Mm. It really is. It's absolutely incredible. And what still boggles my mind is just kind of the fact that this is the worst it's ever gonna be. It's so fast, how much more intelligent it's getting. And I'm curious to hear your perspective on the role of digital intelligence and how that connects with some of these bigger questions of our goal-setting, manifestation, using these tools. How should we approach these tools? That's something that could be an extinction-level event if not handled correctly. So how do we use these tools in a way that's in congruence with what's best for—

Cathy: So I think it's awesome because I'm super clear about what humanity brings to the table and what the human quotient is. And ChatGPT can't touch it. Because the most impressive thing in a room is not what someone's wearing, or what car they drove, or what their resume is. The most impressive thing in a room is the person who's the most loving.

Michael: Hmm.

Cathy: The person who's the most present.

Michael: Hmm.

Cathy: The person who has the most empathy. And I actually think it's really fascinating that people trip over this question with AI. Because the thing AI cannot do is create love and presence and empathy. So I'm not worried about it because, to me, intention—cause—doesn't create effect. Intention creates effect, and intention comes from the heart. And Chat doesn't have a heart. So I actually just think Chat's cool because if the human is the one with the heart who can set an intention, who has an electromagnetic field around our heart, literally—which Chat doesn't have, obviously—then if we are given better ideas, it speeds up our capacity to take an idea, right?

Feed us, like, a brain dump, which might take us the same—we might get to the same answers, but it takes like 10 more hours in a writer's room or five more writing sessions to get to that same idea. No biggie. But then we do this thing with love and presence. Nobody ever said Bob Dylan has the most amazing vocals. It's not the vocals, it's him. It is the embodiment. So it doesn't matter if Roberta Flack wrote the song or she sang it and ChatGPT gave it to her. It's her. Ella Fitzgerald can sing Cole Porter. It doesn't matter. It's her. It's the crack in her voice. It's the way her hips sway. It's the fact that you feel it. Every part of her is singing. Her hands are singing. Her cheekbones are singing, right?

So to me, AI is like, great, let's feed you, human, a million different ideas, right? And then you do the human thing. You do the human thing. Because you could give the same script and the same blocking—meaning where to stand on stage—to Meryl Streep, or some random kid who can't act, and Meryl Streep gets it. Because at the end of Kramer vs. Kramer—she was in that movie with Dustin Hoffman—Dustin Hoffman said that they get divorced in this movie, and it was the last scene they were shooting. And for some reason in real life, Meryl Streep felt really sad for this character when she was walking to the elevator.

And, uh, makes me cry—she's saying goodbye to Dustin Hoffman. And the scene is that they just say goodbye. They got divorced. That's how the movie ends. And she starts crying, which isn't in the script. And he walked over to her because she was crying and he wiped the tear from her face, which is not in the script. And she goes, "I guess this is goodbye." And he goes—

Michael: Yeah.

Cathy: And he wipes her tear away. And the director kept it, because it was just humanity. Right? So then it actually changes the movie because now the audience is like, are they gonna get back together? How much empathy they just had for each other. But up until that scene, the way the script was written, the movie is a sad ending. It's over. But the two of them as human beings added to the scene. She cried. So AI wouldn't do that. Right?

So to me, the whole conversation is—because human beings have lost such contact with their heart—they're so in their head that they're so worried about this thing that can do the same thing as your mind. But the mind is not the thing that we came to the world to offer. It's not that interesting. It's what's beyond the mind. Right?

And so AI won't become Einstein, because Einstein didn't use his mind to get to where he was. He used his imagination. And he didn't use a level of imagination that you can program because it came from a—whatever Will Ferrell is coming from. It's like a flow state. It's a, "I don't know what the next thing I'm gonna say is," and it's nothing that you could program in, because it has to do with me being in free flow. Right? Me being in, like, complete, total, like, I'm not in the mind.

In fact, they just did an fMRI series—what—they did MRIs on monks at Columbia University. They had no brain activity whatsoever. Because they found out that the wisdom that we have as humans—the real wisdom—doesn't come from the mind. It comes from the heart. Which is why the most amazing things that have ever happened in humanity, it was a moment where somebody did something that they didn't intend to do.

The last thing I'll say is like when Martin Luther King—he got on stage, Dr. Martin Luther King, he told this story, I Have a Dream. Everybody knows the story now, but like, he wrote the script, he knew what he was gonna say in the speech. And then as he walked on stage, this woman from the choir shouted out, "Martin, tell them about your dream." And he wasn't gonna say, "I have a dream." He was gonna read this speech. So he heard her, and then he just—his voice cracked, and he said, "I have a dream. I have a dream. I have a dream."

And so everybody quotes I Have a Dream. The speech is in the Smithsonian. Nothing on the page says, "I have a dream." It was improvised. It came in the moment. And the thing that everybody was moved by is a man who was vulnerable enough to just share his dream, which is a vulnerable thing to do. But that's what moves humanity—is the vulnerability.

So I think it's fine. I think it's interesting. I'm not worried about it. I'm more concerned with how much do you understand what you bring to the table as a loving, alive, feeling being. I would rather have you have the script part done, and then you punch it up with your humanity. Because then we get a lot cooler stuff, if that makes sense.

Michael: Hmm. I love that. Absolutely. Makes sense. Yeah. It sounds like what you're saying is that the reason that you're not concerned about, you know, AI is because, you know, the role that humans play in terms of their soul and their heart and what they're bringing. And that's something that AI might be scary to our minds or the egos because it's something that can replace some mind activity. But ultimately, you know, you can use those as tools. And the part that we can bring to the table is our heart and the thing that makes us human.

I feel like there's a much longer conversation we could have just geeking out about this in particular. You know, I interviewed Nolan Arba on our podcast a few months ago, and he's the first human patient of the Neuralink. And so he's quadriplegic from the neck down, and he has this device installed that allows him to think and control electronic devices. So he was on the podcast and we created the first song ever telepathically. And it really opened up my mind to, like, what is possible in terms of what you're describing—of using these tools and having almost like a tertiary layer of being able to... the intent is the important thing, you know. But we can have these tools that can help us do things faster.

And I just imagine, I don't know, probably shorter—in less time than we would expect—being able to dream things into existence in a way that just feels like pure magic. So I just get the sense that, Cathy, this is a topic that I personally could geek out for hours about. I would love to hear your perspective on it, but we are approaching the end of our slot here. So I just wanted to say this has been a really great conversation. I so appreciate you coming on here to share your journey and what you're doing to help inspire all kinds of people and all of us as artists.

I think often people don't necessarily think of themselves as an artist, but they do. Like, they have a unique expression, they have art, and you're helping people to discover who they are and express that and reconnect with the roots. And so it's really cool, and I appreciate you sharing that gift with the community here.

Cathy: Well, you're really good at what you do, and I love your questions. I love the way you ask questions. And I just think you're doing something unique. I've been on so many podcasts, but this is really a different conversation. A lot of them are usually very similar, but I just think you do this really uniquely.

Michael: Well, thank you. That means a lot, especially knowing the caliber of guests that you've connected with. But Cathy, for anyone that's listening or watching this right now who's interested in connecting more or taking a deeper dive into what you teach, where can they go to connect?

Cathy: Well, I wrote this book—this is my recent book. It came out in December—Abundant Ever After. And this is something you can get anywhere you want to get books—Amazon, Target, whatever. And I'm on Instagram. I try to write something inspiring every day @cathyheller, cathy.heller. And then I always have some kind of workshop about getting your life to feel like jazz and moving you into flow state. And so I usually post that.

And then I have a podcast called Abundant Ever After. We just released a collection of all kinds of extra content on the podcast called the Confetti Collective. And so people can find that at the podcast as well.