Embracing Consciousness Elevation and Personal Growth w/ Catherine Llewellyn

I had to kind of let go of those people because we were never going to make each other happy and sometimes that was very sad, but then inevitably other people would show up and we'd be a better fit. It's never too late, I don't think, but you don't realise until it's kind of almost too late that we've been living your life. It doesn't actually work, no term, it's not sustainable. So if I had it to do again, I like to think I would be a bit more self-sustaining, you know, in terms of taking care of myself.

The journey to wealth is a long walk and some may walk quicker than others, but what good is sprinting to the finish line if you pass out when you cross it? On Walk to Wealth, we enlighten and empower young adults to build wealthy, abundant lives. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and your first step starts right now. This is Walk to Wealth with your host, John Mendez.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Walk to Wealth podcast. If you're tuning in on YouTube or any of the podcast directories, make sure to do us a favour and make sure to follow so you don't miss any of the amazing guests I'm bringing on this year. We have not missed a single beat so far and I'm not going to continue to miss any so far. So, with that being said, let's get right into this one. Catherine, for anyone who hasn't had the opportunity yet to get to know you, to get to meet you, tell us your quick elevator pitch who are you and what do you do?

Wow. Well, I'm a personal growth worker, really, and I help people to elevate their consciousness in whatever way they want to do it, and I do energy technique treatments, I run workshops, I do mentoring, I'm a podcaster, I write. I do a whole bunch of things, all of which I really enjoy, and I'm just trying to be helpful to people.

Amazing, and so I always like asking this question. It's one of my favourite ones, and so take us back in a time machine. What was little Catherine like? What was it like growing up in your household? How did your upbringing influence what you have going on now Like? What was it like being a kid?

I was a little tomboy in dungarees, with one strap falling down and with my hair in my face Messy little kid climbing trees and things like that and riding my bicycle. My original upbringing, it's not going to surprise you. My parents were really quite alternative and they believed in thinking for yourself, questioning the generally agreed narrative, not assuming that the people are in charge, necessarily a right about everything. Really being a free thinker and also my father was very unusual. He was a nature cure practitioner, so we were brought up with very healthy diet, no medicines, no vaccines, no nothing, and so really it was a very unusual upbringing and I think that encouraged me to strike out and explore what it is to really understand human potential and being fulfilled and being true to ourselves.

Now remind me again which part of the world are you from? You're in Australia, I'm not mistaken. How far are you from Australia?

No, I'm not in Australia. I am in the UK. I live in Wales, which is the sort of the lump on the left hand side of the UK is Wales. That's where I am.

So let me ask you, because I guess I kind of are you normally from the States, I've been a very blessed and fortunate day and there were a couple of people who were brought up not in the States and they're always different, getting perspective, because there's different cultures, and so it's like what was it like? How was that viewed in your culture at least, being someone that was kind of against the traditional way of thinking? So for me I always make fun of my grandma and I tease her and I say that she lost, she became too Americanized, right, because every time someone gets sick it's always medicine, medicine, medicine. And it's like she grew up in, like a little camp in the outskirts of the Minnigan Republic by the mountainside, and it was all her and her upbringing. There was no hospital, there was no running water, there was no plumbing, there was no, it was very bare bones, very basic living. And now now she's here say everything. It's like, oh, hospital, very, very traditionalized. And I saw one that asks you what was it like in? You know, from growing up, did your upbringing cause you to be kind of an outcast? Because I believe I'm not mistaken in the UK At least philosophically very similar to the US.

Yeah, well, I was born in 1956. So if you imagine, that means that when I was 10, it was 1966. So there was a lot of changes starting to happen. People were, you know, finding about LSD and smoking, weed and festivals, and things were just starting, but only just only just starting. And generally people thought my father was really weird and some people, as the local witch doctor, that he was just, you know, scarily weird, and they thought our whole family was weird. And it was difficult. You're right, there were times when I felt really excluded by other people and there were other times when I felt like I was kind of torn between wanting to be accepted and not wanting to be accepted, not wanting to fit in because I thought fitting in was a kind of a death. And so, as an adolescent in particular, particularly after, you know, the hormones started kicking in, I started noticing boys and all that kind of thing. It started to matter to me to be accepted in my social sphere. I was kind of torn between this believing and thinking for myself and this kind of need to be, a sense of belonging. There was a real challenge.

So let me ask you what do you do to solve that? Because I think that even for the people who, let's say, have a more traditional upbringing like even I think, everyone, no matter what your own burden is, especially at that age group is just struggling to fit in and struggling to connect. I think, more now than ever with technology it's so much harder to make connections. So it's like, what did you do? Because for me I knew kind of pretty early on, around eighth, ninth grade for me was when I started realizing that I kind of ninth grade especially I see the world a little differently than most people and my upbringing and the way I just had, my outlook and my perspective was definitely different than most people in that age group. And for me I always stayed true to myself and part of it is because I had this persona that I adopted where it's like I don't care about anybody. It's like bravado, typical high school, you know, you know confident, young, you know young guy. It's like I don't need anybody, right the whole, I'm good on my own, I could cut off the world and be fine, and I kind of adopted that. What I thought was out of, you know, because I just didn't need anybody was really out of fear of being hurt and being lost, and I didn't realize that until later on. And so for me I kind of adopted that bravado to help protect me and be okay with not fitting, and be okay with not normalizing or fitting into the crowd. So what did you do at that around that age, to find your path?

Well, I must say, at that age I really didn't know what I was doing. I hadn't yet learned about reflecting and using a journal and talking to a. You know, I was just flailing about really. But I suppose if I look back, I think the things I did that helped me were following things that fed my spirit. So, for example, I loved dancing, I loved walking in the woods, I loved riding my bicycle, I loved talking with friends, I loved reading. I used to read a lot of fantasy and science fiction. I still read that and find it very mind expanding and helping me to get a better perspective, you know, on the ups and downs of actually being a human being. So I did follow a lot of those things and I was also lucky in my family in that we had the strong culture of turning everything into a game. Especially if it's a disaster, turn it into a game, and that kind of bred in me this wonderful sense of humor and this ability to laugh at face of problems and fears and issues. And I've still got that with me now and I've been told that's quite an unusual thing for someone to have that So-.

It's one of those things that are, it's like, not socially accepted almost because, like when you're in a situation where the norm is to feel a certain way and your natural response is to laugh or giggle or chuckle or smile, but that's just for a lot of people, how they know how to cope or how they were taught to deal with certain situations, and a lot of people frown upon it. Like my sister has that thing, an issue where it's like she, even if it's a serious moment, would laugh or you go, not because she doesn't find a moment like serious, but it's just like it's hard for her to know how to navigate that experience and from the outside, like an end, it's like what's wrong with her, like why is she laughing? Someone got hurt or someone passed away or someone did something really tragic happen, but it's like that's how they do navigate with that situation. So it's like that's one of those things and like for me I don't know where it kind of got fostered from my sister, but I know for me in my Xbox parties back when I used to be playing video games in middle school and high school, there was like a pretty much nothing's off limit rule, pretty much where you could talk about any and everything and it's fair game. So if you're in a party and you know we're getting at each other's necks, you could bring up someone's grandma, someone's dad, someone's sister, someone's whatever, and like nothing or nothing was off limits. So like I was just forced to get tough skin and for me I turn jokes out of almost every situation. For me that's just how I learn how to deal with a lot of things. I don't like being stuck in the sadness or the negativity or those emotional. I feel like they bring me down and I'm a very upbeat, positive person, so I try to not stay down there as much as I can.

Yeah, me too, and I think there's a difference between using humor in order to escape the truth of your feelings and using humor to recognize that your problems are ridiculous. It's a completely different thing. A lot of the dramas and ups and downs I've had in my life if I've been able to actually laugh at myself and say how did you get yourself into that? That's just ridiculous that you did that. That's not the same as me pretending I'm not hurting. It's a subtle and quite an important difference. But I think another thing I did that really helped me was to try to keep my eyes open for people who were what I would call conscious, awake people, other people who were asking questions and who were interested in looking outside the expected way of looking at things and following that and through that I met a lot of interesting people and there were times when I had to let go of people who wanted me to fit in, who wanted me to be the same as everybody else and who wanted me to conform. I had to kind of let go of those people because we were never going to make each other happy, it was never going to be a good thing and sometimes that was very sad and sometimes it meant I was completely by myself for a while, but then inevitably other people would show up when we'd be a better fit. But I might make it sound like it was all very straightforward, but I went through an awful lot of angst as a teenager.

It's hard to navigate, and it's hard to when you especially the sooner you wake up, the harder it is to navigate, and so it's like once you, I think, I woke up not extremely early. I think the awakening process is, for me, to like, become conscious, started pretty early on, just because I had so many different perspectives, I didn't have a said role model, and so I was very open-minded. So I was just naturally curious and just naturally asked questions, and wherever I had the opportunity let's say there's like a debate I used to, on purposely go to the side of a less people. I say there's a class debate, I'll go to the side with less people so I can have a harder argument to try to back and Just figure it out, regardless of whether I thought it was right or wrong. I just so I can have some fun arguing and debating. And for me, what really happened, though, that woke me up is I had to have all the time here in the pocket reading which that poor dad. But during the pandemic it just me waking up during a pandemic, not that the world is resumed, it's like all that time I spent the process of growth Just kind of just like the gap, just almost Like 10x, because while everyone was on pause, I was working. By the time everyone resumed I was already working and that just kind of compiled and I self and then meant to. You know, I kept learning, I kept meeting new people, I kept surrounding me myself with people who thought better, bigger than me and different than me and had different perspectives and outlooks, and that just all started compounding and to the point where it's like Nowadays, majority of the people I talked to Are like double or triple my age, aside from, like, my girlfriend and aside from my best friend and, uh, like one of my boys, one or two of my boys um, that's pretty much the only people in my personal life that I talked to. Everyone else is people I met through entrepreneurship or the podcast or a conference or a networking event. It's it's hard to find people at this age that, um, and that's why I'm Now I'm doing a lot of like in person events, not a lot decent amount. I have a couple of like networking happy hours. I'm doing in person podcast events and psych. It's trying to get more young people in these rooms with other people who think differently, who are trying to Take control of their lives and, yeah, the whole process is becoming conscious. I feel like I kind of got a bad rep, them like that, the woke movement, and it kind of like got politicized, but like the active being conscious, I feel like it's just like. It's like um, remind me of, like like socrates, right, just ask questions for everything, right, just asking questions, being curious, being open-minded, seeking the truth, seeking information, seeking new perspectives and just Knowing that, no matter how confident you may feel about something, that, in the grand scheme thing, you actually don't know anything. And the scotch of socrates quote I love that I was quote it's uh, I know that I do not know, and that's something I try to always keep in mind. So even when I try to feel strongly about something, it's like I know that I do not know, and so I think it's a perfect segue. It's kind of against the today's conversation. We've got a good idea. I see you're upbringing. What was it like, um, navigating? You know the world at around. You know your teenage years. When did you start to step into the role that you're kind of in now? When did that start to blossom and how did that? What was the epiphany that kind of led to that?

Well, I think I I always knew, even as a child, that I wanted to do something like this, because I was looking around at the adults in my life and most of them seem to be Trying to persuade each other to believe things that they didn't even believe in themselves and most of them didn't seem really all that happy or truthful. So even at the age of six I was thinking that's not right. So it kind of was seeded at that point. And also the example of my father who, although he was, um, like a medical professional, he was a nature-gill professional. Quite a lot of his work involved psychology actually, because he was having to help people do things like give up sugar and stuff which people are addicted to sugar, and so that was a massive problem for them. So he had to help them do that kind of almost intuitively. So I had that example. But then later on, as I kept following the right kind of people, the people that seemed right to me, I was living in Oxford, I was, I think, 22, 23, something like that, and we were all hanging out and partying basically in Oxford and I wasn't working, and a bunch of friends of mine I bumped into them one day and they seemed completely different from how they'd been the last time I'd seen them. They seemed much more confident, much more together. Some of them were in a band and one of them was the manager of the band and she was about to walk across town and walk into this particular venue and tell the guy she wanted him to put on the band. Now, in those days you just didn't do that right, but she was totally confident, she was gonna go and do it. This tiny little woman, you know age 23 or something. And she went off and she did it. She just walked in, she persuaded him and I went okay, guys, what happened? And I said, no, we went and did a weekend seminar. So, long story short, I went and did this weekend seminar and it was one of those very transformative experiences where you really examine your stuff, you know in your baggage and your consciousness and what you're telling the truth about, what you're lying about and all that kind of stuff, who you are, your emotions, how your mind works, your creativity, your energy, your spirituality. Now, that had a very big, powerful effect on me. And after that, not long after that, somebody who I'd met through that started a business and invited me to come and work in the business and said we don't have any money, we might not be able to pay you, but you wanna come and try and make it work? And I immediately gave up my job and went and joined and to begin with we were doing telephone marketing work. And then our clients started saying your people get much better results on the phone than our people do. Why is that? And we said, well, it's because of the training we've had, and of course we meant this weekend we'd had. They said, well, can you train our people? So we started training their people in communication skills, which was a lot about being authentic, paying attention, being present, the stuff that nowadays is standard. But in those days in 1980, was very, very new and very, very people thought it was very weird, and some people. So we started training their people. And then they said, right, you've trained our people, they're better now at getting the results, but we can't manage them because they're too unpredictable. They're really all right, we'll train your team leaders. And then the team leaders. You know now the team leaders can't be managed. All right, we'll train the manager. And it just went all the way up until we were training the board and I was then working with CEOs and marketing directors and sales directors and people like that but yeah, the top exact in large companies by now and doing things like change leadership not change management, but change leadership. You know, like, how do you embody the change, how do you lead people the right way, how do you understand your own relationship with change? Very deep person work. And then we were doing these big organizational transformation programs. But it all just kind of grew from that initial place of doing that weekend and that whole process from doing that weekend, and then I started working with that business year or so later and that just evolved and evolved, and evolved and evolved. And then 16 years later I left that organization and set up on my own and that was in 1996. So, as I've been working under my own banner ever since then, that is amazing.

Wow, quite the story. So you had a webinar, a workshop that you went to over a weekend and then from there it led to you producing better results than where you were at. People took note of that and they wanted those results replicated. So they reached out to you, of course, and then that led to more people reaching out to you to get those same results and more people out and kept pretty much going up the food chain. That's amazing. And then you got to the point where you kind of branched off. I want you to touch a little bit of part on the point where it's like so you're working, we started working with execs, you started working doing big organizational programs and then you made the decision to go on your own. So at the time of recording this, I just recently quit my restaurant job. I was out there for three years, so three full years in a month, I think, if we'd be exact. And it was one of those things where it was extremely bittersweet because, despite me knowing that I need to work on myself I mean work for myself and I need to be independent and have my own business, I knew that. I've been knowing that for the past two years. I knew that I wanted to leave the restaurant, but I just wasn't in a position to do so and so quitting. It was like the moment is now here, but despite me waiting so long for this moment to finally arise, it's like, well, part of me wants to hold on and stay, and so it's like what was that opportunity like for you? Because, unlike me at the restaurant, I was just a food runner, so it's like nothing crazy. It's not like I was managing the restaurant, but you managed to work your way up. So you had a pretty solid position. We had some solid foundation underneath you going and you decided to branch off and go independent. Take us back to that point in your life, illustrators for us. Like, what was it like making that decision? What led up to that decision? What was it like after you actually pulled the plug and went on your own? Like, what was that period of your life like?

Well, it was interesting. I was about how old was I? 40, about 40 years old. I was at a point where there wasn't really anywhere else for me to go in the organization. We'd just done a big internal change program in our own organization and I was one of the two people leading that. And at the end of that the thing is, if you do a big internal change program on your own organization, it's very difficult after that to disappear back inside the organization because you've had to let some people go. You've had to make some difficult decisions. You either got to then run the business or you've got to go. Really you can't do anything else. And the guy I was working with, he was chosen to run the business. I wasn't chosen and actually I didn't want it. I didn't want the administrative headache of being that person. So it was time. It was time for me to go. But the other difference, of course, was because I'd been there for so long. I managed to negotiate redundancy, which meant I had a little cushion of money. So I was able to then take my time getting myself set up with what I was going to do next. So that was an advantage and that was because I was a bit further down the life cycle probably the new are at the moment so it meant I was able to do that, which made quite a big difference. I remember at the time I really wanted to go because by then I was getting fed up with the fact there was loads of people everywhere. You always had to go to meetings all the time. If I was running programs for clients, I had to check in with somebody about that or someone had to check in with me about it. All the downsides of being in an organization were just to me. I was fed up with it. And also by then I had my own. I had my trade. I had my skills. I'd been working really hard, trying to learn from every single piece of work I did for a client and the internal work I did as well, and I'd learned a lot and I felt confident that I had something to offer. And it was time for me to go out and just kind of spread my wings, because the thing is, when you're a practitioner, like I am, if you're completely independent, you can have a conversation with someone on the phone, you can have a meeting with them, you can make an agreement about what you're going to do, and you can do it and you can be completely intuitive in the flow of designing what that's going to be in the moment, without needing to think does this fit with the ethos of my organisation, is this going to cause a problem? That kind of thing. So I just really needed that freedom. But, that said, it was difficult in the sense that I had a lot of friends in the organisation because we all worked very long hours and most of our friends were people that we worked with. So I did have some difficult times of kind of you know, parting company with some people, trying to stay in touch with other people. Some people disappeared from my life, other people didn't, and there were some surprises. You know who sticks around in my life and who doesn't. Some of those were surprises. So it was a really, as you say, bittersweet definitely bittersweet. And also I was then tipped into that thing of oh my god, it's completely down to me. There is no salary now. There's no salary I've got to entirely create this myself. This little cushion of money I've got is not going to last forever. Another thing at the time I was married to a wonderful man who was very supportive and very bright guy and he knew a lot about tech stuff. So he built me a database, which saved my life. So all my contacts went on the database so I could track who I'd spoken to. I could plot it forward. It was a reminder to when to talk to people. That completely saved my life. Otherwise, I was scrabbling around on bits of paper trying to who have I spoken to? Who have I talked to about what I'm now doing? Who have I met with? Who have they referred me to like that. So I had some good things going for me as well to help me.

That's amazing. That's amazing and you ended up figuring it out and now you're at a position where it's like now you know doing what you enjoy doing writing books, the Calvinon podcast, running your own show, impacting lives. So I know you mentioned there's a couple lessons that it took you longer than you wanted to learn, that you wanted to share with the audience. And can you just start touching upon those? Now that we got a good idea, I see your journey came full circle. You know what are some of the biggest lessons you learn just from your journey and that you wanted to share.

Yeah, one thing I've learned is about what I call squandering squandering my resources. So when I look back over my life, I can see numerous occasions where I've just squandered myself. So whether that means squandering myself emotionally by allowing myself to get drawn into something which is going to leach energy out of me, whether that's a relationship or a job or a situation, or whether it's me just not taking care of my health and my physical body, you know partying too hard, burning the candle at both ends, not drinking enough water, not having enough good quality food you know just kind of squandering myself, not sleeping enough, because at the time when I was young, when I was young, I just thought I'm limitless, I'm immortal, I can just do what I like, I'll be like this forever, I'll always have loads of energy, I'll always be flexible and strong and everything else. And of course, you get to the age I am now. I'm in my mid to late sixties and I'm in pretty good shape, actually, in my own opinion, because I do look after myself. But you know, I can't just take things for granted and I remember once saying to somebody this is when I was a lot younger I remember saying why is it that all the men in their twenties are in really good shape and then suddenly all the men in their thirties have got this huge belly and are really out of shape. What happens when they turn 30? Why do they stop looking after themselves? My friend said no, catherine, they haven't been looking after themselves at all the whole time. It's just in their twenties they can get away with it and in their thirties they can't. And I remember thinking that I think, oh my God, that's so true. And you don't realise until it's it's never too late, I don't think, but you don't realise until it's kind of almost too late that the way you've been living your life doesn't actually work long term. It's not sustainable. So if I had it to do again and the jury's out for me on whether or not we come back or don't come back or whatever but if I were to come back, I like to think I would be a bit more self-sustaining in terms of taking care of myself and even silly things like I was listening to. Have you ever heard of a guy called Gene Epstein? He has a thing called the Soho Forum. It's a debate club in New York. He's an economist guy, brilliant, brilliant guy, probably in his 70s or 80s now, and he was talking about that from when he was very young. He started putting money aside every week Right from when he was very, very young. Small amounts, not much, so by the time he reached I don't know 30, he was a millionaire. Wow, that's by putting a bit of money away every week, and I thought I wish I'd done that yeah, we should actually thought you know, okay, I've got 50 quid here, I've just been paid. Could I put five quid away? How much would that hurt me?

You know, but I just never thought of that sort of thing.

when I was younger, I was just running, running, having fun. So that was very important lesson.

Yeah, one of the things that people don't really think about, because it's like we're not taught to think in terms of compounding, we're just taught to think linearly, and so I face value to saving a couple of dollars a day. Doesn't add to much. And, as one of those things where I want to hit on the part of I'm not sure you know your physical health, there's so many people and not to bash anyone or judge anyone, I'm just calling what it is so many people. I graduated high school in 2019. So only four years ago from the time of recording this, right, I think almost, you know, like almost exactly four years ago, last month made four years since I graduated high school, and the amount of people that have gotten out of shape is absolutely insane. It baffles me and it's like we're supposed to be at the height of our physical prowess in this stage of our life and this is like this is where our prime, you know, physical athletic ability. I think we hit our prime around like close to 25 or something like that for being like super technical, but now, regardless, it's like we're still pretty much babies in the world. We're still fresh out of high school, the regardless of how far you know far along. Some worse people may have or may have not come. It's like we're still relatively in the grand scheme thing, so it's super young, and for me it's one of those things to say. There's a quote in the system the long lines of you either find time to take care of yourself now or your illness will force you to take care of yourself in the future. And you don't have a choice then. It's like for me it's like I do my absolute best to stay in top shape, like I'm still playing, pick up basketball, I'm still playing. And some people, yeah, they may have to work long average, but it's like there's no you long term if you don't take care of yourself. A lot of stuff about oh, I got a job or I got to work or I got to this or whatever. It's like find time somewhere, some shape way, shape or form, whether it's like before you get up and do anything, bang out 100 push ups or something, but something you know, a five, 10 minute hit workout, something right. And before you get going, because, like, we only get one of these bodies and the worst part about it is most of the stuff. It's like after, when, like 25, I believe, or 30, it's like that's when everything just starts going downhill and from there there's no way to reverse it at this point in time. So it's like, at the very least, put yourself at the best possible position. So it's like if you're, let's say, you have a cup that's halfway full and it starts depleting, right, you have a cup that's super full and it starts depleting because you took care of yourself and your cup was full, even though it's still going to deplete. It's by the time you reach a certain age you're going to still have a lot more left in the tank than most other people because they just skip down on everything. So I always try my best to live a lifestyle. It's like it's super healthy. And my biggest wake up point was last year when I rolled my ankle and I never got injured. I never got. I played football, basketball, I did track, you know baseball. I played a bunch of sports, never got injured. And I rolled my ankle and I was out the gym for like almost five months. I couldn't play basketball. And I was like the first point of my life when I realized like, wow, I'm actually not invincible and I have. I always tell myself I'm genetically elite, just like jokingly, but I take very good care of myself and I'm very fortunate I never got injured. But when I rolled my ankle I was like wow, it really woke me up. And then this year I was out the gym for almost another five months because of I sprained like a muscle in my lower back so I couldn't work out or anything and it's like, yeah, damn, like I really need to take care of myself now because if my ankle gets, your ankle is one of those things like once you roll your ankle, it's like you just kind of screwed for life, and then, like your lower back is one of those things. It's like you hurt your lower back. You could also be screwed for life. So it's like I've even said, you know, stretching a little bit more, being extra cautious, because I'm not at the stage where it's like you know I'm invincible and so it's starting to wear off a little bit in reality, starting to check in.

Absolutely right and, of course, at every age there's another opportunity. I mean, I had a thing I moved to house at the late 2019. And I just for about five months I managed everything that needed doing to the house and it was like a very kind of sweaty, dirty time. The place was filthy, it was a mess. I was living in one room in the house. There was contractors coming in and out the whole time I was managing it. I was not stretching, I was not going for walks, I was not taking care of my body and at the end of it I had real problems with my knees and I found a yoga teacher and spoke to her about it. She said oh yeah, of course, at your age you know arthritis comes in and don't worry, you know some really good knee operations these days won't be a problem. I thought no. I'm not going to go that way. I'm going to fix these knees. So I went on this whole process of discovering what you have to do to fix your knees, you know, and it was all about hips and thighs and how you stand and breathing and stretching, and I got my knees back and better than they were before. But because I was determined and it was difficult and sometimes it was painful, but I did it and I thought, no, I'm not going to accept. Okay, you're the age you are, it's got to be arthritis. No, you know, it takes quite a lot of strength of will, I think at any age, to do these things that take care of our body, but it really does pay dividends. I've got to say, a friend of mine just the other day called me and he runs five rhythms, dance classes and workshops and does some other things as well, and he is almost 70, now 70 years old, and I noticed that his evening class had been canceled. The message came through this class is canceled, unforeseen situation. So I rang him up and said, hi, are you okay? He said, oh, I've broken my leg. I said, oh, what happened? He said, well, I coming down the stairs. I slipped, I twisted and I broke my leg. But there's no pain. There's absolutely no pain. They offered me pain killers in the hospital. I said, well, I've got no pain. And we realized the reason we have no pain is because he's in really good shape. His muscles are really toned from all the dancing. His energy flow, you know, his chi flow in his body is excellent. His posture is excellent. His body's got incredible recovery and he's almost 70 years old Now a lot of people at that age can barely even walk, let alone be dancing two nights a week running long workshops, and then breaks his leg and there's no pain, you know, phenomenal.

My grandpa. You see him at one of our Dominican house parties I got he'll dance the whole night away. Yeah, I think he's a 75 now, if I'm not mistaken. And man, he still got it in him. He's like eternally youthful, like no matter how old he gets, he's just a ball of energy. And so, catherine, for any of the you know people in my audience, any of the listeners that want to connect with you, want to figure out more about what you have going on, listen to your podcast, maybe work we find you at work. We connect with you so that we can just get more of what you're doing.

Really the best place is, in fact, my podcast, which is called Truth and Transcendence, and the and is the squiggly ampersand in the middle, and that's in all the usual places, because on there I do solo episodes, so you can find out more about how I think about things and get some useful information. But also I have guests on, and one of whom was yourself, john. You came on and did my episode 100, which was fantastic, so that's a very good place to find out more about me, and in the show notes on every episode there are multiple links that you can follow. So that's a really good way. Way in, and I'd love to have some of your listeners come and listen to my podcast, john.

Yeah, definitely go check it out. I was as I said. As she said I was on episode 100. So definitely go check it out, show her some love. And now it's time for our famous five questions. Question number one what is the most impactful lesson you've learned in life?

It's to listen to my own truth first.

What is the most admirable trait a person can have?

Generosity.

If you had to change someone's life for one book, which book would you recommend?

Oh my, God, lord of Light, by Roger Zalini.

What is the legacy that you're trying to leave behind?

I am trying to help people elevate their level of consciousness, because I believe that our next stage of evolution as a species is about the elevation of our consciousness.

And for anyone that wants to embark on their walk to us today, what is the first step you recommend they take?

Start putting money aside and always spend less money than you have coming in.

You've now finished taking the first step. Now let us help you take the next one. Subscribe to our newsletter at walktowealthcom. That's walk, the number two wealthcom, so we can keep you moving on your journey. We'll see you on the next episode of Walk to Wealth with John Mendes.