Let It Be Easy:

Change Your Mind to Change the World

Whether or not you believe that our thoughts create our reality, I think we can all acknowledge that our attitudes and habitual thoughts can affect our quality of life.

I have had a lifelong fascination with the ways that our everyday thoughts, especially the ones we think over and over again, can affect the outcomes of our relationships, career, and creativity. In this episode, I share some ideas about small ways that we can shift our thinking to enjoy more peace, self-acceptance, and even prosperity.

I also discuss how I currently have goals for what I’d like to FEEL in my life, and not just what I’d like to achieve–and how this actually positively affects my achievements.

And I finish up with why I believe it is ESPECIALLY important to hold ourselves in a loving vibration with loving thoughts during times of conflict and turmoil, even though it can be hard to do.

Join me if you’d like to focus your mind on something positive, and be more intentional about the thoughts you are entertaining today.

Episode Links:
Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive as sung by Paul McCartney
Blowin’ In The Wind as sung by Zoe Speaks

Support the show

Transcript

welcome to the what dreamers do podcast. i’m your host carla govan and appalachian musician flatfoot dancer, mama creative and dreamer from kentucky. i’m on a mission to inspire others to realize their dreams and live their most creative lives. grab your mason jar full of sweet tea or something a little stronger, and pull up a chair, because it’s time to get your dream off. that’s what dreamers

do.

hey there dreamers, welcome back to another week of the what dreamers do podcast. i’m karla govier host and i am happy to be back spending this time with you again. this week, i’m going to discuss a little bit something that affects all of us as human beings. and maybe especially affects or at least we notice it a lot those of us who are in the creative realm, or the content creation realm, or people who are trying to make a difference in the world and have kind of a vocation for whatever it is they’re doing, which is the way that our thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes influence, our reality influence our experience of the life we lead. so whether or not you’re one of those people that actually believes that thoughts create a law, the secret or other new age, philosophical systems, or whether you come down somewhere else on that spectrum, i think we can all agree that our attitudes and our beliefs about ourselves can influence our success in life and love and relationships in career. and that by improving those, we can improve our quality of life, whether this is just gaining more confidence to ask for a raise or get the job you want. or whether it’s believing in yourself enough to display your art at a gallery or perform at that open mic, or try to get a booking agent that you think might be out of your reach, or to try to get a boyfriend or girlfriend that you think might be out of your league. and i’ve always been fascinated with the subject, not only as somebody who wants to live the most actualized, joyful, engaged, juicy life that i can but as somebody who’s making a living through my ideas, my creativity, the projects that i create, and as somebody who genuinely wants to create art that touches and heals and affects people in the best ways. so as someone who’s given lots of thought to, you know, the attitudes, beliefs, ideas that influence and shape our lives. one of the first places that we all get our belief systems installed, of course, is when we’re children, you know, the software goes in to the hardware, the programs start running, and then they’re running in the background all the time, we don’t even notice them anymore. if you’ll grant me this metaphor, indulge me this metaphor of computers, it’s a pretty good metaphor for our brain, i guess maybe because we’ve created computers to be somewhat like our brains. but once we’re adults, and we’re living our lives, sometimes we have good stuff installed, like, you know, be kind and help people and uplift people. and we’re, we’re operating those belief systems that we got when we were young, which are really powerful. those are the most powerful ones, that’s when

it goes in really deep, you know, and sometimes when we go back and revisit that, as older people, it can be challenging to not only uproot some of the ones that we think maybe aren’t benefiting us, but also to re implant or reinstall, to continue to metaphor, new belief systems, new programs, new patterns, new habits, which of course, i talk about a lot on this show. so you know, we don’t need to worry about the good programs and the good belief systems that we receive from our parents because they just help us and we just leave those alone. but sometimes, unfortunately, and an often through no one’s fault, just because it’s a cultural belief where it’s circumstantial we get some pretty negative ones and it could be something really toxic and sad, like, you know, having a parent that tells you you’re worthless, or you know, a situation of abuse, to something a little more innocuous but still not helpful. the example i give a lot because i hear it so much from my students is that one you know, misguided teacher inquire that told you to just live sync along to the words or that that dance teacher that told you that you had two left feet, these things that maybe didn’t just totally damage us forever as human beings, but that stunted our growth in some area. so we have these negative beliefs, programs, patterns, habits on some level that you know, are just not really contributing to living our optimal life. and then there’s some that are just almost like they’re in the air and the water in our culture, like, money doesn’t grow on trees, and you got to get out there and work really hard to make a living. and life’s hard, love sucks. and then you die, you know, things like that, that you hear. and sometimes we internalize it. and i think those things are sometimes running in the background and influencing the kind of life we have. so for me, as i examine things from my family thinks, from my culture, the question i’m always asking, is this, the flag that i want to be carrying? is this the rallying cry that i really want to have? do i really want to continue to have this belief and everything that comes with it, including the ways that it might be influencing and affecting the life i’m living? unconsciously? because that’s the other thing about these thoughts. and these belief systems we have a lot of times they’re playing like, really quietly, so low in the background, we don’t even hear them playing. they’re just always running. you know, sometimes we run up against other people’s belief systems like that, and you can see it, have you ever known somebody, you know, maybe you didn’t even know him really well, but they had a wound or they were damaged in some way. and it was like, no matter what you said to them, they thought you were saying something you weren’t? you know, like if somebody’s parents had been really critical of them. and then you ask them a question. they, because they’re predisposed to think everybody’s criticizing them all the time will be like, get their feelings hurt or get riled up. because it’s being filtered through their perception of criticism all the time. and it has nothing to do with you. i think, you know, most of us have had that experience at one time or another. but what i’m specifically thinking about today, is the idea of life is hard. i believe i’ve been thinking about that when more than ever, because just these twin ideas of life is hard. and you got to work really hard to make a living. and it’s really difficult. this is something that is in our culture, and has really influenced us all. and one thing that made me really aware of it in a different way than i ever had been before was the chance i had to go spend a month in denmark and teach and tour over there play music, and i taught at a variety of schools. and i really got to interact with lots of different people from different walks of life and different setting settings. and what i noticed is they did not seem to have in general, and i know i’m generalizing here, but there was not that live to work culture, it was it was work to live, they have a 30 hour work week there, they have a lot of breaks built into the day. i was in a lot of like staff situations on friday at quittin time, and everybody just would bring out a bunch of beers and a bunch of pops and just sit around and let down their hair together. but it was just a different pace of life. and

and i noticed it a lot when i came back to the united states, just the way that our sense of self worth is tied to work and earning in the way that we carry busyness like a badge of honor, the way we carry. how hard we’re working even even in like the artistic community right now the hustle culture is pretty strong. like i’m, i’m hustling all the time i’m hustling and grind and rise and grind. you know, if you look on instagram, you see hustle culture right away. and now there is starting to be some some sub currents of hey, i don’t want to hustle all the time. the whole reason i’m working so that i can have a life. so that’s good. but what i realized is there is kind of a puritanical work ethic overlay on top of our society that we’ve all sort of just breathed in, without realizing it. and i mean, you’ve read about the puritans in school, you learn about them. you know, i learned about him in elementary school. but i didn’t realize to what extent that puritan work ethic had permeated every aspect of american work culture, and corporate culture, i think from what i’ve heard. so what i’ve been exploring the belief that i’m working on changing or the belief that i’m trying to develop a different idea about is it maybe some things can be easy. maybe you don’t have to have pain and suffering to achieve success or at least grinding, hard work. now this is spoken by somebody who have spent my entire career riding the roller coaster of being a self employed artist, and musician, and touring, there have been some really hard parts of it. i don’t want to sugarcoat it or make it sound like everything’s been easy. but i’m also at that point in my life, where i’m trying to work smarter, not work harder. and i’ve paid my dues. and i have done a lot of, of hard work in the past. and so i just feel like digging in and getting into that deeper belief system. so i just don’t think that hustle should be an end in itself. so one of my favorite ways to work on shifting beliefs is to ask the question, what if? because then i don’t immediately engage my inner skeptic, because i’m just asking a question, right? what if i can tour when i want to tour but behind when i want to be home? what if i can find a way to assemble my career that i don’t have to necessarily say yes to every single gig that comes down the pike? what if i can connect and collaborate with other artists and other creatives to do projects that bring us both great financial success and artistic fulfillment? what if it can be easy? what if this can all be easy? and if i look around, i can find plenty examples of people who had some of their biggest financial successes come in unexpected and very easy ways, whether that’s getting inheritance, or suddenly having a song of picked up on a soundtrack that just brought in a big pile of money all at once, or even in my own case, during the pandemic, when i created a digital online dance course, and suddenly realized that i could make a good living and teach people from sitting right here at my computer like i’m doing right now. so i really like using that question, what if, and another thing that has changed for me is that when i make a list of goals at this point in my life, instead of just having tangible achievements on there, like, you know, number one, album and tour dates overseas this year, my goals also have a lot to do with how i want to feel, how i want to feel as i go about my everyday life. and i think that’s important, and something that we can overlook sometimes. but let’s, let’s examine it, let’s

be honest with it, a lot of the goals we have for physical or financial, or career achievements are linked to how it is we think we would feel if we had that thing. you know, for instance, if our goal is to have a vacation home in hawaii, which by the way, this is a really awesome goal, because i just got back from hawaii recently. and it was magical. but let’s just use it as an example. if i imagine myself having that home in hawaii, what is it? i think i’ll get from it. how is it that i think i’ll feel i’ll feel freedom, i’ll feel rich, i’ll feel blissed i’ll feel relaxed, i’ll feel expansive, i’ll feel magical, i’ll feel a sense of great possibility. those things, it’s probably true. having a vacation home in hawaii would contribute to my feeling most things but those feelings are accessible all the time, i might not be able to have that vacation home in hawaii next year. but i can have those feelings. so i’m gonna go ahead and opt in to those feelings that i want to feel now. now with the new age teachers and gurus say is that by feeling those things, first, we pave the way for manifesting more good things in the physical world. but whether you believe that or not feeling magical and expansive, and a sense of freedom and possibility, it’s a worthy end in itself. so if that’s all you achieve, by setting your attention, intention to feel certain feelings, hey, that’s good enough for me, right? so the idea is, you can feel something unconditionally, even if external things that you think you want, or that you really do want aren’t there yet. and that’s very empowering to me. because i like to feel good, i really love to feel good. and life is easier when you feel good. on a more serious note, i want to say that i’m recording this episode in the immediate aftermath of russia having invaded the ukraine. and obviously, that’s a very sobering moment in our world history. and for me, it feels a little bit frivolous to be recording a podcast, or to be making a social media post, or any of the things that i normally do in my business, you know, to connect with people to connect with my fans, and my audience and my friends, it all feels a little bit frivolous, when compared to the life or death, gravity of the situation of war that’s going on in the world. and this is something that i’ve spoken with my spiritual teacher a lot, because there is sometimes i have a tendency to feel guilty when things are going well for me, but they’re not going well for somebody i love or they’re not going well for somebody in some other part of the world. and he’s, he’s talked with me about it over the years. and i remember this one time, i was getting ready to go buy a new pair of shoes. it was many, many years ago, i was pretty broke, and i had not had a new pair of shoes in a long time. and i genuinely needed a new pair of shoes. like i only had like two pair at the time i was in college. and i told him, you know, i’ve got this money over this money, my pocket, my mom gave me some money for new shoes, but i feel so guilty and frivolous buying new shoes, when there’s people that don’t even have enough to eat in, you know, some other parts of the world. and he said this thing to me, he said, you know, you can’t get poor enough to help all the other poor people not be poor. and you can’t suffer enough to make somebody else who’s in pain, stop suffering. and i’ve thought about this a lot, you know, sometimes i think a loving thing that we can do for the world is keep our spirits up and keep our spirits high. now that doesn’t mean if we’ve got extra that we don’t, you know, donate to charities feed people that are hungry, help buy shoes for, for children that don’t have shoes. but i know that i can be of more help to my son, my family, my loved ones, if i’m in good spirits, if i’m in a good place in my heart and mind. and i believe the same is true for the world. so i think the best thing that i can do right now, that may be all of us can do, in addition to whatever other actions we feel called to take is to

be as joyful as we can to be as loving as we can to be transponders for a loving vibration on this planet. i had this experience when i saw paul mccartney for the first time, it was really magical. my best friend and i went and we took our three daughters to see him and it was an outdoor show. and it was really magical. because what it seemed like to me in that moment, was that paul was just standing there with his guitar and his band. and he had some sort of conduit open up to divine love. and he was just pulling that love through, pushing it out through his guitar in raising the vibration of everybody in the audience and increasing the love that everybody had in their heart. and i’ve seen him a couple times since then. and it just, that’s what it seems like he’s doing. so that’s what i want to do whether i’m standing on stage with a guitar, or spreading peanut butter on a piece of toast for my son. i want to raise the love quotient in the world. and i do believe that when i’m doing that it’s a lot more enjoyable. and it feels better than the other options that we have. and this idea ties into a lot of the stuff that my dad used to talk to me about to he grew up during world war two. and then he later went on to serve in korea. when he was a kid, kentuckians and then many other people throughout the united states were actually asked to participate in the war effort by growing him to make parachutes out of so he grew up doing that when he was 810 12 years old. then later, my dad also served in korea, and that was a difficult time for him because he was an enlisted man at first he later got promoted, but he was a nuclear veteran and he was exposed to a lot of radiation from our government who was doing some experiments on the enlisted men and yeah, in addition to being basically a war, even if they call it a conflict, he had a lot of mixed feelings about that. but all three when i was growing up, my dad couldn’t sing a lick. but he would sing this song to me that i think he heard when he was a kid during world war two, called accentuate the positive. and it was really funny, totally tuneless. i had to go back later in life and learn what the tune of it actually was, because he basically just scattered the words. and if i were allowed, i would put a sample of that song in here right now, but i don’t have the rights to it. so i can’t, i’ll just put a link to it in the show notes in case you want to go listen to it, there’s a ton of good versions of it. in fact, paul mccartney has a great version of it. so that’s the one i’ll link to. in any case, life sometimes is hard, and it throws difficult things at us. but i just want to make sure that i’m not creating a more difficult life for myself by my belief system. even if you don’t believe that thoughts create reality. certainly, the reactions, and thoughts and emotions that we have in response to the things that happened to us can make the difference between an incident of road rage when somebody cuts us off in traffic, or just taking a deep breath and saying, all right, buddy, or something like that, you know, just letting off a little steam, but not letting it get to you. sometimes you hear people back home. and i think it’s just a trope in our culture of alright, we can do things the easy way, or the hard way. so my intention is, to whatever extent i can to do things, the easy way to let things be easy to listen to my intuition so that i can find my way through this life with grace and ease. and sharing my gifts with the world as best i can. and feeling really good and expansive and magical, and a sense of possibility, while i’m doing so. so as i leave you this week, i just want to leave you with a question or something to think about. i want you to think about some area of your life that has been a struggle. and it could be a situation in your one of your relationships, or in your work life or your family or your health. and i just want you to ask the question, what if x, y, z could be easy? what if the situation with xyz could be easy? what if i could accomplish xyz? and have it be easy? what would that feel like?

what would that feel like? what would that be? like? just ask that question? you don’t even have to answer the question. just ask it. and allow yourself to feel a little bit of ease around whatever your heart thing is. i stand in solidarity with all the people of the ukraine. the mothers, the father’s the children, the everyday people. the artists, the musicians are dreamers. and i know you do too, and i stand in solidarity with you too. and i thank you for listening. and if you feel moved, say hi holler. you can always reach me over on instagram at kentucky carla or you can email me carla, carla, go for.com whatever feels easy for you. i’d love to hear from you. and until next week, let it be easy. and i’m going to take you out with a song that i do have the rights to the my band and i recorded. this is a track with zoho speaks that has never been released officially it’s called blowing in the wind. it is a song by mr. robert zimmerman, aka bob dylan, which i fervently hope becomes irrelevant at some point. but i hope you enjoy it. especially the fabulous cajun accordion as played by mr. dark power

rule master man damn for you call him she must away before she sleeps in the same time cannon balls for the fall river my friend the dancer muscle man therefore before he can see the sky irs password man before he he’ll be here the people will change to tv news to many people my friend my friend you can allow to earn exists before us was juicy many use cans on people before they’re allowed to be will last lantern his pretending he just does my friend blow

thank you so much for joining me this week. if you want to make sure you never miss an episode, please hit subscribe wherever you’re listening now or visit my website to get on my email list@www.karlova.com when you sign up, you’ll instantly receive my milton mama digital care package, a bundle of music and videos to help you wring every drop of yeehaw out of life. you’ll even find a dance lesson as well as my granny’s cornbread recipe with new goodies being added all the time. i’ll see you next thursday on the wet dreamers do podcast