Hello and welcome to the blossom and your awesome podcast. I am your host, Sue Dylan episode number eight. We has got Mark Allen on the show today talking to us about manifestation. Mark Allen is an internationally renowned seminar leader, entrepreneur, author and composer. He has written several books, including the magical path, the Greatest Secret of all the book that changed my life, the millionaire course visionary business and others. He is also the co founder of New World Library, which is a major player in the independent publishing world with works like The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle the southern spiritual laws of success, Way of the warrior and the collected works of joseph Campbell, just to name a few.

I am so excited to have Mark here on the show, sharing his story with us. So Mark Allen, thank you so much for being here. You are like such an inspiration for me and I cannot thank you enough and honoring your time and just so grateful to have you here with me today. Oh, thank you. So I appreciate that. Okay, so I'm gonna jump right into this. I have a series of questions for you, I know you're up to a bunch of stuff, you've got some things that were going to get into that you have been working on and um so I, you know, you are such a visionary and I would love to know like I know you kind of talk about some of your struggles when you were younger and then kind of coming to this place in life, but can you talk to me about this on a deeper level what I went through?

Um sure, I think so, I mean I'll just start and luncheon and if you have questions you jump in. But I often think I knew one important thing from a very young age, watching my two brothers, one that did everything the parents wanted and went into business and blah blah blah and the other that totally rebelled against the parents. The first was the parent's dream. The second was a parent's nightmare I offered and I got at an early age that neither of them would work for me that I didn't want either of those paths that doing what your parents want, you to do will not lead to your fulfillment, but fighting them all your life will not lead to fulfillment either. And I realized early on when you rebel against something and fight against it, you're empowering that thing you're fighting against. So from a pretty young age 12, 13, I just ignored my parents completely and did what I wanted to do and I knew early on I wanted to be a writer and then I wanted to be an actor and a musician and so I got into all that stuff even though my dad was no, you should study business and no dad, that's not my path at all.

I, I just ignored him. Remember he said to my brother's market is so slippery, he said, I can't affect him, he's slippery. So I just did my thing and that I am so grateful for, as I look back on that because that proved to be, I think the key to it's kind of an extraordinary life. I must say I've had one I've really enjoyed because I became a theater major and then I got a band together and uh I in my twenties first I was in some theater companies but they both fell apart and I had a band that fell apart. Then I wondered into all the spiritual stuff. I spent six months at a zen center, which was really good for me actually for my physical, mental and emotional health and did a lot of other stuff wandering around. I moved from Minnesota to Berkeley California and uh became a workshop junkie, we called ourselves and did all kinds of things.

And uh I met a woman named Shakti Gawain in my late twenties uh at a seminar and uh did all kinds of, I realized through my twenties, I really, I tried about 10 different careers on when I look back at it and they all fell apart. They all fell, I sort of had the opposite of the midas touch. I had all these negative things about money, I wanted to be spiritual and somehow money wasn't at the root of all evil going after, money would somehow get me off of my spiritual path at all these conflicts. Um and ended up in my late twenties. I had no job, I had no money, I had no direction whatsoever. When I look back on it. And then I turned 30 and that day changed my life because I woke up in a state of shock. I I I, my friend said, wanna party party. I said no, no way, I I gotta be alone.

And I was alone in my little cheap slum apartment in Oakland California, not a nice part of Oakland, funky bars on the windows, kind of neighborhood. And I spent most of the day as I was pacing up and down in my little one room apartment. And uh that day changed my life because I, I really pondered, I somehow it was cool being completely broke and spiritual in my late twenties. Uh, but turning 30 this voice in my mindset, you're 30 you're not a kid anymore, what do you, what do you want to do with your life? And that was a good question. I wandered up and down. Then I remembered a little game I played during a pretty disastrous back to the land trip I'd done when I was 22 or so, we tried it back to the land experiment that did not work at all. But one night when we were out there in the land, we're sitting around a fire.

This one couple said they were kind of the odd couple of the group. They were, they were christians and taught at this church camp and they said let's play a game that we play at church camp, let's imagine five years have passed and everything has gone as well as you can possibly imagine, what would your life look like, What would, what is your ideal scene they call it? And we all went around the fire and said something and looking back, I I do not remember a word of what I said that at 22 at words, so it had no impact on my life. But the day I was 30 pacing up and down, I thought okay this is a good game to play, where do I want to be in five years. But this time I grabbed a sheet of paper and this is what I teach to this day. This is like the essence of what I know is what I did on my 30th birthday, getting involved, just a few sheets of paper. The first one I took a sheet of paper, I put ideal scene at the top and imagine five years in paso I was 35!

That seems so old to me, that's like middle aged when I was when I was 35 you know what would my life look like? And I was amazed what spilled out and said, I have a publishing company, I knew nothing about business and I'd kind of written a book, very funky thing, but I had no knowledge of publishing or anything like I have this successful publishing that cruise company that cruises along and I write books and I record my music and I have a beautiful office and company and I have a beautiful big house on the hill in Marine County that was across the bay from Oakland and it was heaven, it's heaven, it's 75% undeveloped and just beautiful going right down from a mountain, down in the ocean, it's gorgeous.

And and of course as soon as I started writing the first sentence, these doubts and fears just overwhelmed me. But I kept it up, I plowed through and then the more that I thought about it pacing up and down and I thought okay, this is my ideal. So then I added what might be still my fairly unique contribution, humanity. I thought oh my ideal to is I don't work too hard and any of this, I start a business and I write books and I record music and but I don't, I'm not a workaholic at all. In fact I just want to work musicians hours or actors hours, which I really loved in my twenties because you never did anything until one in the afternoon, you know, you know, and I never was a morning person. So I said okay, I added that I'm doing everything in an easy and relaxed manner in a healthy and positive way in its own perfect time for the highest good of all. I added in big letters at the top, that was a phrase I got from a unity Church minister named Catherine Ponder who had written some books on prosperity in the seventies.

So I made my whole ideal scene, doubts and fears chest overwhelming. But I kept on and then I looked at that ideal and I realized within there was a list of goals and I took another sheet of paper and I put goals. Now, I put intentions that's even stronger than goals, intentions. But at the time I put goals and I listed them all. Start a publishing company, start writing a book, start recording music, start learning about real estate. It was all started because I had nothing happened and I made my list of goals, I started that then I turned every goal into an affirmation at the top, having in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time for the highest good of all. I am now creating a successful publishing company. I am now writing wonderful books that have an impact on a lot of people's lives. I am now recording my music and I made a whole list of goals as affirmations. Something that I still carry around with me to this day.

Over 40 years later, I carry my list of goals with me in my pocket. Yeah. And I stared at them. And then over the next few days, what happened was I started making one page plans for each major goal, start a publishing company. What do I do? I knew nothing about it all. My entire plan was one reader used business, one on one textbook and to talk to people I know who know more about business, to see how you set one up and stuff. And I did that and it led to the next steps. And so to this day, I really think I can summarize what I know saying there's just two critically important things. The rest you can, it can totally vary, but the two essential things, at least for me is dare to dream and put those dreams out in writing and even turn them into intentions and make a plan doesn't even have to be a good plan.

Just just clearly tell your subconscious what the goal is at the top, like creating a successful career and then you just need the next few steps in front of you is all you need. If you don't need to imagine the entire thing at all, just make a plan. That's the first critical thing. Dream and plan. The second critical thing is deal with the doubts and fears that will inevitably overwhelm you. And that's what I spent the second half of the day doing, pacing up and down dealing with my doubts and fears literally. And I remember, you know, they kept saying market won't work, it won't work. You don't know anything Well, how how do you dare do you don't have any money, You need money to blah blah all these and you need to work really hard to succeed. You know that you you wanna you want to just work when you feel like it. That was my idea. None of this 40 hour week stuff. I only worked when I felt like it and my dozen first said impossible, that won't work.

And I got around him because I had heard of a friend who had seen a man named Buckminster Fuller talk in the sixties and seventies. He was a wonderful inventor and a wonderful speaker. He invented the geodesic dome and all this stuff did very well turned out for himself. But all my friend had told me about him was he started his talk by saying that when he was in his twenties, he decided to either commit suicide or to look at his life as this totally unique experiment. Unfortunately, he jumped on the word experiment and as he spoke in campuses, he looked back on what he called his 50 year experiment. And I jumped on that word experiment and said to my doubts and fears. Look, doubts and fears. Give me a year to try this as an experiment. They said, it won't work one more said okay, in fact, most of me thought it probably wouldn't work right. But I said, okay, let me try this experiment. And in they were just vehement, You know, this, this will not work, this is ridiculous.

And I said, look, if it doesn't work, I'll be no worse off than I am right now, right? I had no job, I had no money. I had no family support. I was scrounging a word. We used all the time every month to get my cheap rent together. So even my doubts and fears had to say, well, yeah, you can't get much worse. So that's how I began. I began this experiment. I told my doubts and fears, give me a break for a year or two. I'm gonna try this. If it fails, it won't be any worse off than I am now. So what do I have to lose? And that day I started uh the next day probably I started finding out how to start a company. And as soon as I started working on a book, I started getting my recording and just took one step at a time. And the first three or four years were real struggle losing money because I didn't know what I was doing.

And just a bunch of my friends were helping. We knew nothing. When I looked, we weren't professionals at business. We were musicians and spiritual types right over 34 years then the right people started coming along, most of whom are still with me today and showed me how to really create a successful company, wow! Now, this is you know, it's interesting when you're one of those people, you've had such great success. You've manifested all of this for yourself. But you make it sound so easy and you know, for a lot of people, I mean, help me share with those naysayers or the people who doubt like, oh yeah, just that can't be possible. Right? What do we, what do you say to those people?

That's what most of my thinking was when I started, or it's just not possible. You can't create a company and and only work when you feel like it. I don't do mornings, I don't do Mondays only work when I feel like it. At first I really had my doubts. I think most of my thinking was full of doubts, but just latching under that word experiment. And I I ended up thinking, okay, this is a great experiment to do. Just try to just keep doing it, but do it in my own lazy way. And I kept affirming, I said thousands of times. I'm doing this in an easy and relaxed manner, a healthy and positive way. I said that thousands of times. And at some point I realized my experiment includes seeing if affirmations really have power or not. I'm experimenting with the power of affirmations for my success.

And even then it grew from for my physical health, for my relationships. I'll keep affirming that I am creating the life of my dreams in an easy and relaxed manner, healthy and positive way that became my mantra. When doubts and fears would arise. I would do a counter statement as I just did a wonderful interview with Sark awhile ago. Who who I I love her, I love her. And she even improved my concept of affirmations by calling it counter statements. And she said what she has done for years is when when those doubts and fears arrived arise like saying, ah it's so hard to succeed. You really can't do all the naysayers. As you said, when that those naysaying thoughts come into your brain, you can immediately go cancel, cancel. And then I would always say an affirmation. You know, and I am now creating this successfully.

And Stark said, the best Sark said, the best thing to do is which he called a counter statement and to start with the word actually where so when your doubts and fears say that, that you can't do that. You you're not capable, you don't have what it takes when you find yourself thinking that you can you go cancel cancel, let that thought go and you say actually. And then you do your counter statement. Actually, I am fully capable of creating success in an easy and relaxed manner in a healthy and positive way. Actually, I have everything it takes to live the life of my dreams actually. And you tell your subconscious that and I I see it so simply now, the older I get, the simpler I see it, all we need to do is get those powerful creative thoughts into our subconscious. Our subconscious will say yes to everything we tell it.

It absorbs everything as somebody said. Are so conscious is like an incredibly powerful five year old who will believe whatever you tell it, you tell a five year old, there's a monster under the bed. The five year old will believe it. You tell your subconscious, you're going to create the life of your dreams. You're totally capable. It will believe it, just as it has believed all the negative crap we've picked up over the years from schools, from siblings, from parents, even from, from society. From ads for the media. That's the worst. All those ads. That's a basically you're not good enough. You need to buy this product to make you better. You're not enough. So you cancel, cancel all those thoughts and keep saying I am enough. Actually, I'm enough. That's a real good one. Just saying I'm enough. I have everything I need to enjoy my here and now I have everything I need to create success in the world. A big part of my experiment. Starting at age 30 was experimenting to see if these affirmations really did work.

I never had to take a leap of faith. I never had to come to believe anything. I never argued with anyone about the power of affirmations. I just tried them with an open mind. I just tried to this is a worthwhile experiment to see if affirmations are really powerful and I found they are because the your subconscious mind. So in other words, your entire physical mental body, mind and spirit is an amazingly powerful and creative force that has maybe unlimited capabilities when we learn to to program it. Right? One way to look at it, we've we've been programmed negatively in many ways. Mhm. And now we're reprogramming, we're dumping that negative stuff. No, we don't need to believe we're limited. We're not capable or words yet were victims of something all like didn't treat me right?

Um My parents were abusive, whatever it is, whatever you're sad sob story is, we don't need to believe that anymore. We can dump all that stuff and we can program ourselves. We can affirm I am a creative genius in my own unique way. I can create the success of my dreams, success as I define it in an easy and relaxed manner in a healthy and positive way. You keep telling yourself that and just watch you don't have to believe it. Just keep telling yourself that and watch what happens, wow! Now, this is so powerful. You know, I just people, it's sad to me how we limit ourselves and you know how little of our just our faculties and what were actually capable of how so many of us don't actually tap into our own, like you said, genius.

So what is that? I mean, was there an epiphany around that for you? Was there it just I mean you at 30 you made this decision and you said I'm giving myself a year and you just, those doubts came in, but you stuck with it and that's and that everything just essentially starts manifesting at that point, right? I mean, it it is amazing. And again, I didn't have to come to believe anything. I said, okay, this is my experiment. I'm gonna keep this list of affirmations in my pocket, which I, to this day, I carry around a list of affirmations in my pocket. It's also right now, front and center on my desktop and yeah, not on my phone now. But yeah, I keep these words in front of me that are affirming affirming I am now living the life of my dreams in an easy and relaxed manner.

And you just you affirm some people often say to me, how much do I have to affirm it and I just say, it totally varies with different people, but you keep affirming it enough so that your subconscious says yes to it because our subconscious says yes to every thought and every word. So if we're saying I am now creating success or subconscious says yes and starts showing us how it'll tell us the next steps to take, but then if our next thought is, but it's so hard to succeed, So few people succeed. Your subconscious says yes, it's hard, it's hard for you with those thoughts. Yes, absolutely true. So it is a matter of becoming aware of every thought which sometimes freaks people out but it's just becoming, we have this conscious awareness. We can we can easily be aware of the stream of our thoughts and when they wander off course I uh you know, we can just put them back on course with the right thoughts I did here.

I remember years ago this really helped me because I thought and I even put it in a book I wrote called A Visionary Life. My first book Business. Big big book was Visionary Business. And then I followed it up with a visionary life. And in there I thought that your thoughts had to be like 51% positive or focused and then the magic happens. I thought that that seemed maybe like the way it is. But then I heard that a plane flying somewhere is off course over 95% of the time but the pilot just keeps correcting over and over and over and it reaches its destination. When I heard that I thought that's the story of my life. You can be off course most of the time with all these negative thoughts. Oh it's so hard, all these details. Life, life is a bit and then you die. That's somebody had on a T shirt in Berkeley. Yeah you can have all these totally negative thoughts. I thought when I read that, that's actually buddha's first truth Buddha's first truth of that.

Life is suffering of his four famous truths. Uh the great translation is life is a bit and then you die. Yes, that's true. Life is a bit and then you die. But he goes on to say, you don't have to suffer about it. It doesn't have to because you'll have some physical pain sometimes if you have a body but we don't have to have emotional pain. We don't have to suffer. We don't have to have problems. And that's that's been my, my great experiment all my life and now, you know what I think is so remarkable about your vision and your philosophy is that um again, like I said with people who are kind of, we limit ourselves and even if we say, okay, I'm going to have these affirmations and I'm going to manifest this. But where we settle and you speak about the ideal, right? What is your ideal?

Yeah. You want this life where you don't work hard and you attain everything you want and you don't want to work mornings or Mondays and whatever. But that's so unique to the this philosophy of, you know, the law of attraction and manifesting what you want. But that to actually say, hey, you don't have to settle. You can have that ideal, Whatever that ideal is for you. Mm hmm. Yes. Yes. You really can, wow. And now, in fact, Eckhart Tolle, who is the greatest teacher on earth in my opinion. But he summed it all up so clearly and simply in one sentence is he has wanted to do with he just said, when you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Mm hmm. When I read that I said, that's it. I've I've often said, I think 99% of the important work I do is internal.

Once the inside is right, once you've got your goal your and make it an intention and take the first steps and affirm you're doing it in an easy and relaxed manner. That's all completely internal work. And the external, it does fall into place. So it every it's every step you take is not difficult. It's very simple. The next step. The right people will come along and support you or you just hear things that suddenly solve all your problems or whatever. It's lots of coincidences start happening and once you have the right focus internally, you're just affirming for me, it's just my list of affirmations on one page is my guiding light. And now can you speak a little bit about your personal process of like how you get your inside right?

Yeah, I mean, really, that's, that's just what I've been talking about and I still look back at everything I did the day I turned 30 and that is the day I got the inside. Right? Looking back. I really think, even though it took me years to realize this. I was a very different person at the end of the day of my 30th birthday than I was at the beginning. I woke up at the beginning with my usual, uh, I got no money. How can I scrape a buck and a quarter together for a latte, Let's see. And I'm I was unemployed completely. And uh by the end of that day, the end of the day. So 12 hours later, maybe I had a list of dreams and goals that I over time turned into intentions.

I had a list of them as affirmations saying, I now in an easy and relaxed manner, a healthy and positive way in its own perfect time for the highest good of all. I am creating a wonderful publishing company that makes the world a better place. And I went on at first, I had a list of 12 affirmations that over the years. It's down to six. But I made that list and I started carrying it around in my pocket and pulling it out, I said I'd pull it out every day. I didn't even do that at all. I I pulled it out maybe a couple of times a week at first and then even and now, I mean the whole weeks go by before I even think of looking at it. But it's just all there on automatic. And it's all moving ahead, wow. Now a couple of more questions for you. So I know you are currently working writing the power of the feminine a guide to creating radical success.

Can you talk to us about that? Uh huh. Yeah, that I hesitate to talk so much about a book before I've finished the thing. Um but it is, it's just it's it's what everybody, so many people are writing about. You could call the feminine. It's you look at yin, yang, you uh and the way I see it is uh you know, the taoists are exactly right. The entire universe is this endless play of yin and yang which you can call male or female energies or active and receptive energies or whatever. There's so many ways that it's been put. But we have both within our bodies, you can say all of us have a masculine side and a feminine side. And to me, this simple truck of really becoming empowered is to empower both of those sides.

So I I've already did, I recorded, you know, I've written a meditation. I haven't recorded it yet. That sums up the entire book where all you do is relax and then imagine your masculine powerful side and it's your dominant hand, if you're right handed, it's your dominant side and you imagine just really empowering that masculine, really becoming uh that's the strongest masculine force you can imagine to create whatever, you know mars energy and then you let that go and then you imagine that feminine side, then soft, receptive, intuitive, endlessly powerful were endlessly powerful because it's the feminine. Then that takes in the entire creative power of the universe. And you empower your feminine, You empower your intuitive side.

And then you put the two together and have that masculine side completely surrender to the feminine, completely bowed to her and embrace her and put her above him saying, you be my guide, guide me in every way so that you're guided by spirit. You're guided by intuition and that's the key. Mm That is beautiful. Now, last question here for you, I know you have got a new the visionary business course. Can you tell us about that and what people should know and what they can expect with that? Yeah, I've got, you can go on marco island dot com. I uh I did a quite an extensive chorus visionary business. It's 14 downloads of this of live seminars and then the last tour interviews with a marketing person and a finance person because those are my two areas that I not strong in or not even interested in.

So, I now have great marketing people I work with and great financial people. But the rest is all me and it's uh so it's close to, I think close to 10 hours of audio plus I added all these commentary. I added 27,000 words to it, some of which are from my book, visionary business, but it's the most complete course I've ever done in terms of creating business success, It's about everything I know to create business success and it's available on Mark Ellen dot com. Okay, great. And we are going to include a link to that for people to be able to access that and some of your guided meditations and things. And then I want to have you leave us with something to just take with us some guidance, some wisdom and insight. Mhm.

I always keep saying the same thing that to me the it's the essential thing. Just dare to dream, dare to go for it. Life. Life can be exciting. Life can be extraordinary if you dare to dream and go for it, if you uh you know, and I I even say make it a big dream, a big dream and in some cases say you're 95 years old and you decide you want to be a billionaire rockstar, You know, you might not make it depending on how long you live, you know, but especially like you don't know any music or anything, you have to go get a guitar, learn your guitar, but I'd say go for it. Age doesn't matter at all, go for your most expensive dream. If you're 95 are trying to be a billionaire rockstar, you might not make it, but along the way, you're going to have an extraordinary experience.

Extraordinaire. And who knows with that intention, what might happen? You might, you know, when you're 100 put some of your music on, you do and whatever it might go viral and you might end up being a world famous billionaire rockstar, who knows? Who knows? But of course, you never know unless you go for it, you'll never regret it. Whatever happens, you'll never look at it. So just go for don't let those doubts and fears keep you thinking small in any way. We all are visionary and brilliant creative people. If we dare to be, wow, that was so, I literally have the chills right now. That was so amazing. Just so inspirational. I cannot thank you enough for your time. This means so much to me. You've been such an incredible inspiration. And um I just feel like I have to go right down affirmations and carry them around in my pocket.

Great, great. Thank you. Thank you for all you do in the world is a better place because you thank you so much. Thank you so very much. Okay, well thank you. You too. Bye bye bye. Mm hmm. Thanks. Mm hmm, mm hmm, mm hmm, mm hmm. Mhm