Tami Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge, produced by Sounds True. My name is Tami Simon, I’m the founder of Sounds True. I’d love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion, regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges. The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing countries. If you’d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit soundstruefoundation.org.
You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Rha Goddess. Rha is an entrepreneurial soul coach, CEO and Founder of Move the Crowd, an entrepreneurial coaching and training company. A movement galvanizing three million plus entrepreneurs to reimagine work as a vehicle for creative expression, financial freedom, and societal transformation. She’s the author of the book, The Calling: 3 Fundamental Shifts to Stay True, Get Paid, and Do Good. With Sounds True, Rha Goddess has released the new audio series, Making Money, Making Change in which she shares a step-by-step path for defining and achieving a new kind of success, one that allows us to be true, paid, and good. I have to say, I love talking to Rha Goddess. I felt various thresholds, various ceilings that I’ve put on my own capacities to be true, paid, and good falling away as I spoke with her. Listen to this conversation with Rha Goddess.
It’s a great heart joy to be here with someone who feels to me like a new friend, someone I’m just getting to know, someone whose work I deeply respect, Rha Goddess. Rha, welcome.
Rha Goddess: Thank you so much for having me, Tami. It’s my joy to be here.
Tami Simon: Now, for people who are meeting you for the very first time, can you give us a sense of the arch of your journey. I know several years ago you created a TED Talk and you talked about the journey you made from being a starving artist to a sustainable revolutionary. Now you have an academy where you’re teaching people how to stay true, get paid, and do good. Tell us a bit about the journey that got you there.
Rha Goddess: Well, for most of us, it’s never a straight line. Right? It’s always lots of wonderful, and fun, exciting twist and turns. I always begin with I am a, what I describe as a change of life baby. I went into the intersection of civil rights and hip hop. That has shaped my aesthetic. My parents, very, very big on education. Very, very big on family. Very, very big on community. My mother used to have a saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.” It’s one of her favorite sayings. What she and my father instilled in us was that the only difference between us and anyone else who’s less fortunate—I’m using air quotes for those of you who are listening—is a twist of fate, is a turn of circumstance. It was their way of encouraging us to stay humble, I think, in the work and in life.
They also used to say that if you had any advantage, any opportunity, then you had a responsibility to make a way for somebody else, because they knew what it was to fight for the very, very basic decencies in life. They really instilled that in us. They didn’t just talk about it, they lived it. I think that infused in me, has always been the driver, so whether I’ve worked in nonprofit, whether I’ve worked in corporate spaces, and then ultimately becoming an entrepreneur. After a nonprofit industrial conflicts meltdown, it has always been the driver, is to use whatever I think is in, whatever I’ve cultivated, whatever I’ve learned to try to make a way for someone else.
Tami Simon: You say you had a nonprofit industrial conflicts meltdown. Tell me about that.
Rha Goddess: There are models that we know are not working. I think in the years that I was very, very active in the nonprofit world, it was because it was the work that I most wanted to do. I would say that most people who occupy that sector and occupy that world, they’re clear that they’re servant leaders, they’re clear that it’s about wanting to make a difference in the world. But so much of what we often have to do to sustain the structures that enable us to do the work that we want to do don’t often carry a lot of dignity, don’t often lend themselves to longer term viability and sustainability. And so often, working in a nonprofit context, especially if you’re an executive director in a nonprofit context, you’re spending twice as much time trying to keep the whole thing afloat as you are doing the work that maybe ultimately calls to your heart.
There are people who do thrive in those models. They potentially come from a particular kind of background and orientation where they love that challenge. I was not one of them. I had to really come to Jesus with myself about what did it mean to be a purpose-driven person at odds with economy. I think that’s a lot of what we talk about in the context of the work that we do at Move the Crowd. It’s a lot of what I talk about in the book, The Calling. It’s a lot of what I talk about in Making Money, Making Change. How do we find our way in worlds where we feel like the status quo doesn’t support our value system or doesn’t support the way in which we want to show up and be in the world?
Tami Simon: You know, Rha, this is one of the things I really wanted to talk to you about because you write about how you had to heal your relationship with capitalism. I’m imagining people listening who say, I have various criticisms of our capitalist society. What do you mean? Healing my relationship with capitalism. How did you heal your relationship with capitalism such that you’re now talking about making money? Talking about it, here we are, we’re going to make money and we’re going to make change, but we’re also going to make money.
Rha Goddess: What I came to understand was there, for me, is a distinction between capitalism and economy. Part of my healing was being able to separate the culture of capitalism from the principle of economy. We know capitalism as one economic system but there are other economic systems. There are other ways in which other cultures and other communities have operated inside of what I’m going to call more life-giving ways of economy. This idea of how we attract or how we earn and how we spend, and the opportunity to do that in ways that actually forward and further more love, more generosity, more communal wealth. Healing my relationship, what it enabled me to do was to go from being an anti, a person who is opposed to, a person who is living in reaction to, or a person who was victimized by those constructs, to a person who had my own vision for what I wanted to create around myself and around my money, who had her own vision around what an economy rooted in love and truth and honor and respect and dignity could look like.
Tami Simon: Can you share with us a bit when you say your own vision, what is that for you?
Rha Goddess: For me, it’s that I really am contributing to economies that are life-giving—economies where more people can thrive and prosper. Economies that carry dignity and honor and respect at the center. I talk about this in the course, the economy of love, the economy of truth, and the economy of we. In the economy of love, it is about this new level of generosity that is sourced from something different than obligation and pressure. The way that sometimes we give even when it is painful or we neglect ourselves in order to show up in a particular kind of way. It’s an economy of scarcity that invites this obligatory giving as a way to prove you’re a good person, that is painful. We have a lot of people who are putting themselves last.
We see this a lot in indigenous cultures. We see this a lot in communities of color. We see this a lot in the culture of women and the way often that we define it. That’s not the only place but it’s more prominently, right? I think we all have a piece of this where we give in ways that hurt. In the economy of love, it says that I’m sourced by something different. I’m really tapped into a more prosperous supply. When I’m giving from that place, from a well-sourced and a well-resourced place, I can be more generous. The giving contributes to my expansion as opposed to my contraction. In the economy of truth, I’m accountable and responsible for the choices and the decisions that I make and the impact that they have on me and others. I’m willing to own where I’m a part of the solution and where I’m a part of the problem. I’m willing to be actively engaged around moving to places that enable me to be more a part of the solution than a part of the problem.
In the economy of we, it’s a story of us. It’s the fact that we are not on an island unto ourselves. We have seven billion neighbors that we share space and air and water and energy with. How are we going to do this together so that I’m not interested in economy that’s rooted in how do I obliterate you or how do I dominate you or how do I subjugate you? But I’m glad they’re rooted in an economy of how do I expand you, how I contribute to you, how I uplift you, how do we work in ways that make the pipe bigger, how do we work in ways that make the world better and that we all had to hand in and an active role to play in doing that. We’re excited to be about the business of collaborating to be able to do that.
Tami Simon: First of all, Rha, I just want to say as you’re describing the economy of love, truth, and we, my cells are lighting up inside. I want to make sure that I understand a couple things. First of all, it sounds to me like what you’re saying is, I’m not going to focus so much on the outer capitalist society and criticisms I might have about the billionaires and the tax laws and what they’re getting away with and et cetera. Instead, I’m going to focus as being a conscious creator, that’s going to be my focus of an economy of love, truth, and we. First of all, I want to see if I’ve understood you correctly.
Rha Goddess: Yes. Yes.
Tami Simon: OK.
Rha Goddess: Yes.
Tami Simon: Then I want to ask you a couple follow up questions here because you talked about—let’s start with the economy of love. I’m tapped into a prosperous supply instead of this notion of scarcity. I think when some people hear that, they’re like, wait a second. The truth of my life is a truth of scarcity. That’s what’s happening right now for me. I don’t have enough money for this, that, or the other thing. I have debt. I have scarcity. You know, when I hear somebody say that, I just think, oh, come on. Good for you. Good for you that you’re tapped into an economy where there’s prosperous supply. That’s not my experience. What would you say directly to that person?
Rha Goddess: I would say to them, I understand, and what you want to know is that that is all by design. That the indoctrination and the systems and the structures and the way that we have defined power and creative power have given us that result. But the challenge is we can criticize capitalism. We can look down on the rich. We can do all of those things, but it doesn’t give us a different reality. At some point, we have to decide, are we willing to take back our right to participate as conscious, active shapers in forging a different reality? That’s why we started with the conversation of healing, because a lot of us do have to heal in order to create more capacity to affect the kinds of changes that we want to affect.
I do begin the conversation with saying, we do have to heal. We do have to understand, what is it that I have said yes to? What is it that I am participating in that is creating this reality for me of I have nothing? We’ve all seen it. You know what I mean? Whether that’s your reality or whether that’s the reality of somebody that you know or love, whether you’ve been able to work your way out of that reality. There has to be a moment where every single one of us has got to say, this is not working for me and I’m willing to do something about it. I’m willing to be in a conversation that invites me into other alternatives that don’t leave me in the fixed position of being impoverished, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, financially impoverished.
Tami Simon: What would I like to hear more about, Rha, when you say we have to start with healing, what kind of healing are you talking about?
Rha Goddess: We have to be willing to ask ourselves some really important questions about how we got to where we are. Those questions sometimes are personal questions that invite us to look at the ways in which we grew up, and the messages that we’ve received about ourselves, about others, about the world, about money. We also have to look at, what are the societal messages that we’re getting? To what degree have we bought in, consciously or unconsciously, to the messages that we’ve been bombarded with? How do we start to make some choices as we become aware of what it is that we believe? How do we start to make some choices about what it is that we want to be believing? And the way in which what we want to be believing has the potential to empower us.
Tami Simon: Specifically, tell me what you feel are some of the most important choices somebody needs to look at and choices they can make to be more in that conscious creator mindset.
Rha Goddess: Mindset. The first thing is to embrace and even maybe try on, because maybe you are really, really skeptical. Right? But just to try on the fact that you do have the ability to co-create with your circumstances. You are not powerless, though a lot of the indoctrination and a lot of the messaging will tell you that you are. You are not powerless. I think that’s the first place we have to begin is to even consider the potential that we do have a choice. Because what you and I both know, Tami, is a lot of what ingrains us, a lot of what entrenches us in the positioning of lack is the belief that we don’t have a choice. That everything outside of us is orchestrating and dictating our reality—until we can unplug from that messaging.
I’m going to get even more specific what does that look like, cut the television off. Let’s start there. Come off the social media. Really begin to create room and space to actually be with yourself and engage in a different kind of dialogue that isn’t guided by what is existing and occurring outside of you. This is a hard one for some people. I would even imagine, Tami, that some people are hearing this and they’re feeling anger.
Tami Simon: Oh, yes. They’re mad at you right now, Rha.
Rha Goddess: Like, how dare you tell me to go somewhere and sit down? I remember, this is funny but not so funny. I remember when I was young, my mother used to say to me, “You need to go somewhere and sit down. Think about the kind of person you want to be. You need to go somewhere and sit down. Think about what you want to be doing versus what you’re doing right now.” If I was doing something that was in her mind off or out of character or wrong. We use the binary right and wrong conversation. I think that how auspicious that we have had 18 months to think, maybe even a little bit. Whether you were bought to that place of having to think because you were overwhelmed or you were disrupted, your reality was disrupted, your economy was disrupted, or whether you got just a wonderful retreat by grace or circumstances, we’ve had time to think.
I’m saying to you, in your time to think, have you recognized that you do have power? Have you recognized that there are things that are important to you? Have you recognized that you do matter? That the choices you make matter, that the decisions you operate from matter. That the things that have happened to you matter, and that all of it shapes the way in which we see ourselves and the degree to which we believe anything is possible or not possible in our reality. The revolution is step one, to start to consider the possibility that you can actually do something about it.
Tami Simon: In your work, you offer people lots of different sayings or mantras that they can try on and see how do they feel, work with this for a week. One that really spoke to me was, “This is my world and this is my watch.” That spoke to me because I thought when I’m out there and I’m saying, blah blah blah, all these things that are wrong, that I could go on about for a very long time. I thought, what if I interrupted myself and said, “This is my world and this is my watch,” and I decided what I was going to do instead? It’s a very powerful turn. I can see, Rha, why you are such a sought-after entrepreneurial soul coach. I can see why. I was ready to text you last night even though I don’t have your number and say, can I have a session?
Rha Goddess: Anytime, Tami, you have to do it.
Tami Simon: I wanted to get into this a little bit because I’m going through, or was going through, before I started engaging with you and your work preparing for this conversation. I was working with a really hard situation. I was feeling burned by it. I couldn’t see my way through. Then this is what I read from you, if you really want to change the game, you must embrace the fact that you’re a creator. I thought, OK, that’s true. I’m a creator. I’m sitting here and I’m just complaining really about those and just feeling terrible about it and just complaining. OK, I’m a creator. But then the second part really got me. You must start to pay very close attention to what you believe. This is the part I’d like you to talk more about because it’s the part that popped me out of it.
Because I realized that I bought into a bunch of beliefs about the situation I was in and that I didn’t have to stay stuck in that. When you see the beliefs that are holding people back, and I know you work with lots and lots of people and you’ve seen patterns, what are the beliefs that you think people are, that’s what they’re stuck in? That’s why they can’t move out of it.
Rha Goddess: There are six core beliefs. I do talk about this in The Calling. I talk about this in the Making Money, Making Change. There are six core beliefs that I’ve seen over and over and over again in various dresses and pants and culottes, right? And colors and disguises. The first is that there is not enough. At a fundamental level, in terms of world consciousness, we have been indoctrinated into believing that there is not enough. That in order for the world to go around, somebody’s going to get it and somebody’s not going to get. So much of our existence becomes dictated by ensuring we are the person who’s going to get.
Tami Simon: Let’s pause on this one because I think this is pretty pervasive. What if someone is listening and they go, but that’s true? Someone’s going to get it and someone’s not going to get it. What if they think that’s true? You’re just saying that’s just a belief? That’s not true?
Rha Goddess: I’m saying to you, it’s true because we believe it’s true and because we operate from it as if it’s true. In other words, we can show, and this is how you know it’s a belief, you all. You may be feeling some heat right now. You know it’s a belief because you wanted to shun it. You want to fight for it even if it limits you, even if it challenges your possibility. Yes, we have been indoctrinated to believe that there is not enough. We’ve been indoctrinated to believe that we, in order to be in the world and in order to experience the world “the way it is,” we have to be OK with human suffering. This is the indoctrination of what I call old paradigm power. When you say there’s not enough, you and I both in three seconds can name just off the top of our head five people who have more money than there were ever their great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great.
I mean, they could die and everybody in their lineage could die and be reincarnated and they still won’t spend all the money. This conversation of there’s not enough or this idea that some people have and entitled to have, and other people don’t have, well, that’s just the way it is a construct that we’ve bought into. Depending upon the degree to which we continue to feed that belief, we perpetuate that construct.
Tami Simon: OK, I’m going to stay with this for a moment because I think it’s so important. Let’s say someone’s listening, they go, it is a construct I bought into. I bought into it. I’m fully bought into it. Rha, what am I going to do? I believe this. I believe this is true. I believe the more I get, if I become part of the 1% or something, all these people aren’t going to have something. I believe that. I believe that.
Rha Goddess: The question is, is that what you want to believe? As you sit in that belief, does it empower you? Do you honestly feel like that belief empowers you?
Tami Simon: No. I think people would say no. No matter where you fall on this, you’d say, no, it’s not an empowering belief. It’s one that puts me at odds with others.
Rha Goddess: Would you be open to an upgrade?
Tami Simon: Hell yes.
Rha Goddess: That begins the conversation. That’s really the million-dollar question for anybody who’s listening. Are you willing to consider something different? Because if you aren’t, there’s going to be a long conversation for you. I’ll tell you now. I love you, it’s OK. It’s going to be a long conversation. But if you’re willing to consider, Tami, this is where we have to come with fierce love and conviction and commitment to one another. This is part of also the challenge we face because this has been relegated to touch you fairly. This has been relegated to the fluff, fluff. This has been relegated, oh, that’s that new agey, I’m sitting on the floor with no money talking about our world is abundant. This is a very grounded opportunity to really touch the truth. Are you willing to stay in there with yourself enough to have something different?
Tami Simon: OK, let’s say our listeners, the ones that still are with us are open-minded to thinking about this question of maybe there’s enough and that when I benefit, I’m not taking something from somebody else. We can all rise together. That’s the first belief that we need to examine. Now you said there are six. Let’s see if we can go through this because I think this is really juicy.
Rha Goddess: Yes. Second belief, I am not worthy. I am not worthy. So sure, there’s enough. The world is abundant. Oprah, well, she’s fabulous, of course. She would have all the great things, but me, I’m not worthy. I don’t deserve it. I shouldn’t have it because of this, this and this and this. Let’s be clear, you all. All of it is trauma. Let’s just say that out loud. All of it is trauma because it challenges our sense of wholeness and wellbeing. We are repeatedly exposed to messages that challenge our sense of wholeness and belonging and wellbeing. But in this I am not worthy conversation, it’s personal. It’s personal. We have lots of reasons. Some that we’re aware, some that we’ve buried deep. Some of us know that we believed this and grappled with it every single day. It’s what we’ve now famously called the imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and lots of other ways in which we talk about this conversation.
For others of us, we don’t even realize that this is operating. I talk about this as well. Right? It’s in the background like white noise. We aren’t even aware of it anymore but it’s dictating and guiding our choices. I begin the conversation with asking you to pay attention to what you believe. Also, by saying to you, there’s some things you know you believe, but there’s some things you believe that you don’t even know you believe. Part of the excavation work that we all are being called to do is about what we don’t even realize is in there that we’re operating from.
Tami Simon: Well, this is real healing work, to go into those places where we don’t feel worthy. OK, let’s move on to the third belief that has us out of our power instead of in it.
Rha Goddess: I am afraid of what it’s going to take. I am afraid of what it’s going to take. This has to do with our definition of success and what we believe we need to trade in order to have it. Whether that is our free time, whether that is being present with our children, whether that is our health and wellbeing. What am I going to have to trade? It touches again, but I’ll come back to, beef with capitalism because that’s on the list. But it touches some of that. It’s what we’ve been indoctrinated, the mythology that we’ve bought into about success. I want to keep saying, Tami, because this is part of the challenge of how do you break the old paradigm is we would say it’s true because we’ve been indoctrinated to believe it’s true so we operate from it like it’s true. Hence, it becomes true. There are laws of nature. There are principles.
There are universal principles that operate in concert with what it is that we believe to be true. When we speak it and when we operate from it and when we declare it, because we are so powerful, it does indeed become true. This whole idea that in order to be successful we have to sacrifice in ways that are painful. That we have to give up in ways that are harmful. And that not only do we have to do that, in other words, we have to scrape and scrounge and grit our way to the top. But then there’s all this other stuff we got to do to stay there because, in fact, somebody’s always trying to tear us down. This idea of what I want requiring more than what it is I believe I have or am willing to give creates more pain, creates more trauma.
Tami Simon: Your very first sentence in The Calling, “I used to believe that if I wanted to make money and be viewed by others as successful, I better be prepared to trade for it.” So you don’t feel that you’re trading right now in any way in your life for your success?
Rha Goddess: I’m trading when I’m operating from the old paradigm. You all, I’m human like you are. Some days I’m aligned and it’s glorious. Other days, I’m out of whack and it’s hell. That is real. It is a practice. In the days that I’m aligned with my commitment and my vision, the days in which I’m like, oh, I’m really choosing. I’m making different choices that enable me to experience something other than profound trading and suffering. There’s a difference between empowered choice and painful sacrifice. I keep coming back to this idea, this idea of choice. When we don’t feel like we have choice, because this is what it means to be a conscious creator is to say, I have choice and that my choice is God-given, spirit-given, source-given. For those of you who may aspire to other, love-given. Right? When I am in the space where it’s like, oh, I’m choosing. Then I’m either like, oh, this is a good choice, I’ll keep going. Or, nope, you’re suffering. Hello. You’re trading. Why don’t we make a different choice?
Tami Simon: Our work in the world is making change work, our business work might require sacrifices on our part. Sacrifices of our time doing difficult things that you really don’t want to do. But what I hear you saying is if you’re saying I choose this, I choose to do this thing, even though this aspect of it kind of stinks, I still choose it. I choose it. That that’s different than trading.
Rha Goddess: Yes. Let’s talk a little bit about it. What do I invest to grow and evolve? Because this is really the conversation we’re in. Whether you want a seven-figure business, or you want the Maserati, take your pick. Your opportunity to lean in and pursue that desire is an invitation to growth and evolution. When we’re talking about, I give time to this, I invest time in the things that I love. This is where we come back to, OK, what are we up to? I invest time in things I love. If I meet something where I feel a sense of resistance, in other words, I’m going to use this even though I love spinach. If I’m eating spinach instead of chocolate cake, and that’s how it occurs to me. In a conversation call, I ultimately feel that there is a greater good that I’m moving towards.
I actually recognize that as much as the experience of eating spinach may not be totally all the way pleasant, there is nutritional quality in spinach that supports me. I might be OK with choosing the spinach, which is very different than some of the other things that we’re being invited to choose that are painful. Right? I don’t know you all, and every single person has to reckon with this, Tami. I don’t know if spending most of your time away from your child is worth it. If I’m honest, you have to. Do you feel me? But you have to be in conscious place of reckoning with it. Now, I have mamas and fathers, but I want to speak particularly about women because this has been so much of the societal pressure that’s been around women. I have mamas who are like super mom and super mogul, and they want to be both.
They want it to be OK that they can have both. They want to find that balance. That sense of wholeness. That sense of integration that says I want to be with my daughter, but I also want to model dreams fulfilled for her too. That the sky is the limit for her. I want to do both. There’s an act of conscious choosing in that and they’re choosing in service to a vision. In my mind, that is different.
Tami Simon: OK, very clear. Good. OK. I want to make sure we got all six of these out. Let’s go for it. Four, five, and six. Take it, Rha.
Rha Goddess: I might be corrupted or changed or compromised.
Tami Simon: Yes.
Rha Goddess: And so therefore, no, thank you. No, I don’t trust myself with more so I’m just not going to have more. Five, we started with this one. I have beef with capitalism, the moral dilemma. The value is challenged. I have real beef with the way in which a lot of us do—the way in which our economy is currently being run and operating and moving in the world. If I look at the corruption, if I look at the poverty, if I look at all of the things that show up in our larger world I have beef with, and so therefore I don’t participate. What I’m saying is that we have got to cultivate a viable alternative. It is not enough to tune it off or shut it up because what we realize is that we have to participate. Then we’re participating from a victimized place and there’s no power in that. We have to make different choices.
I’m saying, we get to reclaim our right to participate in economy and we get to shape what kind of economy we want to be participating in. Small example of this, just because I think it might be useful. I talk about this in The Calling. When I was in this revelation for myself, I was like, oh, I’m supporting or patronizing a dry cleaner who’s very mean. When I go and interact with him, he’s grumpy. He’s always yelling at somebody in the back. Maybe I could find a nice dry cleaner. Maybe I could find an organic dry cleaner with a sunnier disposition. Maybe that’s where I would spend my money because I want to foster that business, support that business. I have a dentist who prays over my mouth before he works.
Tami Simon: Awesome.
Rha Goddess: Who is meticulous and passionate about his work. He loves being a dentist. How many people want to go to that dentist? I’m saying this because they’re examples of people who pour their love into what they offer into the marketplace. We have the opportunity to meet them with our resources. We have an opportunity to be them so that others can meet us with their resources.
Tami Simon: Beautiful.
Rha Goddess: Six, and final, it’s not safe. This comes from trauma and experience of being singled out, being seen, and having that be a negative life-changing experience. We live in a society and culture that likes to build up and then rip down. It’s not safe, so I’m going to opt out.
Tami Simon: Now, what would you say to someone who does have that fear of being torn down by others, being separate from others?
Rha Goddess: We have to heal the trauma. We have to heal the experience, the original experience. Invite and create and build other kinds of capacities that enable them to find their own sense of safety, their own sense of inner reservoir of resilience and capacity so that they can stand. That doesn’t mean that always they’re going to be met with roses, but it means that it doesn’t attack the fabric, the very fabric, the very nature, the very core of their being.
Tami Simon: You know, Rha, I’m going to call you Rha Goddess, the liberator. You are a liberator. You are a force of liberation. It’s beautiful. Now I want to talk about another emphasis you have in your work that I though was really interesting that you put so much on this when it comes to the whole notion of making money and making change, that we have to make sure that we engage and do the forgiveness work that we need to do. When it comes to the area of making money, I wanted to find out from you specifically in your own life, if you’re willing to share, what forgiveness work you needed to do in order to self-liberate and be a moneymaker?
Rha Goddess: Yes, I had to be willing to forgive all of the places where I made mistakes, or either I was careless with money, or I was resistant to money, for all of the root cause reasons we’ve talked about. I also will say this, when I work with people around their money, sometimes we have to heal things that have nothing to do with money. Right? Shame about a relationship. Shame about what went on in our family growing up. They carried a lot of shame about certain circumstances and situations that happened growing up. I carried a lot of shame about when I witnessed my own parents struggling around money. It’s interesting because, Tami, we teach all kinds of things in school, but we don’t teach forgiveness. We teach say sorry, you say accepted, but we don’t teach real forgiveness.
Shout out to the Radical Forgiveness movement and others that, God, who’ve come in. If I would have asked somebody, and I have, tell me about your forgiveness practice, tell me about your letting go practice, what are your rituals for releasing and letting go? Often, we don’t have that. We hold on. Money is one of those places where we definitely hold on. I would say family and relationships, right in there. For me, shame around how I grew up, shame around some of the ways that I’ve been indoctrinated as a woman of color in this country. To see myself in relationship to what’s possible or not possible. Shame around some of the things that have been done to me that made me feel less than human. Oh, there’s a long, long list. We, and I do emphasize this because our liberation depends upon our ability to release and let go of anything that does not serve us.
Anything that holds us back. Anything that weighs us down. Anything that imprisons our capacity to be all of who we are, to be whole, to be vibrant, to be healthy, to be well. As you know, in the book, we talk about it. I give you rituals. I give you constructs. I give you steps, tools for how to do that. I’ll go one step further maybe because I think it’s useful. As an outgrowth of the experiences of what we’ve been through the last 16 months, my husband and I created a course specifically for right-identified change agents. Because we know that there’s shame around the construct of race and around the way that race has played out in our world and certainly within the United States as one but many other places. Shame cripples our capacity to contribute to anything in ways that are useful and forwarding.
So much of the game-changing work that happens in that work is the work of reckoning, reconciling, and redeeming. That’s really what we’re talking about. We live in a culture that is very unforgiving. You make the mistake, oh, this now entitles us to cancel you or worse. We have an opportunity if we really want to achieve the things that we want or need or desire in our life. We have an opportunity to cultivate and to fill up that inner sense of compassion towards ourselves, and that outer sense of compassion towards others as a form of liberation and an opportunity to grow our capacity to achieve more of those things that we desire.
Tami Simon: You mentioned that you offer in both the book and the audio series practices and tools, but I’m wondering right here, if someone’s listening, they’re saying, I can get to about 80% for forgiving myself for that overspending, wastefulness, the way I handled money poorly. Or the thing I’m reflecting on, this bad business deal that I signed and I didn’t read the documents carefully. In fact, I didn’t read them. I had someone else read them. They said, sure, go ahead. I didn’t even read them. I can say, I can be kind to myself and let it go but I kind of can’t. There’s this part of me that’s like, no, now you have to live with this forever. Why were you so ignorant? You just put your head in the ground. Whatever it might be, how do we further that from whatever percentage of self-compassion we can have but we’re not quite really there?
Rha Goddess: Yes, two things I would say. One is, when you say that to yourself, whose voice do you hear? Whose voice do you hear? You think it’s your voice, but whose voice do you hear? We learn lack of tolerance or intolerance from some place. We really do. I know that for me. When I was being really harsh on myself, I got really creative about whose voice that was, which is part of this healing work we’re talking about. Right? Because all of this really is a conversation of how do we do the healing work that gives us greater capacity to have, be, and do what we want. Especially, when it comes to money. But whose voice do you hear? Then the second thing is, OK, great. You can get there 80% today. Are you willing to come back tomorrow? Could we get another 2% tomorrow? Could we get another maybe 3% the day after? Are you willing to stay in there with you as a practice?
It’s another thing that I underscore, it’s practice, you all. It’s not like we flip the switch and we’re there. These are practices like yoga, like meditation. Practices. Forgiveness, a practice. I do ask, Tami, so interesting you said that because I do ask. On a scale of one to ten, how much of this can we work with today? Sometimes people say two. Sometimes people say, I’m feeling bold, let’s go for five and see if we can get five. Five of it transformed or the scale percentage. OK, let’s go 50%. Let’s just see if we can get to 50% of it. The question I would ask you, because I think your willingness to share, for me, is power is whose voice do you hear? How much do you have to suffer before you can let it go?
Tami Simon: Good questions indeed. Rha Goddess liberator, your audio series with Sounds True is called Making Money, Making Change: Build Your Business, Make a Profit, and Serve the World. We’ve talked about how important it is to address our beliefs, to really look into them. What about that person who’s listening who says, I just don’t believe you can really be a positive change maker, really, really, and make a lot of dough. Like, come on, it doesn’t go that way. The people who are really the change makers out there, the activists, I don’t see very many of them at least making very much money. Is it really true? How do I address this is a belief I have? How do I unpack this and start to open up to seeing it differently? Help me. Can you give me an example? You work with people. You work with people who are making change and making good money.
Rha Goddess: Yes, so I can give an example. The trade, again, is a part of the old paradigm. Again, I keep coming back to when we look at what we believe, we have to look at where do we get it. Where do we get it from? It like, oh, man, this pair of shoes just showed up in my closet. Well, no, actually, I remember that trip in Spain when I walked into that little store, and I asked that shopkeeper about those little shoes. Right? Your beliefs have a story about where they come from and where we take them in from. I’m saying this because when you come to these places of challenge, when you say I—who taught you that you had to trade? Where did you say yes to that belief? To just notice that and to recognize that this is in the DNA of our society.
Again, the question becomes, are we willing to challenge it? Even just a little bit. Believing that we can do good in the world and believing that we can be well-compensated and well-sustained in the world, I find this directly correlated to the beliefs that we can love and be loved.
Tami Simon: Wow. Explain that to me because that’s a very powerful correlation you’re making. I want to make sure I really get it. How did you come to that?
Rha Goddess: In the work that we do around the true sort of paid good construct, we talk about your mission as an expression of your love, your proposition, your offering to the planet is an expression of your love. Like Kahlil Gibran’s work is love made visible. When we do what is our work, the work that has our name on it, it is an expression of love. When entrepreneurs come into our fold and we have conversations about what they want to do or what they want to change or what they want to create in the world, one of the questions we ask them, one of the first questions we ask them is, how do you love? How do you love? What are the things that you offer, that you share? What are the gifts that you give? What are the gifts that you’ve been given to give and share with the world? It’s all about love.
For a lot of us, we’ve been taught that we have to do certain things in order to get love and that love is not just forthcoming. Others of us who have been loved and love positively, especially in the formative years, we hold maybe a different belief system. We actually see love everywhere. We have no problem receiving love. We have no problem giving love and participating in the law of reciprocity, the giving, and the receiving. When we feel like anything that we want to do, that we feel passionate about, that we think is important, doesn’t deserve to be sustained were in the wounding of the indoctrination. It says we have to trade. We’re coming back to that philosophy.
So many of us believe like I can’t do what I really want to do. Anytime someone says to me, Tami, I have no idea what my purpose is. I say, oh, you mean you don’t believe that you can do it? You don’t believe it’s OK to want it. You don’t believe it’s OK to pursue it. If I would ask you if money or fear of public opinion or any other concern that you have, one concern, what would you be doing? You better believe people have a ready answer for me. Often it contains the seeds and the kernel of their calling. This idea that you can do what you love and make money, I actually want to invite you to challenge in such a way to actually believe that the way that you would make the most, the way that you would be the most prosperous is actually to do the work that you are brought here to do. To do the work that has your name on it. To do the work that makes your heart sing. To do the work that you would do for free.
Tami Simon: Now what a glorious belief that is. What a glorious belief, that if I do work that I feel I’m called to the most, that gives my greatest gifts, that turns me on the most, that is the way I would make the most money. That’s a very powerful belief to choose.
Rha Goddess: Then the opportunity is I’m willing to figure it out. I recognize that what I want to offer and bring to the world, because I don’t know about you, Tami, but I don’t know anybody that doesn’t want to make a difference in the life of another person. I mean, I’m sure those people maybe exist somewhere but they’re more rare than maybe we would think. I mean, I’m talking about let’s let go of political party. Let’s let go of ethnic identity. Let’s let go of gender. Let’s let go of all of the things that we maybe also believe about who is and who isn’t on our side, however we define that. Are there people who are operating out of wounds? Yes. Unhealed trauma, yes. Undistinguished pain, yes. Undistinguished belief systems that are limiting, yes.
If we really get down to it, ask what you most want to do, they want to make a difference in the lives of other people. Why wouldn’t that be worthy of sustaining? Why would it not be OK to want to be sustained in touching the lives of other people and helping people? In making life better for somebody. This is why I say we have to, my saying is, we have to break the fourth wall. We have to shake up the globe a little bit on some of the insanity that we’ve all ingested and been operating from.
Tami Simon: When you say, Rha, we have to break the fourth wall, what’s the fourth wall? What do you mean by that?
Rha Goddess: There is this saying in the world of theater, this idea that there’s a moment when you come to the theater, you’re being invited into a world that is not your current world. Right? You’re being invited to suspend this belief to come into this fabricated world. Maybe this fabricated world represents or has expressions or reflects some aspect of the real world or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s totally fantastical. But there are moments in the context of theater when the actors go step off stage and they will come into the audience. We call that breaking the fourth wall. They will come into the world or the realm of the audience. They’re now operating and existing in their paradigm.
Sometimes they pull them into the fantastical world, and sometimes they come into their world. The idea is that we do not challenge enough what we believe, what we think is true. That doesn’t mean we have to be antagonistic or hostile or cruel or nasty and negative. We get to learn how to challenge with love, but we have to challenge ourselves and some of the constructs that continue to perpetuate the kinds of disparities that we see. Can you make a difference? Yes. I know there’s a moment of saying it, but yes.
Tami Simon: Interestingly, when you were saying we need to challenge ourselves, I think this is a good note for us to end on because I wrote down a quote from you. Your soul wants to grow you. I wrote that down because I thought, well, I signed up for a life that has a lot of challenges in it. It seems like some part of me wants to be challenged because I put myself right in a critical path of a lot of challenge. A part of me, I like it. I like it actually. Every day, there’s something challenging going on. When I thought your soul wants to grow you, I thought that’s true. That’s true. There’s something in me. I recognize that, I want to grow. I welcome these challenges. I wonder if you can just comment on that as a note to end on for people who are in upgrading this conversation and thinking about how they’re going to move forward welcoming the challenges perhaps that they face.
Rha Goddess: Yes, anything that you’re aspiring towards is an invitation to grow. Your soul wants to do nothing more than grow. Your soul was here to express itself. You grow through expression. There are lots of things that are going to call you to express. Whether that’s parenthood, whether that’s CEO-ship. Right? Whatever that is, right? We do have to, on some level make peace with the fact that we are here to grow. That sometimes those lessons feel yummy and sometimes they feel lousy. But if we can get the insight, if we can pay attention enough to get the gift of the lesson, we do become more of who we’re meant to be. We do become more of who we really are. This work is all about the invitation to become more of who you really are. Because when you become more of who you really are, then you are free.
Tami Simon: Loved, loved, loved this conversation with you, Rha. Thank you so, so much. Thank you.
Rha Goddess: Thank you so much for having me, Tami. I so appreciate you. Thank you for creating this incredible movement that is Sounds True.
Tami Simon: I’ve been speaking with Rha Goddess, entrepreneurial soul coach and cultural innovator, the founder and CEO of Move the Crowd. She’s written the book The Calling: 3 Fundamental Shifts to Stay True, Get Paid, and Do Good. What an honor that with Sounds True, she’s created a new audio series. It’s called Making Money, Making Change: Build Your Business, Make a Profit, and Serve the World. Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at soundstrue.com/podcast. If you’re interested, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app. Also, if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder, and wiser world. Soundstrue.com: waking up the world.
