Prayer versus Meditation and how they work together | DFS 314

Welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, and today I want to talk about prayer

versus meditation in last week's episode, if you didn't catch it,

my friend candy shared a very profound nugget, and when I was

looking over the show notes for it and putting that episode

together, I thought this is powerful. I want to talk about

this in a little more detail. And she shared that prayer is

talking to God. Prayer is talking to God. Meditation is

listening to God. Meditation is listening to God. Now, if your

belief system is not that God is God, and you believe in spirit

perfect, if you believe the word should be source perfect, it's

source for you. If you believe it should be your inner knowing,

fine. It's your inner knowing. If you haven't listened to me

for a while, or, like, in a while, or you haven't heard this

before, like, I'm all inclusive when it comes to this religious

spirituality, what you believe thing I'm I'm open to whatever

you want to believe. I believe what I believe, and I don't

really want you to tell me I'm wrong, because, guess what, I'm

not going to tell you you're wrong either your choices, your

belief system, that's for you, like that's for you, and I'm not

trying to change anybody's belief systems. But in this

episode, I want to talk, and I'm going to use the word God, so

just insert whatever you prefer for that. And I'm going to talk

about prayers, talking to God and meditating, or meditation is

listening to God. In the Bible, it talks about Ask and you shall

receive. That's a quote. And no for this episode, I should have

looked it up. But no, I didn't. You know how I roll. I just roll

people. And one of the things that we as entrepreneurs, as

corporate executives, as employees, as people in general,

one of the things we don't do is ask, and we don't ask for help.

We don't help. Ask help from other people, and we certainly

don't take the time to ask for help from God, universe, source.

Recently, I was at a party, and I turned to someone and said,

Hey, I need to ask you a favor. Will you help me with this? And

somebody else said, No, you can't ask for help. Do it

yourself. And being the very professional, upstanding

personal growth guru that I am, I said, shut up, because that's

just what popped out at the moment, people, this is a

journey. It's not a destination. And she goes, Don't tell me to

shut up. But I said, Don't tell me I can't ask for help. And she

said, but you can do it yourself. And then proceeded to

tell me exactly how I could do it myself, and I didn't want to

do it by myself. And so I asked my husband, would you help me

with this? And it was like I had two choices on who I could ask

easily, and my husband was 10 feet away. This other person was

right next to me. So that's who I asked first. In the end, I

went to my husband, I was like, Hey, would you do this? And he

said, Yes. And it all worked out. And so my my friend who

told me to do it myself, whom I love dearly, and there's no

animosity whatsoever. It just makes for a really funny story,

and it's great to emphasize this point. Later, I said you told me

not to ask for help, and I didn't initially, and you told

me to do it myself, and thank goodness I didn't attempt to do

it myself, because the solution I could not have made happen

like it wasn't gonna happen. And more conversations have since

occurred where we talked about things we like to do, want to

do, versus what we have to do, need to do. And I get teased a

little bit because I order my groceries. I started doing this

before covid When I go to water aerobics. This is more

information than you need, but it's part of the story. Go with

me here. The Target store is in the same parking lot as the y

where I do water aerobics, and so I literally can order

groceries when I wake up in the morning, I can go to water

aerobics, and nine times out of 10 by the time I finish the

class and take a quick shower. Or I get a notification that my

groceries are ready. The fun thing about target, shout out to

target. I love Target. There's not a minimum order, and you can

order and they'll bring it to your car. My niece literally

ordered a 99 cent packet of gravy mix and and she said, Hey,

will you run me up there real quick? Because I was parked

behind her. I did pick this up, and I said, Yeah, it's

convenient. I like it. I order groceries from Walmart, and I

pull up and I park, and they throw them in my trunk.

Sometimes, if I'm in a big hurry, I actually will order

them to be delivered to the house. It's convenient. I like

it. I like asking them to do something for me, and then it's

convenient. It's convenient and I can get on with my day and do

other things that I care about more and where I want to put my

energy. It's the same thing with asking God, asking for universe.

You don't have to do it all by yourself. You don't have to.

We're put together on earth like however you believe. We all got

here as human beings. Everything was set up to live in community.

I overheard a conversation and inserted myself into it because,

gosh, I just can't hardly keep myself from doing it. But there

was a conversation about the Bible on the Bible, in the Old

Testament, in the New Testament, and it's my understanding and

belief the Old Testament is history. It's prophecy, and it's

telling us how to set up society. And when it talks

about, if somebody steals, cut off the hand, pluck the eye,

right? All those really harsh things. That's for the judicial

system. The punishment should fit the crime. The punishment

should fit the crime. So that's all historical. The New

Testament is all how you should live as a person. Turn the other

cheek. That's how you should live as a person, in my belief,

my understanding, my interpretation of that

scripture. And so if we're looking at that and we are to

ask for help, where to ask for help? I need help with my

relationships. I need help building a business. I need help

knowing the next step I've heard for a long time on this

entrepreneurial journey. Don't ask how, just, you know, set it

up that you want it. And I'm like, Yeah, but I want to know

how sometimes things turn out in such a better way, like we can't

plan everything out and have it turn out for the best. Sometimes

the biggest things that derail us end up being the best

possible solution. Years ago, I applied for a job. I just knew I

had the job I like when I got that letter that I wasn't

selected, I was devastated. I knew I had that job. How could I

not have gotten that job? And I ended up having foot surgery,

and I came back from foot surgery, back to work. I was

off, like two whole days. I should have been off a week or

two, but, you know, you're committed. I was off a couple

days, went back to work, and I got a call, and they offered me

the job. And I was like, Wait, but I wasn't selected. And the

woman said, well, the person that we selected changed his

mind and he's not going to work here, and we're offering it to

you. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Like, can I call you right back?

And she goes, Yes, ma'am, but we need a decision. And I said, No.

Like, I'll call you back in five minutes. Give me your number.

And I wrote the number down, and I hung up, and I turned to my

work best friends, and I was like, Oh my God. I was just

offered this job. I was having some heart palpitations, and I

returned the call, and I was like, Yes, I'm happy to accept,

but I can't start for three weeks because I was having the

second foot surgery. And she said, Okay, great. You know,

you'll start on this date. Perfect. That was excellent. I

was talking to my mom, and she said, Well, isn't that just

wonderful? Had you gotten the job the first go around, you

wouldn't have been able to take off work and have your surgery

because you wouldn't have had any sick time or vacation time

to do it. So I did get what I asked for, just not in the

timing I thought it would be. It wasn't in the time that I

thought it would be. I thought it would have been two months

earlier, but it wasn't. It was in the perfect time. So I asked

for what I wanted, and the answer came when the right time

was

when you get responses. The responses come. Come when you're

quiet. They come when you're quiet. So you pray, you ask, you

ask for help from others. You seek out answers and guidance,

and then sometimes you have to wait for the answer. And what I

have found time and again the answers come when I'm still and

I'm quiet, another scripture again. I don't know which number

you can Google. It is Be still and know that I am God. You have

to be still. You have to be still. You have to quiet your

mind, and you have to be able to hear the answers. If you're not

quiet, you're not going to hear the answers. The guidance is not

going to come. So again, if you're newer to my world, on

April 19, 1995 I worked for the federal government, for the

Department of Housing and Urban Development, and I woke up that

morning sick. I had bronchitis. I had no business going to work,

but I was very committed. Thought I needed to be there.

And I debated for a long time, do I stay home or do I go to

work? In the end, I stayed home, and less than two hours later,

the whole house literally shook. I was 133 blocks north of my

office in the Murrow Federal Building, and the whole house

rattled. All the dishes in the house rattled. And that was the

day of the Oklahoma City bombing, and that morning, as I

asked the question, should I go to work or should I stay home?

The answer was, very clearly, stay home, take care of

yourself. Had I not listened to that? Had I not been still?

There wasn't a radio on, there wasn't a TV on. The dog was even

outside and not even barking in the house like it was perfectly

quiet and I heard the message. If we don't take time to be

quiet, we can't hear the message. There's an awesome

meditation on YouTube. I will get the link and drop it in the

show notes, and it's on manifesting and manifesting

anything you want. And he talks about just throughout the day,

ask, what is my next best step? What is my next step? And the

next step? We have to ask questions to keep our brain

engaged, because our brain is always looking for answers. It's

always searching and seeking. It's like a radar, and it's

going be beep, looking, for the answer to the question. So you

have to pose the question, ask the question, and the answers

will come. But you have to be aware and you have to be quiet

as you listen for the answer. I read a really great book, I

can't remember the author, and it was called the prayer circle.

I believe the prayer circle, and he's a preacher, and he's

talking about literally, physically walking around a

building or a baby crib, or mentally in your mind, or

circling a passage over and over again and praying over it or a

person or a wish or a thing. And that was so enlightening to me.

A colleague said, Yeah, I don't really want to do meditations.

They seem to take you down a path, and I don't want to go

there, and I'm a Christian, and I went, Oh my gosh, I just read

this book. So if you ever look at my show notes, it always

says, If you want to start your meditation journey, click here,

and I have a collection of meditations. And I have one for

anxiety and one for joy and one for sleep. I have, I don't know,

four or five. I don't it's been a minute since I recorded them,

but most of them are based on scripture, because they're just

awesome statements, and they just bring peace. At least they

do to me, and they also do to the lots of people who've

downloaded them. So that's an option too. I really enjoy a

meditation with beautiful music and then a repetitive statement

like that's very calming to me. I. And then I need to shut it

down and be quiet and be still. And the messages come, and it

can be really great when you go to bed at night, if you've got a

problem you've been trying to figure out, if you ask the

question, How am I going to solve this? What is my next best

step, and you go to sleep and your brain is working on it. It

is working all night long, because your brain doesn't shut

down trying to find the answer. I know this is true because math

was not my favorite subject, and I took Algebra One, Geometry,

Algebra Two, and trig, Algebra three, all through ninth through

12th grade. And Algebra Two is really, really hard, and trig

algebra three. That was a semester of each for my senior

year of high school. They just about ate my lunch. They were so

hard for me. And literally, I would wake up the morning of the

test, I would go in and take the test, and I pretty much gotta be

consistently, because it took me that long to figure out what was

going on. I always said, you know, if we could have one more

day, I probably would have gotten an A on that test, but it

took that long to figure it out, but I went to bed with this hope

and intention that I could figure out what to do on that

test. I was happy with the B because it was so hard for me a

B was outstanding in my book. But you go to bed with that

intention of what do you want to know? What answers do you want

to be revealed? Your brain is going to work all night long,

while you sleep peacefully, to find the answer. And I've talked

a lot about intuition over the many episodes. And intuition is

that inner voice. It's that inner knowing. And intuition

comes from practice of listening effortlessly and getting that

answer quickly and effortlessly, because you've practiced so

much, you've listened so much. I hear people say, Oh, I just go

into my body and I feel the answer. And I was like, that is

the weirdest thing ever. I don't know what you're talking about

until I learned this sway test. And if you're not driving a car,

if you're in a safe place where you can do this, if you sit up

fairly straight, but not like stiff, but straight, and you

say, My name is, your body will just naturally lean forward just

a little bit because it's like, Yes, that's true. Let me hear

more. If you say my name is Karen, my name is not Karen, my

body just leans back just a little bit. You can do that with

so many things and practice it. Go to the grocery store. I mean,

I don't go very often, but I do go sometimes. I went this week.

But you go to the grocery store and you say, Should I get this?

And your body will lean in. Should I get that? Your body

will pull back. Your body knows what it needs. The more you

practice, the more you'll hear. Then when you take those moments

of being quiet and being still, you will hear the answers

faster, easier. I like to say with ease and effortless.

Effortlessly. It's easy for me to say all of a sudden. I have

trouble with that, but you can hear the messages. So my three

points today are Ask and you shall receive responses come

when you're quiet, and you can build that intuitive ability

with practice. I'm Jennifer Takagi, and I look forward to

connecting with you soon. You.