Kristen (00:06)
Welcome back to the Soul Expansion Podcast. I'm your host, Kristen Cipriano. I wanna set the stage for you because lately I've been recording podcasts in kind of interesting ways. And I had my laundry saga today. I'm actually awake super early. My allergies woke me up, so if my voice sounds a little funny, it's because I have some pretty intense spring allergies at the moment. And it me up at like 4 a.m.
I took a shower to kind of just like wash off any pollen that may be on me. And then came downstairs, had a coffee. The dogs are cuddling with me, the fireplace is on, and I was gonna start writing for book two because I do have a June 15th deadline, but I'm also kind of in the midst of a pretty big mindset and energetic breakthrough. And I was...
actually feeling more called to share that. So in today's episode, I'm going to be talking about quantum physics and how it actually has really enabled me to be in my power so much more than I ever thought possible, if I'm being honest. And if you're not really familiar with quantum physics or how this reality works,
then a book I want to recommend to you is called A Happy Pocket Full of Money by David Cameron Jaccandi. I recommend this book all the time. It is a really powerful, in-depth look at how to manifest wealth and the scientific principles that we can leverage when we want to become wealthy.
and those scientific principles of course stem from quantum physics and one of the principles in that book that I've come to understand a lot more deeply lately is Knowing that you are first cause and your reality is simply the effect Okay, so what do mean by that so
If I believe that I am going to sell millions of books this year, I am causing that to happen with my beliefs. And then when reality shows up and I've sold millions of books this year, that's the effect. Okay. Another example, if I feel internally unappreciated by people and unsupported, then externally I'm going to see evidence that people don't appreciate me and that they don't want to support me.
So maybe I'll do all the dishes and my husband won't really notice, right? This is just an example. I'm not saying this is actually occurring. On the other hand, if internally I feel so valued, so appreciated, so loved, and like the whole world wants to support me, well then my external reality is going to reflect that. It's going to, you know, in the dish example, my husband would be like,
Thank you so much for doing the dishes. I appreciate you so much. You're such a big help. You're such a great partner, right? So we are first cause. And sometimes it's really hard to remember that when you're looking at reality and reality has remained the same and it's not the reality that you want for yourself for a long time. So I'm gonna use visibility as an example because this is the area of my life where I have
consciously been working to shift for quite some time. I want to say I actually started working on this a couple years ago when I got on TikTok with my spiritual healing stuff, which I have since archived to focus just on my author brand. But I instinctively knew that if I was going to reach the level of success, I wanted to.
in the types of careers that I was interested in, which is like creating content and now in this modern world creating books, which you have to sell online if you're an indie author like me, I knew I was gonna need visibility if I wanted to reach a certain amount of success. The problem was visibility had been a long-standing effect.
in my physical reality where I would look at it and it would seem like there was no way it could change. It would seem like I didn't really have power over the situation. And maybe there's an area of your life right now where you don't really feel like you have power over the situation. I'm bringing all of this up about my visibility because that was an area of my life where I had been working on again for years.
And in the past like two months or so since my book launched, I had been doing a much more conscious effort of like, no, let's solve this visibility issue once and for all, right? Because I want the book to blow up. That's just the facts, right? Like the fact is I want to sell millions of books this year, right? I'm not waiting around for that.
So I need to do the internal work to change this effect in my visibility, right? And the effect in my visibility is I have always felt capped in the past. I'm moving out of it now. And I'm going to describe the shift so you can kind of follow along. But apply this to whatever area of your life where you feel really stuck, right?
And when you look at that area of your life, you look at it and based on what reality has shown you for years in your mind, it's very easy to say to yourself, I don't see how this can change. Okay. This is the type of shifting that I'm talking about. I'm not talking about stuff that you have been able to work through and grow through with ease. Okay. That stuff, you've got that down, right? And I have stuff like that where I've got it down, like,
For example,
when I get reviews that aren't topped tier, right? Like maybe they didn't rate it as highly as I wanted to. I'm able to work through any, feelings I have about that very quickly. And I think pretty soon I won't even have feelings about that. And I'll talk more about that in a later episode, but.
navigating people's different opinions with me somehow has become something that is easier for me to shift and let go of and move on from in a relatively quick manner. I think at one point it took me maybe like a month to move through that sort of thing.
and then it took me a couple days and then it took me about 24 hours and now I feel like I can start to make kind of like those in the moment shifts of like no this isn't going to affect my success I don't need to take this to heart right?
So that's an area of my life where I feel like things are flowing. know what to do. But visibility has been one of those areas where I felt like I've had to actually like work at it and chip away at it and go deep within myself and all of my belief systems to change it.
so I want to talk about like where I was and some of the work I've done up until this point with visibility. And then I'll talk about the big shift that I had yesterday. Because I think if I just reflect back on what I've been doing, then you'll be able to apply it to your area of life and kind of tease out, okay, where am I getting stuck like this? And I just think it'll be helpful to hear me reflect back. Okay, so two years ago,
When I first started working on visibility, the first thing I really worked on was giving myself permission to want it. So maybe for you an area that you're struggling with is money, or maybe it's success, or maybe it's also visibility, like me, maybe it's fame, like maybe you're an author or a creative or an entrepreneur and you feel capped with your visibility, whatever that area of your life is. So I had to give myself permission to want it and to not feel like...
I was weird or selfish or self-centered or narcissistic for wanting it, And especially with something like visibility, we can have all those kind of societal judgments on ourselves when we want something like that, when we want more attention. So I had to just give myself permission to want it, to make it okay that I could want it. And I also did this with money at one point. I had to give myself permission to want it, to make it okay that I wanted it.
and to not make myself a bad person for wanting it, right? So I had to like normalize the desire and decide that it was all okay, right? So that was the first thing that I recall doing. And then I had to believe it was possible for me. And in order for me to believe it was possible for me, I had to believe it was easy for me, it was natural for me, it was something that could occur with very little effort because...
And this is the key, if you're thinking of your area of real life where you're really stuck, we oftentimes have beliefs of like, it's so hard to change this. And then of course, what does reality show us? That it's so hard to change it, right? We are first cause, our beliefs are first cause, reality is the effect. But the reality can sometimes seem like the cause of our beliefs. And they can kind of like reinforce each other. But ultimately, beliefs are first cause, right?
So if you're looking at your area of your life and you're like, this is so hard to change, okay, you just identified one of your beliefs that is causing it to be so hard to change. So then you wanna go for the opposite. This is so easy to change. This is so natural for me to change. It's becoming easier and easier to get really good at this, stuff like that, right? So I had to believe it was possible for me. The next piece.
was I started to observe, how are other people doing this? And what do I need to believe about myself to believe it's possible for me to, right? So with this, I was noticing, okay, the viral content creators that I watch all the time, I like just want to watch them, you know? So for me with visibility, I realized, I have this underlying belief that people don't want to watch me.
And how many of you content creators have had that belief at one point or another? I for sure have had it. And so I realized, okay, I need to believe about myself. What I believe about all these viral content creators, right? Like I'm captivating people want to watch me. People love to watch me. People can't stop watching me. People share my videos. People like my videos. People engage with my videos. People comment on my videos, et cetera. And so
you know, if we're kind of going back through the steps, I had to make the desire okay for myself. I had to stop saying like, it's wrong or bad for me to want this. Then I had to believe it was possible for me and that things could change. Then I had to start believing about myself, what people who had the thing that I want, AKA virality and visibility, I had to believe that about myself and that those things were true about me too. And here's what happens when you believe that you are captivating.
on video, you're going to create videos that are more captivating naturally, right? If you believe that people don't want to watch you and that you're not captivating, then you're naturally going to create videos that are like not captivating. And so it's kind of cool because I learned without really having to like look up viral content strategies, I learned what
type of editing of my videos, what type of hooks at the beginning of a video would really get people to keep watching. I learned this by changing my beliefs and by deciding I was captivating. I didn't necessarily learn this by copying anyone else. Now, did I pick up things as I scrolled TikTok where I was like, ooh, that made me want to keep watching. I'm going to try a version of that. Yes, absolutely.
But the thing is, I shifted the belief first and started to believe I was captivating. And I think if I had used the tactics, like having no pause in between your video cuts, right? Like if I had just cut out all the pauses in my video cuts, like I do now, I don't know necessarily if that would have changed my reality. I don't think it would.
because if I still had that belief that I'm not captivating to watch or that no one wants to watch me, then it wouldn't matter how I edited the video, reality would still reflect that belief back to me. Okay, so what are we learning from all of this? Reality is responding to your beliefs and your beliefs are the first cause. The other thing we're learning from this is
if you take more action to try to change a situation, but there's an underlying belief that keeps the situation the same, you're not gonna get anywhere, right? So that's where like, if I believed that people didn't wanna watch my videos, it wouldn't really matter how I edit the video, no one would watch my videos because I still had that belief, right? So your actions,
are important, right? it's important that I edited my videos down. that was an important step, but that was an effect, not the cause. So what else are we learning from this? Actions, the right actions are effects that come from you shifting your identity level beliefs, right? I've noticed this with myself as well as I've affirmed I'm a multimillionaire author.
something that naturally started happening is my tolerance for procrastination and BS bullshit has gone way down. And even things that I used to totally be okay with for example making plans with people and having them be kind of like wishy washy, that was something I used to be totally okay with like whatever we'll figure it out right?
Now I have zero tolerance for it. I wanna know, are we doing this? Are we not doing this? What time, what place? And then I expect and want people to show up. And when I think of like a millionaire, that's how they operate. And I know this because I've been around enough millionaires where I just observed their behavior and they are like that. They're more protective of their time and energy and they don't like.
things being up in the air. They don't like wishy-washy. I didn't decide to become more decisive. I didn't decide to want to hold people to a higher standard with scheduling things, right? That just happened naturally. That was an effect of me shifting my identity level beliefs to say like I'm a multi-millionaire author now, right? So.
The temptation is to change the behavior first. The temptation is to, if you're working on visibility, study what other viral content creators are doing. And that's not like a bad step, but, and it might in fact be an essential step. But in order to really change reality, we have got to change first cause, which is
your beliefs about that aspect of your life. So I feel like I've kind of hammered this into your head and I want to get to the big breakthrough I had yesterday because it'll kind of reinforce everything we've been talking about here. So the big breakthrough was I realized all this time, even though I'm so good at empowering myself, at loving myself, at being confident in myself and my book,
at choosing myself and choosing my book, even though I'm so good at that in so many ways. I realized yesterday, holy shit, I have been in this state of believing that visibility is not something I have the power to change, but in fact, it's something I have to depend on book influencers and readers to change for me.
Okay, so if you're looking at reality and you're seeing that when book influencers share books, those books get really big, right? So your brain says, book influencers are the thing that made the book become more visible, right? Like it's really natural to look at that and see that and say that, right? But that's not what made the book more visible, okay? And going a little deeper on this for myself, because I believed and I was giving
the book influencers so much of my power because think about this, I don't have control over what book influencers post unless I pay them, right? So if I'm giving them the power over my visibility and if I'm deciding that they are the cause of my visibility, then it's like I have no control, I have no power, I have to wait for a book talk influencer to choose me and my book.
I have to wait to be chosen. I have to depend on them to decide I'm worthy or good enough to decide my book is worthy or good enough. That is a really shitty place to be mentally and emotionally and energetically if you want to sell millions of books this year, right? And the funny thing is I had been chosen already, right? So like I had seen evidence of people sharing my book
for a brand new book as an indie author, I had a great march in terms of visibility. Things started to taper off toward the end of the month. And that's when I was like, no, I have to wait for the next book influencer to choose me. So the funny thing is I was already experiencing the result I wanted, but instead of understanding and believing that I caused it through my beliefs, I gave that power away back to
the effect, which is people sharing my book. Okay, so here's the thing. People don't share my book and then that's the cause of the visibility growth for my book. Okay? I am the cause of the visibility growth for my book because I decide my book is visible. I change reality with that belief. My book is visible. My book is highly visible. My book is worthy of visibility. My book is shared all the time. those beliefs
changed my reality. So then the effect, I am first cause, my beliefs are first cause, the effect is book influencers share my book. So I was looking at the situation as like, the book influencers have all the power over me, over my book. I have to depend on them, right? That was never true. That was never true. And I didn't really realize that I was believing that until it started to taper off toward the end of March.
people sharing it. And as it tapered off, that's when I realized, holy crap, I actually believed that they were in control of this and not me. Right? And again, it's not to say that I can control specific people and what they share, but I can control what occurs in my reality based on my beliefs. If I believe that book influencers desire to share my book, well, guess what's going to happen in my reality? They're going to desire to share it.
I don't necessarily have control over who or how or when, but I have caused reality to shift and book influencers to share my book by shifting that belief, right?
So in that area of your life where you're struggling to see change, where might there be still this dependence on something that actually isn't the cause, but it's the effect, right? And it's tricky because you can look at book influencers sharing your book and then you can look at increases in your follower count, increases in your book sales, and you can look at all of that and you can say, yes, I can see very clearly.
that when the book influencers share my book, my sales increase and my audience grows. you can make that conclusion. In fact, it would be very natural to make that conclusion. But where does that position you? It positions you at their mercy, right? And I love book influencers. It's not really about like not wanting them, not desiring them, not being happy when they share my book or grateful for that. I'm very grateful for that, but I don't want to be dependent on them.
I think that's too much pressure on readers and I think that just takes me completely out of my power as someone marketing my book. So again, it's very natural to look at reality and say, okay, this is causing this. So therefore I need more of this. But in order to get more of the thing that you believe is causing the visibility, all you have to do
is believe that you can have more of it, right?
So I'm going to kind of take another example with money. So it would be easy to look at book sales coming in, or any sales coming in if you're a different kind of entrepreneur, and say, this is the maximum amount of money that I can make at this stage of my business. Like, that would be a very easy conclusion to draw. But it's not actually true.
It's only true because that's the conclusion you drew and that's the belief you hold. The money is the effect, right? Like you are first cause. So what do you need to believe to see the money shift, right? You can look at the money, but you can't look at the money. You know what I mean? You can't depend on what the money is telling you to inform you of what you should believe.
The only reason to really look at the money or at who's sharing your book or whatever, the only reason to look at that is to gather data of like, okay, what am I believing? You know? So if the money is stagnant, okay, what are you believing that is causing the money to be stagnant? And I realized too, that a part of me believed I need more visibility to make more book sales. And yes, they're definitely related. They go hand in hand.
But because I believed that my visibility was in the hands of book influencers and not in my own hands, that made me feel so stuck, so disempowered about how my book's sales could grow.
So now I can look at the money and I can have two different beliefs about it. The first is my sales get to grow just because, like just because they do, just because it's like destined, right? And I believe I have a success contract with God. So I also believe God is helping the sales grow. So that's one conclusion and belief I can lean into. But another one is,
I don't have to wait for anyone else to share my books in order for the money to keep growing, right? And then, okay, so this is really cool, because look at the effect of that. So the cause is I decide, I don't have to wait for anyone else to share my book to know that the sales are growing. Like I decide that internally. That is my belief. That is first cause. So then what's the effect?
Well, maybe the effect is that more people share my book and then more people buy my book, right? So like we so often get it backwards. We look at the effect and we make that mean something about what's possible for us, but you can't look at it. You have to look at it only to determine, okay, what do I need to believe to get the reality I want?
So yeah, that's what I have for you. I hope it all made sense because it is like five in the morning. Six in the morning now. But if you like this episode, give me a five star review. Share it with a friend. Send me a DM on Instagram. I'm at Kristen.Cipriano. Let me know what you liked about it. Leave a comment on Spotify if you're a Spotify listener. And if you want to check out my amazing spicy romantic fantasy book, it's called The Queen Rises. Go to thequeenrises.com.
It's for you if you like slow burn romance, if you like forced proximity where they're like forced under one roof and then there's all this sexual tension and they're not supposed to get together but they do if that's your thing and you also like elves and animal friends and fantasy novels then and evil kings and hidden motives and secret societies then you'll probably like my book. to the QueenRises.com
and share this episode with a friend if you think they could benefit from it. Alright, I love you, have a great rest of your day, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.