Rewrite Your Story: How Neville Goddard’s Revision Technique Can Change Your Trajectory

Have you ever wished you could go back and change a past business failure, a bad deal, or a financial mistake? What if I told you that you can—at least in your consciousness? In this episode, we’re diving into Neville Goddard’s powerful concept of revision and how it can reshape your business mindset, boost your confidence, and help you rewrite your story.

Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

****
Decoding the Unicorn is live on Amazon! Check it out: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

For updates, please visit: https://decodingtheunicorn.com/.

You can also follow my author journey on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saracauseyauthor.

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Revision, Neville Goddard, New Thought Movement, mental rewrite, past events, consciousness, business mindset, confidence level, financial abundance, money blocks, positive thinking, personal growth, entrepreneurial challenges, visual aids, deliberate creation.

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now here's your host, Sara Causey. 

Hhello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I want to talk about the concept of revision and how it can really change your trajectory towards success. You may be familiar with Neville Goddard. He was, well, I'm not even sure what you would label him. I think he may have been part of the new thought movement, or New Age movement. He was a writer, and I'm using air quotes here, a mystic, I always find that title to be really interesting. Some people apply it also to Dag Hammarskjöld. And I'm sort of like, What the hell does that even mean anyway? A mystic. Think sometimes it just really means somebody that doesn't go along with the status quo. But Neville had this idea of revision, and it's a practice of replaying an event that perhaps didn't go the way that you wanted it to. Maybe it disappointed you, it angered you, whatever, and then you mentally rewrite it so that you don't have to carry pain with you and you don't have to let it taint future outcomes. Now you may be thinking, Well, isn't that delusional? Isn't that crazy? You gotta face the facts. You gotta face reality. But do you just get a long pause there for a second? Do you haven't the best ideas come from people who looked at what was in front of them and said, No, this is inadequate. We have the light bulb, we have vehicles, we have airplanes. There are all sorts of inventions where somebody would have looked at it initially and said, That's cuckoo, that's crazy. I think the concept now of becoming delusional. I don't know who it was that came up originally with the idea of dulu, but I'm even seeing it now on sweaters and T shirts. I think it was like Target or Old Navy, someplace like that. I saw an ad for a shirt that had dolu on it. I was like, Oh God, this concept's gone mainstream. I'm always a little bit suspicious of anything that gets too popular. That's just me. I'm kind of a contrarian in that way. But you go back and you revise the event, and yes, you can think of that as being doulu or cuckoo or whatever. But if it helps you, if you have the opportunity to reshape those setbacks and those challenges, isn't it better to do that instead of wallowing around in a pit of misery or self pity? I used to call them pity party, party of one, when I'd sit around and stew in my own juices. Instead of doing that, I really just look at revision. So let's start off with the obvious question, Well, what exactly is revision? Neville taught that the past is not necessarily some like fixed point that exists. In fact, it really exists in our consciousness. Because if you think about it, the present moment is all that you really have. You don't have 7am this morning again, you don't have 7pm last night again. You don't have when you were five years old. Again, that's gone. It lives in your brain, in your consciousness, but it's not independently there anymore. Okay, fairness to the argument, we could go down another rabbit hole of quantum physics and quantum mechanics. Maybe it does exist somewhere. And if time travel becomes possible for us, maybe you could go back to 7pm the night before or to your fifth birthday and poke around and look around, but for the time being, let's just say the past lives in our consciousness. By changing how we remember that story, we can make our present moment less painful, and we can also have a more optimistic outlook for the future. Revision is not just about like head in the clouds, pie in the sky, positive thinking, although it could be if you wanted it to be, it's about feeling like the new reality, the reality as you're revising it, has always been true, and this can work for personal problems, for relationship problems, for business issues, how we perceive past failures. I'm using air quotes here, failures, rejections and financial struggles really does impact our current mindset and therefore our future actions. So why does revision matter? Let's say in business, this isn't. Daytime, business oriented podcast. Why would revision matter to a business owner or an entrepreneur? For one thing, it helps to shift your mindset and your confidence level. So often, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, business owners, can carry past failures. Again, I'm using our quotes here. Failures as baggage. It's like a heavy backpack full of bricks that you're carrying around. And if you can go back and revise those events, it can remove a mental roadblock. And I will use myself as an example here. You know, I've talked before about wanting to be radically honest and authentic on this podcast for quite some time, part of my bag of bricks as a business owner was thinking back to my first iteration of self employment that failed, and that had really become, I hate to say it, but a part of my identity. I had told that freaking story so many times that I felt like a broken record. And I had a great appearance on Michael free chooses podcast where I talked about embracing the splat, because I felt like I went splat at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The way that I looked at my situation in that first iteration for a long time was that I jumped off into the Grand Canyon, and I thought I had created a good enough parachute. I thought I had created a good enough safety net. I read so many books, I read so many articles, I watched so many episodes of Shark Tank. I mean, I was really trying to absorb as much entrepreneurial advice as I possibly could before I took the plunge. But I was in a situation where, because of non competes and non solicits, I could not keep my day job in staffing and then go out on my own and start my own staffing gig simultaneously. I had to cut it off. I had to rip the band aid off in order to go into business for myself and really do the thing. And that was terrifying. Yes, I had money in savings. Yes, I had excellent credit. I mean, my credit was well over 800 I can go at any bank and get any business loan that I wanted. None of that was an issue for me. I thought that I had done everything right, everything good, everything correct, and I failed anyway. And for me, it felt like I went splat at the bottom of the Grand Canyon because I thought that I had this awesome parachute that was going to open, and then it didn't, and I just fell, and I just fell and I just fell. And it was a lot like the sensation of a snowball becoming an avalanche. Like the snowball starts out small, but as it goes downhill, it picks up speed and momentum, and it starts to bring other snowball friends with it, and it just blossoms into this disaster. It's like how people will talk about being on a winning streak or being on a hot streak. Well, you can get on a losing streak too. You can get in a sales slump. That's pretty darn terrible. I know it because it happened to me. So this had really become a story that I told over and over again. And I would also bump up against a number of triggers too. Because whenever anything happened, no matter how slight or even how frivolous it might be, it didn't matter if it was something in my personal life or it was something in my business life, if something bumped up against a trigger, if something felt even remotely familiar to the way that it felt during that first iteration of self employment, I would freak out. I'd have a panic attack. I'd become extremely worried. And I would begin telling myself a story. This is how it begins. This is the beginning of the end. This is disaster. And I would start to feel like Chicken Little but here's the good news. When you can start to reframe and to use Neville's technique of revision, you don't have to continue re traumatizing yourself over and over again. You can reframe the incident as a stepping stone or a temporary setback. You're not dwelling on a business you tried to launch and it didn't go well, or social media campaign that was one big nothing burger, a lost business deal, a client who acted like a poop head, or some past rejection, you get to revise your experience to better align with success. So now I don't go around telling half the world, hey, my first business failed, my first business failed, my first business failed, my first business fail. I don't do that. I've really revised it to say I certainly was. Perfect. I didn't get everything right, but I learned a hell of a lot from that experience, and it has now given me the groundwork that I need to be a successful business owner, to have a better sense of what works for me and what doesn't. You can also use revision, by the way, if you want to get rid of money blocks, because so many of us have those from childhood. Money is hard to make. Money doesn't grow on trees. There always seems to be more month than money. It's called work for a reason. Work is a four letter word. They pay you because it's not a party. It's work. Rich people are greedy. If you love money, it's the root of all evil. More money more problems. You can actually revise those beliefs as well to put you in better alignment with financial abundance. Because let me tell you, if you're sitting there, money is hard to make. It's called work for a reason, life's a Bucha, and then you die, that's exactly what you're gonna get. It's like you're shoving all of that away from you. A friend of mine, when we were in college, she dated this guy, and she said that he was like holding up a stop sign with one hand and a come on motion with the other. He was very hot, cold, fickle, on, again, off again. That's really what you're doing with money. If you're on the one hand saying, I love money, I'm I'm tired of being broke, I'm tired of the hustle, but then with the other hand, you're like, money's hard to make. Money isn't growing on trees. You always have more bills than you have disposable income. You're setting yourself up for a blockage. When you revise your mindset, you're going to have more confidence and you're going to be more open. I know this sounds Woo, woo, and I get it, but I swear it's like you become a lot more receptive to cool ideas, investment opportunities, a new business venture, maybe you submit an application to a job that you would have never considered before, or maybe you put a bid in, or a proposal for a project that you typically wouldn't because you were just feeling really good. You were feeling really strong that day. And it worked out when we are constantly in the energy of the problem. I'm broke. She doesn't like me. He was rude to me this morning. I'm stuck in traffic again. How many times is this kid gonna smart off to me today? And why does the dog keep peeing on the rug? And when we're when we're in the energy of the problem, we're really shutting off the energy of the solution. So some step by step ways that we can use this in the business world. Step one, obviously, is just to identify a setback. It could be a deal that didn't come together. It could be a bad review, a client from hell, an unsuccessful product launch, a client who ghosted you. Now as step two, you want to replay the event differently. So let's say we'll use the idea of a client who rejected your proposal. Maybe you got super excited about a contract gig or a project that you wanted to work on, you put your bid in, and you were all happy and excited, and the client was like, no, not. You close your eyes and imagine a scenario where somebody different enthusiastically tells you, yes. I'll also use myself as an example here. I there was a podcast that I wanted to go on. I have been doing more podcast guesting because of the book. And I'm just going to be honest with you about that because of the book. As I've said before, there are things that I typically would not do, but I will do them for dag I wouldn't do them for anybody else. I wouldn't even do them for me, but I'll do them if DAGs involved. And so I've been going and doing more press, more publicity, and more guesting around, getting out of my introvert cloister, and there was a podcast that I was really interested in, and it seemed to me that maybe the people involved in the production could even have Swedish roots. I kind of got that impression. And I thought, God, this is going to be a shoe in how perfect. Well, typically, when in podcasting, if you submit yourself, or you have an assistant, submit you to be a guest. If it's a no, you just don't hear anything. And most podcasts will tell you that they'll have some kind of disclaimer, some kind of note in the submission process that says we will only reach out if you are selected. If you do not hear from us within X amount of time, it means we're not interested. This person's executive assistant actually took the time to sit down and write me an email to say, diplomacy is important. We think it's great what you're doing, but we don't want you as a guest, not you. And I was like, oof. How petty you took time out of your day to do that. Who does that? It really rubbed me the wrong way. As you can tell, I just thought that is so tacky. It's just ticky, ticky tack. So I got mad. I could feel myself like, who does that? What the hell are these people's problems? And I'm like, All right, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. This is not a rabbit hole that I want to go down. I have got too damn much to do. I don't, I don't want to get focused on these people and their whack ass attitude. So I started to revise the situation, and I closed my eyes, and I envisioned myself getting a phone call or an email from a podcaster enthusiastically saying, Yes, we think it's great that you're talking about diplomacy. We think it's great that you're talking about quiet leadership. We think it's great that you want to bring DAGs legacy back into the forefront again, and you're like on this one woman mission to do it across America. We want you to be here. We want to hear your story. We want you for our podcast. And I instantaneously felt so much better. It was like their loss, and then you can just move on. And I think that's one of the great gifts that you give yourself in revision, is you get to move on, instead of dwelling on some poopoo head that could have ruined your day. You're saying, No, I'm taking my power back. I am saying that you are not relevant to me. And I'm going to move on to something that is step three, I would say, is really feeling that new reality, really feeling that revision and getting into the emotion so that you're not just visualizing it, but you're also feeling the success as if it has already happened. You're relieved, you're excited, you're happy, you're confident. That feels a hell of a lot better than sitting around stewing in your own juices. Something else that I have been working on. You may have heard in the success principles, how Jack Canfield through or attended one of those, come as you want to be parties where everybody that attended dressed and acted as as they wanted to be five years in the future. And he was talking about how somebody came with, like a mock up. They'd had somebody get in like Photoshop or something, and they came with a mock up of their image on Time Magazine. Somebody else came with a fake newspaper of their book being on the New York Times Best Seller list. There was a man there that wanted to be like some high profile stock broker, hedge fund manager guy. So he hired some college kids to call him on his cell phone every 10 to 15 minutes, so that he could play this role like buy low and sell high, and make sure that we get 1000 shares of that, and make sure that we put a million over here, and you're going to want to transfer that into your Swiss bank account. So he was just rattling off all this finance bro type stuff, but it worked. That's the thing. Jack was talking about, how many people that attended that party when it came to the five year mark, they were doing exactly the things that they had predicted, exactly the things the magazine covers, the best seller list, the high profile finance bro. It's like these people were able to do what they predicted that they would do. And so I think having the elevated emotion along with some visual aids can be so powerful, and we are at a tremendous advantage in that regard, because we have Canva, we have Photoshop, we have all kinds of things that we can do to make graphics, to make vision boards, and we can also make auditory things. And that's one of the things that I'm doing, sort of like the finance bro at the party I'm working on, like some voice mails and some things that I want to hear somebody calling saying, here's an opportunity, here's something we want you to do, here's an awesome report about your finances, here's an awesome report about your book sales. I'm like, Yes, this. This makes me feel good. Even the act of like writing the scripts and hiring a voiceover person to do the work for me made me feel electric. I was like this. This is one of the best ideas that I have had probably ever step four, I would say, is carrying the news story forward and acting as if this is the truth. This is going to guide me, this confidence, this sense that everything is going to be all right. Instead of being a pessimist and a gloom and Doomer, things are going to be okay. And I think that's another area where the visual aids and the auditory aids can really be helpful. Having an event, even if it's just you and a friend you and a buddy you and your spouse, having. Like an event, or some kind of something where you're like, we're gonna act as if, for this evening we're gonna be millionaires, or for this evening, we're gonna be a best selling author and a hedge fund manager, whatever it is that your goals are that can be so powerful to just like, radiate that energy. This can help for a wide variety of things, as I said, can be personal, it can be business related. It's not about being full tilt crazy, at least to me anyway, it's really about choosing the reality that you want to live in and not dwelling too much in the past, and also not stressing out too much about the future, leaving some playfulness, leaving some space for the universe to surprise you, but you're getting out ahead of it enough with your deliberate creation that you're saying, Here's what I want. I know what my goal is. I don't know the how, I don't know the when, the where, I don't know the various people that will come along and support me on this journey, I just know that they're out there. So maybe just take one particular event. If there's something that has ticked you off recently and you're like, I want to let it go. I'm not sure how I can move past it. Revision is always an option. Stay safe, stay sane, maybe do some revision, and I will see you in the next episode. 

Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time!