EP 179: From Wall Street to Wellbeing: Redefining Abundance and Unlocking Inner Wealth w/ Jason Pickard

Imagine being a billion-dollar portfolio manager and partner to hedge fund legend Paul Tudor Jones but feeling something was missing from your life. That's the crossroads my guest, Jason Pickard, found himself at. 

Jason shares his transformational odyssey from the adrenaline-rush of Wall Street to a more balanced existence.  Today we delve into his unique approach to wealth and wellbeing through his Abundance Archetype Method. 

What if I told you that there's more to life than just the monetary success? 
Jason who was once a dedicated advisor on Wall Street certainly thinks so. 
Jason shares...

• How he redefined abundance beyond a fat bank account to overall life fulfillment and career satisfaction. 
• Unearth the profound intelligence inherent in nature, our bodies, and the concept of abundance. 
• How to turn life's curveballs into stepping stones to our inner growth. 
• In the realm of wealth though practical rituals, discover how aligning with your true nature can nurture your inner abundance. 

Ready to unlock your unique abundance?
Jason guides us through his ingenious eight-step model that begins with understanding unconscious belief systems and ends with exploring ways to access flow states. He also reveals the secrets behind his mentorship program that focuses on living in alignment with your true self.

Lastly, we dive into the profound concept of surrender and joy in spiritual experiences, embracing the unknown, and finding beauty in everyday life. Get set to be inspired, enlightened, and start living out your fullest potential.

Connect with Jason here:
The Abundance Archetype Method:  https://www.jasonpickard.org
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jasonpickardofficial/

Pick up a copy of my book Finally Thriving or purchase my audiobook here:
https://geni.us/FinallyThriving

Join my Finally Thriving Group Program waitlist here:
https://www.finallythrivingprogram.com/waitlist

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The Synchronicities. Welcome to Integrate Yourself, everybody. I'm your host, alison Palau, and you can find me at FinelyThrivingProgramcom. You can find my book Finely Thriving on Amazon or any other place that you find books and audiobooks. Do you feel like you can't keep up with your overwhelming schedule and you don't have any time to take care of yourself? Do you feel like you're doing all the different workouts and diets out there but your body is just not changing? Are you exhausted? Do you feel like you need a big life change but you're just not sure where to start? If you're listening to this show, you know my name is Alison Palau and I am the creator of the Finely Thriving Program. It's a 12-week program that I based off my bestselling book Finely Thriving. I created this program with the intention of giving you an experience and an opportunity to dive deeper into what you'd like your life to look and feel like, to help you thrive. This program is a 12-week program of transformational live coaching and training to help you tap into your intuition and create your very own sustainable wellness practice. Imagine a space where you can explore yourself and step back into your natural state of thriving. Thriving just means you are comfortable being you. You feel good in your body and you have the energy to attract what you want and do what you love to do. You become a conscious creator of your life. Head over to the link in the show notes, finelythrivingprogramcom, and get on my wait list to be notified for the next registration dates, and you'll also get my free Align your Mind mini course and connect with your body meditation. Let me help you flip the switch in your life and teach you skills that will help you feel calm and safe, tap into your inner creativity and let you lead a life that's vibrant, fun and full of energy and opportunity. Let's help you thrive. Hello everybody, welcome to the show. I'm so excited you're here.

Speaker 1: 2:40

We have a wonderful guest today, jason Picard, and I know him through Paul Check and other people in the Check group as well and other various groups, that he's just been in my circle for quite some time now, so I'm so excited to have him on the show. He is amazing at what he does. He's very wise, as he'll explain it today's show. He has dove deep into his own inner work because he you started out in the financial district on Wall Street and he shares his story today and how he started putting together the pieces of the puzzle in his life that brought him to a place of really valuing his health in a way that went beyond just eating right and exercising, because he ended up losing a ton of weight and really got healthy. But he took it beyond that because he was feeling, like he explains today avoid in his life, which many of us do. When we change our bodies so quickly and then we're like what you know, then you kind of fall into patterns, old patterns, because it feels like there's a void there. There's nothing to fill the void with a new thing that you're stepping into, the new version of yourself as he explains it. So he went into this deep dive of spirituality and many, many different ancient healing modalities as well, and so he brings a very interesting and unique flavor to the mix with today's show and how he puts together the holistic perspective on wealth and health. And so he's experienced, as he teaches people how to do this in his class, the abundance archetype, and he's going to share more about that in today's show.

Speaker 1: 4:36

So, without further ado, it is my honor and my pleasure to introduce you to Jason Picard. Everybody enjoy your life is your greatest work of art. Welcome to integrate yourself. Everybody. I'm your host, alison Palau, and you can find me at Alison Palau dot com and, finally, thriving book dot com. Today I am here with Jason Picard.

Speaker 1: 5:05

He became a billion dollar portfolio manager and partner to hedge fund legend Paul Tudor Jones at Tudor Investment by the age of 26.

Speaker 1: 5:17

He was recognized as one of the top 30 traders under 30 years old in the world. Yet his health was an absolute in absolute decline and he was 330 pounds and suffered from a mental and physical health crisis. On a quest to become a master of both his inner and outer worlds, he decided to travel the world, spending thousands of dollars and studying for thousands of hours, learning directly from the greatest masters of a wide variety of healing arts, martial arts, holistic nutrition and movement, cutting edge psychology and wisdom traditions of the East and West, ancient, indigenous and contemporary. He has now integrated the wisdom gained on his journey by creating the abundance archetype method to help you discover and actualize your supernatural capabilities to create wealth and well being in your life, to thrive at work while also feeling your best. This, in turn, will give you a greater sense of your reason for being alive at this pivotal moment in human history. Jason, welcome to the show. I am so excited you're here.

Speaker 2: 6:28

It's so good to be here. Thank you for that beautiful, warm welcome.

Speaker 1: 6:33

You are so welcome. You have such an incredible background and experience in life and I'm very excited for you to share that with my audience today. I'd love to get started on your story and just share more about how you got here. You've been on many podcasts talking about this, especially Paul's podcast. I know you worked with Paul one-on-one for years and you still do and you still do yeah. So it's so interesting, coming from a background of Wall Street, if I'm not mistaken and then bringing and realizing your health is in a crisis and then taking the steps to really heal yourself and balance it all out. So I'd love for you to share your story of how you got to where you are now.

Speaker 2: 7:27

Yeah Well, you touched a little bit about that. But just to go a little bit deeper, I thought I was living my dream life. I was 26 years old and I had this dream from when I was a young child to be this big Wall Street legend. And here I was, 26, ranked top 30 under 30 in the world. When I was about 12 years old, I set my sights on wanting to work for Paul Tudor Jones and here I was, becoming the youngest partner ever to him and his firm. And despite all of that, despite all of that financial success and accomplishment, I still really felt quite broken and broke on the inside. I was 330 pounds. I was in a state of mental, emotional, physical, spiritual crisis and at 26 years old I realized I'm not going to live very long if I keep this up. And there was a deep emptiness that I had. And around that time I met a Czech professional in New York City, just by the grace of destiny. Really I didn't know anything about Paul Tsecker's work.

Speaker 2: 8:39

This was 2006. And I started exercising like crazy, really what you would imagine would be sort of a 24 seven CrossFit lifestyle, just grinding it out, you know, sweating, and just real hard work, which, for better or for worse, was what I needed at that time, and I just drove the weight off over a two year period just by working really, really hard. It was a very challenging two years, but it started to really grow and feed on itself and I saw the momentum and I'm like all right, I got this thing and over the period of two years I lost 170 something pounds. And then I was there, I was 160 pounds and I look in the mirror. I didn't even recognize the person that I was. I didn't even know who I was looking at, which was a really interesting thing, because the mind goes much slower, I found, than the body my body was now was now looking lean, but I still imagine myself probably, you know, 30 or 40 pounds on a lag from where I was. But here I am and despite now having the financial success and actually the body that I always wanted, I still felt an emptiness. And so I had this really deep realization that this sense of fulfillment, this deep inner peace, this fulfillment, this real success on all levels that I was seeking didn't come solely from my financial bank account or my professional success. It didn't even come only from my body. So what was this thing that I was looking for and where can I find it? And that's when I met Paul Check in about 2008 or 2009 and realized that this missing piece was the inner journey. The inner journey into my heart, into my spiritual practices, into my emotions, into my mind and really learning and embracing.

Speaker 2: 10:52

Despite all of the success and all of the education that I had which was quite phenomenal I still hadn't learned any of those things. I didn't know how to eat right for my body type. I didn't really even know how to move my body in a sustainable way. I had lost 170 pounds but I was totally fried. I had stage three or four adrenal fatigue after that because I didn't know how. I hadn't had no sense of balance, I had no sense of really how to have play or creativity or joy in my life, and I hadn't learned any of that along the way, despite being educated at a top university and being very successful on Wall Street.

Speaker 2: 11:36

So that really started about a 15-year journey of my inner world and it started with Paul and I ventured out into all sorts of fields where I studied extensively and I integrated that into my Wall Street experience for about 10 years, becoming a very sustainable, successful, highly optimized, high performer and was able to do it in a way where I could still nourish my body, my relationships and my other passions outside of work and be a big influence on others within that space. And this all kind of came to a head for me in 2019 where I just realized that I already kind of climbed that mountain. I wanted to see if I could do something else. I wanted to sort of see if I could be successful in another field. So I really kind of pushed that trader aside, that Wall Street guy. I said, you know, I don't want to be him anymore, I don't want to know him, I don't want to even want to think about his skillset. I want to go full on into coaching and, you know, therapeutic work.

Speaker 2: 12:41

And I spent another couple of years, you know, gaining certifications and going deeper into all the things that I had already done, but now exploring them on a professional level, only to find that my real talent, my real gift that I could bring the world where I could be of the most service and where there was the highest demand for my skills and talents, was actually integrating.

Speaker 2: 13:06

Both of those worlds was bringing together the trader, the wealth generator, with the healer, with the well-being and with the spirituality, and I recognize that that's actually what is missing in society. We have a divorce between science and religion and we have a divorce between wealth and well-being, or wealth and spirituality. They don't seem to go together for most people. You know, we have people that are really wealthy that don't have very good relationships or have crappy health or they're not making a big impact on the world in a positive way, and then we have people that are, you know, deeply into the spiritual world and have really deep well-being practices and may have good diets and meditative practices, but they don't really have wealth and have a way to really express that or make that big impact. So I realized that by putting both of those parts of myself back together, that that's actually what I needed to teach and that was sort of the impetus for creating the abundance archetype, which is now the method that I've put together, where I teach my students how to do both of those things.

Speaker 1: 14:15

That is so powerful. And, yeah, I love how you point out that there's so much imbalance throughout people's lifestyles and well-being and practices there, because, yeah, they're all important and it's really just finding that balance within. And that's so amazing that you discovered that after you started losing the weight, because so many people will kind of go back to what they were, you know what they were doing before, and they'll kind of slide back and because they'll feel that void and then they'll be like, well, I'm just going to start going into my old patterns that got me here and overweight again, you know. So, instead of, like, looking in the inner parts of themselves and discovering and exploring that.

Speaker 1: 15:10

So kudos to you for going in that direction, because that takes a lot of courage, you know it really does, and I'm also helping people with those kinds of things through, you know, bridging the gap between the physical and the spiritual connection, because I'm realizing over the last three years how important it is to really bridge that gap and create a spiritual relationship with yourself, but not get so out of body that you're, you know, trapped in that spiritual world, but coming back down to embody that abundance in your life and living right. So that is amazing that you're able to bring those two together and help people and then realize that you know it's now. I want to just be of service to people. You know, and it's a hard thing, I think, for most people to step away from a job that's creating a ton of money for them, right.

Speaker 2: 18:30

Yeah, it was. It was challenging, but I really felt like I knew it was possible to generate a lot of money again and do it in a way that was more dream affirmative for me and more in a way that was reciprocal. I wanted to put my money where my mouth was, so to speak. And so, you know, my quest was to say, ok, yeah, I'm in this career that's generating a lot of money, but it's I'm not. I'm not into it anymore. And with that I also recognize that when you're not fully into something, it was going to be hard to generate that money. Because, you know, wall Street is a career. It's not like you make partner at a firm and then you have this salary that just costs you into perpetuity right. Every day I woke up I had to essentially go hunting for my lunch, and so you know to the extent that I wanted to be involved in other things and my focus wasn't there. I had so much respect for the high level of competitiveness and focus that it takes to do anything well, including that job. Then I knew that if I was kind of half in and half out, I'd probably just be wasting my time, and I kind of had this idea. I said, all right, I can do this job for maybe another X number of years. Right, I mean, being a Wall Street trader in some ways is sort of being like a professional athlete, and that there is like an expiration date. Yeah, right, you know, maybe it's 35, maybe it's 40, maybe it's 45. Very few people are able to make a lifetime out of that career, just like you know many there's not that many Tom Brady's we could say. Right, that can perform well into their later stages of their career.

Speaker 2: 20:28

So I had this crazy idea.

Speaker 2: 20:30

I said, okay, yeah, I'm giving up money here in the short run, possibly.

Speaker 2: 20:36

But what if I'm actually beginning to work on the career that I can have sustainably for the next 50 years? What if I'm getting a jumpstart on that and I'm looking at my earning potential over the next 25, 40, 50 year time horizon? Am I really giving up money or am I beginning to work on that now so that when all of my peers stopped doing their jobs you know, 5, 10 years from now, at 45, 46, 47, 50, they don't have anything to fall back on? Yeah, maybe they've made some more money than me over the next couple of years, you know, and you could argue at the expense of what you know heart attacks, strokes, divorces, etc. But you know, putting all that aside, even just from a monetary perspective, I started to look at this long term view that I wanted to get started on a career that I could do to the day I die and do it well, be paid for it, make an impact and enjoy it, and I didn't want to wait any longer to do it.

Speaker 1: 21:33

That's amazing, yeah, it is.

Speaker 1: 21:37

I love how you seem to be sustainable because, yes, at some point you just get tired and it's fatiguing and it sounds like it's really stressful. And again, what is true abundance, anyway? And so that's where I was going with this, like, what is in your opinion, jason and I've been thinking about this a lot myself is what really is abundance? Because, yes, part of it is money, yes, but there's so much more to it. You know, it's about our life and how much we're really in the moment and enjoying it in some respects, and if we're doing something that fulfills us in our life and we're honoring ourselves and we're actually being able to notice all the abundance that's already there, instead of feeling like not enough or consuming more and more and more, you know. So that's what I'm feeling into a lot more lately is just acknowledging and appreciate what I have now and then creating more of that through that gratitude and that feeling and inspired action it takes to create more of that in my life. What is abundance to you now that you've gone through all this?

Speaker 2: 22:52

That's the $64,000 question here of creating a course on abundance, right, and you know, I think you hit on some really beautiful points because there's a lot of research that shows that once you have your survival needs met Now we're not talking about, you know, the 2 billion people out there that don't have access to clean food and water, right, or shelter or safety but once you have your survival needs met, you have enough money to pay for food and water and shelter, and you have safety and security in your life and you, let's just say, you have a stable paycheck of some sort. More money does not equate to life fulfillment. At that point, right, and we all have seen this, we've all seen the. You know the archetypal Scrooge out there, you know, made famous by the movies, but, like, we know people that have a lot of money that don't seem happy or don't seem fulfilled, and we see people that don't have a lot that have a big smile on their face. So obviously those things are not correlated. Right, once you have your survival needs met we're not talking about people that can't can't pay for their dinner tonight or they don't know if they're going to be safe but once you have that met, which is a large part of the Western world. Here, then you know, more money does not actually equate to that feeling of fulfillment that we're all searching for.

Speaker 2: 24:10

So when I was looking at this word abundance, I always go to etymological dictionaries that's this new habit of mine of being a word detective to really break down what is the hidden meaning, what are the real messages in the word. So abundance comes from the root word under UNDA, and so you could say that the first clue is that abundance is under us, it's under us, it's in us, right, and abundance or under also comes from the Sanskrit word Varuna, which basically equates to the intelligence of water, or we might say the water spirits. In yoga it would be the deva of water. But this idea that there's intelligence behind nature Most of us have been really cut off from this intelligence. We live in a world that we think is quite mechanical and random and purposeless, but the reality is there's so much intelligence behind everything that we see and experience. Even you know the intelligence of our bodies. Think about the trillions of chemical reactions, or even the intelligence in a body symptom, or the intelligence in dreams, or the intelligence in synchronicities, the intelligence in the planets and the stars, and the sun and the moon and the way it's all orbiting each other with like exquisite precision, the intelligence in the seasons, intelligence in the plants and the animals and the elements. It can go on and on and on.

Speaker 2: 25:47

And you know, we look at our normal waking life and we recognize that corporations, we would think, have intelligence. And we recognize that there are departments of intelligence. There's a human resources department, a marketing department, a finance department and so forth. And if we walked into a beautiful art gallery, we wouldn't think that the art just like randomly got slapped on the wall. We would recognize that there was some kind of intelligence that curated and created this. But we wake up and we look out at the world in the most beautiful art gallery there is, which is our Earth, and we don't recognize that there's intelligence behind everything.

Speaker 2: 26:27

And so abundance is linked to the intelligence of water. And, as you know and most of the people listening probably know, we are water-based beings, right? I mean, some people say we're 70% water, other people say we're something like 99% water by molecular count. But whatever way you look at it, we're mostly water and our earth is mostly water. And so when we connect to the water, the fluidity, the flow that is within us that begins to lead towards affluence, being able to be fluid in life.

Speaker 2: 27:05

And where that led me to is that it's not about always being happy. Happy comes from the word happenstance, which means to be lucky. If you study Buddhism or Taoism, you know that there's polarities in everything and that to have a momentary happiness must mean that at some point, some sadness is coming to have, given that any kind of value right, the dark and the light go together, the night and the day, the winter and the summer, and so forth, that we're living in a world of polarity. So it's not like striving for anyone's state oh, I'm going to always be an ecstasy or I'm always going to be happy. But what it is to me now is that, no matter what life throws at you, no matter what happens to you because there's things that are going to happen to you in your life that are out of your control we can't control all of life's events. We can't control the parents that we had, we can't control the bodies we had. We can't control, you know, the COVIDs happening or so forth. You know all of these different events that are outside of us Each day.

Speaker 2: 28:12

There's things that we can control and actions we can take, and then we can't control if there's going to be, like an accident on the highway in front of us on our way to work, right, I mean, the list goes on. There's things that are uncontrollable with our karma and uncontrollable with the way the planets are grabbing us, you know, through astrology and so forth. But how we respond to those, how we respond to life, to the circumstances of life, knowing who we truly are, knowing what we stand for, knowing what is life affirmative to us, and waking up each day and kind of attuning to that resonance and that frequency and making today a day that I'm going to create more beauty and harmony in the world and really standing for my truth, no matter what life throws at me. That's abundance, that, no matter what you do to me, you can't affect my mood or my vibe. And one of the most beautiful ways that you know you know this because you express this is through music, right, and that's why, through the practice of chanting or mantras, it's waking up each day and like brushing off the goo from the night before and starting to lock in to that frequency, that harmony, when there's almost no better way to do it than by singing and by playing music and by cultivating that frequency and then letting that be your guide for the day.

Speaker 2: 29:39

And just one more example that I've told before, but it's so powerful that I think I want to mention it, is that in Victor Frankl's book A Man's Search for Meaning, he talks about being in a Holocaust concentration camp and seeing Jews and likely others from various faiths.

Speaker 2: 29:56

But you know a lot of Jewish people being marched into the gas chamber and as they're being led to their death they're singing songs of life that he translated, that their songs were saying yes to life, and this really shook him to his core. Admittedly, you know from his viewpoint in the book, but also me too oh my gosh, I would be so mad, I would be screaming and just in so much pain and like being such a victim mentality I'm imagining of like this is so unfair. But the ability to say yes to life in even the worst of circumstances, that no matter what you do to me, you can even take away my body, but you can't take away my soul, you can't take away my spirit or my attitude to life, and I think that that's a long journey and a very kind of high state or high ideal archetype. You know this organizing motif or this source code or this North Star, but that's what I've geared my abundance meter towards. Is that?

Speaker 1: 31:17

Wow, that's amazing, yeah, and it's and that's what I, in my opinion what the flow state is. You know, when you say water, it's like, yeah, this is we are taking in that, taking on that element of water in our being in life, and attaining that I don't know if attaining is the right word, but just getting to that place of you know, new neutrality first, and then becoming loving unconditionally to whatever comes our way and being able to, just like you say, really appreciate life with the abundance of life and be for life and stand in integrity in yourself. That's that's so big, that's like everything I feel like you know.

Speaker 2: 32:13

Yeah, and with that I found that it's the connection between wealth and well being.

Speaker 1: 32:26

Yeah, yeah, because.

Speaker 2: 32:28

I not either, or.

Speaker 1: 32:30

Right, I feel like we've been programmed to think of wealth in a very scarcity mindset way, yeah, and so it sounds like you're reprogramming people to see it in a different way. And I love that because, yes, you look around the world and you see people that don't have very much, but they, they're very content, they're very happy, they, they actually have an experience, more abundance than some people with lots of money. And I've always thought about that like, wow, what is that about? And, yeah, now, realizing that, you know, as I got into my holistic health journey and realized that there's so much abundance that we have access with our own healing, with our own body, it's incredible, you know, like you said, looking out at nature and seeing everything, all the symbiotic relationships, and how it just keeps going and and it doesn't really, it only takes as much as it needs, you know, and then it's, it's, it's fine, it all like works together in all these different relationships and it's kind of it's really amazing to watch.

Speaker 1: 33:38

And, yes, it's. So it's us turning back into, like, what's natural. You know what we have to really learn again what is natural, because I think we've been learning for years what's unnatural and thinking that's what's natural. Right, and so it's coming back to what, what's organic, you know what's true for the human being.

Speaker 2: 33:59

This is such an interesting. Interesting point because if you look at nature, you recognize, if you have a pulse, that nature, that nature left alone, is naturally abundant. You know, we all know, we've read these reports that during COVID, when we were all locked up around the world into our homes, that and when nature had time to breathe, that all of these particular areas were healing itself naturally, right, I mean, dolphins were coming back to places where they hadn't seen, dolphins and wolves were reentering various places, and you could probably breathe in Beijing, you know, and things like that, like all, just because we weren't kind of mucking it up, you know. So part of the problem is not that nature is an abundance, just that we're not distr distributing the resources appropriately. But this whole concept of rituals I find interesting, because many of us, in our fields, we wake up and we do a lot of rituals each day, right, you know we have to work out, we have to meditate, we have to take our cold shower or, you know, whatever it is. I mean, we have a long list of things, right, that we have to do each day. But the question that you have to ask is why am I doing these things? What's the point of them, like, what's the ultimate goal of all these rituals? And when you look at the word ritual, it comes from the root word re, r-i and the re gives us creativity and ritual and reading and writing and arithmetic and rhythm and also rich r-i-c-h. And this re is attached to the rit-tom and Sanskrit, or the laws of nature, and so the whole idea of properly doing rituals is to align ourselves with nature so that we can become abundant. Like her, the sun is naturally abundant, so when we have a ritual of waking up with the sun and going to sleep with the sun, we become like that, we start glowing like a sun. When we connect with water, when we have a ritual around our water, we can become water-like, abundant like water, and so forth.

Speaker 2: 36:22

And when you look at the word wealth, it's quite an interesting thing because, yes, the scarcity mindset and all of our belief systems about wealth are quite disempowering a lot of the times for various reasons Societally, culturally, our parents, our early childhood experiences trauma around money and so forth, this idea that money is inherently bad, money is the root of all evil. No, money is a tool of energy and how you use it, you can just like artificial intelligence. You can use it to create bonds or to cure cancer. We could say right, and it goes on and on. The same thing with money there's been great people with money, great leaders that have made huge world change and have been very terrible dictators that have had a lot of money, that have made a lot of suffering. So it's really just a tool and the more you have, the more responsibility you have because the more impact you can have on others with it.

Speaker 2: 37:21

But when you look at the word wealth, it's quite fascinating because part of the problem with the scarcity mindset is that we're looking for this wealth in all the wrong places, that we're looking for it on the outside. But in my course we first recognize that this wealth is an inside job, it's an inside out experience, and one of the first lessons in my course we talk about divesting. What do you need to let go of? What police do you need to divest? It's not about taking in more. You already have it. It's about scraping away the unnecessary stuff and getting down to the root of it, and the root of it's inside of you.

Speaker 2: 37:59

And when you track the word wealth, it comes from the root word of well-being, and well-being comes from wheel and wheel comes from chakras. So you mentioned this embodiment. So real wealth begins in deep embodiment in the body, in the chakra system, recognizing these energy centers and having them all turned on and being healthy. And then, once these wheels are turning, we can then engage with the wheel of life and become naturally abundant and reciprocal, like nature, and cyclical like nature, and we can focus on net impact, giving and taking equally, and when we do that we have well-being. And when we experience real well-being on the inside, then we can actually create wealth.

Speaker 1: 38:51

Yes, I love that. That resonates so much with me. And when you say that, what comes to mind is you know, I talk about this a lot is that people tend to separate themselves from nature. But we are nature, we're part of it. And when we start to realize that more and more, then we start to tap into what you're talking about, like that balance, that harmony within us, to connect the nature that is, our bodies and our soul, you know to the nature that we see outside of ourselves, or that we the illusion of that it's outside of ourselves. But getting into the rhythm of that is true abundance.

Speaker 1: 39:29

And then, like you say, money is just. In my opinion, it isn't good or bad, it's just a tool of creation. So you can create distortedly or you can create purely, you know, with money. So it's just up to the individual and their intention behind that, I think. So that is another way to look at it, for sure, because, yeah, people tend to blame money for all the problems in the world, but it's not money's fault, it's just an energy, and the energy of wealth and health are very similar. Like from my, what I've looked at is you know, it's a very similar energy and that's why a lot of times I will, you know, place health as like also a way. When you build your health, you can also build the wealth like you're talking about too, because you have a better relationship with the energy of money too. So, yeah, I love everything that you said was just spot on. Yeah, it's just, that's great.

Speaker 2: 40:28

Thank you. You know it's interesting because, from my understanding, all of the great world religions were all founded on money. Research that Paul showed me was that Jesus was given the equivalent in today's value of four million dollars of frankincense, myrrh and gold when he was born by the you know, visited by like kings and magi's from across the land. Moses was a prince, buddha was a prince, arjuna was a prince, muhammad was a very wealthy businessman, married a very wealthy businesswoman who was a merchant and became a businessman himself. So where did this distortion happen that in order to follow these faiths or these spiritual practices, we couldn't do it with money? When they all began with money themselves? All of these great movements began founded on wealth, but somewhere along the line we picked up this distortion that they can't go together, and I think that part of my work is bringing that back together for people and making them more aware of that.

Speaker 1: 41:44

Yeah, that's a great point to make, and do you think that that distortion is meant to disempower people in a way?

Speaker 2: 41:54

as it relates to that. Yeah, I don't know exactly, but I would imagine it's sort of the corporatizing of religion.

Speaker 1: 42:01

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:02

Yeah, where you know, like the difference between Jesus and the church, or Buddha and Buddhism and so forth. And so yeah, along the way, we've developed these institutions around these mystical ideas and practices and we've made them sort of more fundamentally rule-based, and a lot of them, I think, became funded by having the people give money back to the institution. I mean, the Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest organizations in the world, right, and many of the other religions are probably the same, so they're certainly not adverse to money.

Speaker 1: 42:48

That's true Good point. Well, there's this thing called yeah, I think, as it relates to religion. Religion has been a very, very much created as a divinity scarcity tool for people. That don't, you know, it prevents people from realizing that it comes from within, and they're again led to believe, just like with money, that it's all outside of themselves, that they have to access it outside of themselves, and so it's kind of all. It is very similar, it's a very similar energy, that whole scarcity thing. You know, it's just like it can look like many different things for people depending on where they're at. It happens in spirituality all the time, you know.

Speaker 2: 43:36

You know, carl Jung says that the purpose of religion is to protect one from the true experience of God.

Speaker 2: 43:47

And that could be looked at in a few different ways. In one way, what you're saying, but in that it's sort of a distortion. But in another way, there's actually like a purpose to it in that, like most people aren't really actually ready to take on the responsibility that, like they are God, like that they are the creators themselves, that they have to take responsibility, that the buck stops here, fully individuating and having a direct experience and not having a middleman or a middle woman mediating their experience with divinity, but taking full responsibility for it. That it actually serves a purpose because most people aren't ready for that. That's a full on yes to life that most people aren't ready to take. And so if you're not at that stage, it serves a purpose protecting you from that direct experience. But then, as you progress and evolve, you may get to a point where you have that direct experience or you're ready for that direct experience and you may no longer need the institution anymore. You become it.

Speaker 1: 44:55

I love that perspective. I haven't thought about it like that before, but that makes so much sense because, yeah, to realize that it's coming from within is very powerful and sometimes can be too much and overwhelming for some people if they haven't done enough inner work right. So that makes sense. That religion would be that kind of step to that next thing, until you don't need it anymore. That makes so much sense to me, yeah.

Speaker 2: 45:21

Yeah, and there's all these different stages of religion, right, there's like the magical, magical, mythical stage. There's the modern and postmodern, and we move up through these different stages until we get to an integral stage where we may believe in a particular style or lens of religion. We may have been grown up as a Taoist or a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Jew or whatever, and we may actually still feel an affinity for that particular flavor, but we see it as part of a great world religion that is all collaborating together to make this whole big. You know, maybe religion with a capital R, right, is we see the piece of the puzzle and we're actually bringing that piece up and supporting that one piece, but only as part of a whole, knowing that all of us need to share our truths together, from all religions and from all cultures, from all races, from all perspectives, and that only when we do all of that can we actually find out the truth, because each one of us holds a part of it.

Speaker 1: 46:30

Yes, yes, resonates so much for the day. Thank you, oh my goodness. Okay, so I do not want to end the show without you talking about your eight abundance archetypes today. I really want to cover that because those are important and it sounds like very foundational to the class that you teach. You're offering a new class, like you've been talking about teaching, but what we're talking about is this class that you have been teaching this year, and I don't know what class you're on, but it's been very successful, from what I hear, and congratulations, by the way. That's a really big deal and you're and it sounds like you're really attracting some wonderful students for that, and I'd love to hear more about what your experience has been with that too.

Speaker 2: 47:21

Yeah, thank you so much. I mean, yeah, it's been really amazing to leave Wall Street and to not know what I wanted to do really, and to be exploring all these things and having a few dark nights at the soul, being like what is my real purpose here? Why am I here? What am I trying to do with this? Am I crazy for leaving this career and staying on that path and, like you know, slaying those inner dragons and meeting various mentors and allies and overcoming obstacles and then, yeah, now circling back with this inner elixir that I've cultivated on this hero's journey and now spiraling back up and now offering that and it's just the biggest blessing to be rewarded for that too, you know, be rewarded for that faith in the universe. So, yeah, I created this course called the abundance archetype with freedom builders, who I think you know quite well.

Speaker 1: 48:13

I actually I use them for my course as well. Yeah, they're great.

Speaker 2: 48:18

Shout out to Mike.

Speaker 1: 48:20

Gonzalez.

Speaker 2: 48:21

Mike Schwartz and the rest of the team. So, yeah, I love those guys and girls. They're amazing. My wife, kara, is actually doing a course with a known on amazing the energetics of cooking and making very cool easy for people. But yeah, back to my course.

Speaker 2: 48:37

So I created the abundance archetype and it's really my journey in Wall Street and my journey in in well being and the combination of those two. So one huge part of the course is developing a process to defining your competitive edge and finding what you're really good at and developing a system for you to bring that out, but not also professionally, but also in relationships and in your personal life. And then we go through my eight keys to greater wealth and well being, or my eight keys to mastery, which are essentially the eight things that I found through my years of study that are essential to create flow states and the ways that I got to. That was really it's a kind of a long story but, in short, studying yoga, and when I started studying astanga yoga and the eight limbs to astanga yoga, I recognized that what yogis were calling Samadhi, or the ultimate stage, was basically what we're calling flow and that people have been cultivating this scientifically for thousands and tens of thousands of years, ubiquitous in cultures across the world, but particularly India, that they were creating flow state. So I based my model essentially after this, like tried and true experiment that yogis were doing sitting in caves, to developing perfection in any one area. And so the first step in my model is really working on your unconscious and your belief systems and finding out what you really love to do, and I take people through a whole process of doing that. Once you do that and you know we do that by working on your earliest childhood memories and your earliest childhood dreams and your earliest memories of money and working through visualizations and meditations and belief system practices Then we move into Paul Chex for doctors.

Speaker 2: 50:29

Because once you, once you know what you love to do and what you have your dream and you've and you've gotten out of the way of your disempowering beliefs. Now you have to actually fuel that and take care of that body, you know, but you have a reason to do that now. So now you're going through Paul Chex for doctors, you're moving your body appropriately for your needs, you're eating right, you're getting enough sleep and you know all this stuff and you're finding ways to create play in your life. And then I focus on the importance of posture, because in the third step of a stronger yoga, this is what they called asana. Now that's what we call yoga Now is basically we think of yoga in the West as we go to a yoga studio and we do, we're going to like how long can I hold this plank? Or how hot can I make the room where?

Speaker 1: 51:18

it's very competitive, right yeah?

Speaker 2: 51:20

it's very competitive. It's all about. It's all about the posture and, oh, I'm going to do this longer and stronger. I mean it's not all like that. But you know, the whole idea is that the focus is not about the belief systems, it's not about being in right relationship to yourself and others. It's. I don't really hear much about diet or balance of movement or sleep or play and creativity and things like that. I mean, yeah, of course there's amazing yoga teachers out there, but in a nutshell, it's really just focusing on really just a fitness aspect.

Speaker 2: 51:50

But that was what was taught in ancient India to children in kindergarten. It's like, look, this is, this is elementary school. You got you got to know who you are. You got to know that you are they call it an atma, or a soul living in a particular body, and you have to learn why you're here, what you're naturally good at, what do you love to do, and we're going to create your education system around that. Once you do that, you have to recognize that you're in a unique body and know what kind of foods does your body like and need, how much sleep do you need. You know how much movement and what type do you need. You know what are your goals for that and what brings you authentic joy. And then, once you do that, you need to be able to learn to do whatever you're doing, but sit in a way that isn't going to hurt your back, isn't going to sap your productivity, isn't going to take your mind out of the flow state because you're like your back's killing you, your legs are falling asleep, your foot's in pain or whatever it is, and you can create optimal breathing. And that's three. And so, once we do that, now we're in this state where we're regulating our breathing and we're beginning to move into a state of coherence where we can harmonize our right and our left brain. And so many of us in the business world are really only focusing on this left brain. But there's so much more information that I could go on forever about and I think it's more essential than ever in this world of artificial intelligence. That's literally a left brain tool to access the potentials of our right brain, listening to the signals of our body, listening to the dreams or dreams at night, and accessing the intelligence of our heart, and I take you through a whole series there as well.

Speaker 2: 53:35

Then five we're moving up into the throat. It's essentially learning what to say no to eliminating distractions. Where's your time going? Where's your money going? What do you need to eliminate and delegate? What are your values? What do you stand for? Six we learn how to have a tension, flexibility, where now we're learning how to focus on things, but also how to have open focus and to take in more information. All of these are really keys to flow states.

Speaker 2: 54:02

Finally, we're seven. We're learning how to alter our state. We all know, you know a lot of people in this world know about the benefits of altered states, whether or not it's through, like drumming or plant medicines or meditation or whatever hypnosis. I mean, there's a long list of stuff. But how do we do this? In little mini, what I call micro dose meditations at work, ways to engage with the creative process and alter ourselves slightly so that we can access the information that exists in non-ordinary states of consciousness and then bring them back in into our life.

Speaker 2: 54:37

And then, once we do that, we're in eight.

Speaker 2: 54:39

We're in the flow. We're moving into the archetype. We're in the archetype of the investor. We are becoming abundance. We've gone from doing ceremony to becoming ceremony. We're in the archetype of the mother, the father, the trader, the teacher, whatever it is. And when we get into this stage, we recognize our importance in the larger wheel of life and the importance of using our rank and power to empower other people, to leave a seven generational impact and to really participate in the cycle of life in a positive way. And so that's it. And then so the course is that, and then you know much, much more that I can't even talk about. But in addition, I'm offering people this mentorship program. That is where I'm seeing huge transformation, where all of the people that take my course jump into two weekly, two calls per week with me and other special guest speakers from a variety of fields. I've had some amazing guest speakers come in and we work live through the material and much, much more in a community of abundant seekers. So I've created a little tribe of people.

Speaker 1: 55:47

So that's so incredible. Oh my God, I love everything that you're doing and it really makes sense. It's literally a flow state. You're moving to the next thing with flow, and just the energy of it is so wonderful. I had a question about, like you see, how long is the program? Is it three months? Is it a year? How long does it last?

Speaker 2: 56:13

Yeah, so the program itself is an eight week program, but I honestly I've been telling people because you have access to the material for life, you have lifetime access to the course. So really I encourage you to go at your own pace. The information unlocks to you in over eight week period. But you know, everyone has their own life circumstances. They people have kids, relationships, jobs and stuff. So I just encourage them to go at a pace that they can actually integrate and enjoy. But it's designed for eight weeks.

Speaker 2: 56:43

But some people can go through it all in eight weeks and some people might need, you know, 15 weeks, 20 weeks or a year or 10 years I don't know depending on what pace they want to go at. But you have lifetime access. Anytime I update it, you get that information and the mentorship program is lasting for one year. So you have one year of about 12 hours of live group coaching potential a month in this community and we also share a Facebook group together where we have a lot of shared experiences and you can hear what's coming up for people and I post in there all the time and just you know, prompting people on different questions and reflections and things like that.

Speaker 1: 57:25

That's amazing, Wow. Thank you so much, Jason. That's just incredible service for people and I know that it's going to help them so much really reach their own potential and really get to that next phase of their life where they are in that flow state but also just enjoying their life. I think that's so important that people miss, you know.

Speaker 2: 57:49

I think it is so important because, honestly, our flow follows our focus and our focus is following what we love to do.

Speaker 1: 58:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 58:02

You know. So I mean, if you really want to be great at something, you have to truly love it. And I think if anybody authentically, you know, looked at some of the great masters of any field, it's hard to find people in any walk of life that were truly great at what they did, that it wasn't their life's love.

Speaker 1: 58:26

Yeah, I agree. I agree you really have to love it to be able to focus on it and devote your life to it. It's got to be, you got to have that love for it, you know, even though you might go through some stuff and learning curves and that kind of thing. But yeah, ultimately it's got to be one of your first love, there for sure.

Speaker 2: 58:49

Yeah, and each one of us has this unique fingerprint, this unique expression of what that looks like for us. And really getting to the bottom of that is really the key to my course is recognizing that we all have an individual process, we all have individual dreams you know, not two of us are alike in any way and really finding what is that for you, what is you know what? What do you really love to do and what are you really good at and what does the world need from you. And then aligning all of those and doing it, not because you know you're expected to do it or because your mom and dad told you that you had to do this, or because you think this is the way that things need to go, but because you truly you couldn't live your life without doing it.

Speaker 1: 59:35

Yeah, yeah, it's called living in integrity. I think, yeah, oh my gosh. So please, before we go, jay said first of all, I want to thank you so much for coming on. This has been an amazing interview and show today. I really got so much out of it and hope my audience does too. I'm sure they will. I wanted you to just leave everybody with where they can find it, find your course, what you're offering, as well as when it's being offered again.

Speaker 2: 1:00:08

Yeah, yeah, it's quite easy. You can just go to my website, jasonpicardorg, or on my Instagram, jasonpicardofficial the link is up in my bio as well and when you get there, you can check out all of the different things that we talked about about my course and some other things as well. But the opportunity is that if you really feel called to this, you can book a discovery call with me for free, where you get on a call with me on a Zoom for 30 minutes and we just chat about your life and your experiences and you can ask questions about the course. And if it feels good to you and in residence with your life and it feels good to me because that's one of the things that I learned is that I'm really looking for people that I feel a strong connection to as well, or it becomes a headache that I don't want either. But yeah, if we feel a really good, strong connection, which most likely we will, if you're coming, if you're listening to this podcast and you feel called to checking me out on the website and booking a call with me, then I'd love to have you and I would be honored and privileged to take you through this experience and once we're on that call. We could talk about all the particulars but how to make it work best for you, and it's essentially ongoing right now.

Speaker 2: 1:01:24

So I have people that are still joining into this. You know, first cohort, and it's becoming sort of like a mentorship program. You know my kids go to like Waldorf schools and sometimes the there's kids three or four years older in the same group and so, like, the older ones become the mentors of the younger ones, and then the younger ones eventually move up and then they could, you know, have the perspective to help the others. And so I have people coming in at different stages and now people that are have already progressed through can help the others, and then you know one day that then you'll become the mentor and it creates like a community effect.

Speaker 1: 1:01:59

I love that. So the people who have already taken it can just do it again and support the people who are new. Is that how it works?

Speaker 2: 1:02:07

Well, just because you know, people that started, you know, two months ago, you know, have made it through the eight weeks, let's say, but they still have 10 months left to go on their mentorship program. So somebody will just jump into the existing calls and we revisit stuff and we recycle things as well. But yeah, they're just a little bit farther along in the material. But you know, we're basically all on this journey together and everything, all of the calls that I've done have all been recorded in place in our Facebook group so anyone can go on there and actually access all the old calls and have all the guest speakers and all of the material that I brought in there as well.

Speaker 1: 1:02:43

So very cool. Well, gosh. Thank you so much, jason. This has been a delight to talk to you more, get to know you more and for you to share everything that you're doing, which is just so spectacular. I'm just so happy to hear it and I'm happy for you, and you know I just love seeing your progress and your success and it's just it's fun for me to see that and inspires me greatly. So thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:03:13

Yeah, and same to you, and just thank you for this amazing energy. I don't know it's hard to put words to it, but you've created a very sacred container to allow me to feel very calm and comfortable and really enter quickly into a flow state with you where I forgot that we were even doing a podcast and we're just having a conversation, and so it's been very fun. I think you you know you're doing a great job too, so thank, you for everything that you do.

Speaker 1: 1:03:41

Thank you, jason. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. I believe bliss is a spiritual experience and you can't find this without first learning how to play, make mistakes and have fun. But it's hard to experience bliss until you've learned how to surrender to what you cannot control. It's more fun to roll with life most times and, of course, control what you can, but let go of what you cannot and hand that over to the universe or your higher self. Our joy lies in the idea that many times life does not unfold the way we always expect our plan, but it does unfold the way that is right for each of us, giving us exactly what we need without losing anything. Oftentimes the result is even better than what we could have ever imagined. Ever imagined Ever imagined Because we opened ourselves up to infinite possibility. Embracing the unknown in your life is like watching a good movie and waiting for the next clue as to what could come next, with curiosity and excitement.

Speaker 1: 1:05:29

What you discover along the way in your life is important, and it all relates back to you being able to see the beauty and bringing awareness to the sacred mystiques. Your life is your greatest work of art. We are all artists in that way and you get to create your life any way you like. That's the fun part, and having fun, I believe, is a spiritual experience. Experience, experience, experience, experience. Your life is your greatest work of art and it all relates back to the synchronicities. And having fun, I believe, is a spiritual experience. Experience, experience, and it all relates back to the synchronicities and the synchronicities. Your life is your greatest work of art and it all relates back to the synchronicities.