New Earth Currencies: Redefining Prosperity for Purpose-Driven Creatives

What if prosperity wasn’t just about money—but about alignment, creativity, and the energy we exchange? In this episode, we’re rethinking wealth, breaking free from scarcity mindsets, and exploring new ways to thrive as creatives and changemakers.

Tune in for a deep dive on:

• What “New Earth” prosperity looks like beyond traditional finances.
• How to shift from scarcity to sustainable abundance.
• Creative, spiritual, and communal currencies that fuel real wealth.

If this episode resonated with you, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your people! Let’s keep the conversation going—connect with me and let me know your biggest takeaway.

Chapters

• 0:00 Redefining Wealth in a Transformative Era
• 5:24 The Currency of Spirit
• 19:14 Mindset as Currency
• 28:03 The Currency of Wellness
• 30:53 Taking Responsibility for Health
• 34:27 Currency of Community
• 41:29 Collaboration as Currency
• 49:02 Agility in a Changing World
• 50:55 Creativity as a Form of Wealth
• 58:15 Redefining Wealth on Your Own Terms

Transcript

Greetings, greetings, greetings, shapeshifters. 

Welcome back. Welcome to episode two. Today we're going to be talking about redefining wealth on your own terms, redefining wealth on your own terms, and how to work with what I'm calling new earth currency. So go ahead and grab a paper, something to write with, and let's get into it. You know, when I was preparing for this episode, I couldn't help thinking about where I was in 2020.

I was living in my hometown of Oakland, California. California was one of the first places to go into a major, major lockdown. And obviously the world was experiencing something that I had never experienced before. None of us knew what a global pandemic was. We had never been on lockdown before. And it was just an overwhelming, interesting time to be alive when everything really shut down. And as I...

watched the days go by, when days turned into weeks at the beginning, they said, hey, it's only going to be two weeks. And two weeks turned into what seemed like a year. And as the time continued to roll by, it became obvious that our idea of wealth, our idea of success, really kind of got turned on its head. And what really came to me was this

saying that many folks have been saying for quite some time that we're in this transformation state, this transformative time where we are hospicing the old world, we are watching old structures, old systems die, and we are midwifing the new. And as many of you have heard me say, but we create the new, we create the future in the present moment. And so part of the old world dying is these ideas of success.

and the ideas of how to become successful were kind of withering along with it. You know, I'm born in the 70s. I'm a child where literally, I probably was the last generation where you could literally go to college, get a major in pretty much anything. And I was able to move to New York. I was able to get an apartment. I was able to have a variety of jobs. Many of the...

when we're not even in my own job field, just because I have that piece of paper. And so I think about that when I think about my own child, I have a 19-year-old daughter, and everything that worked for me is no longer going to work for her. And so it's really important as educators, as parents, as people in community, as purpose-driven creatives, people who really are about stewarding and co-creating the world that we want to see.

that we begin to compost these old ideas of how we're living and begin to really embrace a new paradigm, embrace a new shift of what the world can become. So oftentimes I'm in social justice circles, I'm claiming that they're piloting and innovating new work and new projects and ideas, but we're still using the same mindset, the same systems to get there.

I can't talk to you about how many GoFundMe's, burnt out leaders, folks dying with no retirement, having to raise money for people who have literally given their blood, sweat, and tears to the movement and have nothing to show for it. This idea that we have to, particularly as women, particularly as black women, sacrifice ourselves on the altar of

social justice on the altar of our families, on the altar of our relationship, and somehow we're going to help the world, we're going to help our families. And we know that that's not true. Many of us can look at people in our own families who have sacrificed so much and knowing that it does not serve them. And so what I know for sure is that we get to recreate and co-create a new world that's built on thriving, that's built on wellness.

that's built on imagination, that's built on living well, and we don't have to burn ourselves out in the process. But that's only if we're willing to transform ourselves. And again, when I talk about transformation, I'm not saying it because it's a cute buzzword, I'm saying become something else, allowing those parts of ourselves, those mindsets within us that are no longer serving us to...

wither away into compost and from this new soil, allowing something else to emerge, literally changing states, changing the state from one form to another. And so I call those new earth currencies. So let's get into what some of those new earth currencies are. And so I want to also remind you all that this comes from this idea as we learn the Father, we all come from this idea of heaven.

We come from the cosmos, we come from the primordial darkness, going to earth to live our hero's journey, to bring our unique, special gifts to the world. That if you hold up your hand and you look at your fingerprint, that with the eight billion people on the planet, even twins, even triplets, your fingerprint is unique, that you have been imprinted.

with the unique signature of the divine that no one else has but you. And unfortunately, we have been programmed in a society that has taught us to ignore that unique imprint. And instead, we're supposed to pick from a list of boxes, and we're supposed to choose a box that we want to put ourselves in. Even sometimes when we're finding new language to think about,

how to work together, when we're forming new language of how we express our sexual identity, our racial identity, our relationship paradigms, we still put ourselves in boxes. You either have to be this or that. Even when we go up to people often, we say, what do you do? We're kind of asking them, what is your boss? Even when we think about the way that we show up on these social media platforms or when we have an opportunity to write our signature or writing our bio.

We put all the boxes up. And I'm this race, I identify as this and all that that does, I understand the power of that, especially for folks who feel like they've been marginalized and have been unseen. But at the same time, you don't want to literally box ourselves into a box that we can't get out of. And so when we think about

how we're going to now be able to navigate the market, navigate economy. And this is not just for us. This is especially for those of you who are parents, for those of you raising children, those of you co-parenting children. My glorified aunties and uncles, I'm out there talking to you because sometimes the parents like that have been having, it really takes a village. All of us have to be responsible for the care of our children. If there's any group

that is truly suffering the most. I would say in this time we're living in a loneliness epidemic, we have a mental health epidemic, we're really seeing that come through really strong with our children. And I know that work firsthand because I train educators and work with folks that are working with young people on the front lines. And that's a whole other topic for a whole other day. And so the first currency is the currency of spirit.

It is your spirituality. I don't want to call you into any specific type of spirituality, but rather I'd like to remind you that you have your physical body and we are good things for our physical bodies. That we know that our spirits never die. And we know this because we know that there are universal laws. What are universal laws? Universal laws are just another fancy word of saying what indigenous people knew for thousands of years, and that is science.

catching up with those wisdoms that knows that energy can never be destroyed. Energy can never be destroyed. It can only be transformed. And through that transformation is your spirit that lives in this physical body in this moment, but it's not going to ever die. It just transforms into

another body, whether it's going into the ancestral realm, whether it's been reincarnated into the next body. We often think of mind, body, and spirit, where your body's not been Alaska ever. And your mind, hey, could go either way, but your spirit is that eternal part, the ground, and one foot in the spiritual realm. So cultivate those spiritual practices, the practices of aligning your eternal body with

what is permanent, with what will always be, with what can never be destroyed. And it means when we wake up in the morning, what the most two most important times in your life are when you wake up in the morning and before you go to bed and making sure that you make those times sacred for yourself. Often when I'm talking about this form of currency with my clients, you know, because meditation and yoga are so mad.

practices that have become extremely popularized in the West. Typically when we think of our spiritual practices, many people, that's the first thing you think of. Well, I want to meditate more in the morning. And I love meditation. That's something that I do. But often what I ask them is like, well, are you actually being able to get to it? Well, no, I'm not able to really get to it. But when I do get to it, it's really sweet. And so I feel like sometimes we get so caught up in the idea of what we're supposed to do.

that we don't do anything. And that's one of the most detrimental things that she could do. Taking time, even if it's five breaths, even if it's two minutes of silence, even if you gotta say your prayers in the shower, you gotta say your prayers and you make making yourself a cup of tea or a cup of coffee or taking your supplements for the day. Make those sacred moments.

carve out those sacred moments of stillness, to be able to bow to something greater than you, a greater divinity, to know that yes, we are here, but there is a greater force that is here. And when I give myself the still, quiet time to connect with that greater force, I'm able to receive messages. I'm able to receive insights. I'm able to...

feel a little bit more peace, feel a little bit more calm, feel like I can have more strength. I think of my grandmother, and when I would wake up in the morning, and this is true of many indigenous people, if you go to West Africa, you will see this. I currently live in Mexico City, and every morning you can hear the sound of bros. You hear people sleeping. And that there is a sacredness of waking up in the morning and just sweeping your house.

Because what you're doing is you're telling the universe all of the energy from the night before, all the energy that is in the house, resetting and bringing in something new. And I remember my grandmother, which is be sweeping and praying, praying out loud, talking to God, fellowshiping with God, singing with God. She has to get her mind right. She didn't have a yoga mat to sit down at. She didn't have an ulcer. She was her own ulcer. And she used that.

broom. As her magic wand to call out the energy and bring in what she wanted. She was seeking prayers over her entire bloodline. Prayers that I have been a beneficiary of even until this day. Because we know what the power of prayer, when you're putting it out into the metaphysical, the pedal seat, that all of us are recipients of someone else's prayer.

Prayer does not know space and time. And that was connecting her to a knowingness that everything was gonna be all right. Didn't mean everything was easy. Didn't mean everything felt good, but she knew that just as the darkness was here, that the sun had to rise in the next morning. And that is what we get to hold onto. We get to hold onto the spiritual inheritance that our forefathers and foremothers have

gifted us with to know that regardless of uncertainty, there is still success and perseverance and persistence and opportunity within those times of uncertainty. That there has never been a time on the planet for Black America, Black folks in America, where we have not had to face triumph over, navigate through uncertainty. And as Angela, Maya Angelou, reminds us, and still arise.

still were able to rise. But if you're relying on what you can physically see, right? We talked about this in episode one. spirituality isn't just about, you know, God. It's also about the unseen. It's trusting that inherent intelligence of the seed that goes into the soil. It's trusting that there's an order of operations.

As you know, I'm a mother and I decided 19 years ago that I was going to give birth naturally. And the reality, one of the things that my midwife and many of the books that I was reading taught me is your body knows what to do. Yes, you can take prenatal classes, maybe all those are great, but there are women who just were pregnant and were in a field, were in a forest, or wherever they were, and the inherent intelligence of their body knew what to do, knew to swap down.

closer to the earth in order for them to catch that baby. Their body had it. And so we have it. And what spirituality allows us to do when we tap into that unseen, is we get to just be still and listen. So often when I was talking to clients or even when I'm working with young people and I say, hey, what is your vision for yourself? What is that thing that you want to do? A lot of people don't even know what to do. And often I say to them,

One of the first things that you need to do is you just need to get still, just to be able to hear. It's like if you're sitting in a rural place at night and you see those beautiful stars shining and maybe only the moonlight is only what you like that you have. And all of your senses start awakening. You start hearing the crickets. You start hearing the birds. You start...

understanding the forces, you start tapping into something else, everything else awakens within you. This is why some people go on darkness, which is because darkness is mimicking the world and the womb is that place where creation is born. So we get there and we tap into that by tapping into ourselves and tapping into the currency of spirit, the currency of our ancestor practice. And so we're

you are on your spiritual journey, this isn't time to step it up. This is a time to do more. This is a time that if you were thinking of your life as a piece of pie and there's slices of how much time you get to your relationship and a slice to, you know, your personal projects and a slice to work, that spiritual slice has got to be there. And I behoove you to really

step up that ancestor practice wherever you are. Queen Ofua has, if you've ever read Heal Thyself, go get a copy of that book. There's many ways that she shows you how to set up an ancestor alter on a basic level. And for those of you who have an ancestor alter, know, the Bay Area, we're real into, you know, all of the new age things and we like to pry ourselves on how pro-black and African-centered we are. And so, you know, a lot of people got ulcers.

And my question to you is, how often do you sit with your altar? When's the last time you cleaned your altar? When's the last time you changed the water in your altar? When's the last time you prepared some food for your ancestors? I'm not talking about decoration. I'm talking about building the physical muscle of practice. Because then when you sit down at that plate of food and you sit down with that fresh water, you're talking to your ancestors. You're telling them, look, this will be going through.

This is what we need. I can't do this without you. I know I'm not here alone. And they are here to help you. They're here to serve. Sometimes many of us, we go to oracles and we get readings and people say, I have long ancestors. My lineage is strong and I'm this and I'm that. Well, are you activating that strength We said go out into the marketplace because you actually have to go out. You got to go outside.

And you have to go outside empowered. And so that is where those spiritual practices are going to give you, you know, if you do nothing else, that spiritual practice is going to give you a strength that no one else is even going to be able to understand. Well, how are they still thriving? How are they still shining? How are they still holding up? Because you understand that you are connected.

and rooted to something that is eternal, that will always be, that can never be destroyed. You're not just relying on yourself. You get to rely on Spirit. You get to take the burdens off your shoulders and give them to a force that is greater than you. The next currency is the currency of your mindset. This is an extension of the currency of Spirit, but...

your mind and we talked about this in episode one when we talked about the power of your or read which represents your crown chakra. That is your highest self. Your highest self represents your mindset. And I remember getting a reading and being told that you know you're going to be wealthy in this life. You're going to have many children in this life. You are here to lead. You are here to do special work. But guess what?

You can't get to that work if your mindset is not in the right place. And they said it's almost like at the time they were telling me, they were saying, it hits all these amazing things you're gonna do in the world, but because your head is not in the right place, your mindset is not in the right place. It's like it's raining blessings all around you, but you're holding up an umbrella over your head. So the blessings are missing you. The blessings are missing you because you are in a state of receptivity.

You're not in the state of resistivity because you think of the glass as being half empty. You can't see the light. You believe everything the shoes. You believe everything that the feed of the algorithm has given you, the distraction of the day. You've given your power to that. And so although you might have all the potential and possibility in the world, you might have a treasure trove of blessings standing outside your door.

but she's not willing to go outside and get it. When you see it, you question it. You want to talk yourself out of it. You want to say, maybe that's not for you. I'm not good enough. So if your mind isn't there, you're not going to get where you want to go. It doesn't matter how many people help you. And this is why they can't save people. Because if their mind is not in the right place, we know this with addiction, right? People have to go to...

rehab when their mind to say that they're ready to go. Myself included. I have people who struggle with addiction. My family, everybody in the family is rallying them together, getting them to go to rehab. And what do they do? They relapse because they weren't ready for it. So you've got to get your mind in the right place. And when I think about mindset, I think about our collective ancestor, Harriet Tubman. And I think about the mindset.

that she had to have. know, many people say that she suffered from falling asleep or we know that we know that's not true. We know that Harriet was divinely guided, that she was receiving downloads, that sometimes she would be ushering people for freedom, that she would just go black. She had to go into the darkness. She had to go into the spiritual realm, close her eyes, lay down, get her mind right so that she could move forward.

She had to imagine a North Star without the internet, without a map, without a GPS. She had to imagine freedom not only for herself, but for the people that she was responsible for, when she was the number one most wanted fugitive in America. A lot of us are ready to toss ourselves out of that new project, that new venture, that new thing, that what come, when does that new thing come to you? When you're daydreaming, when you're night dreaming in the darkness, right?

You got the download, you got the vision, you see yourself, you see what you're supposed to be doing. And then what do you do? You talk yourself out of it. Oh, but that's not for me. She had to be able to hold that vision when her old people were like, girl, I don't know, you about to get caught. ain't going over that freedom with you. I'm okay over here on the plantation. The Harries send them a little note. I see the North Star. I'll follow. Spirit, she had her head up.

her mind right, head looking at the stars, looking at the cosmos, following what she knew to be the truth with every piece of physical evidence around her said the contrary. And that's where we are right now on the planet, y'all. This whole gang we're in right now, we're in a video game. You are in a video game. Call the game whatever you want.

but you're going to have to decide whether you're going to be a non-playable character. You know, you'd be in the video games and you pick your own character, then there's other characters that are just like in the background, walking down the street and stuff. Those are non-playable characters. They're just in the background. You've got to decide whether you're going to be in the background or whether you're going to be the lead. If you're going to be leading your own story. And you might not have

any physical evidence that she can point to. The situation that you're in might say, there's no way I'm going be able to get from here to here, given where I'm at. The bank, your bank balance might say, hey, there's no way you're going to be able to get from here to here. The world is going to say, no, not with this government. There's no way. All the economy is going to say, this is happening. there's no way. And you are going to have to get your mind so dialed in to your bullseye.

so guiled into your North Star that it doesn't matter what is around you, you're focused. And that is why we have to have a plan. That is why you have to have a vision for your life. Because if you don't have a vision for your life, you're be caught up in somebody else's vision. And that's what many of us are doing. You are non-playable character in somebody else's video game. They're getting to the goal. They're getting to the prize. And you're wandering around lost.

You're wandering around lost, eating their feed, digesting their algorithm that you have to create your own. And you will not be able to do that if you cannot hold on to the currency of your mindset. And so that's why it's a currency. You might be up for the job with somebody else. They might be more qualified than you, but they don't have the mindset that you got.

It's your mindset that's gonna carry you through. Look at the ellipse. When you get to be at a higher level of professional athleticism in any sport, everybody is a good athlete. Everybody's, what's the difference? They're minds. Look at a boxer, they're blind. They know I'm the best. gotta talk yourself up into it. Mind over matter. And if you ain't got it, you gotta fake it till you make it.

You can't just walk into the meeting, walk into the job interview, walk into sitting down to pay them bills. You gotta pray yourself up into it. You might not put on a special outfit. Burn those cute incense. Put on that vibrational frequency music. Raise it up. That's why when you go to black church, that's why when you sit down in any ceremony, we don't pray silently. We pray out loud.

before the minister even comes on to give the sermon. I remember after school, was wanting grow up, and I was taken to Baptist churches in my birthplace, not my hometown, my birthplace of Richmond, Virginia, by my grandmothers because they were like, don't get this Jesus. And I remember the power of the deacons in all white marching down, marching down the aisle. I remember the choir marching down the aisle.

raising the vibrational frequency up, moving people into an absolute trance before the minister would even come and speak the word. Because they understood that you have to raise the frequency, you gotta get the mind lifted. And every single thing that is currently in our physical reality is doing everything to get your mind distracted in a place of fear, in a place of worry, in a place of doubt.

in a place of frustration, in a place of othering, in a place of comparison, in a place of not enoughness. You have to work that muscle. It's not just gonna come at you. Because the normal reality that we are now existing in is in the lowest frequencies possible. So you're going to have to do some work just to get level, let alone to get up. And that's

Work is going to come from a place of your mind, and then it's going to transform into your physical body. And then it's going to transform into those and others around you. But it starts with your mindset. So get your mind right. And then as we sell, we go into the next currency, the currency of wellness, the currency of physical wellness.

Just as everything is designed to keep your mind in the lowest vibrational frequency possible, everything is currently designed to keep your physical body at the lowest heart of health. It's based and designed to put you in a state of dis-ease. Many of you have to look up into the sky right now, you're gonna see capsules in your skull. If you were to go and look at the water coming out of your top, we know that there's poisons that they're putting in the water.

We know that there's genetically modified foods that they sell in America that they don't even allow in other countries. So if you think that you can just randomly go out to the grocery store and not read a label and somehow be healthy, it's not gonna work. And if you think that you can just stay crazed up, but you can eat poison and somehow be healthy, it's not gonna work. And if you think that you can just not really have to worry about it, but you can somehow go...

to the doctor, which we know is ruled by big pharma, that the biggest drug dealers on the planet are big pharma, and the medical industrial complex, and think that they're going to heal you, You have to take complete responsibility for your health now, the ways that generations before us did not have to do. Now, the good thing is, many generations before us knew how to be in alignment and work their herbs, and so we had that wisdom.

But we also know that in the Western world, not much of that comes with a level of privilege. And so for a lot of us, eating healthy, buying the right things, it's not so much about education, it's a lifestyle change. We have to have more time to prepare delicious food, healthy food. You might have to hack your food plan and do more food prep. You might have to buy and bulk.

You might need to get with a whole lot of like-minded people in their community and say, hey, let's all go in on this bulk shopping guide. Let's connect with CSAs. Let's connect with the bulk farmers. Whatever level your budget is at, that you can do better. And it also might be, what a surprise. Maybe if I cut down on those Amazon prong packages and I cut down on my Starbucks or whatever your buy size is, I might actually get a single linear preview.

You know, I just had to make the decision that food for me is medicine. So I'm not trying to eat cheese. You know, and people say, you have privilege. No, I know people who will tell you that they ate healthy when they were on glue stamps and they ate healthy when they had more money. It's priorities. I prioritize what I put in my body because that is my health care plan. So I have to invest in that.

So I'm not going to have all the chronic conditions, the diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, heart attack, all of things that are in my bloodline. Every single person in my family, cancer, all of it, they have all of it. And I decided that I'm going to be the psychograber so they can look at me crazy when I'm going to spend more money on that organic piece of fill in the blank because I know that food is medicine. I work out every day. I move my body.

Moving your body, getting your body to a place of sweat doesn't mean you have to join a gym. So many of us, when we think about doing things, it's always join a new class, join a new thing. We got to get to be more self-reliant and independent that we don't need an external factor to contribute or control what we're doing with our own physical symbols. Get out there and move your body. You don't need anybody for that.

You all have the internet subscription. else you want to do is on YouTube. Stop blaming other people or saying, I couldn't get to the gym today. You don't need to get to the gym to physically do something. Take responsibility for your health. Take responsibility for your health. Because part of what keeps people as non-playable characters in someone else's video game and keeps you locked into the dune and gloom, was the first thing that that

doom and gloom, and low vibrational frequencies attack is they attack your immune system. So even when we're living in this age of viruses and virus mutations, you you can have all the men in the world that you can put over your face, but if your immune system is high, you're not going to get sick. That's just the scientific box. That your immunity is like a light that is going to repel all of those bacteria away from you.

And when you are caught up in lack and you're not moving your body and you're not eating your right thing, right? One of the reasons why people suffer so much in COVID, many of the groups that died and had the highest fatality rates or people who got COVID and were not able to shake it, there are people who already have pre-existing medical conditions. So if you're already overweight and then you've already got a pre-existing condition of,

diabetes or high blood pressure or fill in the blanks, your body's gonna have to work twice as hard to fight off and repel negative energies, negative ideas, let alone bacteria and vibes. You gotta work hard. So, and this is what we talked about in the last episode. You can do the work, but do you wanna go outside when it's sunny or do you wanna have to do the work going outside when facing 15 feet of snow?

You maybe can push that 15 feet of snow out of your way, but it's just gonna be a lot easier when there's nothing blocking your path. So remove the obstacles from your path and take responsibility for your health. And that's an opportunity where we can come together and we can think more creatively and dynamically and we can reprioritize what is important to us so that we know that that currency of wellness

When everybody around you might be physically, emotionally, or spiritually sick and you're still shining brightly, that's going to give you a competition, a competitive edge in the marketplace as you're navigating your own hero's journey.

So the next currency is the currency of community. Community, community, community. And we learned this in COVID. We've learned this through some of the wars that have been going on, some of the natural disasters that have been going on. I'm thinking about folks who were impacted by Hurricane Helene, folks who have been impacted by the California wildfires and the power of community.

the power of the people in your circle, even during COVID, the people who were willing to check in on you, to give you a call, the people who were willing to bring you a bowl of soup, or to launch that GoFundMe campaign, or to volunteer their time. Community, community, community, we know clearly that the government, that politicians, even though that they're supposed to do these things, we know that they're not going to support us.

in times of need. We know that as people of color, as marginalized communities, as communities who may adhere faced with income disparities, that those are going to be the hardest hit during climate change. Those are going to be the hardest hit during global pandemics. Those are going to be the hardest hit during times of war. And so the only thing that we can rely on is ourselves. And this is something as a Black community we lost with integration.

Because when we were segregated, as my mom and my father grew up in the segregated South of Virginia, and even though they did not come from well-being families, they had doctors and lawyers in their community. They had black-owned banks. They had black-owned grocery stores. Every business in their community was black-owned. And so admit that the dollar circulated within that community.

We know that the Black community circulates its dollar the least amount of all other ethnic groups in America. And so that's why we as a collective are able to have the generational wealth that we see other cultures have. And it's not even a racial thing at this point. I was just using that as an example. The point is really more about

having a community. And here's the thing about community, because a lot of people say, oh, I want to build community. I'm looking for a community. First off, a lot of people in our community are broken and sick. Let's be real. A lot of us have been traumatized by community because it's an illusion of community. And then when you need people, they're not there for you or they've ain't got. And I don't mean they ain't got the money. They just don't even have the fiscal awareness for the self-management or the

to support you. And so, attracts like. Now I'm not talking about the people in your family that you didn't get to choose. I'm talking about your chosen family. Like attracts like. So if you're finding yourself this opportunity to do a community audit. Who is the circle in your community? Can you rely on these people? Are these people folks that can rely on you? Are you the friend that checks in on other people? Are you the friend?

that is able to initiate getting together with your friends? Or are you the friend who just sits back and waits for everybody to reach out? Are you reaching out and reaching out and not feeling that feeling reciprocated with your relationships? Then those are not the relationships for you. And the more that you build on your currency of spirit, your currency of mindset, your currency of wellness,

You are going to magnetize the right people into your community. So community is not something you have to go out there looking for. You can magnetize it. But the point is you want to invest in. You want to understand that community is something that you can literally take to the bank. All of us know people who've had financial challenges, personal challenges, health challenges, and the power of community to rally around them, to support them when nobody else would.

was golden. We've seen this time and time again, and we're living in a time now where our concurrency of community is gonna be one of the most valuable assets that we have. And so that means we gotta get outside more, and we can't just maintain our friendships parasocially, online. I know what's up with them, I DM them. I know what's up with them, I saw what they just posted. No, that's not enough.

Pick up the phone and call somebody. Put the voice text. Stop with the written text. Call somebody on the phone. Say, hey, when can we get together? I know that many of my closest community people, especially now that I've moved out of America, I currently live in Mexico City, some of my closest community, we live all over the world now. They're not in my seat. And so I have to be really, really intentional with maintaining those relationships and taking the time out of every year

to be face to face with my people, to lay eyes on them as the old folk you standing to lay eyes on you, right? To make sure that they're okay. And we know that as we're also living in this time of isolation, we're living in isolation epidemic on the planet where we are more quote unquote connected than we've ever been before because of these technological devices, but it's creating more and more isolation.

where people don't feel comfortable coming outside. They don't feel comfortable being around people, having all of these connections with people virtual, but we're not having these same connections in the real world. And we know that a child, if not given real world connection, will die. That we are social beings. We are biologically engineered to be in social relationship. That is why indigenous communities actually built

their homes in consensual circles. They built their homes as compounds. They built their towns as compounds. Even the Moorish influence on the Spanish empire living here in Mexico, one of the many of the centers of town, the centro, is organized around Bogotá, the Zogaló being a center. There's even the way they design many of the homes, there is a central court mark. There is a central meeting place. There is a cipher.

There is a rank shot. There is a coming together. This is what all of our people before us knew they had to do in order to survive. Not just to kick it, not just to have fun, not just a party, to survive. And this is going to be a critical currency for our survival. And those of us who are alone, who are alienated, who are isolated, are going to be at a deficit. Because it's going to be that

currency of community where we face the next pandemic, the next global insecurity, the next food insecurity, the next climate catastrophe. Because we know these things are all coming and they're here. They're not in coming They're here right now. So let us design. Let's architect the life that we know is going to withstand. What an architect sits down and designs a building. They're designing it not for the current moment.

But for the future, okay, well, I know if I live in an earthquake-prone area, you're gonna have to design the building this way. You know, if you live in an area with hurricanes, you're gonna have to design a building that way. You know, if you live in an area with a lot of storms, or sometimes you can live in a place and you might have all those things, you design for that. You don't just let the storm come and say, he didn't know, like, bummy foo foo, you already know what it is. Just look at the news. You already know what it is. So design for that.

And you desire for that by investing, by cultivating, and by maintaining the right people in your life and those relationships that are not a value add. They got to go. Value add. Well, how come every time I hang out with this person, I feel depleted?

How come every time I hang out with this person, I feel less than? How come every time I hang out with this person, this entire relationship is around smoking weed or drinking alcohol or partying or shopping or eating or gossiping? It might give me a moment of pleasure, but it's not really sustainable. It's not really nurturing my spirit. How come every time I hang out with this group of people, I have to wear a mask? I'm around all my girls and I can't even tell my girls how I'm really feeling.

I'm around all these people, but I'm maintaining this illusion that I'm OK, and I'm dying inside, suffering in silence. I can't tell you the amount of people in my community who people think everything is OK, and when they come to find out, there's this whole other backstory. But you see in this person, you're hanging out with this person, you're with this person, you're thinking it's cool, but they don't even feel comfortable enough to take the mask off. You don't want relationships like that.

where you have to wear a mask in front of your friends and you can't be your authentic, unadulterated self. When I've been in my lowest moments, my lowest moments of a breakup, my lowest moments of housing insecurity, my lowest moments of work, employment security, know, navigating, raising my daughter as a primary parent, it was my circle that breathed life into me, that still saw me as the woman that I am today.

when I was another woman 10 years ago. They still saw me as my highest self. They bring life into me as my highest self. I've never had to wear a mask. They already knew who I was and saw that. Those are the type of people that she want around. And you know what? It might be a small circle. That's okay. It might be small. It might be small. But hey, a small group of dedicated people is worth more than a bunch of fake friends.

We don't need the fake of friends. You want real world connections and real world community. All right, let's move to the next currency and that is the currency of collaboration. You see all of these are connected, right? The currency of collaboration, being able to collaborate. You know, as a kermaculture, which basically is just a compilation of indigenous ways of living and design principles.

that indigenous people create and then white people to credit for. That's pretty much what permaculture is. But in permaculture, we learn the design principle of the edge and that the edge where the ocean meets the river, where water might meet the forest, creates some of the most amazing biodiversity of plant life, of animal life that is in nature. When things come together,

This is why I said episode one, one plus one does not equal two, it equals three, because when two different things come together, they make a new energy. And so that is the power of collaboration, that this idea that we can do it on our own. There's no successful person that you've ever seen in the world, not one, that's done anything by themselves, does not exist, is a fallacy. So don't buy into it.

Every single person that you admire, whether you're admiring someone who's a business person, an artistic person, a spiritual person, they have a team of people, of mentors, of confidants to the planet. And so when you're out there thinking about this new idea or thinking about how are you going to live, you know, one of the things that I was able to do when I first divorced is I lived with another mother and her children and

We live together, we co-live together, we co-parented our children together, and we collaborated on our rig so that we could navigate through that season of divorce where we went alone and we were able to support each other. You know, in my business, when I think about things that I need in my business, I think about who are other amazing people who do that thing really well. Because again, I have my own unique fader print, my imprints, but I know that other people have their own unique imprint as well.

And so getting out of this idea of, you know, having dominion over, that is the imprint of imperialism, of colonization, that we're taught in Abrahamic traditions. have, man has dominion over the earth. That's not how indigenous people thought. That's not part of an indigenous cosmology. This indigenous cosmology knows that we're in co-creation with every other living thing. You bring your thing, I bring my thing. That's how.

Our ancestors were able to move through the Haitian Revolution. You have people who were from the Dahomey region, next to people from the Congo, next to people from Guinea, next to people from the Yoruba Empire, next to people who were Taino, who were already on the land. And they all got together in ceremony and created the first Black Republic collaboration. So it is the diversity of different skill sets.

the different ideas, different mindsets, different possibilities that are able to birth something even greater. So when you're thinking about what it is that you want to achieve, what it is that you want to do, think about how you can collaborate and how you can call that in. And if you're feeling stuck like, I don't even know who these people are, focus on your spiritual practice, focus on your mindset, focus on your wellness.

and you, will attract the right community in order to have the right levels of collaboration. This is an inside job. So it starts from the inside out. And the more you sit with self and do the internal work, you're going to vibrate at a level that you're going to draw in all that is required. And that moves us to the last currency of today's shapeshifters, which is the currency of agility.

not being waded down. One of the things that we learned during that 2020 reset, 2020 being 2020 vision, the veil being lifted, the glasses of 2020 being put on where you got to see everything for what it was and what it was not, is that those who weren't able to get out of the way that they were doing things, holding on to old

ideas were adjunct. They couldn't move, they couldn't shift. And those of us who could pivot, who can let something go, who could throw something away, let it compost, let it die, have the mindset that they could birth something new, the future belongs to those who are adjunct. Being able to adopt new models, adopt new ways of being, as much as I don't let AI in, as much as I

don't love being on social media all the time, but not embracing technology and not being able to be agile with my mind and learn new things is not going to serve me. That is why we know that being a lifelong learner, a lifelong learner is going to be an asset for the future because you can learn new things, because you have agility. So we have to be able to bob and move. We have to be able to let stuff go. We have to be able to step.

into new possibilities and new ideas. When we find ourselves being weighted down with, I can't do this because it's never been done before, then we've already caught ourselves. We've already canceled ourselves out of the run, out of the race. You might as well just sit down. Just sit down and accept, because you're not going nowhere with that mindset. And actually, I do have one more, and that is the currency of creativity, and that's a wonderful, beautiful way to end.

You know, we said before that creativity begins in the darkness. And I'm not just talking about here, creative, I'm a musician, I'm a painter, you I have this creative thing. No, actually talking about being able to imagine something out of nothing. Being able to see your light as a canvas and to understand that you get to draw the stroke.

in the frame of how you want your life to look, of how you want it to be. And so be able to creatively think out of the box when you're faced with obstacles, when you're faced with you can't do it. We know that as people of African descent, we are the most creative people. We are the brand creators. We know for those of us born with the mitochondrial DNA of melanin that we fold in our wounds,

the creative power of all humanity. So we are the grand creators and creatuses of the planet. And so there's nothing that you can put us in. You you go to a country that they call a developing country, they call a third world nation, and you go to any hood and you see the way people have built their houses with creativity, the way people are reusing garbage.

the way people are creating energy out of plastic, the way people are figuring out a way of purifying water, the way people are upcycling and recycling clothes. We know that it's through some of the poorest places that we find some of the greatest creative innovations and imagination. But they have to be able to imagine. And sometimes it's people who have all the privilege in the world, right?

that can't create anything. All they can do is take someone else's creation, this is in the fashion industry all the time, appropriating indigenous clothing styles for themselves and remixing it because they actually can't think of anything for themselves. And we also know that part of what we destroy when we are ingesting social media is our creative capacity, that it literally destroys the creative part of your brain.

And so the more that we stay addicted to digital crack, because it's digital crack and we're all addicted to digital crack, the more that we're getting that digital crack fixed, we're actually depleting our own creative genius. This is very, very important for the children. Because now more and more than ever, we look, you go to dinner, you go out and you see someone handing a device to their child.

one, two, three years old. By three years old, they got their own tablet. By four, five, they got their own phone. You know, lot of parents are opting out of parenting because they're overwhelmed. And so you want to just hand your kid that device. But what you don't realize you're doing when you're handing them that device is you're destroying their creativity. You're literally making them a non-playable character. And the critical thinking skills, the navigational capacity, the confidence,

the grip, the 21st century seals that are gonna be required for them to compete in a global marketplace, because now they're worth competing against everybody else in the world in order to navigate the market, you just up with them out, because you're destroying that bid. And that's why when we say, what do you wanna do? What do you envision? They can't even imagine it, because even the synapses in their brain are firing off because you destroyed them.

And then now do you think that when they get 18 or somehow when they go to college, there's this aha moment of brilliance going to happen? No, it's not going to happen. They're going to be sitting around, neurolinked in, as a non-playable character, collecting Salati's universal basic income. And someone else is going to be out here in the market, thriving with their passions and their purpose. So this is very, very important.

that we really begin to monitor all of our connections to these devices because it is killing us. It is killing us. And I do not say that lightly. We have to be able to find a place of balance. And that means that if we are not intentionally taking the devices out of the room, if we are not intentionally turning them off, and turning them off is not just the off button, you might get to turn the internet off in your household at a certain time.

or having digital detoxes or spending more time in nature or finding more analog activities. You want know how to boost your creativity? Do something analog. Go exercise. Go play some records. Go get a Polaroid camera. Do something analog. You know, if any of you have been in a power outage recently, I know here in Mexico sometimes a bottle goes out. And I'm like, dang.

Okay, listen to music. well that's on Spotify. Okay, well read the book. no, the book is online. Okay, get connected to somebody. my goodness. I was laying down like, well, how many things can I do that don't require electricity? And remembering that, you know, I didn't grow up with these devices, but now I become such so addicted to the digital crack that when you turn that switch off, it's like we're hopeless. It's like when you turn that switch off, we no longer have any power anymore.

So we gotta change that, we gotta do better. And so that currency of creativity, being able to create another reality and create another solution. Because what happens is then we get caught up in that lesser to evils mind, right? Well, they say, well, you either have this or that. No, there's a million different choices. And it's like, for me, I believe in possibility of something else besides status quo. And if we keep falling into black or white,

Democrat, Republican rhetoric, then how are we ever going to build something different? No, I want to invest in something else. The matrix is going to supply you with options. And you're going to think, well, they said I have to do this or that. There's no other option. Yeah, because you don't have the creative currency to think outside of the box. So you just have to take what they give you. And you're not going to be able to do nothing else with that. And we know that what is offered is not going to be what is most nurturing for our mind, body, our souls, and our spirits.

So those of us who can think outside beyond that will be able to navigate the future with more ease, more peace, and more alignment. So those are the currencies. These are the currencies of a new earth. These are the ways that we can begin to redefine wealth. This is wealth. As one of my friends, Isu, would say, we define wealth. He used to make t-shirts and he used to put it all over Oakland.

these murals and these sayings, we define wealth for ourselves. Don't let somebody tell you that your bank account defines who you are. You know, I have a whole coaching business, and 99 % of my clients, how lucky. That's not the issue. But do they have peace? Are they in relationships that they are enjoying? Are they living a purpose-driven life? no, no, those are other things, right?

So that is wealth. That's one of the reasons why I left America and decided to start my life in another country. Because the things that were valuable to me, the lifestyle that I wanted, the wealth that I defined for myself, to be able to wake up and to be able to afford nutritious food and nutritious food to not be something that's elite, that's something that everyone deserves, to have access to

clean drinking water, to be able to live in a walkable community that's clean, that the streets are clean, and there's parks that everyone can enjoy, that there's food that is accessible. When you go out to a restaurant, you don't have to spend 30 freaking dollars on a breakfast sandwich and a of coffee, right? That families can afford to eat. Then I don't have to work as hard.

that the money that I'm earning can afford me a beautiful life and a beautiful home. I had to redefine wealth on my own terms. And there people who said, yeah, but you're leaving America, you're not going to have this. But yeah, maybe sometimes the power goes out. Yeah, I have to learn a new language. Yeah, when I walk down the street, there's nobody that looks like me, 99 % of the time. But the peace and the lifestyle that I have,

and the ease that I have and the new community that I've been able to create and the new connections, the new collaborations, they're prompts-less. To the point where people say, well, would you return back to America? I say, well, what would I be returning? I love my family and my family is so there. And you know, I love America. I'm not ashamed to say that. I don't necessarily love lot of the government, but I love the people.

Also, my people are proud. My people helped build that country, so it's no shame. I'm kind of proud. American of African descent. Very proud. I see myself as a cultural ambassador here in Mexico. But I had to decide. I had to make a decision. I had to make a sacrifice. I had to give something up in order to get the light that I gained. And so that is how you step into a place of wealth. You define wealth for yourself.

You build these currencies within yourself and you utilize those currencies to design and architect the life of your dreams. Okay. All right. That's about half for you all today, shapeshifters. Until next time, keep shitting.

Thank you for tuning in today, Shapeshifters. Your presence means the world to me and I deeply appreciate you being here. If something resonated with you, don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Leave a comment and spread the love by sharing with others. Until next time, keep shifting.