Episode 134
Janet Attwood, The Passion Test
In today’s episode, we chat with Janet Attwood, a bestselling author with more than 20 books under her name. She is also a passion, fulfillment, and creative coach, a Transcendental Meditation teacher, and an Ayurveda believer.
Janet is the creator of the “Passion Test” -- which is both a test and book that helps you discover your true passion and really start living your life’s purpose. In addition, she has expanded the Passion Test to different areas of life including: Passion Test for kids & teens, and the Passion Test for business.
She followed up with “Your Hidden Riches: Unleashing your power of rituals to create a life of meaning and purpose.”
Janet says the Passion Test enables individuals to realize that they're not just going through this world on automatic, but they can be able to tap into their genius and really use their creativity to bring out their gifts so that they can share them with the world. It helps you to become a manifestation magnet.
In this conversation, Janet gives us a toolkit on how to be creative, what to do when you’re dealing with blockers of creativity and how to get rid of limiting beliefs about yourself so as to keep the passion alive and burning. Here is what works for her:
- The first is Transcendental meditation, where she uses rituals to enhance her life and refuel. This relies heavily on meditation.
- The second is undoing her limiting belief- this is where she changes what she puts her mind to focus on while using positive words when talking to herself.
- The third is TheWork, based on a process developed by Katie Byron. This is a process of self-inquiry that allows you to access the wisdom that lives within you by asking yourself the “Four Questions and a Turnaround method”
- Fourth, Janet uses the Maro-Up process which she also wrote a book on. Here, Janet uses the 10 principles of Wahei Takeda, the Japanese Warren Buffet, who used the Maro-Up teachings of gratitude to make his fortune and live his life.
- Lastly, find a mentor. A mentor who can untangle and undo the beliefs that you have about your inability to shine a light on your greatness and inspire transformation through love.
In summary, through Janet's years of Meditation practice, developing the Passion Tests which have been used by millions of people and written bestsellers, Janet believes that in order to live a high level of creativity, we must share our lovely gifts with the world, no matter what it is, because that's the path to happiness.
Janets Website: The Passion Test
Maro-Up: Maro Up: The Secret to Success Begins with Arigato: Wisdom from the “Warren Buffet of Japan
Your hidden riches: Your Hidden Riches, unleashing the power of rituals to create a life of meaning and purpose
The Work by Byron Katie: The Work
Transcript
auto generated transcript
Mark (:Welcome back everyone to unlocking your world of creativity. And when we talk about our world of creativity, sometimes we have to ask ourselves where's the passion? Are we losing the fire? And how do we get it back? And so I'm just so happy today to have as a special guest, Janet Attwood. So excited.
Janet (:What The heck is her name? Keep going, keep going. It's good. Let's be real.
Mark (:This is where the editing might come in. But anyway.
Janet (:No, don't edit. Don't edit.
Mark (:Yeah, here we are. Just before we hit the record button, we were talking about authenticity. No filter just put it out there and here I'm talking about editing.
Janet (:Yeah. Right, right. Come on. Let's be real. Yeah. Do people make mistakes?
Janet (:Are there any mistakes? That's
Mark (:There's no mistakes. Well, Janet Attwood has developed and has written about the passion test, this effortless way to discover your life's purpose and really unleash the power of your life's meaning. And Janet, hundreds of thousands of people have taken this passion test. What do you think? Why do people wanna know where's the passion and where did it go and how do I get it back?
Janet (:Because it's all about them. I mean, think about it. Passionate. What is passion? Passion is, are the things that you love, the things that you care about, what gets you up in the morning, what really lights your fire. And so why everybody has a desire to live a passionate life is because they want to know that they're not just going through this world on automatic and so that they can also reach into their genius and really use their creativity and, and bring out their gifts so that they can share them with the world. I mean, that's when it really matters. Isn't it? When you're living a passion and, and you've just developed to a mastery where it can really support others to live a greater life in some way, shape or form.
Mark (:Well, let me ask you, do you take you wherever you go?
Mark (:Yeah. Okay. So therefore, absent really there's commonality. I mean, it's, you know, in the passion test, the regular passion test, what is it? It's one exercise after the other, after the other, after the other, that gets you. So crystal clear that when you close your eyes, you can actually see the world you choose to create. In other words, the passion test helps you to really get clear on what matters most to you. So clear that when you close your eyes, you can actually see the world you choose to create, and it's an inside out job. And when you get so crystal clear, in order to manifest, you have to have that ability to close your eyes and really map it out. See it, see the colors, see who's there, see what you're doing, see how you're doing it. And that's when you become what I call a manifestation magnet, where the people, the places and the things start to show up in the Vatas in the Vatas are some of the most ancient knowledge known to man.
Janet (:They say curving back on myself. I create again and again, curving back on myself. So to find your passion in the passion test, we have you curve back on yourself. And how do we do that? We have you do it by asking a question when my life is ideal, I am. And then we say, take a look at the areas of your life that are important. Health, spirituality, fun, career relationships, fun environment. Where do you live? Do you live in the mountains? Do you live in the ocean? What does it feel like? What does your house feel like? You know, an Iveta they say your house should be so intimate to you that when you walk into your home, you feel healed. And, with the passion test, what we share is that everything matters. Absolutely. Every aspect of your life matters.
Janet (:So that's why when you first take the passion test, it's very general, but then say you need to find out about your ideal career and get really clear on what it is. It's not like you write down things like, okay, write 10 passions. I'm a nurse, I'm a helicopter pilot. I'm a, this I'm a that, no. What are the qualities? What are the feelings? You know, what are you doing? Are you working with a team or are you working alone? What are the different aspects to what you'd like? And then what happens then when you take all of these different elements that you write down and start to really get clear on what of all the things you write down, are you most passionate about? That's when you become a passionate magnet? Why? Because it's not the how in, in the passion test, we say, it's not the how, it's the what and what I mean by that?
Janet (:What do you love? What do you care about? What lights your fire and how it is, so maybe when you are thinking about your career, you write it down, you start thinking, okay, what would be my Ideal career? Oh my God. I work in New York city. I have a beautiful office on the 80th floor. I work with an enlightened team. And you write down all these different things, you know, like, what do you love doing, oh my God, I'm, I'm connecting with all these rock stars. it's, it's music involved and you just let yourself at it just to really just like, what would, what would really view to the end of the earth? So, that you woke up every morning with an attitude of gratitude, for the great life that you're living and think about what would, what elements would be there?
Janet (:I worked four days a week. And so we say, make 10 to 15 passions, any more than 15, you start to write the same passion only exactly. And then in the passion test you guys can all find out about it. By going to the passion test website, www.thepassiontest.com. You can find out how to take the elimination process to come up with your top five passions. And in the passion test, we say what you put your tension on grows, stronger in your life. What you put your attention on grows stronger in your life. So you start with intention, the formula for living a passionate life, intention, attention, no tension intention. So first you take the passion test. You get clear on what it is. You're passionate about it. You keep your power at tension on what you choose to create. Not what's not happening in your life.
Janet (:Not COVID COVID COVID, but you're like a samurai where you're, keeping your powerful consciousness just hooked on and locked into what are the aspects of your life? What are the things that you choose to magnify to draw to you? And, then when you do that, what happens is automatically the people, the places, and the things start to show up, because why? Because we're so powerful, what you put your attention on. Just like I said, grows stronger in your life. And to the extent that you're clear about what you choose to create in your life, those things will show up. You'll start to be this incredible magnificent manifester. And so it's intention is to get clear on what you choose to create, take the passion, test your attention once you know what you're passionate about. Once, you know, clearly what your passions are, take your attention and keep it lasered on what you choose to create.
Janet (:And then take massive action in the direction where the doors open and don't complain about the doors that don't open and then the last step of the formula, no tension. Okay. Once you've done something, you know, to do, to really step into that field of your passions then, and you've done everything, you know, to do to attract them to you, let go surrender, and you say, this is something better. And that's really the sweet spot. When you let go. That's, that's the whiteboard starting to organize itself. And that's when all of these different people and places and things will start to show up. This is the formula for living a passionate life.
Mark (:Well, and it's really strong. And I, I was interested in your own creative PA process there, Janet, because the passion that you have for this topic, but you've written lots of books about it. You've shared the stage with some of the best speakers and leaders in the country, in the world. Where do you keep your passion alive and burning? How does it work for you?
Janet (:Well, I've been practicing transcendental meditation, number one for over 55 years. And that's really an important practice of mine. I have what I call rituals and my other New York times best selling book is your hidden riches. And it's all about using rituals to really enhance your life. When Chris Attwood and I, after we wrote the passion test and it became a bestseller, we thought, what do we wanna write about? And then we thought, well, what are the different other tools that we didn't share in the passion test? Because it would've been too big of a book. What haven't we shared? What is the secret to our success? And we realized it was all the different ways that we tapped into our consciousness. And the number one way that we both felt that we wanted to talk about was our meditation practice twice a day.
Janet (:You know, how do you keep yourself creative? How do you keep yourself pumped? How do you keep yourself really, really excited about what, what you're up to. I don't know about you, but I know that when I'm tired, I don't care what I'm passionate about. I can't be passionate about it. So meditation is a really, really important key for those people that always want to refuel. I mean, I ask you Mark, you wouldn't drive your car all over the world without getting a tuneup, would you?
Mark (:No. No, not at all.
Janet (:No, but actually think about this. We drive this body all over the world, but we don't give ourselves a daily tuneup. Right. Or regular tuneup. Yeah. And what is meditation? Meditation? People think it's ommm Shanti Shanti. Oh, I had a good meditation. And that's the purpose to have that nice sweet experience, but really it's much deeper than that because what science has found is that when you get a deeper state of rest than the state of rest gained eight hours of deep sleep.
Janet (:And that's what happens when you meditate with TM. I know 20 minutes of meditation, they've done all this research from Harvard, Yale, Stanford in MIT, you name it all. The big universities found that the state of rest is so different from sleep. It's much more profound. And it has the ability, this deep, deep rest to release these deep rooted stresses that are lodged in our physiology. That happened from maybe you'd been in a car accident, maybe you'd been sexually abused. Maybe you lost a loved one. All of these different experiences that we have cause deep stress and that stress blocks our creativity. It blocks our flow. It blocks our energy. We all know that you can see stress on people's faces. People who are doing different practices to release this stress. You can see it. They have a lighter air about them.
Janet (:It's just, it's not that they're any better, greater, smarter. What they're doing is, not causing more stress to come and blocking their creativity. What they're doing every day is, they're undoing these deep stresses so that they're able to, have a wider angle lens about all of the opportunities, all of the different things that are showing up for them. They're not blocked by all this stress in their life. When you're, nervous system is tied up and knots notice the creativity can't flow. So my number one tool that I use every day, twice a day is transcendental meditation. I'm actually a TM teacher. And hence the big riff because I really feel like God, if the creator came down and said, you know, the general manager of the universe said, Hey, Janet, you only get to keep one thing.
Janet (:That's what I'd keep, I'd keep my meditation practice. Because really with it, all creativity just flows and it continues to flow. Then I get this deep rest, throwing off stress. The next thing I know I'm ready to go again and again and again. And so that's my number one tool. The other tool is undoing my limiting beliefs. And what do I mean by that? Okay. If I'm walking around and I'm going, I'm not smart enough. Good enough. Rich enough, powerful enough. I should be more famous. I should, should, should. And I should all over myself. What that does is that what you put your attention on, as I said earlier, blocks your creativity. So if you're always thinking you're limiting beliefs about yourself and about others, I'll never be smart enough. They're not smart enough.
Janet (:They're not this. They're not that. Then your creativity also can't flow. You're blocking it. And so I use this process. That's like a virus. Once you start to use it, it doesn't let go of you. And it's called a work to undo my limiting beliefs to undo any limiting beliefs. I mean, the minute I become aware that I'm thinking something that isn't serving me, I cancel . I just like, no cancel. I don't give energy to it. I won't power to it. And I also use, as I said, the work of Byron Katie, which is a process of self-inquiry. This incredible, beautiful process that my dear friend, Byron Katie created called the work and the reason she called it, the work is because it's not for sissies. It's a way to put down all the different ways that you suffer. And I, you know, the different things that cause you pain, separation and suffering and take a look at them and start to undo them by asking yourself what's called four questions and a turnaround and you can go and look at her work if you feel like God, during this time, especially now mental health is, is at a all time high people are just falling apart left and right.
Janet (:And, understandably so because of stability, and, and having a feeling that you can make a plan and that you, you can see clearly your future. Well, that's really important to people. And right now we don't have that. Right. It's and so if you don't have that inner strength from within then you're really shaken in your boots and it really affects your ability to be happy, to feel like everything's okay, Namaste, impossible. And right now people all over the world are feeling like they're shaking from within. So what this wonderful process of the work does, and it helps you to, to come back to a place of peace and understanding because here's the thing, there's this beautiful quote from Byron Katie. God is good. God is everything. And there are no mistakes in the universe. Now when Katie says, God is good, God nature, higher power, the universe, the unified field, whatever name you wanna put to that energy, that's greater than yourself.
Janet (:Okay? God is good. God is everything. And there are no mistakes in the universe. And when you start to understand that everything is happening for you, not to you, then the whole world, how you perceive the world starts to look differently. And what the work does. The work allows you through asking these four core questions to really come back to this place of peace and understanding to see that everything's really working for you, not to you and an incredible process, www.thework.com, a great process.
Mark (:So that's, I'm gonna check that out.
Janet (:Yeah. You know right now my ex-husband, he's my best friend. He's been my best friend for over 24 years. His name is Chris Attwood, co-author of the passion test and you're hidden riches. And he just brought his whole family. His wife Doris, his wife's Doris's mother who's 84 and their three kids, Sophie, Tiana, and Shaitan, and their best friend Carlata who's 17.
Janet (:They all came and descended in my condo from Germany. And how can we all be that close? Because we got rid of the concepts that create these blocks. Ex-Wives, can't be best friends with ex-husband, ex-wife, can't be best friends with new wife. I'm the godmother to these three kids. And it's because of number one first meditating enough so that I have this inner peace to be stable, to be clear. And then anytime a limiting belief comes up, she should be like this, or he should be like this. I do this wonderful process called the work to come back home and take responsibility for myself instead of putting it outside myself, because this is what so many of us do. We get into each other's business, because why, because sitting with ourself is too painful. So that's another thing that I do because limiting beliefs are energy suckers.
Janet (:They just suck the energy out of you. And if you have no energy, you have no creativity. So meditation, the work, the passion test, because look, if you are not waking up every morning and you're just not excited about what you're up to on another energy drainer, right? Another creativity sucker. And, then the other thing that I use a practice that I use it's called Maro up and Maro up is simply, and it was created by this wonderful man named Wahei Takeda who I interviewed extensively in Japan. Wahei was one of the top small investors in all of Japan. And he created this program gazillionaire. And unfortunately he passed away a couple years ago, but Wahei said that he cured himself of two diseases by just being in gratitude. And, I thought, well, that's interesting, you know, and, and, and then he created this whole program called Maro up, one of the, practices in Maro up, because it's 10 different ways to just raise your energy is to be in gratitude.
Janet (:And the other ones are like, you know what It feels like Mark, when you go into a temple and you just feel like, oh God, there's something, the energy is different or you walk in nature and it just, oh, you can smell the fruit trees And there's that, that beautiful earth underneath your feet, you know, everything feels fresh. Well, Wahei had all these 10 different ways that you can just raise your energy. And I love his process called Maro up. And I use that as well. And especially the gratitude, because what you'll notice is that when you're in gratitude, you can't possibly be thinking a negative thought. And if you get stuck, if any of you are super stuck, here's where the school of gratitude is free. You don't need to take a course.
Janet (:All you have to do is just stop and then put your attention on right now. Where are you? Like I'm sitting here in my office. Oh my God, thank you for the light. You know, find if you can hardly crawl outta bed in the morning, cuz right now your life feels like everything's falling apart. Then just from your bed, lay down there and just, oh thank you. That I'm laying on a bed. Thank you. That I have a pillow to hold my head. Thank you for the air that I breathe for, for being able to see what I can see, for the ability to know that even when the clouds are there, the clouds always move in the sun. The sun will always be shiny. Huh. And what you'll notice is that as Wahei found, when you're in gratitude over and over and over again, it's impossible to be depressed.
Janet (:You can't possibly have depression when you're putting your attention on what you're grateful for. What does gratitude mean? Grisha In Latin. And it's about grace. It's about grace. And so these are my main practices that help me to be more creative. What am I basically doing? I'm filling my soul, self love. I've a whole program called mastery of self love. And these are some of the practices and, and I have many more. I call it my cosmic toolbox that I dip into whenever I feel like better to say that I'm out of alignment. because you see our nature is love and light. But what happens when life happens is, maybe someone's been sexually abused. So what do they do? They start to protect themselves and cover their hearts in protection.
Janet (:And then maybe someone, you know, died and same thing. Oh my God, that's too stressful. I can't handle it. So what do we do? We start to protect our hearts because I can't handle that. I can't handle it's too painful. And after a while we wonder how come I can't feel if you can't feel?
Mark (:If you have all the protective layers. Yes,
Janet (:Exactly. And those protective layers are blockers to your creativity. You see though, here's the matter that we are love. We are light. It is our nature, unless we're waking up every morning and, and we're just this fountain of creativity, then what is necessary is to find a mentor. And I always say, find a mentor, because a mentor has walked through the mind fields and they've already been, shattered and bombed and gone through hell and back. And so they can take you through that, those mind fields.
Janet (:They can, you can tiptoe around those little mind fields so that you don't have to make the same mistake so that you can get all the tools you need so that you can really live a life that is worthy of you and really be able to take your lovely creativity, which you actually have loads and loads of more than you could ever imagine. All of us, all of us, it's just to find a mentor who can untangle and undo any of these beliefs that you have about what you're not to shine a light on your greatness, inspiring transformation through love. This is what you wanna look for a mentor who can do that because your nature is love and your nature is light, and to remind you who you are. And when you need a tool to provide you with, with different tools, that can really be not just something you use in this moment, but a major lifestyle change that you will use forever and ever, and ever.
Janet (:And this is what I feel is necessary mark, in order to live a very high level creative life so that we can do what we're supposed to do here, which is to share our lovely gifts with the world, no matter what it is, because that's the path to happy. You wanna be really happy. It's not in how much you've acquired, but how much giving you're able to do. And, you're only able to give from what you have. So, no mistake that you're on this call, that's because you know, here you go.
Mark (:That's right, listeners. You're in the exact right place. You need to be to get that creativity you need. Janet can't. Thank you enough for being on the program and listeners. I mean, you can feel not only Janet's passion she's sharing a creative energy that we could all just absorb and soak in, the tools, the techniques, the practices, and you can access a lot of those on her website, thepassiontest.com there's books, there programs, products, courses, blogs, videos, you name it. Janet's offered it up freely on the website. So check it all out, Janet. So glad to be with you today. I appreciate you.
Janet (:Yeah, Mark. I love what you're doing and I love your light, honey. You are just beaming. So continue on doing such a good service to the world. Thank you for your gift.
Mark (:Thanks so much.
Janet (:Thank you and love to you.
Mark (:Well, listeners, come back again. We're gonna continue our journey around the world. As we talk to creative practitioners and leaders like Janet Attwood, and to really find out how we can get inspired with new ideas, but also how we organize our ideas and gain the confidence and the connections to launch our work out into the world. And that's what it's all about. So until next time I'm Mark Stinson. We're unlocking your world of creativity. See you soon.
