In this episode of "Beyond the Paycheck," Paula Christine delves into the topic of feeling stuck in life and how to overcome it with mindset training and nutrition coach, David Messano. David shares his personal experience growing up in a cultish family as one of eighteen kids and how he had to change his beliefs to achieve financial freedom. He emphasizes the importance of having the right mindset to achieve success and how it can make all the difference in one's life.
Paula and David discuss the scarcity mindset, which is the belief that there is not enough to go around, and how it can hold people back from achieving their goals. They share how they overcame this mindset by reading books and listening to motivational speakers who helped them shift their perspectives. They also talk about the quantum field, which is the idea that everything is connected and that our thoughts and beliefs can influence our reality.
David explains how he uses the quantum field to manifest the life he wants and how anyone can do the same by changing their thoughts and beliefs. He emphasizes that changing your mindset is possible, but it takes effort and consistency. Paula and David both agree that it's crucial to surround yourself with positive people who have the energy and mindset you want to emulate.
Overall, this podcast episode provides valuable insights into the power of mindset and how it can impact one's life. It encourages listeners to take control of their thoughts and beliefs and to surround themselves with positivity to achieve their goals.
Connect with David on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david_messano1of18/
Email Paula Christine at Paula@PaulaChristine.com. You can also learn more online at www.PaulaChristine.com.
Paula Christine: Hi, and welcome to Beyond the Paycheck. I'm Paula Christine. Today, we're going to talk a little bit more about mindset. It is hugely important to have the proper mindset when you're looking to go forward in your life. I have asked David, I'm going to probably botch his last name, but he can fix it when I'm done, Messano. I hope that's right.
David Messano: That's perfect.
Paula: Oh good. See, I did well. He is a mindset training and nutrition coach, so welcome, David.
David: Thank you. Thank you.
Paula: We briefly talked a little bit before we started this podcast. David comes from an unusual background and he's had to make a lot of growth and changes in his life to change his mindset. Why don't you just briefly talk about your background?
David: One of the big things about me is I am from a family of 18, which there's not many of those in the world, but being from a family of 18, there are definitely blessings, I think more blessings than the bad things from having a big family like that.
Jon: You stop yourself from saying curses, that's good.
Paula: [laughs]
David: Yes. Having such a big family, it was definitely a joy in a way because you have such a big community that you don't really need to venture off to have other people to be with. At the same time, we grew up in a cultish family. My mom and dad were both a part of a cult and it brought us up in a way where we had to grow up poor. They did not believe in having money, they did not believe in providing money. Basically, it was believe in God and you'll go to heaven and live a happy life.
As I grew up, I slowly learned, just watching and observing how my life was turning out, that that is not at all true. I think that was one of the biggest things that hindered me. Not as much as some of my other family members, but it definitely hindered a lot of us, just coming into the world and being able to make a financial difference in our life because we always grew up poor.
Paula: We didn't have a lot of money. I wouldn't say that we were poor, but it does set your mindset to be a certain way because you like living, at least I did for a long time as I lived with that scarcity mindset, like I didn't have enough. Even though I was making a great living, I felt like I didn't have enough, the floor was always going to fall out beneath me. How did that affect you? Did you have that same type of mindset, or was yours a little different?
David: No, you're exactly right. I didn't really realize that we were poor, though, until I was a little bit older. I mean, you grow up with such a big family and you have a cool community and you don't realize you're poor until you start seeing what rich people look like or what you think richness is, and then you start giving a definition towards it. I always thought growing up, we were rich because we had family. We always had food on the table luckily. Sometimes it was harsh, so we sometimes didn't have that much food, and we had those joys of life and I thought that we are rich.
Growing up, you start to slowly realize that this isn't all towards life and you have to grow up. When I realized that, and I realized that I needed and wanted to be something bigger in life, I realized that my mindset was totally different because my dad always used to say, "Money is the root of all evil. If you chase money, if you try to get money, you're going to suffer in life." I learned that that's not true. Money isn't the root of happiness, but it brings a lot of joys and gives you the freedom to bring joy into your life as well and takes a lot of stress out of it too. That was the biggest hindrance that I had from it.
Paula: I think what helped me change my belief about that is just understanding that everybody can be rich. Not everybody's rich is different, but everybody can have the money that they need. God didn't put us on earth to suffer. That's how I look at it. We all can achieve what we need to achieve. What steps did you take to change that mindset?
David: It was hard. Not only was I hindered by this, a lot of my family members were hindered. Like you said, that scarcity mindset was the number one thing in us because we had to grow up. My dad could not provide the basic necessities of life towards us and we had to work for everything. Even when I believe it was, when I turned about ten years old, I literally started to have to buy my own things, such as getting my own clothes.
What we did is we had to go out mow lawns, figure things out on how to-- I think for me, my biggest thing was selling candy. I think I learned how to be a salesman really early is I would buy candy for $1 and sell them for $2, and I'd make a little bit of a profit off of that. Everything that we bought had to come from our own money. Our parents could not provide that extra stuff for us, but it also taught us to work hard.
One of the biggest steps that I've learned in changing that mindset of always being in a lacking place was being able to realize that I can achieve that. I think the number one thing is when I grew up in that mindset of my dad and just realizing what situation we were in and always struggling for money, moving from house to house, struggling for food sometimes, is that you don't have to be that way. I always thought who I was, who I was destined to be. I think thinking and putting energy towards that every day continually brought that realization into my life.
As I started to consciously think about that and tell myself, I don't have to live that life. I can go out and make money, I have a lot of talents. I can go and change lives and make money off of this, and I deserve a better life to where I can make more money, and I don't have to live in that scarcity mindset. I think the number one thing was making steps to change my mentality about the situation that I was in and to do it alone is one of the hardest things that I've ever done because you don't have guidance, so you just go around and search for stuff until something finally works.
Paula: I know some of the tools that we talked about prior to the recording was you found through books and the same thing I did, I found through reading and listening to Abraham Hicks and Joe Dispenza, and all of those I don't know what you call them, but I learned to look at things differently. That when a negative mindset popped into my head, I was like, "No, I don't have time for that today. I'm going this way." That helped me out a lot in changing my mindset.
David: Yes, that's exactly how it worked for me, too, is I've had to put my energy towards the things that I wanted because as Joe Dispenza talks about like you said is there's this unlimited amount of potential around us, and we have to be the observers of it. Like, we can either observe a life of scarcity and let that come to us, or we can observe a life in that quantum field where the quantum field is something that you can't see or feel or you can't do anything with the five senses. You have to do it with your mind.
It's like you have to look at that. Look at what it looks like to be a great person. Look at what it looks like to have the money that you want, to live a wealthy life, to live a life of freedom. What does that look like? What does that feel like? The more you think of that, the more potential you have of bringing that into your reality and you becoming that. That was the mindset shift that I had, is reading that and then putting into action, everything in my life started to slowly change. It's not an overnight thing. It's practice. You have to build that momentum up, and then sooner or later, things will start to happen to where you're like, "Oh, it is working."
Paula: I know it's really and then when you do and you're like, "Oh my God, it's true. It does work." I mean, I think about I was listening to Joe last night and he was saying, if you want something in your life, become that person. When things, like I talked about before, triggers you, then just let that trigger go and deal with that. It's like with anything, if you want to live a certain lifestyle, become that person. I don't know who said it, but it's like, [unintelligible 00:08:27] is when you hang out with the people you strive to be. Is that right? Is that how I'm supposed to say that?
David: Yes. Surround yourself with the people you want to be. Yes.
Paula: Then you become them.
David: Yes. That is so true. That's crazy that you said that about Joe Dispenza. He was actually just talking, I was reading his book this morning and he was talking about in the chapter that I was reading, is that basically that you become the person you already are. If you're being a successful person, if you're living the life of a wealthy person, the quantum field is going to reward you with more of that. Whereas if you're living a scarcity life or you're living a life of lack or fear or something of a life that you don't want, you're going to get more of that.
It's like you need to put your mindset where you want to be and you have to be that before you can bring it into reality. It's almost, in a way, fake it till you make it, but you're not really faking it.
Paula: That's the hard thing because you have to put that emotion and belief and faith behind it. Yes, sometimes it does feel like you're faking it, but it does come to fruition when you really do the work and start to believe and put that emotion behind it.
David: Exactly.
Paula: I drive my friends crazy because if they'll say something negative, I'm going to go, "That's negative, turn it to positive. Let's reframe that." They'll say, "Paula, stop."
David: I love that.
Jon: That sounds like a great mindset, Paula, but depending on the mood I'm in when you said it to me, that might affect my reaction. [laughs]
Paula: Yes, I do it nicely. Sometimes I don't say anything, but it's hard for me to be around negative people.
David: Exactly, because the people that you're around, they also affect you as well because they have that energy. In a way, I feel like us as human beings, we talk more with energy than we do with words as we feel that. We feel that connection between each other. Because in a way, I grew up in a cult, but my beliefs started changing into believing that we all are connected, that we have a bigger meaning towards all of us, and that we can feel each other without even saying words at a time.
Paula: Correct. You can feel somebody's body language.
David: Exactly.
Paula: You can tell when somebody's having a bad day and they don't even have to open their mouth.
David: Exactly. This is the number one thing. I went into the military as well. I was a Marine for a short while.
Paula: I have to say that had to be a shocker, I'm sure [unintelligible 00:10:57] the life that you lived before, and then going into the military.
David: Oh, my goodness. Yes, it was a culture shock, but it taught me a lot about the mindset and what discipline and structure was, which I think I needed that, especially being a young person. It gave me a structure to-- Having structure in life, I think helps you organize your mind and have a more clear mindset. One of the things that I noticed in the Marine Corps is the Marine Corps boot camp I believe personally is one of the if not the hardest boot camp out of all the different branches.
One of the things that I realized is talking to different people, it's like I would go around and ask different people from different classes that were ahead of us. I'm like, "Hey, what's coming up? What should I expect? Is it hard?" I realized that a lot of the ones that said, "Man, this and this and this is coming up and it's super hard," they were struggling. Whereas some of the people I talked to, they would give me an answer of like, "Man, just get out there. Go do it. You signed up for this. It's not that bad if you just do it. It's not that bad." I realized they succeeded and were usually either a platoon leader or they were a guide or some type of leader in their section. It got to me. It's like, "What's the difference?"
Because even people in my own platoon, some of them, the ones that had a negative mindset towards actually going into boot camp and going forward, it was hard for them every step. The ones that had a better positive mindset when something came up that was hard, and they're like, "Let's go get it. This is nothing. Let's do this. I signed up for it." They succeeded with ease. It clicked with me. It's all in the attitude and the mindset that I have that brings these things into reality.
Paula: I 100% agree with that. I think it goes into any aspect of your life. If it's boot camp or losing weight or taking control of your money or finding a new job or whatever, it's all in what you believe to be true. If you believe it to be negative, it's definitely going to be negative. If you believe it to be positive, it does happen so much more easier in life.
David: Exactly.
Paula: I am going to cut us off. Because Jon always yells at me if I go over, right, Jon?
Jon: No comment.
Paula: [laughs] Okay. If anybody would like to reach out to you, how would they reach out to you?
David: Yes, so they can definitely reach out to me on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. My Instagram handle is going to be david_messano1of18. Facebook, you can look me up, David Messano, and then TikTok, same thing.
Paula: Thank you so much. If anybody wants to reach out to me, they can reach out to me at paula@paulachristine.com, or check out my website at paulachristine.com. Thanks so much, David.
David: Of course, thank you.
[00:13:58] [END OF AUDIO]