#44 The Place Mat Process by Abraham Hicks
Back from her most recent Ibiza retreat, Kelly shares The Place Mat Process from the book 'Ask & It Is Given' by Esther, Jerry and Abraham Hicks.
Hear how this deceptively simple process helped her to fill the remaining retreat place with her dream client - and get her taxes done within 24 hours of assigning it to the Universe.
Kelly encourages you to try The Place Mat Process for Yourself.
Let her know how it works for you via Instagram @kellyprojectme www.instagram.com/kellyprojectme or email hello@myprojectme.com
Read the Transcript for this Episode below:
Episode 44 of the Project Me podcast.
Hi, I'm Kelly Pietrangeli, the creator of myprojectme. com. This podcast is designed to be an entertaining, lighthearted, inspirational, personal growth journey. Each episode goes in a mostly chronological order as I piece together the books, modalities, people, and experiences that have fallen onto my life path exactly when I needed them.
And how often I resisted the very things I needed the most, or didn't see the gifts contained in the challenges until later. By sharing my stories, I hope to inspire you to reflect on your life path. What are the seeming coincidences that have led you to where you are today? What are the hidden gifts within your challenges?
And what magic is out there waiting for you as you let go of resistance and follow your own breadcrumb trail? At the end of each short episode, there's an opportunity. For you to reflect on how my story relates to your own life. You'll also find a PDF of journal prompts in the show notes or in the podcast section at myprojectme.
com. Hello, I am back from running my most recent retreat in Ibiza. I've actually been back for about one week, but in that time, so much has happened. And if I don't get the retreat stories shared first, then the next parts aren't going to make sense. It's all happening so thick and fast. The poem reader did say that the big idea would come to me when I'm in silence and that it wouldn't take long.
And Oh my God, he was right. I kind of imagined me needing to patiently wait it out for a few months, but it's only been a matter of weeks. But first, the retreat. Reading from my journal, October 10th, 2022. I woke up this morning out of a spectacular dream in which I was a professional ice skater in a sequined outfit.
Feeling invincible as I glided and twirled across the ice, all of my backing performers swirling around me with the audience rapturous in their delight at the performance. At one point, I had a wardrobe malfunction, and I tried to fix the jeweled straps on my top, but they were crisscrossed, exposing my breast.
Finally, I thought, Who cares? And I boldly skated with my breast exposed, confident in knowing that it really didn't matter. I woke up giggling from this dream, still feeling giddy, light and free. It didn't take a great deal of dream interpretation to know that this dream was a pure reflection of how I'm feeling straight after running a wonderfully successful retreat here in my own home in Ibiza.
The retreat ended yesterday. And last night was my first long, deep, peaceful sleep where my head wasn't swirling with thoughts. It's a big deal to plan a retreat and then to hold space for a group of women for several days. This ice skater dream reflects how accomplished I felt. How light and free. And my fellow skaters were the women on retreat, also swirling and twirling with me in unison, with such grace, and the vulnerability of my naked breasts being out on display, giving way to being shamelessly, unselfconsciously me.
If only I'd had a crystal ball three months ago when I first pulled the plug on this retreat. It was the second week of July, and despite my previous retreat selling out within 48 hours, this time I only had three committed attendees. October is such a gorgeous month in Ibiza, and I was sure this one would be very popular.
I'd even deliberately avoided the UK half term break. I'd had so many people express their desire to come, but only three people ready to pay their deposits. At the same time as trying to fill this retreat, I was also managing bookings for my September round of my High Vibe Journey program. And I was in the final stages of my house refurb in Ibiza, my son's upcoming university graduation in the UK, my other son's upcoming move to Canada.
I was definitely getting cold feet on trying to fill all 10 retreat spaces amongst all else I had going on. And then, one of the three women, who was committed and so excited to come, had to pull out due to her baby daughter being seriously ill. At that point, I felt into my intuition. I did my tried and tested sway test, and I got a definite NO.
To running this retreat. I let the other two women know not to pay the deposits. After all, Julie told me she'd already booked time off work and I could feel her deep disappointment. I also felt a sense of great relief. I really didn't want to spend my first summer in my new home, trying to market the retreat and fill those remaining seven places.
Now here's another excerpt from my journal. Dated July 20th, 2022. I was in Nailsie, the town in Somerset in the UK, where my mother in law lives. And it was the day of my son's graduation from Bath university. Max's graduation day, huge smiley face. Two nights ago in our new bedroom in Ibiza for the first time, I was unable to fall back asleep.
So I listened to the sacred dreaming with mother Mary meditation again. As she said. What dream do you have? What do you most want? Put that to Mary now, and know that it's done. A vision came to me, of running the first of my bespoke one on one retreats, with Julie, at my house, over the same dates as the group retreat she'd wanted to attend in October.
I drifted off, thought of it again throughout the day on my flight to the UK, and then, In the summer soul school group, Julie posted a comment and I found myself telling her I dreamed of her, but I didn't go into detail as I was at my mother in law's house and there was so much going on. Plus, I needed to process the potential offer, price, and details.
So, here I will begin to flesh that out. And I continued to kind of write about this idea, bespoke one on one or very small group retreats, they're high end, they have the potential to create jeep transformation, it's a luxury experience, no sharing a bedroom with one other or a bathroom with several others, it's tailor made for the individual.
Can I charge the same price this time given I have no villa rental cost, but there are still home running cost of water, electricity, cleaning? If we did kundalini yoga, I'd need a quote for only a two person private lesson. What about a private cacao ceremony? How would so much that would that cost? I was just brain dumping all this stuff.
What's better in one on one dynamics is visiting sacred sites. We could go swimming, hiking. I create a beautiful itinerary and weave high end sacred mentoring into it all. What does soul plan work? We'll get Lydia and massage as before, plus optional extras. And then I went into all the food options and work out my actual outgoing expenses, I wrote, work out my hours, factor in that I get to experience the experiences too, but.
Also factoring that I could be doing this with my friends. If I'm not making some money, is it better just to invite my friends? Hmm. And then I came up with the idea. If more than Julie comes, if one or two more people come, could I price it the same, yet have a higher profit? And I wrote down the names, Anna, Alexandra.
They both wanted to come. I'll sleep on a mattress in the dressing room. I had never thought until this point that I could run a retreat at my house because I just thought, I don't have enough bedrooms. I normally run my retreats at Ilva's house and she's got lots of bedrooms, plus we sleep two to a room there.
She's got single beds in each room, whereas in my house, I only have two. Big king size beds in the three bedrooms that I have. So I'd never thought I could run a retreat at my house unless I did one of these one on one bespoke experiences that I've kind of fantasized about. So my initial part of my journal entry was me trying to figure out if Julie could just come and we could just do the retreat with just her.
But then, yeah, I started to think, wait a minute. I don't know how I would make any profit off of that whatsoever. So maybe I should just invite some friends. And then it just morphed into me doing some just really basic calculations. I wrote, it's the food that has the potential to run expensive unless I fully take charge.
I, um, wrote down some ideas. To me, it seems that unless Julie was to pay at least double, it makes no sense to do a one on one bespoke. It's four days of my time, plus all of the pre retreat organizing. We need those two extra people. And then I wrote, I will weave my magic into creating an incredible, life changing experience for them.
I already feel better about the group dynamic, surprise, surprise, I love facilitating groups. So that was my, uh, you know, my heartstorm. Well, suffice to say, I didn't listen to my own advice. And before I worked on calculations, I excitedly told Julie she could come for the same price as it was going to be for the original group bigger retreat that she'd originally was going to sign up for.
When she said yes, I also told Alexandra in France, and she said yes. I put it out to the women in my summer soul school group and Susie put down a deposit immediately. No questions asked. I had my dream team of three very high vibe women and I felt elated, but once I actually sat down at my computer, it got a spreadsheet out and like work this out.
My calculations were very off and I soon learned that my estimated price per head for food in the private shop. was simply not feasible. The very lovely Raki from Spice Rack and I worked together on creating the daily menus and trying to keep the prices down whilst keeping the meals super healthy and yummy and generous.
But my profit on this retreat was going to be next to nothing if I did not fill one more place. Hmm. We do have one currently unremodeled guest room down by the pool. I'd need to offer this room at a reduced price, of course, but that would be my profit. Just as I was putting my feelers out to fill that room, Susie messaged me.
She had to pull out with less than a month to go until the retreat. Going through a hell of a time, bless her. But now I was needing to fill two places or take a total loss on the retreat. Susie said she would forfeit her 50 percent deposit so I could offer it at half price. Oh my god, what an amazing deal for someone to get this intimate, bespoke, incredible retreat for half the price of what's already a retreat that I priced too low.
I put it out to one dear soul who said she needed 48 hours to decide if she could logistically make it work. And when she got back to me with a no, I made the mistake of doing the same again with a couple of other people, like asking people one at a time, and everyone needed a bit more time to decide, and I realized, like, I was just losing so much time when all of them ended up coming back and they couldn't make it work.
The retreat was now a couple of weeks away. It felt like a long shot to ask Anna in Switzerland again, since her daughter had been so ill, and I also knew she had a clashing work event. But I'm so happy I asked. She had been a part of that initial vision, and she said yes, she could now come, and she'd take the room by the pool, so hurrah!
Now it was time for that fourth person to emerge. As the others all coming on this retreat had done my High Vibe Journey program and done soul plan sessions with me, I didn't want to bring in someone who wouldn't be in the same energy of the others. It was too small of a group for that. Even though it made business sense for me just to put a mass call out and just fill that place, I just couldn't do it.
I just felt like energetically I owed it to the people who were coming to like really make sure that somebody was there that was like the right person. Well, I work in collaboration with the universe now. I don't try to do life on my own. So I wrote down my dream vision of her. She's done the high vibe journey.
She's had a soul plan or would be open to having one prior to the retreat. She has good energy. She'll be an asset to this small group. She's ready for transformation. I then got the idea to send out an email to everyone who's done my high vibe journey program, offering it again, this place for half price, an incredible offer.
Nobody could make it work on such short notice. I kept my vibes high and I refused to fall into the downward spiral of worry or frustration. At this time, I was also running the September round of my high vibe journey program, which always keeps my vibes sky high. So it was kind of perfect timing that I just was not even like allowing myself to get worried.
And then Simone, who was doing the program again, and she was having all kinds of light bulbs going off left, right, and center this time, she made a post in the High Vibe Journey group to share one of the processes from the book, Ask and It Is Given. This is a book I absolutely love by Esther, Jerry, and Abraham Hicks.
I have done a whole podcast episode previously about Abraham Hicks, and this book was my handbook for life for a few years. It contains 22 different processes that one can use if you're feeling of a low vibration. For example, feeling discouraged? Try process number 12. Feeling angry? Try process 18.
Feeling fear or despair? Try process 21. So, Simone posted in the group about the placemat process, number 10. And I'm looking right now at my worn out copy of Asking It Is Given, with dog eared pages and sticky notes popping out of so many pages. And this placemat process, number 10, for dealing with overwhelm, is not one I had ever done before.
So, I follow the process, I grab a white sheet of paper from my printer, and I draw a line down the middle. As a header at the top of the left side column, I write things I will do today. And on the right hand side column, things I would like the universe to do. And you only put the things on your list that you absolutely intend to do that day.
Things you really want to do. So on my side, I wrote create Ali's soul plan chart, record a podcast about my palm reading experience, dream up more retreat experiences, and type up the itinerary. Book the Mexican restaurant for my mom's visit. All things that made me smile. And on the list for the universe, well, I sure wanted to hand over this huge task of gathering all the All the numbers needed by my UK, USA, and Spanish accountants to file my taxes.
Yes, I have to file in all three countries and it does my head in. I have dyscalculia, like I see numbers back to front and just doing anything to do with numbers is like, I've been procrastinating for weeks and there were deadlines approaching. How in the hell was the universe ever going to do that for me?
So I wrote, inspire me to gather all the numbers from my taxes. Even that felt like a giant ask to feel inspired to want to do it, but I whacked that over there on the universe's side. Then I wrote another task I'd been procrastinating on. Create the Project Wee Monthly October edition. That's my newsletter from members that I was dragging my feet on feeling very uninspired.
Then I added another item, find a beautiful lamp to hang over the bath in Ibiza. That might sound fun to some of you, but I had been looking for over a year and I never found the one. And now with the retreat coming and there's like a wire just dangling over this beautiful bathtub, like waiting for this lamp, I had an actual deadline coming up and I was just so sick of looking at lamps.
So this really was something on my list that I was like, uh, so I whack that over on the universe's side too. And so speaking of the retreat, I added one more thing for the universe. to bring the perfect dream fourth retreat guest. Please, I added. And damn, this is what happened that very same day. You ready for this?
I started joyfully doing the task on my side of the list. It felt so light and free to be doing all the stuff I truly wanted to be doing. You know, when you've got a to do list and it's just like stuff that you're like avoiding looking at, you're like crossing out the things you want to do first, but you're just like, Uh, I didn't have anything on my list that was like that.
It was like, just what's next? I would cross it off and just do the next thing, you know? And I was really, really in my, in my joy. I was really enjoying all the stuff that I wanted to be doing. And then a message flashed up on my phone. It was from my virtual assistant, Junie. Asking if I'd like any help drafting up the Project Wee Monthly Newsletter.
I hadn't asked her, she asked me, thank you Universe, yes, yes, yes, I told her. And then I went into my Project Wee group just to check on post and I saw that Annie had posted a task in our Monday motivation post that she wanted accountability that week for getting numbers together for her taxes. I asked if she'd like to do a Focusmate session with me so we could set a timer and just do it at the same time.
No procrastinating or distractions. She said an immediate yes. We hopped on. We both finished what we needed to do. It was downstream tax preparation. Yes. Thank you, universe. I'd asked for inspiration and I got it immediately. Then, I'm not kidding you, my phone goes again and I got a message from Cynthia in Ibiza.
She's an interior designer who sourced my curtains and a few other home furnishings and that prompted me to ask her if she had any new lights in stock for over my bath. She sent me pictures of what she had But nothing was right. One of them, however, triggered a memory of a lamp I'd seen in another shop on the island ages ago.
I'd taken a photo of it. I went through my camera roll and I just found it straight away. I thought I'd have to scroll for ages, but it was like, boom, there it is. And I thought, if that shop still has the lamp, I'm getting it. And they did. It was bought and put up in time for the retreat and it looks so gorgeous.
Thank you, universe. And then, drumroll please. I woke up the following morning to an email from one of my most amazing clients, Elizabeth in Sydney, Australia. She's done the High Vibe Journey, my Hire program, she's a member of Project WE. She's had a soul plan session with me and she wrote to say that she had a vision of herself in Ibiza and she went to her inbox and for the first time she saw the email that I'd sent up to that whole five I've journey list 10 days earlier about the retreat.
She'd missed it then. And she said, if there's space, I'm coming. And I'm like, what? You live in Australia. It turns out she needed to go and visit her dad in the UK. Who isn't well, she could rejig her trip. Come earlier than planned and make the retreat. Thank you, universe. I actually think that at the time I was writing that on my list about, you know, may, may the perfect, you know, I wrote this dream vision of who I wanted on the retreat.
I think that was when she was getting the, the message through like the vision of herself in Ibiza and something prompted her to go into this inbox where she only keeps certain email subscriptions in this. email inbox that she has to go into separately. So like, really like, Oh my goodness, you know, that was, that was how the universe worked.
So that mother Mary meditation that I did in my brand new bedroom in Ibiza led me to running this very small retreat in my own home. And Anna did come from Switzerland. Her baby recovered from illness. And Alexandra came from France and Julie ended up sleeping in my bedroom. It wasn't planned, like the logistics, everything got moved around when different people were coming.
I was like moving my idea about where everybody was going to sleep into different places. And Julie suddenly got bumped up from a lower room. She got bumped up to my bedroom. And. It didn't even occur to me until afterwards that that was the very room where I'd had that vision of Julie. And that was what prompted the whole thing during that Mother Mary meditation.
And Elizabeth did come from Sydney with a stopover to see her dad in Nailsy. Which, if that sounds familiar to you, when I was telling you about my writing this whole thing out in my journal, I said I was in Nailsy at my mother in law's house. Well, it turns out Elizabeth's dad lives there and Elizabeth went to the same small school as my husband in the 1980s.
So, the retreat was just gorgeous in every way. We went deep into our soul plans. With such a small group, there was so much time and space for everyone to feel deeply seen and heard. We did fabulous vibe lifting Kundalini with Nicole, fun adventure hikes to high frequency locations on the island, swinging on my favorite seaside swing, floating in the sea.
We ate gorgeous meals by Rocky. Had body works massages with Bianca, crystal healings with Lydia, who also stayed for dinner one evening and we threw kind of a spontaneous Tupperware party, only it was with crystals, like my kind of Tupperware party. I think this should be a thing. And we did an incredible full moon cacao ceremony in Nicole's garden.
You can see highlight photos on my Instagram. It's Kelly project me and. In two of the photos that Anna from Switzerland took, sorry, Anja, we are now calling her by her given name to empower her. Well, Anja took photos of me at the retreat, just doing my thing, that completely took my breath away. They show me in circle.
Looking so in my joy, so alive, so deeply fulfilled. It was last week. I was going through my photos from the retreat and I was looking at these particular couple of photos that Anya had taken of me and I was just in my element. You can just see that I'm glowing. And I just suddenly got this like. I don't know how to explain it like this epiphany and it caused me to very suddenly cancel the project.
We October workshop with only a few hours of notice. And instead I put an email out to call an emergency summit of the women who did my recent summer soul school. I need to share a big, bold, scary, but exciting idea I have. And I'm going to share about that in the next episode of the project me podcast.
Dear listener, relax your forehead. Take a long, slow, deep breath in, and let it out with a sigh. This week, I have an assignment for you to try the placemat process from the book, Ask, and It Is Given. It's as simple as taking a piece of paper, drawing a line down the middle, and making one column be, things I will do today, and another, and another.
Things I would like the universe to do. On your list, write down only the things you absolutely intend to do today. Not the stuff you're likely to procrastinate on, but the things that either absolutely have to be done today, or things you really want to do. In the moment that you're putting these things into the right or the left side, you are co creating with the universe.
Not doing life by yourself, feeling into your preferences of what you would really like or want to do. Letting go of the energy of resistance around the things you really don't intend or want to do today. And in that letting go of resistance, you are allowing, allowing a flow of energy in which things begin to fall into place in order to give you exactly what you want.
Thank you for listening to the project me podcast. If you enjoy the show. Please subscribe in your favorite podcast app. If you're listening on Spotify, you can now tap the five stars to say you enjoyed it. In Apple podcast, you can do the same and even write a review. I really appreciate you sharing it with your friends too.
The podcast has now had 26 and a half thousand downloads for only 40 some episodes. So I'm really thrilled that my stories are resonating with so many of you. I'm going to be announcing big changes soon at project me global limited. Get onto my newsletter list at myprojectme. com for the intel. I'll record another episode as soon as I can.
So much is happening in rapid succession and I can hardly keep up myself. Do the placemat process and let me know how it goes for you. On Instagram, I'm kellyprojectme. On Facebook, projectmekellyp. Or email me, hello at myprojectme. com. Until next time, open your mind, open your heart, and stay curious. We all need some space in our lives for the magical and unknown.