How Losing $250k was a Gift

What if the thing you're clinging to is the very thing holding you back?

In this week’s episode, Stephanie and Maren dive deep into the attachments we hold—money, identity, expectations—and the hidden cost of not letting go. Maren shares her powerful personal story of losing $250,000 and the radical transformation that followed when she chose to see it not as a failure, but as a gift.

Together, they explore:

• The emotional weight of attachment
• The courage it takes to surrender
• How to recognize what’s no longer serving you
• And what freedom really feels like on the other side of letting go
  
  

This episode is a heart-forward companion to Ep 180: The Secret to More Energy—so make sure to add it to your playlist.

If you’re holding on tight to something (or someone), this conversation might just be the invitation you didn’t know you needed.

• 0:40 $250,000 lesson
• 5:43 Attachments, we hang on, and on and on
• 8:55 The process of letting go
• 14:07 Self judgement, if I were a better person
• 17:16 The fist wants to fight, there are alternatives
• 21:28 The costs and solutions
• 23:16 Stephanie’s cat
• 26:06 Where is it serving you and how to surrender
• 30:21 Not meant to do it alone

“It takes a tremendous amount of courage to let go of the attachments of who you think you are and what you think or assume is going to happen” ~ Stephanie J. Allen

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Transcript

Stephanie Allen: 0:04

In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it?

Maren Oslac: 0:10

Deep inside you know, there's more to life. You're ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you.

Stephanie Allen: 0:19

That's what we invite you to explore with us.

Maren Oslac: 0:22

We're your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac, and this is The Soulful Leader Podcast.

Stephanie Allen: 0:30

Yay!

Maren Oslac: 0:32

Welcome back to The Soulful Leader Podcast. I'm Maren. I'm here with Stephanie, and a couple podcasts ago, we talked about the 'Scrawny Cow'. It's a fun podcast if you haven't listened to it, you can go back and listen to it. The scrawny cow represents things that we get attached to, and we don't even realize that we're attached to them, so they become defining figures in our lives without our even realizing it. And when I say defining figures, I'm going to use a story from my own life. I invested in a company that went public, and it was one of those like, oh my god, you get an opportunity of a lifetime, because most people don't... the average person, and I'm an average person doesn't have an opportunity to invest in something before, pre IPO, before it goes public on the stock exchange. And I was like, oh my god, we have this opportunity. So I jumped, and we put quite a bit of money into it, and I have been holding on to it. It went public. Oh gosh, three years ago... IT popped.

Stephanie Allen: 1:46

I'm just gonna say, like, when you say quite a bit of money, like a chunk of money that most people would be like, and we don't have to say how much that is, but I think, just to give the levity of it's a large amount of life force that you put into someone else's dream.

Maren Oslac: 2:06

So I borrowed$250,000 to invest it into this company, yeah. And I borrowed it against my own, like, kind of like a mortgage, right? I borrowed it, I leveraged it against investments that I had, and I borrowed the money. So when you, when you invest in a public company, there are rules in place that say that you can't sell until six months after the IPO, at least for the average person. And like I said I was just the average investor, right? So I had to follow those rules. So my investment was at about $4 a share, and it popped the day that it, you know, popped. It went to $40 a share, andI was like, oh my god, I'm a gazillionaire, holy crap, right? Like, so excited, and by the time I could sell my shares, I had lost half my money. It was down to $2 a share, and it just kept going lower and lower. And I invested in the company because I believed in the person who started the company. And I was so attached to the fact that he's a good person. He wouldn't screw us over. He's really trying. He's doing this and blah, you know, like all the stuff, all the things...

Stephanie Allen: 3:32

You really believed in him. You really wanted to be that cheerleader for his dream and for him.

Maren Oslac: 3:38

Yeah, and it was so in alignment with everything that I believed in and all of this stuff and and...So last week, it was about to be...I mean, it just kept plummeting and plummeting. It became a 30 cent stock, and then they reverse split 10 to one. So we ended up with one stock, one piece of stock for 10 of them, and then that went down to 30 cents, and itjust and...

Stephanie Allen: 4:09

It just got worse and worse and worse.

Maren Oslac: 4:10

It just got worse and worse and worse and worse. And if a stock is under $1 for a certain amount of time, it can be delisted. And what that means is, if it gets delisted... so if I were to sell the stock, and, you know, I could actually have$250,000 worth of losses to claim against my taxes, because I lost that money, it's gone right? And I realized last week, and it was funny, because we just did the Scrawny Cow Podcast, and it's something that's been percolating in me, and I realized that was my scrawny cow, that was the thing that I had been attached to, that it was going to come back. It was going to make my money back. It was goingto... to X, Y or Z, that this person that I believed in was going to suddenly change to the person that I thought that he was originally right? All of the attachments around this and I let it go. I let it go. I called my stock broker, and I said, sell it. It was at 42 cents. So it was absolutely nothing. It's not worth any value, and I'm so like letting go of that opened up so much space inside of me and allowed...

Stephanie Allen: 5:42

...right there! Right there. It's like we hang on. We hang on. We hang on for whatever reason, you know, we hang on to a relationship, we hang on to a thought or belief we hang on to, you know, just a habit that we have, thinking that eventually it's going to change, or something will be better, which is a really lovely quality to have, hope and inspiration, costing you so much mental and emotional energy, even with the person that you originally invested in, like, even that relationship and how it ripples out into every area of our life. I guess that's what we're trying to say, is, like, what are we hanging on to? That actually is draining you more than it's actually giving you anything.

Maren Oslac: 6:33

Absolutely.

Stephanie Allen: 6:33

Like we even hang on to our pain. Sometimes, you know, I'll hang on to my sore shoulder instead of like, oh, I'll just keep complaining. Oh, I can't do that. Sorry. No, I can't clean today because my shoulder hurts. Like, we'll hang on to it. Because, in some level, it's like a placeholder. It's holding us back until we're ready.

Maren Oslac: 6:56

Until we're ready.

Stephanie Allen: 6:57

Until we're ready. And I think that's what we're making the point of, it's like, you know, all the details of it, it's, it's like, another bad freaking country song, like, you know, you lost everything in it, and you just want to, like, pull it backwards, but one of those things, but it's really what we're talking about, was, like, how we get so enmeshed in those attachments and that we can't let go.

Maren Oslac: 7:19

And so interesting, because after I actually sold it and said, you know what, I'm done, and no more of my... Okay, I'm gonna go back. One of the concepts in investing is that you don't want to pour good money after bad, which is what wehave a tendency to do. And this is exactly what we're talking about when we have an, you know, an attachment to something, and I haven't put any more money into that stock, and what I realized was that I put so much of my life force into it, so I've been pouring good money, meaning, when you think of money, and we've talked about this before, money is called currency because it's a current, it's just an energy. And so I've been putting my energy for the last three years into this stock, which was going down and down and down and and into this person that you know, it wasn't worth my time, energy, whatever. And I don't want to get into good, bad, right, wrong here. What I want to point out is the fact that when I when I was ready, and it took work, I don't want to just be like, well, it just happened three years later, right? This is something that I've been working on.

Stephanie Allen: 8:38

The internal right, having this internal churning of, like, should I stay or should I go song, you know, should I stay or go now? Like, how do you know? I guess I would say in the process, because we tend to look at the products,

Maren Oslac: 8:54

Yes!

Stephanie Allen: 8:55

Like the productivity, like the outcomes, instead of looking at the internal say, which is what we're talking about here, especially as soulful leaders, is the internal process that you went through on whether or not to keep investing or to actually cash in. How do you know? What was your process? What were you working with in the last three years?

Maren Oslac: 9:16

I love that question, because we tend to go to, in this situation, you do that. In that situation, you do, like, there's a preconceived like, well, then Maren has the answer. Oh, if I'm ever in that situation, I do what Maren did, or I don't, you know, like, it doesn't work like that.

Stephanie Allen: 9:39

That is like algorithms more even it's like, well, this has always happened, so therefore that's going to happen, right? We're actually transcending that you all. That's what we're that's what I'm hearing you say too, is that it's beyond that.

Maren Oslac: 9:52

Yeah, it's... everything shows up in our lives, in our individual lives for a reason, and this showed up in its way for me because of my unique situation and the things that I needed to work through personally to get me to where my'next' is, and that's been the... so I'll come back to answer your question. I do want to say that my next it's amazing what showedup for me in the last week...

Stephanie Allen: 10:25

When all of a sudden you no longer had that energy going down, that empty...

Maren Oslac: 10:28

Exactly!

Stephanie Allen: 10:31

Literally, maybe you didn't have that, you know, quarter of million dollars back in your hot little hand, but you have the currency of the emotional energy and the mental energy and the soulful energy that now is available to you from a completely different level.

Maren Oslac: 10:45

It is absolutely and it's really phenomenal. So to go back to answer your question, my process has been questing, and we've talked a lot about questing, and what I mean by questing is literally asking questions and being open to answers that may not be at all what I thought they were going to be. And so when something shows up, asking more questions, and some of them are external questions, like I asked for advice from my stock broker and from this person, from that person, and ultimately, it had to be my decision. And most of the questions are internal questions, like, why am I attached to that? What does it represent for me? If I didn't have that, who would I be?

Stephanie Allen: 11:42

See that question right there, yeah, if I didn't have that, who would I be?

Maren Oslac: 11:52

And I have to say that there's so many layers to that particular question, because if I didn't have that, so I broke that question up into if I didn't have the hope of a quarter of a million dollars turning into a million or 2 million, who would I be? If I had a loss and owed $250,000 who would I be? If I didn't have that, who would I be? Like, there were so many layers of that particular question that I just kept peeling and peeling and peeling and peeling and being like, I can choose - so what I got to after peeling a bunch of those is I can choose to be any one of those people or none of them.

Stephanie Allen: 12:47

Regardless of what happened in the outer world.

Maren Oslac: 12:50

Right! Exactly.

Stephanie Allen: 12:53

Like that's the power of our internal being able, And it's the path, you know, the road less traveled. We don't tend to go in, where we go outward to ask questions and seek or research or Google or whatever we're looking you know, I would say Dr Google. You know, let's ask Google. But it's like, how do we ask ourselves and which self? Here's another level of this is what I go through, and what self am I talking to? Am I talking to my scared self? Am I talking to my peaceful self? Am I talking to my little girl self? Am I talking to my wise, Sage self? Which self am I talking to right now? Because I've got trust me, I got a party going on in there. There is a party going on in there with a whole bunch of selves. So I want to know my true self, the one that chose this bodysuit to have this life experience. It has a greater outcome for me that takes practice to build that relationship with that. And I don't think we're supposed to figure it out of who that is. It's that the whole journey is, the journey is like staying in the quest asking, being able to ask a good question.

Maren Oslac: 14:07

So I think that one of the things when you're talking about that that comes up for me is our self judgment of if I was a better person, that wouldn't have happened to me. If I had done the right things, that wouldn't have happened to me. If I had listened to so and so that wouldn't have...

Stephanie Allen: 14:31

The should have, would have ought to... Having the fixed mindset of it, like, well, that's just who I am. I'm a schlep, you know, I can't change. I don't know any better, and I can't do this. Like we get in that fix instead of saying, you know, like I said the multiple selves, instead of saying, well, wait a minute, there is a life flowing through me. There's the currency, right? There's a life flowing through me that is infinitely wise. I want to ride that wave. I want to serve that way and get to know that. And I need to be able to let go. There's a saying in the 12 step program, let go and let God. And if any of you out there have an issue with the word God, I always say use it as an acronym of get outdoors, out in nature. So find your natural,

Maren Oslac: 15:21

..All the could have, would have, should have, your nature. So whatever it is that you want to replace that word of God with, whether it's love or nature or kindness, whatever you want to put it with, but to me, you know, letting go and literally giving it to something more beautiful, something more powerful, that is giving you life right now, beyond the 'you can figure it out'. That is a practice, and that's called surrender, and it takes a tremendous amount of courage to let go of the attachments of who you think you are and what you think or assume is going to happen. I can't tell you how many times I've run into that this week, of people saying, well, Stephanie, I didn't want to tell you this, because I know that what you believe is this, and it's like a concrete this. It's like, well, did I ever say that I believe that? Well, no, but I just assume that's what you believe. Because this is what you do. And I'm like, we get really attached to who people are and what the markets are doing, or, well, you know, the algorithm says this. Or the polls, you know, the political polls say that. It's like we have so much more power than what we give ourselves credit for, but we don't know ought tos, exactly! how to tap into it. We actually tap out. And that would be so easy. In my instance, you know, like, for this, it would be so easy to tap out, and instead, that's what I feel like I did, is I tapped in, and I said, game on. This is fun. Like, alright, how are we going to make that back? Let's, let's have fun with it. Now I'm in the flow of that, and I've opened that door, and it's so amazing how much space there is there. Because I didn't, this is what I said at the beginning, is we don't realize our attachments. I didn't realize how attached I was to that and how like we've used the analogy of the closed fist before. When you grasp onto something and you have this closed fist, there's no space in that fist.

Stephanie Allen: 17:21

And look at the fist. All it wants to do is fight.

Maren Oslac: 17:24

Fight, right? I wanted to be angry at this person, and he did it. And I believe all the stuff. And when I let go of that, and all of a sudden you open your hand, and there's space. And then if you actually open your hand with the palm up, you can receive!

Stephanie Allen: 17:41

Exactly like it's just, it's such a beautiful image and a metaphor. And I, you know, I love that. I so love that. And to even just practice that with yourself, like squeezing your fist hard, and know what that feels like. That's, that's what attachments feel like. You're holding on, and it takes a lot of energy to hold on.

Maren Oslac: 17:59

Feel how your muscles feel. Like, everything, everything is tense, and when you're tense, that you're stressed, and oh, like...

Stephanie Allen: 18:07

Oh, if you turn your palm down, you're not...your your palms are down. You're not open to receive. Turn up, turn your palms upward. And like, rest their palms on your like, rest the backs of your hand on your knees so your palms are up and just feel what that does. I get people to do that as a therapist, because as soon as you put your palms up and rest your hands on your knees, it opens your heart, it puts your shoulders back, it actually straightens your spine and you breathe better. There's a whole amazing physiological thing that has actually happened, and it's like, if any of you ever have done yoga, part of the very ending part is shavasana, which is really about letting go and being receptive. And it is a practice. It's not like, Oh, hey, I've done a great job doing all these asanas and all these, you know, vinyasana flows. and now I get to, oh, thank God. I get to rest. No, we did all of that other stuff beforehand so that you could be receptive. And maybe that's what attachments are, is that they drain us so much that we start to learn how to tap into our power, yeah, and realize that that power is actually flowing through us infinitely. It's not limited, it's not scarce. And if we can actually just finally let go and let God or let the love just flow in, it's right there and there's nothing, no-thing you need to do, there is something you need to practice, which is being and doing no-thing letting go.

Maren Oslac: 19:47

That's, yeah, I love that analogy, because I do think that, especially in our western world, that yoga is about all of the stretching and the this and that, right? And we've gotten out of the understanding that it's really about the breath work...

Stephanie Allen: 20:05

and pathway for union.

Maren Oslac: 20:07

It's a pathway for union, and that shavasana truly is a practice in and of itself. And when you do sit in the position that you were talking about with your hands up, and you know, it opens your heart, it opens your lungs, the other thing that happens when you're in that position is all of your organs work better.

Stephanie Allen: 20:29

It changes your brain.

Maren Oslac: 20:31

It changes your brain, your digestion, you know, like everything works better. And we have so many dis-eases, you know, disease and it's a literal dis-ease with who we are, with what we're doing, with how we're being, etc. And my question for our listeners, is, what is your practice for being at ease with yourself? Because that's what I had to go through, I had to find the me that I was at ease with in order to let go of such a vast amount of money.

Stephanie Allen: 21:11

If you're not at ease, Maren, then there's a secret part of you that's still actually fighting and hanging on...

Maren Oslac: 21:18

and grasping and holding and, right? and keeping intense...

Stephanie Allen: 21:22

...draining your power, drain your currency, your current, your life force.

Maren Oslac: 21:28

And that's what costs me, you know, like I do have digestive issues I have for years, and they're getting better. And I truly believe, it was not Western medicine that has helped me with that. I truly believe that it's been this process of finding those little places that I'm still attached, that I'm not that I'm like, okay, and not being judgmental about it. I'm like, oh, look at you little booger. Oh, I get it. I get what you're attached to that, yeah, oh, god bless you. Thanks for...thanks for being willing!

Stephanie Allen: 22:07

To be able for you to look inside and have that conversation, or have that visual of what is really going on internally, without judging it or shaming it, but to create space for observing it and then being able, and that's the whole key, is that to observe it and then you can have the freedom to change it. That's our true control. That's our true power. Like I look at that like, when I think of weight, I always say I don't want to lose weight, because as soon as I lose weight, my brain's going to try to go and find it, and I just want to let it go. I just want to drop that heaviness, right? And when I, when I hear you talking, it's reminding me of like... gee, you know, what am I carrying? There's my attachments again. What am I carrying? In my in my mind, in my heart, what are my worries? What am I? What am I attached to that I am having a hard time letting go of habits, behaviors, you know, relationships, thoughts, ideas, hobby, all these different things. You know, I recently went through something with my cat. Now my cat, he's a very special, special needs cat. I just love my cat. He's been with me for 18, almost 18 years. It'll come up 18 years, hopefully, God willing, in another couple of weeks. But couple weeks ago he went through a real downward spiral, and I thought, oh my God, he's gonna, he's gonna die. And I'm like, Well, of course, the other part inside of me says, well, of course, he's 18. What you think he's gonna live forever? That's like, 126 in cat years. Like, like, really, he's, he's a little old man. Like, God, love him. And I started to think, am I being selfish, being attached to him? Like, who will I be when he's no longer be here, right? What will I do with my time, my energy, my like, right now, I don't go away because I'm like, oh, what happens if my little guy, what happens if my furry friend, you know, dies when I'm away? I don't want to do that, and I don't want to leave him with someone. I don't want to put that burden of responsibility, and I don't think it would be really kind he's and trust me, my family has already said, Stephanie, what happens if he dies and I'm here? I don't want to do that, so I don't want to leave that on someone. So I had to have, like, a little heart to heart with many of those parts of myself inside, because there's a lot of parts that are really hanging on, and it's using a lot of life force, and I didn't want to be resentful to my furry friend who's been with me and has been an incredible companion, but is also taking up a lot of life force and energy. So I too, have been asking that question of like, what, what? What is, what's being called with me to do? I want to do...and it's not about the right thing or the wrong thing. I want to do, what is the highest, most beautiful way of helping. And I realize, you know, I haven't even really looked at my own mortality. I'm attached to I still, in my own mind, I think I'm 20, and I put myself on a snowboard and go down the hill and still think I'm 20 until I fall, and then I'm like, you're not 20 it really hurts. You know, I have this total denial in myself, and I realize I'm like, you know, this cat, this beloved little fur being, is really helping me look at some attachments inside, and look at the things that I've been carrying that I really need to address with some love and attention, and not just keep pushing it aside because I'm attached and it's draining my life force and my energy. And I don't want it to. I want it to be free and to be flowing.

Maren Oslac: 26:06

And for every person that's going to look differently, because the other thing that I hear is how much it's feeding you. Oh, yeah. So it's... we're not saying that attachments are bad things. It just is again, like with love, yeah, just be aware of where is it, is it serving you right? And is it not? And it may serve you this week, and then it might change next week.

Stephanie Allen: 26:32

You're making such a good point about it, because I think we think in black and white, like, is it right? Is it wrong? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it up? Is it down? Is it left? Is it right? Like, what if all we could just wipe all those things out of the way,and we could just look at it from another perspective, that it's all of those and none of those... that there's another way that we can even be in relationship with all of that.

Maren Oslac: 26:56

Because that having holding on to that stock served me, and it served me very well, and that's what I needed for years, obviously, until it didn't serve me, and the only way I knew was to keep asking myself the questions. And that's when I realized, like, no, it's a grasping right now, it's no longer something that excites me and like... Oh, this is a like, Oh, look at what I've got, right? It just it shifted for me.

Stephanie Allen: 27:28

So you said something right there, too about a grasping and I have the image of somebody going down on a raft, on a stream, on a river, and and it's like, ready to go over some rapids, and there's a little apprehension. So what do we do when we reach out and we grab a limb that's hanging on the bank, but the the river is still moving, it's still going. You're still on that raft, and you're hanging on, and what it's doing to your arm and your shoulder is not a good thing. It isn't a good... I mean, maybe for temporary you're getting some strength, but after a while, it's not been helpful. So my question, and this is the question I always have to say to myself, and I'm saying it to you all out there that are listening, what would you have to believe in or become in order to totally let go of that, that branch and surrender to the unknown and trust and totally trust it? I'm going to do that question myself, actually, because just kind of popped in, as you were talking about grasping. It's a great practice.

Maren Oslac: 28:31

Well, it's a great to be honest, that that's where I had to that that was the real inner work that had to happen for me to let go. I had to trust that like, okay, I'm going to be able to pay that money back.

Stephanie Allen: 28:47

Well, you just say, you know, let go, let God. What would be the God you would have to trust in? Yeah, that would allow you to let go. Create that as your reality, create that as your imaginal world, that you can surrender and do shavasana in and be.

Maren Oslac: 29:05

And be. Because from where I am right now, and the amount of space and belief and trust that I have right now, it's night and day from where I was a week ago, and it's like, oh, that's what's waiting on the other side. When you truly trust and let go from a deep place, it's amazing.

Stephanie Allen: 29:28

So I'm going to acknowledge something in you, and I'm going to let the listeners know all this too. You know, Maren has not done this alone. Maren. I have known Maren for almost 30 years now, and both Maren and myself have many teachers that we that we sit with, that we are given practices that we go away with and we practice, and then we come back to our teachers. And we say, hey, here's how it went, here's how it didn't go, here's where I'm struggling. And there's no right or wrong. But I'm just saying it's like, sometimes we think, oh, we've got the answer for all things. We don't. And yet we do, because the answer is in all of us. But my question again, is that we need each other.

Maren Oslac: 30:20

We do.

Stephanie Allen: 30:21

And more than anything, right now in our world, we are really needing each other to be able to come together, not to look outside ourselves for answers, but we need each other so that we've got a safe place to go inside and find the answers and then come out and talk about them and tweak them and practice them. And that's what my hope and my my vision and longing would be for us all, is to have someone, or many people, around you all who are listening that are going to help you with some practices, because we're all worth it, and it's such an extraordinary life to be on the path with someone else, and I am extremely grateful to be doing these podcasts with Maren, because it has changed me so much, and it has been a practice. And I'm glad we don't need to do it alone. And I'm telling you all out there that are listening, you don't need to do it alone either.

Maren Oslac: 31:16

Yeah, we're not meant to do it alone our lives, our life mission is specifically designed for us to need each other. So we actually won't be able to do it alone. We need each other. So if anyone is interested, this is the type of work that we do in our Co-creation Circle and it's it's closed for this year, and we would be glad to possibly open another one, if we, if we got enough interest and there, there is a possibility of joining it for next year. So if that's of interest to you, to explore this type of stuff with a group of people that are on this path, let us know. We'd love to chat with you. So remember, you can find us every other week on our podcast, right here at The Soulful Leader Podcast, and in between, you can get our email with, that's got a blog post that we share and we don't spam you. You can also find us on our Facebook page and our LinkedIn page and our YouTube channel. So hey, can you guys do us a favor? Go and subscribe to our YouTube channel, because we're trying to get to that magic 1000 subscriber number that YouTube loves, and we would love your help. So if you would go and subscribe and send some of your friends, we would appreciate that everything's you can find everything at www.thesoulfulleaderpodcast.com. We'll see you all next week on The Soulful Leader.

Stephanie Allen: 32:44

And that wraps up another episode of The Soulful Leader Podcast with your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website, at www.thesoulfulleaderpodcast.com. Until next time.