Finding Your True Purpose Through God or Higher Power with Margaret Agard

Today we welcome Margaret Agar, a Christian mystic, Reiki healer, and award-winning author, to explore the profound impact of spirituality on health, wealth, and weight loss. Margaret emphasizes the importance of connecting with a higher power to find peace, purpose, and emotional fulfillment, which can positively influence physical and mental health. She shares personal stories, including how she dealt with weight gain by addressing underlying emotional issues and how faith and intentional living have guided her to a stress-free life. Margaret also discusses alternative perspectives on wealth, focusing on personal and emotional richness rather than material possessions.

Learn more about Margaret and her books on her website: https://inhisfootsteps.com/

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:43

Welcome back to a magical life. I'm your host, Magic Barclay. And today Margaret Agar joins us. Margaret is the award winning author of the In His Footsteps memoirs, a Christian mystic, Reiki healer, and former executive in the high tech industry. Margaret is also a wife and the mother of eight grown children. Welcome Margaret.

Margaret Agard: 1:10

Hi, Magic. Happy to be here.

Magic Barclay: 1:12

I'm so happy to have you here and, you know, the listeners don't get to see what I see. And there's this smiling beaming face emanating that. You have a higher power in your life. So I just wanted to share that, listener vision description that there you go. It's a thing I've created for your listeners. Listener vision. Okay. So we're going to cover three topics, health, wealth, and weight loss, which I ask all my guests about. Everyone gives me different answers and I love it. And then I really want to open the discussion to. What you feel the listeners need to hear, but here comes your first question. And that is what can your expertise do to accelerate health, not just physical, but also emotional and spiritual health.

Margaret Agard: 2:06

What I talk about is connecting to the higher power in a way that actually each day you turn over to the higher power, that for me, it has brought health, both spiritually and physically, because often when I'm thinking through my day, I'm reminded I need to go take a walk. So, and there's plenty of time for it.

Magic Barclay: 2:28

I think people that Don't have faith, maybe have less purpose in their life. Do you think that can be true? And how can faith, whether you believe in God or a higher power or spirit, how can that accelerate your health every day? When maybe sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees you're so mired in the present moment.

Margaret Agard: 2:53

I think that people who, feel a connection to the divine, who've learned how to, connect to whatever that spirit is that I call God, have a sense of peace. And peace is what brings, I think, both physical health as well as spiritual and mental health. The sense that, we know we can be taken care of and that we have a purpose in life more than to just, you know, eat and sleep. And buy things

Magic Barclay: 3:25

and a lot of people think buying things creates happiness. And I just think that's terrible. Like in a way that you need to create your own happiness. You know, some sort of external force or external influence doesn't do that for you.

Margaret Agard: 3:43

It's true. I remember once, uh, and this is actually related to weight loss. I said, what do I have to do? because I mean, I eat healthy and I exercise and it was, well, don't buy anything except necessities. And by true necessity, like I could buy um, toilet paper, but I couldn't buy, say a new pen set or it was like only by necessities and it was amazing. I realized I was, I was buying things to try to make myself feel better. And so then I had to confront what it was I was trying to cover. I know that's a little off topic, but it was what am I trying to cover up? What sadness and often things from the past am I trying to avoid thinking about by being constantly busy or by buying things. And so by stopping myself from buying and stopping myself from adding lots and lots of activities that I didn't need to be doing to my life, I was able to sit down and deal with this. Um, sadness of things from my past and heal from that, which then brought the happiness I'd been looking for instead of a new pen set.

Magic Barclay: 4:55

I love that. Okay. So our next standard question is around wealth. People often feel wealth is just financial, but it can also be personal and emotional wealth. So what are your top three tips to creating wealth?

Margaret Agard: 5:12

First, I think is. Understanding enough the sense of what's enough, you know, like one coat is enough to codes. Now you're heading into impressing people. And then I think for me, it was to realize when I did have enough now we're older. And so I think when I was in my twenties and thirties and was trying to get in a stable position, my answer might be different. And right now. You know, we, we have enough and I think for me, the third part for me, the reason for having stuff and time is so that I can help other people like the last time and money I spend on myself, the more I have available to be of service to those around me.

Magic Barclay: 6:05

And so what are some other ways people can find emotional wealth?

Margaret Agard: 6:12

Okay, so one of the things that mostly I talk about is turning my to do list over to God is how I found my true purpose and became free of stress and stopped worrying about things. And then the other thing that I like to talk about is this prayer, and it's a prayer that I found when I, that was actually given to me through listening to that, that voice, that still small voice, when I had a 15 year old who I would have to say was the most obnoxious, arrogant child ever. And I would think, you know, he's my son, I love him, but I don't like him much. And I was told, why don't you pray to see him? Like, I, God, the higher power, sees him. And I did. And as a result, had this amazing experience where I happened to be, how much time do we have for this story? Because it takes two or three minutes, Magic, and I'm happy to tell the whole story.

Magic Barclay: 7:09

Oh, please share the whole story.

Margaret Agard: 7:11

Okay, so I'm at my mother's house, and she had some old magazines in a basket next to her couch, and I picked it up, and I was flipping through these magazines, and I came across a story about a young boy, I think in middle school, high school, who had accused a of sexual misconduct, and he had basically been pilloried by the students in the school because they love this coach. And it said, as I read, I was reading it because I thought, oh, you know, something like that just happened in our school. I mean, this is a national magazine. They're talking the whole United States. And all of a sudden I realized, oh, this was our school. This was the experience that my son's school where he was going. And as I read, this young man said he had become suicidal. And the only thing that kept him going was he had on his bedside stand, his parents had framed a small petition that had only been signed by a few students that said You know, we don't like what's happening to you. And once you know, we're here, we support you. And I, as soon as I read that, I knew whose name was at the top of that petition and that it was my son, because I remember the day I had been taking him to school and he was upset about what was happening to the boy. And my son, you know, six, four, six, five, he started in three sports. He was, you know, popular at school. And what he wanted to do was take this petition in and pass it around, have students sign it, but when he went to the office to get permission, they said, we are not talking about this at school anymore. This is, this belongs, this is in the legal system now, and we don't want anything said or done about it here. And so he was upset about that, but so all he did was he signed it and he got a few of his friends to sign it and they gave it to the boy. And so as I read that story, I thought, oh, this is who God sees. He doesn't see this kind of arrogant, complaining, great 15 year old that I'm seeing. He sees a young man with a heart too. Notice someone was hurting and reached out to help in whatever way he could.

Magic Barclay: 9:29

I love that story. Your son definitely had deep emotional and personal wealth in that time. And I'm glad that he got to show that to you. And that changed your relationship.

Margaret Agard: 9:43

It did. And, you know, he's still going through his teenage years being how teenagers can be at times. And yet he's a man now and he's still doing the same thing. You know, there was a time when all the parks and things were being closed down, the libraries, and he was saying, well, where are the homeless people going to go? You know, where are they going to go during the day? Where are they going to go to find a restroom? And so he went to the city council and really lobbied to make sure there were still places where the homeless people could go.

Magic Barclay: 10:12

So kind of him. Now, our final standard question is around weight, and you did touch on it just before. Have you ever battled your weight? If so, how did you win that battle? What can you offer the listeners who may be going through this? Also keeping in mind that stress is a major factor in weight problems.

Margaret Agard: 10:32

I battled it. I am still working on some what I would call underlying issues. So rather than focusing on the weight, I'm not a very healthy person, but my weight isn't optimum. And there was a reason I put it on. I gained once in my life, 60 pounds in 60 days. And I had to do with a man saying the wrong thing in the wrong place and, and it was my subconscious took over and I just kept eating and I was, I'd be like eating in a trance and then I would come out and think, Oh my gosh, I'm eating again and, and I honestly found a day and then I had to really work to take that off, but it wasn't a diet that I had to do. I had to address the underlying issues, and I think sometimes we as women hold on to the weight. I'm talking specifically to women at this point, and I went to a seminar once with just, it was a two day seminar, two and a half days, and we talked about why women hold on to their weight and don't want to release it, um, psychologically. And I lost 10 pounds just sitting there in two and a half days. Talking like that. And so I think for a lot of women, we have to address the underlying issue. We all know how to count calories. We all know how to do the exercises, or even count, you know, fat grams, carbs, calories, so we're blue in the face and we really need to change. For me, I really need to change my thought processes and stop using my weight as a protective layer of defense.

Magic Barclay: 12:11

Agreed. I know during my own Journey, I've often used my weight as like a fat armor to protect me from whatever's going on. And, you know, that's not a healthy way of protecting yourself. Exactly. Now, I want to open the floor to you now, Margaret, a lot of people, you know, the past 20 or so years have been. A little bit nuts, let's just say that, and, you know, so a lot of people may have lost their faith. They may have walked away from believing in God or a higher power or spirit. How do you say people can reconnect easily to whatever it is they believe in?

Margaret Agard: 13:00

Well, it sounds, the question you're asking is if you've lost trust And in my case, my trust grew. when I started this process, there was a time in my life when I was a single mom, the sole financial support of my eight children, and I was working as an executive in the high tech industry, one of the few women, and I had decided to go back to school to finish the last two semesters. I mean, when I first started in the high tech industry, you just have to be smart about things like computers, which I am. And now companies were going public and you needed some credentials if you're going to be an executive. So that's why I went back. And so here I was working full time with eight children and taking classes at night. And I was hardly getting any sleep. I was getting three or four hours of sleep a night. In the middle of the night, I would wake up panic stricken thinking, what have I left undone? What have I left undone? And it was that point in my life where I started turning To God with my to do list at night, written down saying, what do I have to do tomorrow? Because often I found myself doing things that at the last minute got canceled. And so I would have spent hours working on something only to find out I didn't need to do that. And I could have used those hours for something else. That's really why I started thinking, Oh, I only could see the future. And I thought, well, I think I know who can see the future. Now, how do you, how do you rebuild trust? What happened was by doing that. And watching the results in my life, I began to trust more and more that I could count on this voice to lead me in a good direction.

Magic Barclay: 14:44

So you followed the direction, and then what happened? Like, were there any points where you questioned, Why am I doing this? What is this leading me

Margaret Agard: 14:54

initially? My first question was, what do I need to get done? Here's, you know, here's my plan. and what happened is after only just a couple of weeks of doing that, I was finishing every day by about eight o'clock at night. And so I had, I was getting a whole lot more sleep. I was getting the most important things done. And I was getting things done that I didn't know I would need until after I did it. And then all of a sudden the need for it came up. And I know that sounds so kind of odd, but that's what happened. And then after a while, I started thinking, maybe I should ask, what do you want me to do today? And thinking that we're all connected, right? We're all connected in some way. And so I started asking, what do you want me to do today? I did question some of the direction I was given, and I often questioned, you know, what was it going to do instead of, and I can give a couple examples of that. It was once I was, I was just going through my list, and I just had everything on it, like drop the books at the library, you know, that kind of thing that were due. And, and once it was, no, don't take the books to the library, and you're not going to have time, and I thought, but they're due. And I don't want to pay a 10 cent fine, you know, so I was like, no. And then. It was, well, so I said, okay, if I don't go to the library, what am I supposed to do? I don't like to turn in books late. I was just, call them. Now, now we're online. Now you could just go online and renew them, right? But I, at that point, I couldn't. So I just actually called them. It was like, when I questioned, how am I supposed to do that? Or what do I do instead that I could be given more direction. I didn't just have to take the direction I was given. And the other thing that happened, I can remember thinking once we, we were shipping products, we were selling it over the internet. And we always shipped Monday morning, next business day after the weekend. And one morning, I just, that was always at the top of my list, ship the orders. That had never, ever been like, when I listened, here's my list that had never been crossed out. But that Monday, I was told, don't ship the orders, and I thought, well, I don't know how things work in heaven, but let me tell you here on earth, if we say we're going to ship next business day, we're going to ship next business day. Well, and I don't, we're in Australia, where your, where your holidays are. But we have quite a few federal holidays on a Monday, when you're working from home, you kind of forget that. And so it turned out that Monday was a federal holiday, and the post office was closed, so I couldn't ship the orders anyway. And it was just experiences like that, that led me to really trust that voice.

Magic Barclay: 17:38

I love that. And yes, Mondays are often a public holiday here in Australia. We move public holidays around to give us long weekends. So I love that. So many people. My question, you know, if there is a God, if there is a higher power, if there is spirit or mother nature or whatever it is, you think is out there, how can they have forsaken us? How can bad things happen? And what can we do when those times hit?

Margaret Agard: 18:11

I can only share what I've had to do. And we just had one of these times where it looked as if my spouse, my husband was dying, literally. Like, And I can remember having long conversations with Spirit saying, you know, and feeling that sense of comfort. That you like to get and thinking I don't want your comfort. I want my husband and I, but I did come through that time to recognize that even when I'm going through a hard time, because hard times are just what happened on earth, that not only was God there for me, but so were other people. And always. And often would be. why do we have to go through them? Because we're people, because a lot of what happens to us, There's things other people do to us and now I say, well, God doesn't stop me from doing mean things or making a critical comment and he's not going to stop other people

Magic Barclay: 19:15

either.

Margaret Agard: 19:16

So but he will comfort us. That's been my sense of it.

Magic Barclay: 19:23

Now we've discussed quite a fair bit here today, Margaret, what's something we haven't touched on that you feel the listeners need to hear?

Margaret Agard: 19:33

I'd like to share this idea that one way to find a purpose, one way to get a life free of stress is to every day take your daily to do list with however you, sit with the divine, whether it's through meditation or prayer or just focusing inward. listen to, you know, your intuition is to take that every night and ask that question. Look at the list and say, what do I really have to do? And what do you want me to do? And as your daily list changes, so does your daily life and our days are our life. And often I have been led and I know other people who have been led. To find their true purpose, step by step.

Magic Barclay: 20:23

Now, we love freebies here, Margaret. Before I let you go, what can you offer the listeners, and where can they find it?

Margaret Agard: 20:30

I do have a website, innisfootsteps. com, and I do send out a newsletter. I have, my two books up there, and the third one I'm working on. And I tell stories, these inspiring stories, as part of the newsletter, and in the books. And what I do offer is, to the people who get the newsletter, I occasionally offer, freebies, or first peek looks at things, like right now my third book is in the final editing process, and I've been sending it out to the people at no charge who are on my email list, I don't send it. Spam, I only send it once a month. I can say I'm old, I'm tired. You'll be lucky if you get it once a month, but I do send often free posters and access to additional information to that newsletter. So, Innesfootsteps. com and a little pop up off to the side will come up so you can sign up for the newsletter.

Magic Barclay: 21:27

Thank you. Now people can find you on Facebook in his footsteps page. You're on Twitter in his footsteps. You're on Instagram in his footsteps books. You also have YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Everyone look for Margaret Agard in his footsteps. Thank you so much for your time today.

Margaret Agard: 21:51

Thanks for having

Magic Barclay: 21:52

me, Magic. My pleasure and listeners. Thank you so much for your time, go forth and create your magical life.