Entering The Flow State Through Conscious Gratitude With David Corbin

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot.

Hey, everybody, it's Adam. And welcome back to the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I am thrilled today, as I am every day, just to be awake and alive, and I hope you feel the same way. I've got a real special treat for you today as well. So we're going to chat. Have an incredible, and I can tell already, a lively conversation with a dear soul, a person who is a new friend of mine, somebody that I don't know very well, but what I do know about him absolutely adore because he's one of these rare breeds. By that I mean he's a very real person and he said vast experience in business. He's run some of the most famous, well known, well received and successful marketing campaigns. And he'll probably speak a little bit about that. He's a mentor, he's an advisor to many business executives and thought leaders around the world. And he himself is somebody that I think has great wisdom, although he'll probably describe himself in less glowing terms because he's also a humble man, but somebody that I really respect and you're going to learn a great deal from. And he's also somebody that I think has an incredible Pivot story. So without further ado, I'm going to ask this gentleman to introduce himself, so to speak, share a little bit about him, about himself from the standpoint of how he's impacted other people's lives, how he's impacted the world. And then we're gonna get right into the Pivot story. So without further ado, Mr. David Corbin, thank you for being on the Conscious Pivot podcast.

Hey, we're gonna have a bowl today. Got this at the Padres game the other day. So, you know, I'm a lucky guy. I'm excited about that. In fact, I picked this thing up, I felt like a little kid again. So. So your question was.

I mean, look, you know, baseballs I have are all kind of faded with, you know, from age, they're yellowed or whatever. Yogi Berra's signature. And I'm an old Yankees fan, so. Are you a Mets fan from New York.

I am an old Yankees fan too. And for me to go, I mean, you say Yogi Berra. I was invited. One of my neighbors and friends is Tony Gwynn and amazing baseball player. And I was invited to go to Cooperstown hall of Fame and to his induction. It was Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken, two amazing human beings, not just amazing baseball players, but they stayed with the same team that kept their families in the same home and schools and whatnot. Our kids went to school together and went to private school for the over privileged children in America and. Yeah. So you talk about baseball. I think, I think about that. He's a good baseball player. He's a good man, a real good man. He passed away and we just had an unveiling here in town of his 13 foot statue. And I got to see young Tony and young Anisha with their children. I can't believe this, you know. So I think your question was, who am I? I guess I'm a guy with a baseball. Yeah. And a lot of, lot of rich life experiences. And I'm not as. I'm often introduced, you know, as a keynote speaker and as a. An inventor and an author and a business owner, an entrepreneur and a puppet, a porpor, a pirate. Not all those things.

You're not. Are you kidding?

No, I do them, but I am, I be, I are an embodied spirit. And I try to get in touch with that spirit as often possible as possible, keeping that quadrinity together. You know, the spiritual as well as the physical, the emotional and the intellectual together. I try to have the, the emotional and the intellectual get the hell out of the way. So the spiritual could sort of manifest. I think I'm doing a pretty good job of it. I got a report that's a great.

Way you describe that. Sometimes people say I want to get out of my own way. In fact, one of the things that's pretty, pretty interesting topic, you know, subject matter being written about, talked about, is this idea of how do you get into flow state? You know, so when you. No accidents, you bring up, put up the baseball. We're sort of talking around the sports thing and when it comes to sports, getting in the flow, getting out of your head. And then just by no coincidence at all. Right, by no coincidence. I have on my desk, I'm just finishing up a read of this old book.

God, that's about 18 million years old.

Yeah. And I read it when I was about 18 million years younger and revisiting it now because it's an incredible Zen wisdom guidance in here about getting out of your way.

But you were going to the distinction of getting, by the way, for anybody.

Who'S not watching this, I should probably say that because this podcast listened to as well as watch, we're talking about the Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Galway. So the Inner Game of Tennis, old book, but incredible book on the side of how do your two selves work together and how does it. You get into that space where the self, that's your true self, the one that you can really trust, is doing the work and you're not thinking about it, judging it, egoizing it, et cetera.

There it is. That's the distinction. You see, what we thought then were these two selves. We're finding that there's more. And the best that I found is that quadrillity. And I would offer up that when you look at four components, then you're not going to get yourself out of the way because people say we've got to get yourself out of the way. So you can go into. Because yourself is yourself. You don't want to get it out of the way. Obviously. You want to keep things in perspective and in percentages. And when you identify the intellectual self as well as the emotional self and the physical self and the spiritual self and realize it's usually the emotional self that's at the steering wheel. And when you can get them aligned and allow for the emotional self and the intellectual self to have faith that the spiritual self is moving unconsciously, much like it's digesting this morning's breakfast, then and only then will you be able to enjoy. Tap into the flow. The flow. The F word. I love that F word. The flow. And so I love playing tennis. I play tennis about four times a week and I run a 5k every Saturday. And that's when you go into the flow. And there are some times I must tell you, yesterday on the tennis court, I was effing up my f. I was effing up my flow by being in here.

Yes.

I needed to draw my circle of greatness right by the service line, envision myself, my highest peak state, step into that and serve like a mofo. And it was great. And it works. But we lose it sometimes. We lose it sometimes. Oh, my God. We step out of flow. Someone who, you know, owes me money and has owed me money for a long time, and I was getting very resentful of her. And yesterday I was going into a state. I didn't need that money, but I didn't want to be abused. You're not going to take advantage. So I fell out of flow and out of state until I caught myself and sent a text. And the text about me said, may God bless you with all that you wish for. And it blew my mind. And then that tapped some love into her, and we ended a very difficult situation on a loving note. Yeah, flow. We fall out of it. You tap in and allow for. Dude, I got the greatest report.

So. Wait, so can I pause you for one half a second? Will you remember that point?

Press that. Yeah.

All right, I'm gonna press the pause. So I've been thinking for the last few minutes, I've had a word in my mind, and then you just said it, which is that when we talk about the flow and the idea, are we actually getting out of our own way, getting, you know, out of the way of our self? How do we do that when we're always with ourselves, like it or not? And the word allow, allowing was coming up for me, and then you said it, which is this idea that we allow, and I think that's what comes up in this book, which is so beautiful, is the idea of how is it that we can allow ourselves to be our best. So, for example, on the tennis court, we know what it takes.

I mean, you.

You've picked up a racket before. You know what the shots look like. You've watched enough tennis to see what they look like, the way they're supposed to look or what they look like when they're really effective and when you can execute at a very high level so you know what that looks like, and you're capable, physically capable of executing that shot, of hitting the perfect serve, the ace, you know, of spinning it the way you want to spin it, all that stuff. But when we think about it, when our thinking self, the ego self, the self that is the instructor, the self that is the critic, the self that is the one in judgment is in that driver's seat. Well, then we know what happens. We grip the racket just a little too tightly. We're thinking about something like, make sure you snap. Snap your wrist just as the ball is, as you're tossing the ball for your serve. And the last thing you do is snap that wrist, in which case you. You don't snap your wrist. You're stiff, and sure enough, that tightness turns into the ball hitting the top of the net for a double fault or whatever it is. And when you're not the instructor, the critic, the judge, but you allow your knowing self to simply show up and do Its thing. Well, then there's this flow state can occur. So anyway, thank you for saying that word. Allow it just.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I will allow you to. So let me say this. We talk in terms of muscle memory. People talk about muscle memory. Trust in your muscle memory. That's bs it's soul and spirit memory. When, you know, because my muscles are energy which is tied into the universal force as though I've got an extension cord on my tushy going all the way down to the center of the earth and I'm plugged in. When you allow for that, you build the muscle. You build the muscle. That's great and groovy, but that's energy. And so that's. So when you get out of the way of that, you allow for that energy to happen. So when you go into that Zen state, one is only to look at. We're talking about tennis. It could be many other things. It could be. My God. I work closely with speakers like Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy. These guys can get out from a deep sleep and they can go do what they do without thinking and go into that send like a flow state. So when you say the ego gets in the way and you have these voices and whatnot, they're not your voices, baby, they're someone else's voices. They're often childhood admonitions and beliefs that came from someone telling you, filthy rich never amount to be anything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So when you let go of that, when you identify those patterns, source those patterns, bash and replace those patterns, forgive those patterns. You could then move into the state of flow. And what I was going to say earlier, this is kind of crazy. I went and gave a little bit of a speech at our friend Greg Reed's house the other day. And it was a leaked group of people and we were interviewing a bunch of billionaires and looking at some wealth hacks and whatnot. And so I got there late. I just flown in from the East Coast. The flight arrived at 3am here to San Diego, Lindbergh Field and you know, until 6. So by the time I got there, I was a little bit tired, but I was in state. I was in state of love and joy and flow and sharing. And so I spoke briefly and then a gentleman came up to me and we had a conversation. He owns a ship that has discovered over $500 million in shipwreck coins and whatnot. An amazing guy. I didn't know him, but he knew me. And then we had a brief conversation. We're gonna get together. And yesterday he said, listen, if you're gonna be down in Tampa, cause Ann and I are gonna be down in Tampa. He said, please do me the honor. I have a beach house and I have an ocean front house and I'm not around. Would you please stay in one of them? I said, my God, I'm touched by your generosity. We don't even know one another very well. And here's what he said. And this happened yesterday in an email. He said for 30 seconds that in the first 30 seconds that we met, I knew you, I felt you, and I have no hesitation, but rather joy in offering my homes to you. What that meant to me at the deepest level. And this might sound ego, but I don't care. It's not coming from ego. Is that I was expressing my soul, his. The ultimate Namaste. The ultimate namaste. The ultimate Om Namah Shivaya. Om the primordial sound. Namah. With deepest respect, I have Shivaya, the God within Shivaya. And so there was this immediate connection. So I look at that as a really cool report card because we connected, we got each other. And in my estimation, perhaps it was induced by fatigue. The emotional self, the intellectual self and the physical self was out of the way for the spiritual self to manifest. And isn't that what we want? The entrepreneurs who are listening and viewing this podcast. And isn't that what we want? I mean, what do we want? How is Steve Jobs spending his money this afternoon?

We know the answer. He's not.

Yeah, he's not. What do we want? And so I have fun when I do my mentoring. Find out. What do you want?

I freaking love that.

David, what do you really want?

Yeah, let's jump. Let's dive into the pivot. And what I love about the pivot topic is that it applies to. It's so synergistic or relevant to everything. I mean, because what we're like, I'm thinking pivot because that's a pivot in mindset. It's a pivot in how you conceptualize the world, how you frame and see the world. And we're meaning giving machines. So we're constantly. Our life is just a product of the meaning we associate to our experiences. That's why two people that have been devastated by something in their life can see it so differently, can feel it so differently, and therefore the results they live are so different.

And I'm pissed off about you and pivot because you captured what has been so important to me in words. And damn it why didn't I do that first? No. All kidding aside, your book is there. I'm in a cottage on the back of my property here, which is my office, and over there is my library. And in that library is a book called Pivot. And it caused me to look back in my. And unpack my world to some of the major pivot points. And since then, through cosmic consciousness, through coincidence, through Bechert, which is a technical term of. Meant to be very technical term. I've looked back and seen some of those pivots. And I found a journal that I wrote. I can almost cry thinking about this in 1984 and 85, that when I found it, it was. Put me back into a memory and state of one of the most amazing pivots my life. And I just found it last week.

Wow.

Wow. Crazy, brother. It's crazy.

Yeah.

So is that just. That's.

Ah. Wow. Beautiful. And grace.

I just.

That's the word that comes to me. It's just so many things that we. That we get to appreciate and. And sometimes they're. They're that big, you know that. That unexpected and unexpectedly big. And sometimes they're so small. But just the. The state of being in appreciation for those types of miracles. Because that's a miracle, right? To pull out something from long ago like that, and just by. Yeah. Like with quotes around it. Coincidence. You get to. So would you share a little bit about that? Would you share a pivot tale from your crip with us?

I gotta tell you, you know, the definition that some of us have adopted about the word coincidence is a coincidence is a miracle in which God chooses to remain anonymous. But God doesn't play peekaboo very well. You see God's fingerprints all over these things and you go, this ain't no effing coincidence. This is by grace. This is a transformative pivot, if you will, in consciousness. So this is the craziest thing. I just became a grandpa for the first time on Mother's Day, which is a couple of months ago. So I have my first grandchild ever, living on the East Coast, Salem. And if you have three or four hours, let me show you some pictures and I'll tell you about it. Anyway, so in anticipation of going out there, which we did about 10 days ago, I remembered that in meeting and getting to know Peter Yarrow from Peter Poland, Mary, I had him sign a book to the baby. I didn't know what the baby's name was going to be. So it was just to the baby, Corbin, because this was going to be my son's child. And so anyway, bottom line is, I had six years ago, I had these books signed and then another one by Jay Leno, but I couldn't find the books. I tore my garage apart to find these books and I finally did. But honestly, to this moment, my garage is in shambles because I pulled books down from all over the place. And while I was looking for that, that's just. Way to go, dude. You blow my mind. I found this journal. And I don't journal often, but I did then. This was at a time when I owned a business. I started a company years ago and I expanded it from zero from $100 investment to 12 offices in 12 states with many, many salespeople. And we expanded, expanded, expanded. And I was at a point where we over expanded under capitalized. And we were either going to sell the business or lose the business. And the house that I'm in right now, which I bought when I was 29 years old and I just turned 65 years old a couple of days ago, I was going to lose.

With.

A pregnant wife and a couple of miscarriages beforehand. I could not share my angst with her and hence the pivot, because I was like a petri dish for God. We use a petri dish because it's easy to grow stuff. And I was at that petri dish stage. I never thought of it in those terms, but that's a good one. I'm going to write that down. And I was a petri dish. I was wide open. And as a kid who didn't think about God much as a young man then at 30. At that time I was 34, although in the journal I wrote down, no, I'm 35. What the hell am I going to do? Am I going to be able to find another career, occupation, whatever? I'm 35. I'm kind of over the hill. And I'm thinking back, that was 30 years ago and I laugh about it, but I was at that point I went deep and I was scared shitless. Anyway, the bottom line is I was able to then sell the business and stay on. And it needed to happen because in the journal, after it all happened, I sold the business and I had to stay on as president. The company called Bertelsmann came into the United States from what was then called West Germany. And they bought RCA Records and Arista Records and Doubleday Books and Dell Books and Banta Books. And they bought my company, which was a little smaller than the other companies. Nonetheless, I had to Stay on as the president. And it sucked because it was a bureaucracy. And I'm an entrepreneur. I like to get things done. But they wanted a meeting on top of meeting on top of meeting. Bottom line is, I got out of that not knowing that it was one of the greatest gifts of my life. Now I know when the fit hits the sham, it's a growth opportunity that God is taking me to the next thing. Now I know when somebody's going through shit. I can congratulate them and say, congratulations, you're obviously ready for the next pivot in your life. But I didn't know that then. And it was like a train coming at you. You know, mom says, be careful to wear clean underwear in case you get in a car accident. And I'm like, dude, if I see a car coming at me first I'm going to say it, then I'm going to do it. But I didn't know. And then in that journal, it talked about my feelings. I was talking to my children. You know, your dad is away Monday through Friday. It doesn't mean he doesn't love you. I love you so. And, Jenna, you're growing this way. And I'm talking to my infant son before he's born. And then later on, I said, well, I sold the business. And I guess I was scared for no good reason, because my friend Ken Blanchard suggested that I contact Tony Alessandra and Dennis Waitley and Brian, Tracy and others to see if I could team up and work with them. And every one of them said yes. They wanted to make an offer to me, and I teamed up with this guy named Brian, who's a good guy. His last name is Tracy. And now we're partners in a business. And so as I look back, I see that. Magnificence. Now. I'm starting to get a little teared up, so I'm going to shut up.

David, I want you to go back. This is one of these ironic moments, but we had a little glitch there. So go back to that moment 30 seconds ago with Brian and just repeat what you said there, please.

And so I didn't know that the pain I was going through was the. I want to be in that industry. Then I introduced to these folks this guy Brian, and he formed business together in a partnership.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot to into a new business and lifestyle you love. Join our Pivot community on Facebook at pivotfb. Com.