Reaction, Reinvention and Radical Responsibility With Jason Goldberg

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. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Conscious Pivot podcast. I feel like, I feel so blessed that I get to be able to do this. This is actually a pinch me. There are always pinch me moments, in fact, because I can't believe I get to do this with my life, which is spectacular because it's only a few years ago, maybe more than a few years ago, that I would wake up in the morning and feel dread to start the day. Just no enthusiasm for what I was about to do. And no amount of money, curiously enough, could cure that. So I made plenty of money. It wasn't the money that would ever make me feel enthusiastic. I get excited about the money from time to time, but it just wasn't. It certainly wasn't filling up my heart. So at the start of this podcast, I just want to be in gratitude and openly give thanks for all the blessings in my life and all the blessings in this moment, including the blessing of this breath. Just the ability to breathe and to breathe collectively with thousands and thousands of people. But even if it was just myself or with one other person, how blessed we all are, how blessed I am and feel in this moment. Because as I'm taking in this breath and having this awareness, even listening to the sound of my voice in the headset, feeling it, and I'm feeling that there are people in this moment who are taking their last breath and thinking that this moment right now is a sacred moment, it's a holy moment, and what we do with it, that's our true free will. So I am grateful. I feel blessed to be here. I'm so excited that I get to also share this podcast with a wonderful, wonderful man doing incredible things in the world, who was introduced to me through a mutual friend. So it's great to have Jason Goldberg on the podcast and to find out more about you, learn more about you, get to know you get to know what jazzes you, what excites you, and even where your Pivots have been as people listening and watching this know. I don't read bios, we don't do intros. So I'm gonna toss it in your lap.

And.

You'Re a TEDx speaker. You've written best selling internationally, best selling books and all that kind of thing. And rather than me say things about you, I'd love to hear from you, what's important in your life, where you've been, and then we'll get into some of the good, juicy pivot stuff as well. So without further ado, Jason, welcome to the show.

Thank you, brother. I appreciate it. And I just want you to call me every morning and say everything you just said about gratitude. Because I'm sitting here like you didn't see me because you had your eyes closed, but I'm like taking the breaths and I'm like, holy crap. Like, this is. This is not a podcast interview we're doing. Like, this is like a gift. This is a true, like it had there, the mechanism happens to be a podcast interview. But like, what a gift that, like, what, what has to line up in every single element of the earth and what we understand and we don't understand for you and I to be doing this right now, I mean, from a technology perspective, from a consciousness perspective, from everything that happened in both of our lives to get us here in this moment and our parents and their parents, it's like, dude, this went from a podcast interview to like God in a box. It's crazy.

It's crazy, dude, I love that.

And that wouldn't have happened had you not said what you just said. So thank you for that, brother.

You got me taking notes already. We're two minutes in. That's great. Well, yes.

And yeah, okay, so I guess I'll talk about me. So I love this and I love, you know, and we have some context around kind of what we know will serve the audience here. And so I love that you kind of. I love that you kind of glossed over some of the things I've done, because that's not who I am, right? Like, that's the least of who I am. Writing books and speaking and whatever I do to make money is the least of who I am. Who I am in this moment is somebody who is just deeply passionate about spreading as much joy as he can in the world. My business plan and my life plan are kind of the same. It's to leave people with 5% more joy than I found them with. And so that's. That's who I am is a man who, as much as he is able to not be in his ego and not be self indulgent and go through the Mental masturbation of thinking I'm the center of the universe. Whenever I'm not doing that, which I still do because I'm human, I'm just focused on serving people and loving the crap out of them and doing whatever I can to make the world a little teeny bit better.

Amen. I never say amen. That's not words that come out of my mouth typically. And I'm not saying you're preaching. I just feel like, holy shit, that's. That's an amen for me. That's a yes, yes, chin up, you know, eyes wide open moment. And I appreciate you. You saying it that way. Joy is so freaking important.

It is.

I don't know whether I like distinctions, and I play with words. It's part of my nature, I guess. But the difference between joy and happiness. Do you see a difference between joy and happiness?

I do. I think sometimes. So I think that I. I loved. I'm big on distinctions. My entire book is about a single distinction. So I love that. And I have. So I have these. You've seen these, my intent bracelets, before. Have you seen these before?

I have seen those, yeah. Yeah.

So you can put whatever words you want on them, and one of them says, spirit of play. Right. Because I want to always be reminded to bring a spirit of play to everything I do. And so to me, happiness kind of sounds like a noun. It kind of sounds like a destination. It kind of sounds like something that you have for a while, and then as soon as you grasp it, as quickly as you grasp it, it goes away. For me, joy is a sense of something you can come from. It's not something you attain, it's something you come from. And I think joy leads to happiness. I think joy leads to fulfillment. But at my core, at my base, and the words I interchange a lot, my number one core value, the thing that really drives me when I'm feeling. When I still feel those times, like you mentioned, where you're just not super jazzed, you're not super excited, you're not super motivated. Just because I'm doing the work I'm doing in the world doesn't mean I'm always on cloud nine. What I recognize, though, is that anytime I tap into and recognize that enthusiasm, me coming from a place of joy and enthusiasm is the only thing that separates me from having a shit experience of life and having the most glorious experience of life possible. As soon as I know that and it clicks in my head, dude, my entire experience of the world changes.

Yeah, that lines up so well. For me, when I think of joy, it's a feeling and it has nothing to do with. And it's a sense. It's a state of being versus a thing we're attaining or aspiring to. I mean, when we're doing well financially, we're happy, you know, we're on vacation, we're happy. When we get a good cocktail in our hands, it's done its magic. We're happy, you know, so it's so fleeting, like balance. I think balance is bullshit too. Totally. I'm in balance. I'm not. I'm in balance. There's like a lot of work involved. It's not harmony. And yin and yang is not balance, it's harmony. Or maybe they're related. I don't want to sound so arrogant about that. I just feel like it's harmony. And when it comes to joy, this is something we can have while we're cleaning up the dog shit. Now, I know that's like an extreme example or digging ditches or anything. We have to do things in life, we have to. As oh my goodness, Elizabeth Gilbert says in her book Big Magic, she tells a story of somebody else eating a shit sandwich. And then she talks about the passions, the things that bring joy. Like for her it was writing. And for this friend of hers, he loved writing. He was a writer, he was talented. But all he ever did was complain about it. All he ever did was complain that the writing, the creative writing, fiction writing, my dad's a fiction writer, that the whole thing was fixed, it was rigged. You know, if you weren't commercial, you know, you couldn't be successful. The whole thing sucked, you know, so the guy was a great writer and he loved writing, but all he did was he was in misery all the time. And so she's like, you know, he's got his, his half eaten shit sandwich, right? And any. And he's prepared to get up from the table. In fact, she told him, get up from the table and leave it. Like, you need to stop writing, take a year off or two and see if the joy comes back to you. But as he was gonna get up and leave the table and leave the shit sandwich sitting there, she'd be like, are you done with that? Right? I mean, and that's joy. That means you're not requiring that things be perfect or that they feel, you know, they feel good all the time or that they give you everything your ego wants, like validation and all the other stuff that pumps you up and makes you feel more than what your Parents made you feel like, or what your teachers made as you put all that pressure on something we call happiness. When joy is a place that you can be while you're cleaning up after your puppy or you're doing any number of other things that you might not necessarily love in the moment, but you can still do it with joy. Is there any. Does that dovetail with what you're saying?

Oh, my God, yeah. It's the key to everything. So then the other. My intent bracelet that I have, Amora fati. Latin for love your fate. And it's the same thing. Your fate can be picking up the dog shit. Your fate can be billing your clients. Your fate can be being stuck in traffic. And what if you could love the crap out of that moment? And the story that I love that illustrates this amorfonti so much is when Edison had his entire research facility that was engulfed in flames. And. And he lost all this research he and his team had been working on for a decade and literally millions of dollars of damage, which by today's standards would have been tens of millions of dollars of damage. And he was told that this entire thing is on fire. And he comes to the building and it's just totally engulfed in flames. And he turns to his kid and he says, go get your mom and go get the town. There has never been a fire like this that anybody will ever see again.

Thomas Alva Edison.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thomas Alva Edison in Edison, New Jersey.

In Edison, New J. And he knew. I mean, he knew. And that's the thing, is that, you know, you can. It's, you know, and who knows, maybe that's an urban legend kind of thing.

But.

But it illustrates the point that your lens through which you see the world dictates the way you experience the world. That's it. It's never the circumstance. The lens through which you see the world dictates your experience of the world.

Yes.

And here's the thing that I want to pen drop, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And we're. And we're talking about this. And immediately, like, just a minute ago. And so I kept this in my head. I promise I was present, but I also kept this in my head immediately. I want to dispel something. People are seeing the two of us, and they see. And, dude, this is our first time really meeting this way. Like, we've talked online. This is our first time meeting. And your energy is like, oh, yeah, these are my people. Like, this is. This is so easy. Right? And I don't mean people like tribe. I Mean, like, these are my people. And so I just see your energy and I love it. And so people could be watching this and used to seeing your amazing, beautiful, smiling face and your energy and my smile, smiling face of my energy and say, well, these guys were born this way. What about the rest of us? Right? And so I do want to take a step back, if you don't mind, and talk for a few minutes about how my life was when this was not my default way of being.

Alright, yeah. Would you please do that? You just gave me the chills because. All right, I'll pull the curtain back just a little bit here. Right. Which is that. And I hope that everybody that is listening and watching that someday you, and many of you are probably podcasters already. But if you haven't or you're not in this space, this is a fun place to play, even as a hobby or something, as a side hustle or whatever it is, to the day job or whatever you're doing. But this is way cool. And one of the things that's way cool about it is occasionally, it's not all the time, but that you do you click with somebody in this kind of a thing where they can kind of not read your mind, but it's like taking the baton. It's like you're in a relay race and they just so fluidly, effortlessly take the baton. So thank you for taking us there, because that's the truth, Jason. Right. We'd all think that people, whether it's whoever you're looking up to, I mean, it could be somebody in the business and personal development space, it could be a celebrity or whoever you think their life is, you know, they got it going. And even whatever problems they've got, they're pretty under control because of how. Because of their celebrity, their money or whatever. And that's just. That could. That's such a. You're missing a lot if you're not able to see that. We're all so connected and so much more one than you would think. And by the thinnest of margins, you know, somebody, their fate can be, yeah, I got the world by the tail. And by the thinnest of margins, they could be in a situation where they don't have anything by the tail or they feel like the world's got them by the tail and that. That distinction or that thin, you know, razor hair. Just difference between those two experiences of living is profound. And therefore, thank you for taking us into the belly of the beast a little bit so people can understand that. Yeah, great. Energy and all that. And yet I know I've had anxiety in my life. I've dealt with probably borderline depression. I got bullied when I was a kid. I've been a shit in my life at times. I've cheated and lied and done all kinds of things. And thankfully, I didn't fuck things up so, so badly. I mean, I'm married 28 years, and thank goodness I did not mess up my relationship with my wife. So thank you, God, you know, and our kids are healthy, and thank you for that. By the grace of everything, you know, they're well and, you know, almost anything else, you know, is icing on the cake. But in any event, thank you for bringing that to our attention.

Yeah. I mean, my pleasure. And thank you for creating the space where that's welcomed and that's invited and it's encouraged. Like, this is where the juice is. And I want to also preface it by saying, you know, as I'm telling you some things about how I used to see the world and kind of how I see it now until I don't. Right? Because this is not like some permanent pervasive thing. For better or for worse, you don't finish personal growth any more than Michael Jordan finished practicing his jump shot.

Right.

He never got to a point where he was like, coach, just call me when the game starts and I'll show up. Like, it's, you know, transformation in my mind is instant and lifelong. Right. You can see the insight instantly, but it's a lifelong practice. So the first thing I'll say to preface this is, I don't want anybody to feel inferior because they were not as much of a prisoner of their mind and their life as I was. Don't be jealous that I was a super victim. If you're not to my level, it's okay. Still, listen to what I'm saying. So I always say, you know, I kind of, you know, as successful as I was professionally, I kind of sucked at life for the first 30 years of it. And the reason I say that is because from a very young age, a very young age, like teenage years, maybe even before I was somebody who carried a lot of anger around, I was a very angry kid. I was the one who punched holes in walls and did all kinds of damage to all kinds of inanimate objects. I never directed it towards, which was good, right? I never hurt animals, never hurt people, never wanted to fight anybody, but I wanted to kick the crap out of walls and throw things and break things, and that was just my thing. Right. And while I'd love to chalk that up to teenage hormones, it didn't go away. And getting into my 20s, I was still just super angry. And so I was the guy that would chase people in traffic if they cut me off and then be such a wuss. Like, if I caught them, I wouldn't do shit, but I still felt the need, like I had to chase them down. You know what that's like? You know what that feeling is, that rage? And it's like, no matter what happened in my life, if it wasn't exactly according to the way I wanted it to happen. I only had one response. I only had one reaction. And it was anger, and it was rage. And so leading up into my late 20s, I was doing great. Just like you were talking about with your career. I was in it for 15 years. In my mid-20s, I became the director of engineering and operations for a tech firm in Florida. Was making well over six figures, doing pretty well on all fronts. Nice condo, nice car, wife, all this stuff. Great wife, and all these amazing things. And yet the anger, the depression, the despair, the stress. I had suicidal thoughts from the time I was kind of late teens, early 20s, all the way up until my mid to late 20s, where there was a bridge that I would drive my wife to work on, and after I would drop her off at work and I'd have to drive back across the bridge, I would. Several times I thought about just throwing the wheel to the right, because it's like, why the hell be here? This sucks. Like, I'm making all this money and I'm doing all this stuff, but I just feel so heavy all the time. And then to top it all off, I had gotten to the point where from a very young age, besides being really angry and really heavy with all of this emotional weight and financial weight, always worrying about money. And I was raised by a single mother as an only child, so, you know, there was always kind of financial things going on, and. And I just had always had these emotional types of weight on me, but also I had physical weight on me. And so I was really heavy from a very young age. So by the time I was 15 years old, I was 250 pounds, which, if you remember being 15, that's when kids are super loving and accepting, and they would never judge you based on your appearance. And I was a hopeless romantic, and so no girls were interested in me, but, like, I wanted them to be, and they would always be in my family, friends. It was just like, 15 is not a good time to be 250 pounds, right? And it got worse and worse and worse up to the point where in 2009, in my late 20s, I had gotten up to 332 pounds. So I was 40% body fat. I was dying a slow death, I mean, is really what it really was. And something really interesting happened one day I was at work in this IT company and I went to go make a purchase on Amazon. And I'm going to give you the short version of the story, but my card got declined. My credit card got declined, and it wasn't a big purchase. I was buying like I was buying $100 worth of socks. I'm a sock person. I love, like funky socks because I think as guys, we don't have a whole lot of ways to show our self expression. But I went to go buy these socks, card got declined, tried the number again, card got declined, said, call your bank for further assistance. So I called my bank and I'm super angry, of course, because my mantra back then, my mantra growing up, you know, in personal growth we have mantras, you know, like, I want to bring the spirit of love and life into the world and, you know, bring joy to all the children. My mantra growing up was, who can I blame? Right? That was my entire mantra.

All right, I'm calling bullshit on this one. You did not say that.

Always, constantly.

Can I blame? You said that out loud.

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, essentially that was my mantra. It was like, you know, who can I blame as far as, like, you know, the customers are so damn demanding. That's why I'm so stressed. And my boss is such an idiot. He doesn't know what's really going on. And, you know, the stupid this and the stupid that and the guy that cut me off, it's like I'm just constantly looking around with a blame meter, just trying to find somebody that I can make responsible for all the shit that I'm feeling.

I'm a recovering blamer as well. So, you know, and an angerholic too. I mean, one of the first things I did in a seminar, like I had attended a seminar in my late 30s or something, never been to one before, and they did a breakthrough exercise. And the thing that I broke through in that first thing was anger. That's what was written, written there for me. So. I know, brother.

It's huge. And it feels uncontrollable. It feels like you just, you feel like there's no way. Like people tell you, like, why do you get angry? Why do you react? That way. And it's, it's, it's, it's like they're speaking in another language. What do you mean, why do I react? What other way would I react? That's the stupidest question. And then I'm going to be angry at you for asking that question.

So exactly. I'm going to turn my eye of judgment, my laser cut you into three pieces. Right?

So, so, so on this day, so I got super angry, of course, I'm like, you know, boiling with rage that my card got declined, which 99% of people listening to this would say, dude, seriously, your car, Just call the bank, deal with it. That's not the way. That's not the lens through which I saw the world. I saw myself being held prisoner by somebody else who's doing something to me. So I called the bank and I mashed the zero button a thousand times so I can get a frickin live person. I'm so pissed off at the automated crap. And I finally get this super sweet guy on the phone named Steven who I wanted to murder because he was so well trained and so sweet. That's the last thing you want to hear when you're really pissed off. And I asked why my card had been declined. I asked, I yelled at him to say, tell me why the hell my card was declined. And he said there were some potentially fraudulent charges on the account and so they had cut my card off. So now instead of being grateful that my bank was watching after my funds, I got double pissed. Who stole my money? Who can I blame? Who hacked my identity? Who, whatever. I demanded to know what the charges were and he says, well, Mr. Goldberg, it looks like there were four fast food transactions in one day. And we assumed somebody had stolen your credit card and we're making small purchases with it before making a big purchase. And of course, these were not fraudulent charges. This was what 332 pound Jason does. He eats at four fast food restaurants in one day. And this is the day that I say the universe cut me off, right? That a billion dollar bank said, you are an out of control fat ass and cannot be trusted with your own money. That's what they told me. It took a billion dollar, a multi billion dollar bank to tell me that. And it didn't happen immediately. I'd love to say like, oh, and that was my epiphany and I took control of my life. Now I got pissed off and I blamed some more. But then a little bit later on I was realizing that the thought of blaming others, I was really trying hard to find who I could blame for this. And it kept coming back to me. And for whatever reason, I realized that it wasn't my genetics that made me fat. And it wasn't that my mom worked a lot and we didn't have home cooked meals. And it wasn't that I lived in Florida and it hot to go outside and play and exercise. It was that I was literally taking no personal responsibility for my life. That's it. I had to get really honest with myself. And that took me years of work to start shifting that lens from being a prisoner of circumstance to what I now call being a self leader and really having that radical sense of personal responsibility.

And that's the title of your book. I mean, it's part of the title.

Yeah. Prison. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's all about that distinction that at any given moment we can be owners of our spirit. We can lead with our thoughts instead of being led by our thoughts. We can bring a spirit of play, of curiosity, of creativity, of relaxation of consciousness to what we are facing in the world instead of just being this, you know, the inflatable tube man, that's out in front of the car dealerships that's just like flailing in the wind and like hoping that it doesn't get knocked down by a gust of wind and hoping that somebody better is in the White House and that the economy turns around or that your spouse or your friends or your boss starts doing what they should be doing so that your life can be better. I did that for 30 years and it was a full time job. And then like, who's here living my life while I'm out there trying to mold and modify and manipulate everything around me to try to be happy.

Wow, it's so interesting. Our company has a foundation that's all about creating peace. And the essence of what we want to share with people is that peace is an act of self responsibility. That creating peace in the world is an act of self responsibility. If everybody, I mean, think about this. Could we all be selfish? Is it possible? I know, because every time I say, what? Well, a part of what our company is committed to, where we spend time and contribute money things, is to create world peace. Okay, let me see your pageant wave. You know, they don't take you seriously. I was running a company, you know, for several years where that was what we were conveying into thousands and thousands of people and stuff like that. And I would always get those people say, sure.

World peace. Nice.

Yeah, good luck with that. Right. So can you Imagine a world where everybody's just selfish. Yeah, we are. I mean, whether we admit it or not, whether you give it a negative, you know, pejorative meaning or something positive, we're all selfish. Everybody's selfish. That's not, that's not a stretch.

Right.

So we could just imagine a world where not all 8 billion people, but just enough, where, you know, like Malcolm Gladwell talks about a tipping point, where there's a tipping point of enough people that are selfishly working on themselves, working on, as you say, to be, I want to use your phrase, that you're, you're guided, that you're guiding your mind, not having your mind guide you or.

Something along those lines.

What was the words?

Yeah. Instead of being thought led, being a true thought leader, we talk about being a thought leader in our industry. But I mean, just as a human being, you know, leading, leading myself with my thoughts instead of being led by my thoughts.

Yeah. How beautiful. So that act of selfishness, to me, because the getting control of your mind ultimately produces inner peace. We talk about all the things that we want and that we strive for at times, including success, money, fulfillment, acknowledgement. What's the other one? Significance. All those, you know, things on the hierarchy of needs that Maslow spoke about and Tony Robbins talks about and teaches about all that. But at the end, at the top, self actualization is peace. This is what we're talking about is inner peace. And that's, that's an act, as you said, that's not a one and done. It's. It's an awakening. And once there's an awakening, it's only the job is never done, it's never finished. It's now, it's instant, as you said, instant and forever. So it's a vigilance, it's a responsibility ongoingly for our own, for our own experience of living. So how do we experience ourselves being? And that experience of being can be angry, it can be sad, it can be peaceful, can be loving, you know, and when we choose to be working on creating that peace, we have a peaceful world. Enough, I should say, when enough people are selfishly working on themselves in that way, there's a point where we'll just go, whoa, what's happened? What shifted? What's different? Well, 3 billion people, just in a moment, like right now, we take a breath in this moment, I'm just playing with the space, but we take a deep breath right now. It's, It's possible that enough people around the world taking a deep breath for themselves and feeling Peace and wanting peace. Our world would be peaceful. Bombs and missiles and things stop flying in the moment that enough people are focused on that and committed to that, that it's what gets expressed versus, as you said, describing yourself. And I'm the same way, having been through such angry periods or an extended period of sort of frustration, anger, disappointment and then self loathing and then all the things we do to self soothe, you know, all that. That when you, when you move past that, not when you fix or resolve it in its entirety, but when you're just simply moving beyond that, you're different. Everybody impacted by you is different as a result of you being different. And the ripple of that is, well, it's world changing. It can be.

It's absolutely.

I assume that's a part of what motivated, on some level, that's what motivated you to write the book. Writing a book can be torturous and all that kind of thing can be a big, big challeng whatever it is. And you went down that road for a reason. Would you share a little bit about what did motivate you to do it?

Yeah, absolutely. And I want to say something really quickly first, actually funny enough about you and about your book and what you're doing. We were talking about this before we started the podcast, but when we were talking about pivot, you used a word that just keeps coming up for me as I hear you talk and keeps coming up over and over is this word reinvention. Right. And I think a lot of people think, especially with things like the word pivot and reinvention, that it's always the big stuff, but it's not always the big stuff. Like, yes, I've had huge reinventions going from it to being an entrepreneur and starting two companies before becoming a speaker and a coach and having one of those companies blow up in a bad way, you know, losing a bunch of money, tens of thousands of dollars on that, and having a second company that did considerably better, and now my third company, that's this. And it's easy to say, oh, well, that's a big reinvention. And that's a big pivot. And losing 130 pounds, that's a big reinvention. Those are great and I don't want to discount those. But my reinvention is when I wake up and I don't want to get out of bed and I do anyways, right? My reinvention is when I think a client's gonna sign up and then they tell me at the last minute I'm Sorry, I can't do it anymore. That, that I can experience that and not have it drag me down into the pit of despair. So reinvention happens in a moment, just like you're saying in that breath, in that acknowledgement of being able to cultivate inner peace. Like the biggest reinvention in the world happens moment by moment. And we know this intuitively. Like if you think about putting a baby to sleep, which type of baby is easier to put to sleep? One that's calm or one that's screaming and crying and fussy?

Right?

Like we know this. So if we cultivate inner peace, if we're not screaming and crying and fussing in our thoughts, in our inner world, imagine what's possible for us to create as a society. This is not about meditating, you know, in the Himalayas and selling all your belongings and moving to an ashram in India. It's about living meditatively, right? It's about being so in love with the moment that you're in that you can't do anything but just love and have compassion for your own thoughts. And when you lead with that, you can't help but love and have compassion for everybody else and their thoughts.

Yes. Wow. Way cool. Tell us about your book, please.

Right, yeah. So Prison Break. So I have a copy here so you can see.

And there's the lenses, right?

There's the lenses that we're talking about, right? So this is. It's hard to see, but there's one that's like, you know, a lens of inside of a prison cell. And then one that's like the greatest stock photo I can find. The street or open road. But it really is about this, moment by moment choice, right? That we can either be a self leader or we can be a prisoner. And the thing about this is that something is a core tenet of the work that I do. I don't do right or wrong. I don't do good or bad. Being a self leader versus being a prisoner is not a moral thing. It's not an ethical thing. It doesn't make you smarter or better. If you're a self leader and stupider and unevolved if you're a prisoner. It's about access to how you use the tool of your mind. And in my world, at any given moment, your mind is either an asset or an asshole, right? You choose how you use it. When I'm speaking to corporate audiences, I'll say asset versus liability. But I think we can talk about this here. Your mind's either an asset or an asshole, Right. So you choose. And so for me, I was raised in a household where prisoner language and prisoner thinking was the default language, right? And so I became fluent in that. So if you are raised in a household that speaks nothing but French, you're not stupid. If you don't speak Spanish, you're not uninvolved. If you don't speak Spanish, you just didn't have access to it. And so the goal of this book was to say, great, historically, I get that 10 minutes ago or 10 weeks ago or 10 years ago you were a prisoner. I get that.

Great.

It's an unemotional data point on the calendar given the conditions of the game that I'm playing. And now what do I want to create? And that's that whole moment by moment transition. I have prisoner moments all the time. It's why I'm uniquely qualified to still teach this message. If I ever come to a point where I never have prisoner moments, this whole message goes away and I stop teaching it.

So what's an example of a prisoner moment for you?

Yeah, so a prisoner moment is anything where I react instead of respond. So somebody cuts me off in traffic and I yell and scream, that's a prisoner moment. Somebody doesn't sign up when I think they're going to sign up to coach with me and I curse them and I think they're horrible people. That's a prisoner moment. You spill something on the couch and you get all pissed off about it. Prisoner moment. Like they can be big or small, but essentially it's when I say that shouldn't be happening. It's when I argue with reality. Right? And Byron, Katie, who's one of my mentors and somebody I just love beyond words, says, when you argue with reality, you lose. But only always.

But only always.

But only always. So when I'm a prisoner, it's me arguing with reality. It's me thinking something should be different than it is when I'm a self leader. I say, yes, this is of course supposed to be happening. Because if it wasn't supposed to be happening, it wouldn't be now. Given that's the case, given that that's reality. It's not about lying to yourself and saying that things that are happening around you are not happening. It's not like saying, the guy didn't cut me off in traffic, he liberated me from my speed. Like, no, it's not about like stupid crap reframes. It's about saying, yeah, the guy cut me off. And that's not all that significant.

Interesting. Learning to live meditatively. Is that an example of that?

Absolutely. One of my mantras for that is I say, so what now what? Right. So what? Means it's not that significant. And now what is? Given the current reality that I'm in, what would I love to create? What would be ideal?

You know, it's so interesting. I was. We were podcasting last week with Daniel Gutierrez, who's working on a book called Radical Meditation. Radical Meditation. No, no, sorry, sorry. I don't want to screw that up. Radical Mindfulness and books not out yet, but Radical Mindfulness.

I love the title.

And, you know, he spent time in the Obama administration, a number of other political spaces that he's been an advisor and things like that, too, has been really successful. And also similar. Similar to you and I has had challenges with dealing with his emotions and the lens of, you know, how he sees the world, et cetera. And he talks about that moment of being in the car and somebody does cut you off or they do something, and then you kind of like in that racing against them kind of thing. And he just says, you know, the way you can soften in that moment, you get the opportunity to soften. Soften your eyes, soften. Take. Take your foot off the gas. Just ease up. Just ease off the gas. Ease off the pedal. Right. Yeah, that. That feels very similar to what you're describing.

It is.

And I love. It's not a crap refrain. It's not ignoring reality, which is some. Some other angry person just cut me off and flip me the bird and whatever. It's not. It's not like that didn't happen. And, oh, they're sending me love. It's just their way of giving me, you know, this New York sign for love. No, that's not what happened just then. Right? Yeah, but. Yeah, where you get to choose response versus reaction. And what does response look like?

And what.

What is it? What's the. Yeah. How does this. How does this. How does the response really. I mean, it's those. Response. That response moment is a meditative moment, isn't it? It's a contemplative moment. It's a moment of. Of an option for greater consciousness, greater access to something. I mean, my something is God, spirit, love. That's what I want to access. And you said it earlier about being. You know, you can either you either see these things as assets, you can experience it as an asset, or you can experience it as an asshole. And when we react or when I've reacted, I don't say that We. Because when I've reacted for sure, I know that my reaction is an asshole. It's how I react in those moments.

Yeah. And the practice there becomes when somebody cuts you off. And this is when I do live talks, especially corporate kind of talks, and I'll run through a whole model of this and talk about self leadership. And they'll say, well, so what do I do? Because we talk about this kind of conceptually. What do I do when somebody cuts me off in traffic? Like, what should be my response? And I say, well, there's a couple different things you can do there. You can do the reframe. Because again, this is about no right or wrong. This is about effective versus ineffective. It's about productive versus unproductive. So if you doing the reframe, this person cut me off and they liberated me from my speed. If that's effective for you, that's fine. Every system is perfect for the result you're getting. So if you love your result, don't change the system. If you want a different result, try a different system. So you could do that. You can do the reframe. But the super enlightened Buddha level of this is to recognize when these things happen. When you have any heavy emotion, I won't even call them negative emotions, but something that feels heavy, like a sadness or an anger or depression or whatever it is, to recognize that it is a thought, right? And I want to really slow that down because it almost seems too simple. Not that you have to do anything with the thought, just to recognize that it is a thought. And the way I do that is I call it my Britney Spears moment, right? When I get really pissed off about something, I'll slow down for a second and I go, oops, I did it again. A thought popped in my head.

You know what's great is that I didn't have a clue where you're going there because I'm not a British and not saying anything about Brady Van.

That's fine. But you know the song.

You know that song, don't you?

But you know that song.

Sure, of course.

Yeah. So. So it's. So when I blocked that song from.

My, my list for a long time.

That's smart. So, so, So I say, I say, oops, I did it again. And what that means is like, oh, there's a thought in my head, right? There's a little ping in my head and I'm believing it to be true. I don't have to do anything with it. All I have to do is say, oh, there's that thing. That's that thing that I do sometimes. Cool. That thing can just hang out there. I don't need to do anything with that thing. So it's not the content of my thoughts that make me upset. It's the fact that I'm just believing whatever the thought is in my head. Does that make sense?

No. No, it doesn't make sense.

Makes no sense.

You know, I'm waiting. Having the gazillions of times I've heard that phrase, said, that phrase. I'm waiting for somebody to literally fucking go. No, that doesn't mean you. I mean, I know you're up there and you got the microphone, but I'm just saying put my hand up. That makes no fucking sense. I'm waiting. Yeah, duh. Okay, that makes sense. But how about this one? Our thoughts aren't. I mean, they're in our head. They're in our head that they're from us. No, not believe. Don't do that. To not believe something we think is foreign. So I've taught a lot of people about this. And yet at the same time, when I hear my own thoughts, I think somehow that's me. It's got to be good. If I love myself, which is the other piece of what we teach for creating our own pieces that we care for ourselves and love for ourselves unconditionally. Well, if you love yourself unconditionally and those thoughts come up, you know, it's interesting to the conversation about the thoughts about divorcing or, you know, knowing the difference between the thoughts and you.

Yeah.

What does that look like in your head?

Yeah. So. So for me, so. So here's the first thing I think about that is that it was something. It really woke me up big time when it finally became apparent to me that. That I'm actually not normally thinking. I'm being thought right. And the proof for that for me is that there is yet to be the time in my life, even as an adult doing this work, where I'm a lot more, you know, evolved or enlightened or whatever other cool word allows me to buy Lululemon yoga pants. As a man.

Those are the best pants on the planet. So if you've not gotten into debt buying some Lululemon stuff, you need to do that.

And I mean, today, I'm two weeks into SoCal. Give me time to adjust before I go Lululemon. But. But what I recognized. But what I recognized was that there is yet to be a day in my life where I could wake up and say, you know, I'm not going to have any thoughts for the next hour. Once I universe, once I say that I'm ready to start thinking, then you can allow thoughts to happen. It doesn't, it doesn't happen. Like when I'm in that limbo between being asleep and being awake, the thoughts are already there. So there's no possible way that I'm controlling that. Right. To me, thoughts are like spam emails, right? You can't control spam being sent to you, but you can control what you do with the spam once it arrives. So I don't have to take responsibility for all my thoughts?

Yeah, baby, unsubscribe, Unsubscribe.

Right. I can unsubscribe and they'll go into a separate folder and that's fine. Or some of them will stop and that's fine too. But they'll come back again because somebody will sign me up for a Viagra based newsletter and I'll start getting them again. It's fine. But it really is recognizing, like just because a thought is in my head, it doesn't make it mine.

It's interesting. So say that. I mean, I want you to say it again because I think it's important that people hear that. I hear it, you hear that, we all hear it.

Oh, yeah.

I need to say it again.

Just because a thought is in your head doesn't make it yours. And just because a thought is in your head, it doesn't make it true. And the more you think about something does not make it more true. The more you think about something, the more you think about something. That's it.

Yeah. Interesting, interesting, interesting stuff. Because those thoughts control us from the point of waking. And, and I'd say through the, through the point of waking because it definitely is a cyclical, I mean, around the clock thing. We don't stop thinking even when we're sleeping, but we're just not sort of aware what, what's going on in that crazy noggin of ours. But yeah, getting control of that is. And I'm not, I'm kind of a recovering control freak. So I don't. On the one hand I go, mmm, I want to try and control my thoughts, or really do. I just want to see them for what they really are. And I think that's what's beautiful about what you just shared, is that it's a seeing in, as you mentioned, Byron, Katie, It's a seeing reality. It's not an ignoring reality or trying to pretend what's real isn't Real. It's real. I'm thinking that that's the thought that actually just, you know. But I love that example. I've not heard that one before.

So I.

And I'm gonna borrow that with pride and give you full credit.

It probably isn't mine anyways. Well, I haven't had an original thought my whole life.

Nor have I. I mean, Socrates said, all learning is remembering.

There you go.

So he must have said it because somebody.

Because somebody else said it to him.

I mean, shit, Socrates stood on the. On the shoulders of people before him.

Yeah.

And we stand on Socrates and, you know, in some way, I guess in the future there'll be some one or two things that we all get a chance to say or do that other people can stand on and use. That's how our world continues in a good direction, which I believe it is. I'm not an. I don't consider myself like an optimist. I grew up in Queens, New York. I wasn't born to be. I don't think an optimist, but I just feel it. I just feel that our world is genuinely okay. It's. We're safe, it's good. Doesn't mean there isn't a shit ton of things that we got to work on and be focused on. But like you said, it's the lens. It's the lens we see things through. So if we see it through a crap lens and half. Everything's always broken and missing and people are, you know, there's all this catastrophe we catastrophize, so it colors the way we experience living. That's one of the things you said earlier, right? The lens through which we see the world is how we experience living in the world.

Yeah. And I mean, I wear actual glasses, so this is an easy one for me. But like, when I have schmutz on one of my lenses, right? And for those of you who don't know what schmutz is like, it's a very technical term. It's like no dirt or a smudge or something on your lens. Everywhere I look, I see the smudge. And so I'm scraping the wall, trying to get the smudge off, and I'm scraping the table and I'm scraping the human beings that are in of me because the smudge must be on them because that's what I see. But I'm not realizing that my projector of my mind is projecting that smudge onto everything I see. And so instead of trying to clean the world, when I clean the smudge all of a sudden the world's clean. But it has to start with me. Yeah, self responsibility, always and just what you say, creating that peace in that moment by ourselves. This is the micro and the macro. The macro is, yes, we want world peace. We can't control the macro, but we have 1,000% control over the micro. So focus on that micro. And if we all focus on the micro, as lofty as it may sound, but as simple as it is, it makes an incredible difference.

Beautiful brother. Share one Ritual, practice, master habit. Something you do to keep yourself there where you are right now, right? You are on fire. I know this for a fact that your where you stand and where you sit and where you are meditating and living in a meditative way. The way you are right now isn't a 24 hour, seven day a week thing for you because you're just a human being. So what are the rituals that keep you more often outperforming, you know, outperforming your problems, outperforming challenges and just one step ahead of that crazed monkey mind, that survivalist, you know, reptilian fear based, angry insecure that, that little part of all of us. How do you stay one step ahead of that brother?

Yeah, in my book, I call that the baby assassin. I call that quieting the baby assassin. Because I literally picture like a little baby and a ninja GI inside my head that's like karate chopping and like doing all this crap for me inside. I'm like, you little piece of shit, get out of it. Yeah, just chopping. Just you know, death by a thousand cuts.

Trying to get to you.

Just trying to get to me. You know it's funny, we kind of actually, we actually accidentally kind of talked about this in the beginning of the interview here. And it's something that I practice, I share in my TEDX talk, but it's something that it takes for me, takes gratitude to a whole new level, right? Because I really believe that gratitude is the key to being in this ever present state of joy. And I forget that 23 hours and 57 minutes out of the day, right? I just forget that I think there's something else I need to be doing to be joyful. But gratitude is it. And it sounds super simple and trite, but it is. And so here's the thing, is that people say okay, but then I go through the exercise, I literally was just talking to somebody at lunch the other day and she's like, yeah, this whole gratitude thing, I get it, like I said, but I sit down and I go, I'm grateful for my house, and I'm grateful. And, like, I'm grateful for it, but it's not like doing anything. Like, I mean, it's real, but it doesn't really change my state. And I said, and that's because you're not seeing the significance in the thing that you're grateful for. You're not seeing all the things that had to line up for you to have that thing to be grateful for. And so the practice that I shared was when I was in my corporate job, and then when I got out of that and became an entrepreneur, I would always go to the same Starbucks every morning and get my coffee. And it was the same thing. I would get in place, my order, go to the end of the counter. A couple minutes later, my coffee was there. I'd walk out. And for whatever reason, one day I was feeling kind of down and just not feeling totally with it. And I got my coffee, and for some reason, when they handed it to me, I slowed down for a minute. I took a breath, that deep breath that we talk about, and I looked at this cup, and I said, holy shit, do you know all the things that had to align in the universe for this cup to be in my hand right now? And I really slowed that down and thought about, like, you know, the raw materials that had to be collected for the cup to be created, the equipment that had to be invented, invented to process the raw materials to create this cup, all the people that had to be trained to use the equipment, the people who then ship it, all the logistical things that are involved to get it from one part of the country to another, to the person who delivered the cups, to my actual Starbucks, to my barista who actually took my order and had to grab that cup and put the coffee in it, and then all of the people in all of their lives that helped them to be where they are in that moment so they could serve me this one cup of coffee. And so when I can see the smallest little mundane daily things as being God in a box, which I've never said that before until this thing. So this is not like a thing I've said. But when I see that every single moment is literally God in a box, how can I not be overly joyed that I get to live the life that I'm living? Not that I have to do all these things on my to do list, which I definitely get in my head about, or that I have to have all these calls with clients that I definitely get in my head about but when I really slow down and see what a gift all this is, how can I not be enthusiastic about life?

Yeah, brother. I think it's the perfect place to transition to how we'll remind ourselves of important things as we conclude. And also in the show, notes for folks, there will be an opportunity to find out more about you and even a gift that you have for folks.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I just. I'm so passionate about having people get access to the message in Prison Break. And, you know, I think we're somewhere close to 10,000 copies sold now, and it's just been an incredible. I just get messages every day from people about the book, and I couldn't give a crap about book sales. Anybody who puts out a book to make money, they're really. They have a rude awakening coming. I want the message to spread as much as possible. So I'm going to give you guys a link so you can get a totally free copy. You can get a Kindle, a PDF, an audio version, or the actual paperback if you're in the U.S. if you just go to getprisonbreak.com pivotpodcast, then that'll be just for you guys. And that's my gift to you. And the other place to kind of check me out is one of the big things that I'm most passionate about in the world that we've kind of talked about is just being more playful. And so I have a program called Playful Prosperity that I run once a year. And it's all about really playing your way to prosperity, bringing the spirit of play to everything you do so that you can actually experience more joy in your life and in your business. And that's something that I just absolutely love, and it's kind of the love of my life. Is that in that program?

Way cool, buddy. Way cool. All right, everybody. What a blessing. Again. Whatever you're up to, whether you're on the treadmill, even walking, even stopped, even stuck right where you are, couldn't move another inch till you listen to the rest, the rest of this podcast, whatever you're up to, take a deep breath right now. Take a moment just to give yourself a wonderful. Just a wonderful moment. Be present. And I want to remind you that tomorrow, tomorrow when you wake up and I'm waving the magic wand, so we all get to wake up tomorrow because we know that that is both on a metaphoric level, on a practical level, we get to wake up in a moment when we know that not everybody gets to do that. We also get the chance to just become more aware, become a little more aware of ourselves, of our thoughts and of the reality of our thoughts. And so much of that was discussed during this podcast. So what a beautiful way to remind us A we want to wake up, B we want to be in gratitude, and C, as you guys know, the formula, wake up, be in gratitude. Put your feet on the floor tomorrow morning and declare out loud, if you're willing, in front of yourself, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. Blessings to you all. Have a beautiful rest of your day. And of course, we'll see you very, very soon on the Pivot podcast.

Ciao. Thanks, man.

Bye. 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 into a new business and lifestyle you love. Join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com.