The Road To Self-Mastery With Kevin Russell

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey everybody, welcome back. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I'm just thrilled to be in the seat today, looking forward to a radical conversation with actually a thought leader that wasn't on my radar until recently and was fortunate to have a mutual friend introduce us. And he's actually— this gentleman is also a neighbor of ours. And so I'm really excited for the conversation, feeling in this moment just blessed. In fact, in our sort of the Pre-game conversation about this show, I was just sharing that right now so many things are changing in all of our lives. We've had a lot of different changes, and plans that we had made have been now in need of some tweaking, some alteration, or the word we sometimes will use, pivoting, right? And I just feel blessed that we can do that, just to be able to make a change. How great is it just to be able to change anything? At will or based on an intention. Like, you can change your mind. You just decide there's something you've felt one particular way about. Maybe you've been digging your heels in. I sometimes do that. I'm a little stubborn at times, I'm told. And I grew up in New York, and I don't know, I think that rigidness, if I can call it that, is almost like a superpower, or at least survival skill in my youth. So yeah, I mean, what a joy. What a blessing it is to just be able to change your mind in the moment, decide maybe you don't want to hang on to something that you've been hanging on to. Maybe I want to decide to not carry something that I've been carrying, like a resentment or an anger or a mistrust or a distrust. I get to choose to do that, just change my mind. We constantly are making up the rules of the game as we go along. I used to say this often when I was speaking to a lot of audiences for a number of years, more in the personal growth and human development space. And I would say life is the easiest game you could ever imagine. And people are like, what? What are you talking about? Life is tough. Come on. If you only knew my life story, you'd really know what that was like. I go, no, no, no, no, no. Here's why it's easy. Because who makes the rules? Who's the jury? Who's the judge? Who decides? What things mean. And everybody got it. Everybody always gets it, just like you're maybe listening to this now and going, oh, okay, this is a trick question, right? Because if we make all the rules and we're the referee and we're the judge and the jury and we give everything its meaning, how can you possibly lose this game? That's why it's the easiest game we could ever imagine. We just don't always choose to win it, I guess. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about, and in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So, go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. I want to introduce our guest today. Kevin Russell is a clairvoyant intuitive and energy change agent who helps people remove the subconscious blockages, programs, and conditioning. That keeps us prisoner in life so we can reconnect more strongly with our energetic core, our inner knowing, our inner child, and an innate connection to the energy that is even greater than us, whatever you might call that. His new book, Radical Enlightenment: My Guy on the 9th Floor, was written after a profound enlightenment experience and is a handbook for leveling up consciousness, fulfillment, and connection to your higher self. It's just a pleasure to have you on the show, neighbor. Thanks for being here, Kevin.

Adam, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to finally connect.

Yeah, wonderful. What's something that's not a part of the bio or that introduction there that I just read? What's one thing that you would love for people to know about you?

Wow, that's a— thank you, that's a great question, and I appreciate the introduction. And it's funny, this is all fairly new to me as well. I think that would be something that the enlightenment experience that I had that really launched everything was on November 21st, 2019. And I'd been doing— I'd been interested in theology, philosophy, science my whole life. And a question that always followed me through life was, yes, and? And so diving deeper into science and quantum theory and theoretical aspects of what we're calling science, and then deeper dives in philosophy and exploring different religions, both Eastern and Western, I was always left with, Yeah. And because none of them were the complete picture for me. And so I was doing my diligence and just kind of, you know, taking things that worked along the way, tossing them in my tool bag, different things internally, different things interpersonally. And then so in that regard, I think I've always been a thought leader for myself in my own life. But, you know, so many marketplaces are so noisy and so packed. My professional background's in design, user experience, user interface design. And so everybody's got their 2 cents, everybody's pitching their thing, and I was always just like, I want to do the work. I just want to do the work because I know I do good work and that's what I enjoy. And then so yeah, for me, it was that big pivot just over a year ago of getting everything, putting it together in a way that made sense for me from a what's it all about, what am I here for, what does it all mean standpoint. And it was the hardest pivot I've— talking about a pivot, the biggest pivot of my life where I literally couldn't do anything but what I'm doing now and sharing the information and the perspective to the extent that as soon as I left that session where I did kind of level up, I went straight to my wife's office and I told— I just laid it all out. I'm like, this is the experience I had. This is what information I've got. I'm not sure what's coming next, but I can't do anything but this now. So I'm still fresh in that regard in a lot of ways, but depth and breadth of experience at the same time. So it's a real interesting place to be at right now.

As a fellow husband, let's say, what was your wife's reaction to that statement?

You know, it's funny, the journey that I do outline in the book and then I go a little bit deeper to in different areas, it really was both of us on our individual and collective journeys together. And everything with the acceleration that I've experienced within the last 5 years was really instigated from our daughter. And we— there was, there was something going on with her. We took her to the Western medicine MD. who also happened to practice a form of psychological kinesiology or muscle testing to tap into the energetic body, which was a wonderful combination. And within 7 minutes, he and she uncovered that the issue wasn't anything going on with her. It was an anxiety and anxiousness that was created by being around my wife and I when we would argue or disagree.

Yeah.

And at the time, we were— had our blinders on. We were, oh, we're not fighting. We're having semantical disagreements. You know, we're

trying to keep it— Or as it was in my house growing up, just a conversation.

Yeah, exactly. No, we're just talking.

At heightened levels of volume and intensity.

Exactly. And so that really opened up our path of reconnecting with ourselves, connecting more strongly with each other because we were excavating all of this nonsense, all of this energetic and subconscious gunk that systemically and programmatically kept us safe up until this point. But it started to really unravel things primarily within our relationship. And so my wife was trained up in 2 energetic transformation modalities after coming out of a history with psychology as an undergrad, marriage and family therapy as her master's, and then 15+ years as a yoga teacher, mindfulness, you know, leader, meditation coach. And so it was—

So you didn't freak her out when you came?

No. Yeah.

Because you're a guy coming out of the tech design space and then you say, hey, this is what just happened for me.

Yeah.

She'll look at you and give you like a—

Who are you? What have you done with my life?

Should we make an appointment for the couch and get you a good solid spot?

Which is funny because the experience that I had that was the catalyst for me was on her recommendation. She had seen this practitioner and she knew where I was at at the time. And the analogy I always use is I felt like a toddler in a dark room where I could sense there was furniture, I could sense there was a light here and things like that. I just couldn't— I knew there was something just beyond, my awareness or my field that I just wasn't tapping into, but I knew it was right there. And then I got all of that in the experience. So I wasn't looking for this. That wasn't expected. I was, to your point with where you're at, I was living a really, what I would consider a fulfilled life, a fulfilling life within design. And I was consulting, contracting, making my own hours, getting to surf in the morning, which is something I hadn't been able to do for a long time. I'm doing great. And then it was like the universe was basically saying, okay, I hope you had your fun and thank you for all the practice that you've done, everything you've been interested in. Here's now the configuration that is going to put everything together. So yeah, her reaction was, I mean, it was definitely a deep breath.

Yeah.

But it was like, okay, let's go, which was absolutely amazing on the heels of the experience that I had. And then literally a week, week and a half later, the book just started flying out of me. I was writing 16 hours a day for about 2 and a half weeks straight and the framework as far as the prescriptive aspects of the book were all laid out and ready to go after that. And then I had perfect people at the perfect time coming in with interjections or different perspectives that I didn't have purview to that really helped to build out and create the book that ended up being published.

Yeah. That's a journey all of its own, right? The birth of the book. In and of itself. We're right in the middle. We just launched a book called the I Love My Life Challenge and then we've got another book That is actually taking— we're in the final stages with the publisher and it'll come out in August called Change Proof. But that process is, I mean, it's arduous. It's longer than the traditional birthing process of 9 months or thereabout. I mean, it could take years to see a book from that sort of kernel of inspiration to it being something you can put in your hand, hold up, and share with the world. Yeah. Curious about your daughter and what you were being told. What's the sort of the sequencing there of when you were told, hey, what your daughter's experiencing is actually a result of what you guys are dealing with or how you're showing up in your relationship? That's what's triggering her. Between that happening and this experience where you've created— had new awareness.

Yeah, so that was like, I'd call that the boot camp or the graduate level course on me. And everybody's graduate level course is going to be different. No 2 people are the same by any stretch of the imagination except for the universals that connect all of us. So that inner energy, that inner light, every single human has that. And from that standpoint, we are all the same. There is no differentiation. And the subjective or really inconsequential differences are all surface, whether it's income, skin color, eye color, hair color, whatever the ways that we parse up the world. Those are the semantics. Those are the things that aren't really of import. But because we live our lives so often from the outside in, that is what we give a lot of credence and weight to. And so, it was really an organic journey where it was actually my wife's friend, one of her best friends that instigated everything for us and our awareness into the deeper awareness into the energy space, having cursory knowledge of laws of attraction, positive mindset, and these types of things previously. But she was in a— my wife's friend was in a hiking accident where she hurt her back. I think she chipped a vertebra or something in a hike and went to the extent of exhausting Western means to getting a back surgery against recommendations from her doctors because they were saying, we don't necessarily see anything on the MRIs or anything else that that would indicate that yes, a surgery would be required, but she was out of tools. She had no other— at this time, didn't see any other way through it. So, ended up getting the back surgery, not doing anything, still having the excruciating pain.

Hmm.

And so, this is actually the doctor that she saw. And so, that was our entry point. And I think it was about 6 months, she healed her back just with energy and emotional work, but with the help of this Western MD, coming to the realization that the debilitating— like, I mean, we visited her in bed and she was in excruciating pain, couldn't get out of bed. All of it was predicated on issues that she had that went under, that were underlying and went unaddressed with her husband for 20 or 30 years. And finally, it all built up and it took this minor physical injury, what was a minor physical injury, to create a weak point within the bodily system that then all of this emotional energy started to find its way to. So in that regard, energy, it can work as water where it's always going to find the low point. So if we've got a physical thing going on and it turns into, you know, that, oh, I can sense, you know, the rain's coming, I can feel it in my knee.

Right.

It's really just a physical entry point that gives us more purview into energy that's going on within the body. And so we were following this journey and then when— so the expression with our daughter was anytime she'd get a blemish, she would scratch it or pick it to the extent where she looked like she had chickenpox and we were giving her little tiny Band-Aids on her face and on her arms and on her legs to go to school with and we're just like, oh my gosh, something's going on with her. What can be the problem with her? So, that was the recommendation and the impetus that guided us to this doctor. And then, he literally— he didn't even do anything. He just talked to her for about 7 minutes. And, the kids are so much closer to our source and so much more connected to themselves that she was really in a space of just being able to pinpoint exactly what it was because she didn't have the collection of stories or justifications or things keeping her away from getting to the actual truth of what it was.

Right.

That enabled her to be— to just really get to that point of, no, it's when my parents are arguing that I feel anxious.

And so then that simple answer to a simple question.

Exactly.

What's causing you distress?

Right.

Oh, you know, my parents argue.

Right. Well, but in some dynamics it would be really challenging for a child of any age to do that with a parent in the room if it was, you know, that kind of a relationship where So many of us have come from these families where we don't talk about certain things or we sweep certain things under the rug and there's undercurrents of guilt and feeling less than that are based on any number of influences.

Right, keeping things secret, covert, hidden, all that kind of thing. We don't air our family business and every other cliché around that.

100%. And so then we started working with— so 7 minutes with this doctor, And then he excuses her. He said, okay, you're good. You're fine. And that was literally it. Just identifying it for her, it cleared it up immediately. And then she actually never went back to that behavior. And then he turned to my wife.

Did she understand the root cause? I don't want to assume that, but that's what you're saying.

That was exactly it. Sometimes if we're doing this work on our own and we let ourselves get to the root cause, just that identification is enough for our subconscious to release the condition or the behavior that we've created.

Right.

Other times it takes a little bit more excavating and there's more components in play. So then that's where we take a little bit deeper dive. But for this one anyway, that was it. And then he turns right to my wife and says, okay, now you and your husband, that's another story. And that really launched our journey into really like radical honesty with ourselves and with each other and moving past a lot of the conditioning that we brought with us from our life that was now creating dis-ease in our relationship. And we were just butting heads over the silliest, most inane things as so many couples do.

Sure.

And it ends up being death by a thousand cuts in a lot of ways because we go back to this protected fight or flight approach to our loved ones because of a perceived danger from our— systematically.

Right.

And so we dove into the 2 modalities that really accelerated that boot camp or graduate level work where there's one called PSYCH-K, which is psychological kinesiology. Another one called the Emotion Code, and a partner of the Emotion Code is the Body Code as well. And I went off as soon as I started like dipping my toe into these areas of exploration. I just started like, I cranked it to 6th gear and I was just full throttling. And I was not— I moved through any fear or resistance I had of looking at anything from my past that could still be resonant within my system that was a negative experience. Mm-hmm. still rearing its ugly head. And so, that regard, I did come to an understanding that one, every single human on the planet has and is currently experiencing PTSD in some form. And, it doesn't have—

That makes total sense to me. Yeah.

Well, and it can be, I mean, it can literally be like an absentee father or a mother who isn't emotionally available or the more indelible visible examples are obviously like military deployment. Those are the easier ones to see.

Mm-hmm.

But anything can affect our energetic and emotional body, and our subconscious is exponentially more powerful from a processing standpoint than our conscious mind. And it's also the repository of every experience we've ever had. And so it— we're part of a learning from just being in the bodies that we are that is going to do everything it can to keep us safe at all costs, even up to the point of having the cost be expressed as debilitating depression or anxiety or any number of other mental, physical, or spiritual expressions of dis-ease that we go through.

Right. Anything to get your attention, anything to get you to slow down.

Right.

Anything to, you know,

yeah,

get you to change short of something more radical. I want to get into that radical word with you, but, you know, cancer or some other— or heart disease and any number of things are really radical. It's a radical intervention that the body— and more than just the body, but let's just say, you know, it's a— it's an intervention in the physical— our physical beings for a very specific purpose, right?

100%. It's not like it's random.

It's not, right?

Right.

That was a statement, not a question.

Oh, sorry.

So no, no, for me, I want to correct myself because is it random? I made a statement. It's not random. But I think there are enough people out there that do believe that a lot of these things just happen. They happen because of heredity, maybe. Oh, I'm— I've got heart disease or diabetes or, or something else because my, my mom, my dad, they all had it, so of course I'm gonna get it. Right. Cancer, same thing. I want to get your beat on that, that are we actually sort of victims, if you will, or tied to that, that genetic— those genetic markers and even to our family's history, or do we have More control in those matters than we might think we do?

My answer would be yes and yes, which is the great part. So, and this is where I was going to jump in, there's no single point of causation for anything. Everything is subjective in our 3-dimensional world. So if we are living a monk's life and our bodies are pristine vessels and we're also working in an asbestos factory, there is a greater chance that we're going to develop lung cancer, emphysema, or something because of our physical world. So not to downplay any chemicals or any electric power lines, anything like that that is our infrastructure. Of course, it can impact us, but also our genetic history. And this is where we get into genetic mutation and energy transfer and coming at the— and not even the problem, but coming at the equation from a more quantum perspective, which was really for me the key to unlocking or putting everything together from that energetic standpoint.

And do you mean when you say quantum, are you saying molecular? Is that another way to describe what you're saying? At the atomic level, at the smallest measure of something measurable, is that what you mean by that?

Exactly. And so, at that level, there is wave and there is particle, and both are created from energy. And so, the particle in the field is the visible wave moving through the field. It's the visible excitation in the field. And, I really do think a major thing keeping us as a species at the level we're at is our perspective and the degree to which we can't pull out of our micro to the macro. Mm-hmm. So one of the things I have in the book is an analogy looking at it from the perspective of the car and the driver. The reason that we're so embedded with this perspective of having to fight cancer or give up altogether and just say, well, it's genetic, I can't have anything to do with it, is the only issue is a magnitude of scale. Because we're experiencing everything our car is going through as if we're the car. And so, when a check engine light comes on, we're not seeing that, oh, there's a check engine light. I should probably get the car looked at. We're viscerally experiencing the wear and tear on that transmission. Right. The squeaky brakes, the mistimed belts, the broken headlamp, the chips and dings and bumps that we get from all the debris on the road because we're so in our experiences. We're so entangled and enmeshed with our outer world. that not all of us give ourselves that space and purview to pull back and say, okay, how am I in the experience? Who am I in the experience outside of my labels and my identifiers? And that can be a challenging path for a lot of people to walk because it is moving into the unknown. It is moving into that kind of maybe a little bit less clear space of uncertainty because we might not know what we find there or have never given ourselves or been given the space to explore those concepts or ideas. And anything we fear, we're going to really— we're going to clench up on. I heard from an MD, a researcher, that the only 2 natural fears humans have are loud noises and falling. Everything else is created or manufactured within life, within society, within learning other people's fears. If we see a mother, you know, if a young child sees a mother react to a spider or a snake, that's going to give them a program of that thing is dangerous.

Yes.

And so that's the— those are the— then we're looking at kind of the balance or differentiation between nurture and nature.

Talk about uncertainty a little bit more. I'd love to get a sense of how it is that you deal with uncertainty. Is there a way to actually leverage or create power in uncertainty and use uncertainty actually as something that's powerful for us for good?

Yeah, for me, it's always been an accelerator and something that I've Recently, it's been an accelerator, and it's always something that I've toed the line with and not really shied away from. And so, the only 2 things we can ever rely on in life are our breath and change. Our bodies change every 72 hours to 12 years. If you talk about stomach lining regeneration versus bone regeneration, so we're literally physically not in the same vessel that we were 12 years ago. Breath is our constant, and change is the only other thing that we can rely on because there is no stagnation in life. The earth is a dynamic system that we are part of that is always going to find balance and stasis even if it's not a kind or nice or more metaphysical association with balance. Because a narcissist parent and an overly empathetic emotionally abused child, that is a form of balance which then now we're getting into some more challenging areas of thought but if you look at the energy dynamic that's at play in these, you know, maybe abusive or challenging situations, there is balance there. So,

what's like positive and negative poles? Yeah. Magnetism or in electricity. And so, completely, yeah, if we take our judgment of what it means for those things to be happening or for people to be who they are being away, if you take that out of the equation, yes, then you can see how those things might actually be balanced or even harmonious in a strange kind of a way to use that word, but yin and yang is really a symbol for harmony.

Right! It's harmony in the disharmony of the experience. There is harmony in that. Nothing that we're striving for or going towards. But with the uncertainty, a lot of times, again, because our systems are pre-programmed for safety, the only intention that our bodies have is to keep us safe. But so often it keeps us away from Taking a risk maybe on something we're drawn to. I had a really expansive conversation with my dad right after our daughter was born, where I was working in-house in my design career, and I lasted 3 days, I think, in this position. I was almost having a visceral reaction to the job and to the little niche that I was in. Again, to the credit to my wife, Kelly, she did not bat an eye when I was— I was working 2 jobs, so I was leaving this day job that I was starting my burgeoning design career with to go back work in the restaurant. that I was working at because we'd made the decision that we wanted to divide and conquer and not pay one of our salaries to daycare. And so we're committed to having one of us in the home. And I was like, yeah, I'll work. I have no problem. I can grind. Let's go. And the last day I was there, I called Kelly. I was like, I can't do this. And she said, quit. It's not worth it. And so having that support really did help with these concepts of uncertainty. And then I called my dad and I told him what was going on.

And with certainty, When you have support, like the support of your beloved— I know I had the exact same support from Randy. I've spoken extensively about that. People are probably sick of me talking about it, although I get often just wonderful feedback too, just how, you know, honoring and how it's a great model for other men in this instance to hear men speak about their wives in these ways, especially to, you know, point out a really vulnerable moment in your life. Where what you got on the other end was not reminders of all the things you already kind of know, that it might be a little crazy what I'm going through, it doesn't make a lot of sense, you know, it's probably putting us at risk that we don't need to be at, and all that kind of thing. And yet to get just sort of a deep breath on the other end and a, yep, we'll take one step at a time, we'll figure it out as we go, I got your back. I mean, to say that's valuable is a gross understatement.

Oh, it was invaluable. And we laid that groundwork earlier in our relationship where we had those conversations of, where are you with politics? Where are you with religion? Where are you with having kids? And so I think that if we're going way back, that was probably the instigator that created that dynamic between us. And we would do, hey, what's the worst-case scenario? Okay, we lose everything, we're homeless on the street. It doesn't matter. We can do and create anything. And so we've got each other and we've got each other's backs no matter what. And so that was monumental.

Yeah.

And then the bit of contrast, the most brilliant contrast I ever got was from my dad who worked— he's from that generation who was the company man. He worked for 35 years within one company, obviously making different moves within the ranks. But he told me, he's like, I don't know if I can support this. I was miserable my first 5 years at my job. And then he's like, sometimes you just got to put your head down and do it. I'm like, no, you don't. That was your perspective and your perception. And coming into my adulthood in the late '90s, early 2000s, I was already seeing the writing on the wall with potential writings with Social Security, with different things, the changing dynamics in the workforce where we're going from instead of it being supported by 10 to 1, now it's like 2 to 1 as far as the workforce versus a retiree. And doing what I was doing, I was not worried about retirement. I was like, I'm going to design until I'm 90 because I love this and it fulfills me and it feels good. And so those were major components. And then another big one for me with uncertainty was this— it was almost this innate connection that I had before I really deepened and broadened my own connection to myself of being able to feel instead of think about situations or about whatever's going on. And I hadn't tapped into it to the degree of which I am now where it's like, I mean, it's a really fine-tuned mechanism because I've been honing it and practicing it really nonstop for the last 5 years of tapping into that feeling, cultivating the intuition, and really expanding that inner knowing of my own space. So that's kind of my own personal journey. But if we're looking to end around and to create a shortcut to being more comfortable with uncertainty, To me, that's being comfortable in the present moment. And so, how do we get to that point? Well, breathwork, exercise, getting out of our own way, allowing ourselves the space to just be, which is so rare these days. I think in some regards on this specific topic, all of the change and perceived craziness of the last year, 2 years, 3 years, and then let's go all the way back. Let's say last 2,000 years. Yeah. is really predicated on fear and doubt and then messages of shame or looking at things in the world as the other or separate or different. And that's where so much resistance comes in. And that's where so much reliance on things that are perceived as certain are really held on to at all costs because the alternative for so many is, well, what is there? I don't know. And becoming comfortable with the I don't know was another big component for me.

Yeah.

And just really letting it sit, letting it be in the present moment, which is an entire practice in and of itself.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes and it It's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So, go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. It requires a trust.

Yeah.

Tremendous trust, I think. Trust in self, in ourselves, but trust in the scheme, in the organization of the whole as well. Yeah. And I don't mind calling that organization structure or scheme God. I mean, that's the word I use for it, but, you know, that's not everybody's word for it. But something you said at the beginning I think is kind of interesting here too, which is the yes and— this concept of yes and. Because I'm not a stand-up comic. I've had some pretty funny moments on stage, which is always welcome and a pleasure. But, you know, looking back at improvisation as an example of that yes and, that's what If you're a comedian that's done improvisational work before, it's constantly moving a narrative forward. And so it's yes, and, and you just say, oh yeah, well, I ran into my Aunt Tilly on the street the other day and she was wearing a yellow hat. And then it's like I'm passing the baton to you and you go, yeah, and I saw her too.

And then a bird swooped down and picked it up and grabbed it right off of her head. And then, yeah, exactly. Kind of leading. Yeah.

And we keep just the— so the energy of it is constantly moving it forward.

Yeah.

Otherwise it stops and then it's over. The scene is over, you know, it's done. And I think that when it comes to how you are able to leverage uncertainty, in part, it's this improvisation that's required and it's trusting in your ability to simply improvise.

Yeah, and so often again from early on our confidence or the tapping into that ability really in a lot of instances can get undercut, you know, and I had the benefit of— everybody's trauma is subjective and everybody's got their own stuff. Like we said, PTSD, everybody's got it. So not to say that there weren't aspects of that and things that I've moved through that were challenging or difficult or traumatizing. But I did have the support from my parents in the way that I knew in 7th grade I wanted to be a designer and they never hedged against that as far as, well, you sure you don't want to think about a lawyer or doctor or kind of these more professional professions, so to speak. And one, the freedom that that afforded me to not only have the initiation of this is what feeds me, but then also the support to explore that, that was huge. But I wanted to mention, it brought up a thing that a trainer and mentor told me one time, and it was, sometimes we just need to jump and build our wings on the way down, which leads right into that concept of trusting the organization or the architecture, so to speak. And I completely agree. I think the label— anything that we endeavor is trying to explain our place in the universe: science, theology, philosophy, spirituality. And to me, they're all components of the whole. Yes. They all have value and they all have information that we can take and incorporate to kind of see how it does all fit together. But it was really that instigation and then that continuation of moving forward because there is no stagnation in life. We're either moving forward towards things that fulfill us and that enliven us and that make us feel peaceful and joyful, or we are still resonating with our trauma or states of dis-ease or things that have kept us Stagnant or feeling stuck. And that's the big illusion of being stuck. It's not that we're stuck in a place, it's that we've got 2 diametrically opposing energies pulling us in different directions that's keeping us perceptively stagnant.

Yes.

And so really all we need to do is diminish the negative that's perceptively holding us in place, and that's when the acceleration— and that's when the alignment and really embodiment of concepts like Law of Attraction start to gain momentum and speed because there's not the weight or the baggage emotionally or energetically being, you know, tethering it down anymore.

Yeah, that's a great visual right there. I appreciate very much, Kevin, you said that this concept of almost like a tug-of-war that's happening. We remember from when we were kids and you'd be tug-of-warring and then, you know, somebody would say, well, let go of the rope, you know, and then the other side would just fall on their, you know, like everybody falls back.

Yeah.

To kind of— the idea of being able to look at things that you are in fact holding on to and choosing to let go of them might be just the thing that allows that spring action and that momentum that is moving forward to actually happen. You mentioned post-traumatic stress, and I read somewhere some months ago about something else that I think is really at the root of this, which is that our purpose is to grow. That is— I can't think of anything other than— I might say, you know, what's our purpose? What's the combined purpose of all humanity? I might say to love or to be, and that makes sense to me. But I also feel like it's to grow. That— and I say that because if you look at a plant, what's the purpose of a plant? There's several purposes. In fact, they actually serve a purpose for us, you know, as well.

Or the function of the plant. Yeah, it's growth, right?

It's growth. Because if it's not growing, it's the opposite. So it's the tug of war between living and dying. And as long as living, the energy of living and growing is winning out, then that plant continues to thrive.

Right.

And when it doesn't, well, then it wilts and eventually withers and dies. I think it's the exact same thing for us. So we talk about what we use uncertainty for, as you said, being more comfortable in the present moment. is a way to resolve uncertainty for yourself. But it's also, I think, in addition to that, to understand that uncertainty is a— in many ways, a catalyst for growth.

Of course.

That when we're in that status quo, as you were describing earlier, things tend to get stagnant. And stagnation in lots of areas in our physical world, we can see what stagnation leads to. And ultimately, it leads to toxicity, it leads to death. You know, when we stop moving entirely, we're morte. So the anything that would break the status quo, even if what's breaking the status quo is something in the moment that creates fear or uncertainty or we don't like, the bigger picture is that that is a, is a catalyst for our growth. And so instead of post-traumatic stress, We have post-traumatic growth that's possible. And that's where we get into a conversation about resilience, which is a topic that, that we really— it's just on, on our hearts and minds a lot these days. I'd love to get your definition of resilience.

Yeah, so resilience for me would probably be the undying and unyielding belief in self. Because if we have it, if we have and cultivate belief in ourselves and confidence in just being, not necessarily confidence in knowledge or anything we've gained outside of ourselves, but taking that harder path of self-inquiry on the way towards— there's no such thing as perfection, and even I tend to shy away from the term self-mastery, but I think that resilience really is a component of that. journey from self-awareness to self-acceptance, self-appreciation towards self-mastery. Because once we're— and so this is not a lie, but this almost assumption that all of us are born into is that we are less than just by being born into the world, which is a complete fallacy. We are 100% whole and complete and perfect at inception, before conception, and even before birth. Yeah. And we're born into a world of concepts like sin or your parents know best. And I told my daughter this when she was a couple years old. I said, listen, the only thing I have on you is 27 more years on this planet. I can help you change a tire. I can fix stuff around the house. I can change the oil in the car. I can teach you about the structures that exist, but this life is yours to live however you want to do it. You're the captain of your ship. Your mom and I are just going to be acting kind of as admirals in the Navy. Anything you need, we're there. You need support, you need supplies, you need, you know, whatever it is, we got you. But this is your life to expand and explore and enjoy and experience the entire spectrum of from the good, good, good to the bad, bad, bad. And so I think resiliency really is this— it's an internal— it is part of our energetic core because it is that knowing and just the unyielding belief that I am whole, I am complete, I am, I am.

Yes.

And getting past the labels and the fears that are so often predicated on things outside of ourselves. They're either learned or conditioned or programmed within our subconscious. And this is where we get into the challenge of the dance between what I term our bio— our bio machine Which is absolutely everything of our system except for our conscious mind, our prefrontal cortex, and our energetic core. All of our limbic system, our autonomic nervous system, everything is part of the subconscious mind-body, that bio-machine. And operationally, the subconscious can process about 20 million bits per second. And that's a— from what I've seen with recent research, that's even a conservative estimate. Our conscious mind, when we're critically thinking, we're having conscious communication, we're connecting with others, operates at about 40 bits per second. Wow. So right off the bat, we're dealing with a— what is that? A 500,000x disparity between our conscious mind and the system running our lives the majority of the time, which is our subconscious. And so often in relationships and in life, we drop into these patterns that are programmed. And it's not that we aren't all resilient, it's that so many of us are identifying with our states of dis-ease. That it's perceptive to us that resilience isn't attainable or that self-confidence or intuition isn't attainable because we've been conditioned and programmed to always looking outside of ourselves for answers instead of taking that more challenging path of moving through those fears. And they're just veils or real gossamer membranes of energy. But because they've been cultivated and reinforced our entire lives, the more we replay them, They grow into these monsters that we feel like we can never get away from or move past. And like I was saying before with that sprint or the graduate-level course of what my wife and I did for the last 5 years with energy work and moving, you know, clearing out our own junk from our proverbial subconscious trunk, that was really a reconnection with myself and a disassociation in a positive way From the programs and conditioned behaviors that have been running within my system for my entire life pretty much. So in this journey, I came to the realization that one, I'd pretty much been holding my breath for about 30 years where I was finally taking full and expansive breaths and I understood what a full and expansive breath was and felt like. And then moving through these perceptions of, oh, I've got— and for me, the legacy kind of aspects for me were allergies. I was real sickly as a child. I've got food allergies, talking about kind of genetic mutation or predisposition, to the extent where my grandmother would have medicated bandages on because her eczema was so bad, her skin, like her entire skin on her body was erupting. And so, this is where energy comes into play. Even with these genetic mutations and perceived lineage aspects of life that we feel like we can't get away from, There are actually energetic components that will initiate that in one generation. And if nothing is really attending to that energy, it's going to be carried through and it's going to morph and it's going to transform and it's going to then look a different way 2, 3, 4 generations down the path. So for me, we're getting into a little bit of the metaphysical where a lot of the work I did towards the tail end of this boot camp graduate level course was actually ancestral work. And there was a ton for me that was now accessible because I'd been doing the work of clearing my own— this life stuff out of the way. But the indicator that I was getting was my gastrointestinal dis-ease that I'd been experiencing for my whole life was clear and I could feel what feeling, you know, whole and solid within my system felt like outside of— I always used to call it bubble gut where it's just, you know, now it's termed leaky gut, IBS. They've got all these terms for these different aspects and really it's just To your point about— I said the engine light's on but we can't see it, and you said about the expressions of cancer and all these other things, it's literally our system screaming at us that, hey, something's going on in here and there's not good things and there's energy components that aren't working for you.

Right. Pay attention to me.

Right.

And you know, this is kind of a funny moment probably for some folks who have a check engine light on in their car because there are people who can't, you know, will not drive around with a check engine light on. As soon as it comes on, they go and get it checked out. out. And then there are others that will drive around with it on and ignore it. And sometimes even, you know, it's just like not even seeing it. And I think that's the— I think if everybody had that light that was flashing—

Visible, yeah.

It would make it quite easy. You know, there would still be people who would run on empty or, you know, run the car— I still got, you know, 10,000 miles before I have to bring it in, you know, kind of thing, right? But most people would go, yeah, it's time for me to head to the shop.

Right.

So, I think in part, my question to you would be, do you have a way for people to check in in the moment to see whether or not there are check engine lights on or what we like to— I think people call the idiot lights in their car? Right. So, I didn't expect the conversation to go this place, but I'm glad it has because it's a really tangible thing for people to consider, think about. And if you've got any advice, I'd love to have it. Is there a way to check the system for those idiot lights?

Yeah. That's such a great question. Really, where I've come to is I think where many people have come to that are on this self-inquiry, self-mastery journey is, one, there is no end. The analogy I always use is there's climbs and plateaus. Climbs are more challenging aspects, and then plateaus are your, oh, okay, I can see the clear sky type of thing. Really, it's a practice and the angle I've come at it from in the book and there's, I mean, if anybody's interested, it's literally a blueprint for how to do this and lays it all out in detail. But it really starts with giving ourselves, one, reconnecting and figuring out who we are outside of fight, flight, or freeze because we really, in today's society, we always are dealing with low grades of it based on all the inputs we get. From society, from spouses, from family, from everybody. We get dropped into our limbic system way too easily. So instilling a daily practice of awareness is one of the best ways to get started. So for me, that looks like if we're looking for structure, that would be a vigorous diaphragmatic breathing practice in the morning. One of my favorites is Wim Hof.

Yep.

Because when we're breathing, we are one, we're hyperoxygenating our system, we're expelling CO2. And so, we're shifting from more of an acidic to an alkaline environment, which no states of disease or disease can survive in an alkaline environment. So, that would be number one. And incorporating those regularly, it doesn't have to be every day, but if it's not going to be something done every day, compare and contrast the days that we did have a 5 or 10-minute really vigorous diaphragmatic breathing practice and the days that we didn't, and then see the differences.

That's great. Yeah. And another book that I'd recommend to folks to check out would be The Presence Process, which is Michael Brown's book, which has tremendously helpful breathing exercises, among other things. Yeah.

So then the next step in our day is tasking ourselves with the challenge of shortening the duration between having a reaction and recognizing that it was a reaction. So shortening the distance between reaction and recognition. Because we're going to get dropped into reaction in the day. Our systems are predefined and predisposed to it because, again, all it's trying to do is keep us safe. So if we get cut off in traffic, or if we get overcharged at the market, or if we have a boss or a client who is dealing with a fire drill, and they're like, we need this email, we need you to respond to this email 5 minutes ago, everything's falling apart. If we get dropped into reaction, we're literally not in our right mind. where we've defaulted to one of our dominant hemispheres, either analytical or emotional, and we are in a reactive state. So cultivating the awareness practice of having a reaction, feeling the reaction, and then recognizing that was a reaction. So we're shortening the duration. We're not letting ourselves get away with the kind of ego stroking or whatever that comes along with it of, oh, that guy, I can't believe he did that to me, and predicating things that anybody else is doing in the world as anything—

Yeah, just reinforcing the reaction as opposed to being present with, Hey, I guess that just happened.

Exactly.

I guess I just re— I just reacted again as though I'm 17 years old and my, you know, somebody's asking me whether I'm gonna be home, you know, for dinner tonight or whatever.

Right, exactly.

So I think it's really helpful to shorten— thinking of it shortening the distance between your reaction and your recognition, because on some level, to try to Stop yourself from reacting, which I think is the goal that a lot of people have. It's a really tough goal to be successful at.

Right.

But a stop on the way, and a significant stop on the way, is just to see, oh, that just— again, that just happened. I'm witnessing what I just did there. And that may lead to you being able to revisit that reaction with the person or in the situation, might lead to an apology. It might just lead to the idea that next time when I'm faced with something like that, I can take a breath and go, hmm, instead of actually reacting, go, maybe I don't react here. And instead, and then I don't have to feel bad about it afterward.

Exactly. Yeah. And then the evening or end of the day practice would be, so there's a posture, it's called a hookup or a whole brain posture. And this is in Brain Gym activities and it's in a couple of different places. And I learned about it through the modalities that we learned. But it's basically breaking the midline of our body. And so we, just like everything else in our world— and this is where we get into the quantum as well, like the table I'm sitting at, the perceptibly solid piece of wood is not solid at its— if we're talking the molecular structure, there is space and there is energy going on within that. It's latent energy. And then a really great way to be able to express that is if you throw a wood table on a fire, that energy is going to be released in the form of combustion. And so, our systems are the same way and we don't often give ourselves the space to utilize our pressure relief valve which is our emotions. And again, if we look at it from a gender or a sex standpoint, masculine-leaning energy in our world is usually met with, boys don't cry, you suck it up, brush it off. More feminine-leaning energy can be met with, why are you so emotional all the time? And so, none of us in any expression or experience are really given the space to be able to bawl it out or cry it out or burn through and work through emotional stuff. It's just, nope, smush it down, smush it down. And so the challenge is that, and to your point, if there isn't a disruption of the energy, that is going to be the new normal. That's going to be your new stasis. And so this posture is simple. It can be seated or laying down, and it's simply crossing our legs at our ankles, crossing our arms at our wrists, turning our thumbs down. clasping our hands, and then dropping that clasp either into our lap or folding it up and under and holding it against our chest. And I've actually got a PDF about this that I'll share with you, so, so there's some visuals to go along with this.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today.

So, what we're doing is we're physically breaking the midline, the energetic midline of our body, because we, just as the Earth has an electromagnetic field, so does each and every one of us. It's called a torus field, and we've actually got 2. One that is more of a donut shape around the heart and then the bigger one that goes top to bottom out of our crown of our head down to the earth basically. And so, what this posture does is it disrupts whatever state we're in and it actually allows both hemispheres of our brain to come back into being activated so we're not dropped into an overly emotional or an overly analytical response. It enables our prefrontal cortex more space to come back into our conscious or right mind. And, it's really— so, anytime I meditate now, this is the posture I'm in. This is one of the functions that I've experienced last year that's really helped me with my connection and with processing energies has been Epsom salt baths, which I'm not a bath guy. Last bath I took was when I was 5 years old. And, I was resistant to even jump back into it. And, I was having a reassimilation or configuration challenge the day after my enlightenment experience where it was the worst hangover I've ever had. Body aches, base of my neck was— or base of my skull was killing me, head was throbbing. And, for this specific instance, it was because I had just gone through a complete emotional or an energetic expansive overhaul and my system was kind of reconciling that. I got in the Epsom salt bath and it was literally like E.T. at the end of E.T. I became reanimated. I was like, oh, okay, back to what this new normal is. And so, giving ourselves that space at the end of the day with that more, I'd say, a Thai forest meditation where we're kind of doing that Homer Simpson belly, we're not worried about our beach belly, we're giving our diaphragm room to expand, our lungs to expand in our torso, and more of a natural relaxed breathing practice coupled with this whole brain posture is literally going to separate us from our resistance or our reactions to the day. And it's going to bring us back into our conscious mind. And with relationships, with everything like that, so often we get triggered and drop right back into these reactive states. And this is the cause of so much dis-ease across the board in our world.

Yes.

So the daily practice, if we're starting on this journey, these 3 components: breathwork in the morning, mindfulness awareness of reaction and recognition during the day, and then giving ourselves the space to disconnect from those experiences, bringing our whole system back online is probably— and again, it is a practice. This is not one and done. There's no such thing as a silver bullet.

No, these are rituals and you have to, in many ways, ritualize to habitualize. It starts with making a conscious choice to do some of these things. I want to say as we're wrapping up that the show notes will contain links to where you can all find the book. Obviously, you can go on Amazon as well, but Radical Enlightenment: My Guy on the 9th Floor by Kevin Russell. I think this is a must-read, especially, you know, folks, if you really enjoyed the conversation and want more. And I, I'm already intuiting, I guess, that people are going to want to know more about some of these exercises and rituals. All that's in the book, so the show notes will have links for that. If you know someone that would really benefit from what this conversation has brought to the surface and people that you think would just be interested in diving into this a little bit more, feel free to share this episode with someone else. We'd love to get your comments as well. You can go to adammarkel.com/podcast to leave a comment for myself. And for Kevin. And Kevin, I just want to say what a pleasure, what a joy really to have you on the show this morning and to have this conversation. Thank you.

That's just— I'm just going to hold that mirror right back up because I— right back at you. It's been an absolute pleasure. And yeah, I look forward to connecting further in the future. Absolutely.

Kevin, my question to you, last question is, do you love your life?

Exponentially. And not just my life, just life. My life— and it's funny, I wrote the book and I was like, oh, okay, I've done the thing and, whew, all right, dust off my hands, that job's done. And then it's getting dropped right back into the reality as you outlined of, oh no, you need to get editing and figure out publishing and all the terrestrial things in order to birth it. And so it's still living life, it's still being in the experience and the expanding expansive spectrum of things that we can experience but That centered presence, that is the wellspring of life. And that's where I'm enjoying being, and I'm more attuned with returning to more frequently when I get knocked off my game and get dropped back into reactions.

Beautiful, beautiful, buddy. It's beautiful in so many ways. I just think of that tug of war, that analogy, the picture you painted for us earlier between growth and stasis and status quo. And so even in the instance of your book and any other thing, just because we have something accomplish something or attain some goal, et cetera. It doesn't mean that the growth and this tug, this tension between the status quo, things staying the same, and growth, which is the way of the universe— change, as you said, the great constant. It's kind of a paradox in and of itself that change is a constant. But that tension between our sort of instinct to want to stay the same and the universe's full-on intention and purpose for us, which is to grow, is something that isn't put on hold. We can't hit the hold or the pause button on gravity any more than we can hit the pause button on growth. So, these strategies that you've shared with us, I think, are really phenomenal. And, I'm looking forward to people not only enjoying the conversation but also getting out there and discovering your book. So again, Kevin, thanks so much. Everybody out there, I hope you do in fact love your life. And that you love it just a little bit more, perhaps, because of what insights you were able to get today from our amazing guests. Thank you again. We'll see you soon.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof.