Self-Talk: 6 Ways to Overcome Negative Thinking and Succeed with Peter Ruppert

Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910.

Good day, good day, good day everyone, and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio. And of course, yes, I am Bernadette Boas. I am so excited excited that you're here because what better way to kick off the new year— because we are still in January, at least for a few more days— than to really have a discussion about kind of what goes on between your two ears and what is that self-talk that is either propelling you forward or it's holding you back. And so our guest today is going to give us 6 ways to overcome that negative self-talk and that negative thinking. But before we get there, I want to thank all of our new listeners and viewers, those that are following us and finding us on BlogTalkRadio, on iTunes, on Stitcher, or any of your streaming services, as well as on our YouTube channel, Shedding the Bitch TV. And you might even be watching it livestreamed on Shedding the Bitch Facebook page. I am just grateful that you're here, and we would love your comments, your likes, your follows, your subscribes. Subscribes, your ratings, and any feedback that you might have about what are the topics that are really top of mind to you. And do you have favorite guests, um, favorite podcasters, favorite authors, favorite speakers that you would love to learn more from? All right. So, uh, then I also want to thank our, uh, current and longtime listeners and viewers because it's you that's also helping to get the new eyes and ears onto the program because of your likes follows, shares, subscriptions to our channels, so forth and so on. So please continue to do that. Facebook Shedding the Bitch page. On BlogTalkRadio, you just look for Shedding the Bitch Radio on iTunes, Stitcher, and anywhere you get your podcast. And of course on Shedding the Bitch TV on YouTube. All right, thank you so much. And I'd love to thank North Georgia Tax Solutions. Debbie Smelling and her team, um, are, uh, full-service financial and tax services, and she services small to corporate-sized clients all over the country, not just here in Georgia. So please reach out to her at ngtaxsolutions.com. Tell her I said hi and, um, that you heard about, heard about her and her team right here on Shedding the Bitch Radio. All right, let's get into this and let's welcome our smiley guest that has been there patiently waiting. Okay, so we're going to talk about Six Ways to Overcome Negative Thinking and Truly Succeed. It's the idea about the power of self-talk. It's a powerful tool for freeing ourselves from a trap of negativity, overcoming fears and self-doubts, and achieving your goals. So this is his big idea, our guest Peter Rupert. This is big idea. Our ability to stretch towards success is tied to how we think, but we have a choice. In how we shape that thinking. If we let ourselves view every bad experience as proof we're not meant to succeed, we limit ourselves from taking key risks. Who can raise your hand to that? But we can reframe our perception, see failure as opportunity, and accomplish far greater things than we've ever thought of. Now, in his new book, Unlimited, I'm sorry, in his new book Limitless: 9 Steps to Launch Your One Extraordinary Life, Author and education entrepreneur Peter Rupert reveals the hurdles we place in front of ourselves and shows how to overcome each one. He weaves in stories from his own life and career, and it's a journey marked by his discovery in the power of self-belief. This is what I want you to be listening for, everyone, uh, and then I'll give you your rich question and explain that in a second. I want you to be thinking about, and you're going to be taking away How to practice a positive mindset until it becomes an empowering habit. Why journaling— give it up for journaling— is such a powerful tool for transforming our self-awareness. And how to develop the skill of reframing and use it to push past self-doubt. All right, I want to introduce you to Peter. Peter Rupert is founder and CEO of iEducation Group, which operates over 75 Fusion and Futures academies for grades 6 through 12 in one student, one teacher classroom environments. A 21-year veteran of our education industry, he's opened up over 100 schools and acquired more than 25 others. When does he sleep, you ask? He's been president and CEO of organizations in the private school, charter schools, and early education industries and sat on— sorry. And sat on his local public school board for 5 years. He lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His new book is Limitless: 9 Steps to Launch Your One Extraordinary Life. And you can learn more about Peter and his books and his work at peterruppert.com, and that's R-U-P-P-E-R-T dot com. How are you, Peter?

Great, Bernadette, how are you?

I'm very good, thank you, thank you, thank you. Now, Peter, I introduce a rich question. For our audience because they might have come on to the program and they're just, you know, they're like, well, you know, I don't have negative self-talk, or I know what I need to do there. And I want them grounded in, in our conversation so they then intentionally listen for things that might be affecting them. All right, so everyone's rich question for today is, what negative self-talk— and trust me, we all have it— but what negative self-talk, scribble it down, put it in your head right now, hold you back, is preventing you from living one extraordinary life, as Peter mentioned. All right, so ground yourself in that, and we're going to get into, into this conversation. So Peter, based on your, your, uh, you know, renowned background in education, I'd like to go back a little bit with a little backstory for, uh, to ask you kind of how did your experience in education and working with 6 to 12 grades, and in this environment, I love it, one-on-one, beautiful, but what did that experience teach you or reveal to you to where then you were provoked to write this book and do the work that you do?

Great question, Bernadette, and before I answer that, let me just make a quick clarification on our website. My website is PeteRupert.com.

My apologies.

That's okay.

My apologies, my apologies.

No worries. Peter Rupert was taken, so I am PeteRupert.com.

Oh yeah, okay, because the R in Rupert, it looks— okay, got it.

Yes, exactly.

So okay, PeteRupert.com. PeteRupert.com. Excellent, excellent.

But yeah, anyway, uh, to answer your question, you know, I've been in the education industry for, gosh, over 21 years, 20, but probably 22 or 23 now, and I've had the experience of really watching students, and while I'm not an educator by training, I grew up in business and I got into the business side of education. But in visiting schools after schools and hearing about students' stories, you realize about— you realize how important self-belief is to a kid and to their future. And as we all know as adults, it's also extremely important to us throughout our life. At that young age, and so many kids battle a lot of challenges. The difficult years, especially in middle and high school, where people are bullied or made fun of or told they're not any good or come from challenging situations that are— that can tear them down. And most people were able to recover from that, but many people, it scars them for life, and it carries into adulthood and really hinders them when it comes time to pursue their dreams and whatever it is that they want to do with their life. And so, um, that experience along with my own experience and some of the trials and tribulations I went through in my early years in my 20s and early 30s, um, it forced me to really start to study what is it that successful people do. And so as I analyzed and studied successful people, I learned so much and I started to see these common themes that show up. And that's ultimately what's led to this book.

Nice.

I use these secrets that I gathered, these what seem like universal secrets in so many of these amazingly successful people from all walks of life, created a cheat sheet for myself to inspire me on a daily basis. And then ultimately, as I shared it with others and shared it with people in my organization, people said, you've just got to turn this into a book. And so that's what led to what is now Limitless.

Great.

And the 9 steps we have there.

Right, that's awesome. Now let me ask you, just so we can make sure everyone's really kind of bringing the truth to the surface, I always say truth sits on the surface, can you give us an example from your backstory and from your experience, like you said, in your 20s and 30s where your negative self-talk, and what was that negative self-talk, and what was the impact it had on you?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know that when I was— shortly after I graduated from business school, I was working for a consulting firm, and my boss there came to me and said, hey, we can go off and break out on our own and create our own consulting firm. We can do this better and be more successful, etc. And so I was such— I had such this desire to become an entrepreneur that I jumped at it. And I was naive and really didn't know what I was doing, but I jumped at the opportunity. And we, then we had some success and we built a consulting practice. We ended up opening offices in 3 or 4 cities around the country and had grown, added clients and things, but never really made any money. Any extra dollars we had, we put back into the business. And ultimately our client flow dried up. We lost several clients, seemingly all at the same time. Our new client flow wasn't coming together, and all of a sudden we ran out of money. Uh, we had never prepared for the rainy day, and so we had to close the business down. And so I'm 33 years old at the time. We were expecting— my wife and I were expecting our first child.

Oh wow.

It was like, oh my gosh, here I was. I'm this business school grad who supposedly had this bright future, and in 5 years after I graduated from business school, I'm out of a job. I've already lost a business and many of my other friends who peers from business school, etc., were just starting to accelerate in their career path. And so there's a lot of self-talk and self-doubt in my mind that says, oh my gosh, well, you're not anything like them and you're a failure and you just have to go get a job and just be happy with being employed. And it took a lot of self-talk to myself and that was a lot of time when I was studying other successful people and I realized how prevalent failure is for so many successful people. One of my big learnings in my research was today we see successful people and we look at them at the end of their journey and we see them up on a pedestal and we say, oh my gosh, well, that person had all the luck and, and never really had any trials and tribulations and it was just a straight line to success. We just make this assumption, but then when you really read about their biographies or hear more details, you hear about how many, how many of them had so many failures and obstacles along the way.

Yep.

So that really inspired me to say, hey, this failure of my business didn't have to define me. At 33, I didn't have to go into a shell and just say, okay, well, now you're just gonna be some employed guy and hopefully have a nice job and be able to support your family.

Right.

More to your future. And so being able to break out of that negative self-talk was really, really important.

Well, I wanna touch on too the fact that, you know, you explained how people think successful people, it's just a straight line. They had all this luck and all this opportunity. And it's funny because I'll often see— you'll see successful people and/or even like in the entertainment industry, and people will be like, oh, they're an overnight success. And so, you know, somebody will say to them, oh, so you're an overnight success. And they're like, well, it's, you know, living in my car for 5 years and like eating ramen noodles for 12 years, you know. And selling everything that I had and losing a home means that I'm an overnight success. And it's true, we just don't look behind the curtain, so to speak, to realize that we all travel a very similar path, right? Wouldn't you say?

Absolutely. And that's what I think this— I hope this book brings to life is that, gosh, failures and trials and challenges is so indicative in all of our lives. Everyone goes through them. It's just how we respond to them.

Yes.

Train our mind. The first chapter of the book, as you saw, Bernadette, is win the battle in your head. So for me, if we can't win that battle, because we all have this negative and positive self-talk, if we can't win that battle, everything else doesn't really mean anything, the other steps in the book. So I spend a lot of time on understanding what positivity is all about and training yourself to be able to speak positively to yourself and let that voice win much more often than the negative voice does.

Absolutely. Now, would you, would you say that, um, because we're— our society, um, is so focused on someone, you know, getting the perfect education and, and building that perfect resume and, and getting to that perfect, you know, type of company and position and whatever the case might be. And yet even when they do, they still don't get success. Like even your story that you were mentioning, they still don't get the success because what they didn't do is spend a great deal of time working on the mindset. They're, they're, they're always honing their skill set, but they're not focused on working on the mindset. Would you agree with that?

I would agree with that. And I, I think sometimes people can be successful and never really believe, never really have any self-satisfaction because they've kind of followed this pattern of the least risky alternative. And many of them have become successful in their own right financially or whatever. They have a career that helps pay the bills and raise their family, but it's never really what they wanted to do. And I know a lot of people who are my age who regret that they never took a chance, that they never took a risk. And while they've been successful on paper, never felt like they really were able to pursue their dreams and instead just kind of settled for, hey, this is good enough. And then you look back and say, you know, I've worked for 40 years and I'm not really— I've never really been happy in what I've done.

Yeah, because they never really— again, truth comes to the surface— they never really owned their dreams. They've never declared— I always say declare, own, and achieve your goals and your dreams. I think that's fascinating because, you know, and it's sad also that we get to our 40s, 50s, and 60s and realize that, oh my gosh, I went after something totally, you know, not aligned to who I am and what I truly want. So I, as I was doing research for today's discussion, there is a lot of books around negative self-talk. All you have to do is Google that, or even 6— I put in 6 ways to you know, overcome, you know, negative self-talk. So what makes your book Limitless— what makes your book different and unique and more powerful than the other books that are out there?

Thanks, Bernadette, and you're absolutely right. And that was one of the reasons I hesitated, um, in writing the book initially, right? Because I had self-talk there too. Who am I to write a book, right? I've never authored a book. And so you have to win all those things ahead of time that say, okay, your message is good and it'll resonate and But what I really tried to do, and I think what's unique about my book, is one, it's 150 pages, so I wanted to be short, to the point, and impactful. Two, I wanted to give the reader access to dig deeper and, and provide a lot of other resources. So at the end of each chapter, there's a— there's a section called Dig Deeper. And so in that, for around that chapter lesson, there's podcasts and books and, and articles and videos and things like that that people can go watch or read and learn more about from the real experts, right? Well, and then behind that, at the very end of each chapter, is a little workbook kind of piece so people can actually scratch down their ideas with this whole idea of building a plan for their future. So when they finish, they can do that. So it allows a person to quickly read it, come back to it time and time again to find other resources if they really want to master a topic or dig deeper, like I mentioned, and be something that they can turn to time and time again. And even our website, for instance, we have this life plan form that I put in the book, but I put it on my website as well at PeteRupert.com, where they can each year go and download that and rewrite their plan and adjust their plans that they're constantly thinking about where they want their life to go, and they're creating those goals accordingly.

Right. And I think that's all— and you can tell you're an educator. No, which is awesome, because I definitely, you know, I, you know, it's like, it's not woo-woo, it's a how-to. And, you know, I think it's just critical for people not only to read stuff, you know, that's why bookstores are packed with books, because people just read stuff and they don't— they're not applying it. You know, to where then they're actually making changes and making shifts in their life, you know, based on what they're learning. So that is a beautiful— that is just— well, it's a beautiful but powerful format because it allows someone to take what it is that they're reading and apply it immediately to their lives.

Yeah, well, thank you. And you're right, there's a lot of those kind of books out there, and a lot of them are 300 and 400 pages. That was not my interest. I wanted to provide something that's practical and hard. And it's just like when we, you know, one of the things that I learned along the way is that if you want to achieve something, you better write it down. I tell my kids down to this day, every year I make them set their own goals. And I just learned in my late 20s, early 30s, that the power of achieving a vision is writing it down. And whatever reason, your brain goes to work subconsciously toward those goals once you write those down. That's kind of the step of committing to something. So that process of constantly revisiting, writing things down, helps move your body physically and subconsciously toward that goal.

Love it, love it. Well, and that brings me to my question, because I loved when I read that you were into journaling, like, you know, it's part of the process, writing it down and journaling. So what is journaling? What do you tell your students? What do you tell, you know, others in regards to how to leverage journaling, what that really is, because people are like, oh, do you have a diary? I'm like, you know, so what's your, what's your take on journaling?

Yeah, and I'm not a diary writer at all either, never have been. And, you know, my big focus on journaling is in those last minutes before you shut your eyes and you dream and you, and you, and you refresh for the next I think it is great, and this ties into that win the battle in your head, that positive mindset, that we, we take a few minutes, we open our journal, and we just write 3 victories from the day. What are, what are 3 things that went well that we feel good about? So our last, before we turn off that light, our last thought are the 3 things that went well, right? It could be 4, could be 2, whatever it is, but it is the idea of getting that habit of writing and realizing that even when we're going through tough times, there are victories we have every day. But we have to remind ourselves of that, or otherwise we get sucked into this negativity. And for people who are trying to break away from that, that habit of writing 3 successes that happened that day, even if they're small ones, is great to build on. And then as you go through a year, you look back and you have 1,000 victories that you've captured. Over the course of that year and it just kind of reminds you of, you know what, even during tough times there's a lot of really good things going on in my life and helps us feel better about things and help us build our self-esteem, if you will. That's what self-esteem is built on. It's not somebody telling you you're good, it's about you, you convince yourself you have abilities to do things.

Ah, I love that. I love it, love it, love it. So what would you say you know, from everything that you've included in your book and actually in your studies and in the work that you do, what would you say is the most important step one should take when it comes to getting over their negative self-talk?

Well, there's— in the article I think that you read, I talk about the 6 steps of Building toward a positive mindset. But as I think about what are the most important things is, one, I think the most important step is to realize that we all have a negative voice and a positive voice that speak to us constantly. And two, that it's not just us, but even the most successful people have a negative voice and a positive voice. And, you know, even so, people, I think too often we live this life and we think, oh my gosh, I'm no good. I can't do this, don't take a risk, no way you can be successful at that. So we convince ourselves that we're not capable of doing something, and it's important for us to realize that even those amazingly successful people we see on TV or whatever have those same self-doubts even now when they're on the red carpet or when they're accepting those big awards. Those people have the same kind of negativity in their minds, and they just found a way to win. And so, you know, following that, it's that idea of creating that mindset that says, okay, there may be a lot of negative things in my life and in my mind right now, but I know because millions of people have done this before me, I can turn it around and I can reframe that into positivity. And then you use things like ending your days with writing down your daily victories and some of the other things I talked about that help you get back on track.

Nice, nice. Well, and I think, um, you, you talk a great deal about failure, uh, and in, in, in a way of where failure is such a critical, critical part of just our journey. So you can— can you help describe how failure is so important to success, to the point where, to the point where we have to be okay with it? We have to be almost like befriended. We have to kind of like wrap our arms around it and actually look for it. I think that goes back to, you know, in your introduction you talked about ensuring that you're able to overcome failure or at least embrace it so you can take big risks so you can succeed.

Yeah, failure is just so critically important. And I think as a society, unfortunately, we put too much negativity around failure, right? Oh my gosh, I can't take this because if I fail that means I'm a loser and I'm not any good. And again, when you study successful people, you hear about the many failures that they've had. And for me, and I think for all the listeners out there, is that when you fail, it means that you're pushing your capabilities. And in order to push your capability, in order to achieve your dreams, you have to push your capabilities a little bit, which means you step outside your comfort zone. And when you— sometimes when we step out step outside our comfort zone, we fall in it, right? But many times we step outside of our comfort zone, we are able to be successful. And when we fail, as we all know, that's the greatest learning that we have, more so than anything else. And so if we're pushing ourselves, we're going to fail a little bit because that's just a natural part of learning. It's like when the child's learning how to walk, right? If they just gave up the first time they tried to walk and fell, well, they never learned, they never walk. It's kind of like that, right?

Great analogy.

We're starting out as infants. So, you know, I think that's just so, so critically important in that if someone's going through life and never failing, then that's a sign that they've never really, really pushed their capabilities and they're not really touching their true potential.

Yeah. You know, what— how would you describe the person And this is going to get a little, I think, a little touchy-feely, maybe not. But how do you, you know, what would you say or how would you describe that person if they were standing in front of you, of those people that are scared to fail and that they, you know, are just kind of constantly holding themselves back from achieving?

Well, you know, Carol, I'm a big fan of Carol Dweck and I talk about her in the book, in her book about mindset, and she talks about a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. And the fixed mindset is the person who believes that your capabilities and your skills are kind of fixed and that you can't necessarily grow those or improve upon those.

Yeah, true.

Those people are going to be people who play it safe. And, you know, I think a lot of these people who play it safe, even if they're quote unquote successful in some form or fashion, end up in their career later, late in their careers or late in their lives saying, I wish I had done this or I wish I had done that. And I, as I speak to young people, I just, I make that, I really emphasize that idea of don't be 55 or 60 or 65 and say, I wish I could have done this or I wish I would have done that. And don't look back regretting what you didn't do.

Right.

In the name of playing it safe or not failing. 'Cause at the end of the day, like I said, we're not growing if we're not pushing ourselves a little bit.

Absolutely, absolutely. So who out there, who's playing it safe, who's playing it comfortable, who's playing it, you know, that you've had success and yet at the same time you might not know that success that really kind of pushes you and puts you out there. Really think about it because, You know, you don't want— I'm about to turn 59, uh, in a couple of days. You don't want to be sitting there at, you know, 59, 50, you know, 75, even at 35 or 40, and be like, I'm not living, you know, my optimal life. I'm not living that, that one optimal life. Um, so could you give us an idea of the, you know, the 9-way— 9 steps to launch your One Extraordinary Life. Could you give us, you know, kind of some tastes around what your recommendations are for doing that?

Sure, yeah, and the first one, like we talked about earlier, was that winning the battle in the head. A couple of the other ones that are really important are to really— I call it a chapter that I call Dream Big and Then Make It Bigger. Often, even when we think about what we'd love to do, we limit our potential because we just don't think about how big we could actually make something or do something. I really encourage people to write out what you want to do and then make it even bigger. Think about what if it really went great, what would it be? What would your life look like? Then I tie that into writing it down like I mentioned earlier, that power of writing a vision statement. Being as descriptive as you can. Think out 5 years, 20 years, 25 years, whatever it is. Pick that time frame and write that, almost that news article about yourself, about what you've done, what you've achieved, beauty of your family, the balance in your life, the morals you stand for, all those things. And by writing it down, again, we start to convince our mind that it's already happening and somehow I'm not a brain expert, but subconsciously the mind just helps the body work towards that. And so that idea of really dreaming big and making it bigger and writing it down is important. Another real chapter in here is about finding a champion. It's tough to go pursue your dreams and to achieve that one extraordinary life if you're doing it on your own. All of us need champions, and so I talk about how mentors have really been an important part of my life. And some mentors can be people who are older, more senior, who've kind of carved that path, and you reach out to them and ask for their advice and counsel, and they provide a ton of wisdom. Other mentors can be a peer group that have similar goals and dreams and aren't, aren't willing to settle for, uh, good enough. That frankly sometimes means you have to break away from the peer group that you're currently with. I've read a— I think you've probably seen this too, but you read this periodically that we're the average of the 10 people we spend the most time with. And so if you want to achieve dreams or do things extraordinary in your life, hang out with other people who have those same kind of dreams, even though they may not be specifically what you're doing, but they have that same kind of mindset of making the most out of their life. And so finding that champion, that mentor, is another really important part of this.

Do you give recommendations to even young people as far as how they go about that? Because I get that question a lot. You know, I get that question a lot. So what do you recommend when it comes to, especially if they're young, you know, and even though we speak to kind of adults on this show, those adults have children. So, you know, what do you recommend to those children and/or their parents as far as what they should be looking for, other than the fact that maybe they have the same mindset and they're going or are where they want to be? But how, you know, then all of a sudden, how do you actually put that to action?

Yeah, great question. And I think if you— let's take, for example, a recent college grad, right? I would think about looking for champions in a couple ways. Some person, some individual who might be 3 or 4 years older that the person knows loosely but not very well, but you see that person is starting to live the life that you'd like to have down the road. Great person to reach out to and say, "Hey, I'm just getting started. Can we sit down? I'd love to learn more about your career or what you're doing and get your advice on how I can emulate some of the amazing things that you're already doing at a very young age. So that would be one. And another one would be, uh, if it's a career track or what have you that you're passionate about, that you have a lot of interest in, that you reach out to someone who might be 10 or 15 or 20 years older and say, hey, I've admired you from afar. You don't even know me, but it could be just a letter or a handwritten letter is always so powerful if you track down their address, or an email, or connection on LinkedIn. And what I found is most people are afraid to ask.

Yeah.

So we say, oh, why don't— why don't I have any mentors or champions? Well, I've never asked anybody. And I just know from my own personal experience that when I ask people, they always seem to volunteer. People who have been successful want to give back. Nothing like a young person, or even an adult, who wants to get better, reaching out to somebody and say, can you help? Now occasionally somebody will say no because they're too busy or what have you, but that's okay. It's just enough. Just move on to the next person. But if we don't ask, if we don't write that letter, if we don't connect on LinkedIn, or if we don't do this, make that first step, nothing ever happens. And so we can just sit and feel sorry for ourselves that we don't have any mentors or champions, but they're certainly out there.

Absolutely. Ah, I'm so glad you got there because that's— that is so critical. 'Cause adults, even, you know, very mature, seasoned individual, maybe not seasoned as much as— and they don't ask. They don't ask. Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree with that. All right, so we touched on dreaming big and your personal visions and your journey. And we're talking journaling and we're talking about how all of that, writing your victories down, can help you overcome your negative self-talk.

What—

well, one, I guess I would say, do you espouse to your students and to others, like affirmations, mantras, anything to where, you know, recordings, you know, are there certain tools that someone could use that— and I absolutely love the idea of your book being so interactive to where they could be working at the end of each book, gaining new resources to reach out to or to acquire, and then to do some, some, some work regarding the subject that you're teaching. But what do you— what's your thought on kind of affirmations, mantras, that kind of thing?

It's so important. And here's what, what I've done forever is when I created my first vision statement and wrote it out like that news article I talked about, and it really talked about here's where I want to be in 15 years. I put it on my bedroom, my bed, excuse me, my bedroom closet wall, right where I get dressed every day. And so for years it sat there and I looked at it every day and I read it and it constantly reminded me. And that's that affirmation because you're talking about what your finished state's going to look like. And even though you're not even close when you first write that down, By reading that every day, you're again driving into your mind that subconsciously your mind's going to help you move towards that. So yeah, that's one way to do it. I know other people have created vision boards and put that in their closet or in their bathroom mirrors or whatever.

Right behind me, right behind me.

I see it. Yeah, I love it. That's great. That's exactly right. And then, and some people like the affirmations, and it's easier for a person to say, hey, every morning I'm going to have these 3 affirmations. Kind of ties nicely into journaling, writing your victories at the end of the day, start every day with the affirmations about yourself. I'm a huge fan of that because that repetition is what makes it into a habit, right? And when you're talking, talking positively about yourself, when you're constantly thinking about, okay, what's the future state of who I am as a being out 5 years, 20 years, whatever it is, then you're constantly reminding of where you're going and that helps you avoid some of the temptations and some of the downfalls today as you move toward where you want to be in the future.

Right. I know earlier you said, um, you said like you're not a brain guy, but, um, and I want to mention that, uh, your brain— I just actually, I just learned this recently, um, because I'm not a brain person either, though I'm right up your alley with all everything that you're talking about. But I did just learn your brain doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. And that's why, that's why to everything that you're talking about, about speaking to yourself and envisioning yourself in the state that you, you know, in the future vision that you wanna be, your brain knows no difference between you making that up and you actually living that experience. And therefore, that's why it's so powerful that visioning, visualization, is, you know, works because your brain knows no different between you making that up and reality. So if you're constantly telling yourself this imagination, this vision, the brain's going to start working toward it. Yeah, love that.

I never heard it put that way, but that's exactly—

I had never either. I had never either. I thought it was absolutely like fabulous. The fact— yeah, yeah. And, and a great— just so you could share it with your students if you want, A great analogy, not an analogy, but a study that Harvard did that this gentleman told me about was the fact that they brought pianists, famous pianists into a room and they studied their, they scanned their brain while they were playing the piano and they watched what segments of the brain got stimulated because of their playing and because they're musicians. And then they had a group of pianists come in and pretend, close their eyes and imagine them playing the piano, just visualizing that they're playing the piano, and the same exact parts of the brain were stimulated. So that's my, that's my little teaching for today, even though this is about you, but I think it's just a great example you might be able to use along with that imagination and reality are the same. Anyway, All right, so, um, so share, you know, share with us, um, I, you know, kind of how can people reach out to you? How can people get your book? Um, you know, what, what do they need to know about Pete Rupert at peteerupert.com? Uh, but what would they want to know?

Well, I think if anyone's interested in learning more about me, you can go to, like you said, peteerupert.com. There's more information about my background and information about the book. There's actually a link to actually buy the book that'll take you right to Amazon, but you can find— if you just also, if you go to Amazon, you can find the book under Limitless Pete Rupert or Peter Rupert, either one works. And barnesandnoble.com also sells it as well. So, but if you just go to my website, you can click on a link, it'll take you right there, and you can just order it. One of the nice things about this is all the proceeds, all the net proceeds we're able to generate from sales of the book are going to go to our Fusion Scholarship Foundation, which is to help families who otherwise can't afford our private school tuition be able to pay for scholarships for them. There's a nice benefit to it as well that people are giving back by helping themselves by buying the book.

That's Fabulous. That is fabulous. So, okay, so is there anything more to talk to about the foundation, about that scholarship, anything that people should know about? Because that's fabulous.

Well, you know, as you can imagine, our schools, when every class is taught one teacher, one student, they're very expensive private schools. And, and so we're working with families who can afford to write those checks, but we try as best we can to ensure, uh, other— some families who can't afford can who can attend through a scholarship program. And so this foundation was recently launched by some of our parents who attended the school and said, hey, we'd love to give back. And so they helped kind of create this foundation that allows us to raise money. And many of the families who come to us are very wealthy. And so they're happy to give back because we had such a big impact on their child. They want to give back, and that helps us be able to provide scholarships for other people. So it's just something that we started a few years ago. We're just trying to get our sea legs going, but I'm really— through sales of this book, we'll be able to provide a little bit of donation every time we were able to sell a book.

That's awesome. Okay, everybody, come on. The book is fabulous anyway, and it's very different and unique from any other book around negative self-talk and everything else that you need to do to be a very successful successful individual. So please, please, please check it out, PeteRupert.com. Let's see, Twitter, you're on Twitter?

I am, yep, and LinkedIn. And if people want to message me on my website, there's a way you can just send me an email and I'm happy to respond to any of those emails and communicate with folks in any way I can.

Awesome, awesome. And if they, because you know this is global, So if they wanted to be kind of insert themselves into your foundation, is that— can they learn more at Pete Rupert or, or at Fusion Education Group?

Or yes, if they go to fusionacademy.com, in there there's a menu item under the Fusion Scholarship Foundation, and you can find that and learn more about the foundation. There's actually a donate button if someone may wanted to make a direct donation there as well.

Very nice, very nice. All right, so any one last big tip or big piece of advice for individuals, especially as we go back to the grounding question around negative self-talk and actually living, living their extraordinary life?

Well, I guess Bernadette, I would finish by saying The 3 things that I see most often that hold people back. One is the negative self-talk, right? They don't believe in themselves and they don't find a process to really turn that around so they have positivity in their lives and in their mind. Secondly, they're afraid to dream big and they're afraid to write that down with specificity, so it just bounces around in their head until the next idea comes, and so nothing ever materializes. And then thirdly, The last piece that we didn't talk about today was just that willingness to take that first step. It's that all-important first step because people have dreams bouncing around their heads forever and they say, "I'm going to do this," or "I'm going to do that," and we all know those people, but they never do it because they're afraid to take that first step. What I found is that first step, as small as it may be, is the one that unleashes all the energy and potential around it. And so if you find a way to win positivity with positivity in your mind and you write your big dreams down and then you take those first steps toward those dreams, you're gonna be well on your way and certainly far beyond 95% of America or the world.

Yeah, well, let's make sure we touch on that because that is what puts everything into motion, right? And puts that action out there and creates that energy for the universe. So someone sitting here listening doesn't mean they don't even have to be a student. They could be a 55-year-old and they're just kind of like squirming because they do want to do something, but they just haven't done it. What would you recommend them to do for that first step? And, and how do they just kind of, kind of convince themselves to go and do it?

Well, the good news is that with my book, I think there's a platform to take them through it. So the first step I would do is order the book. Right. But for people who don't want to order the book, I would say take the time, sit down with a piece of paper and a pen, or an old-school way, or get ready with your computer and scratch out what you want your life to look like in 25 years, or pick your time frame, 15 years, whatever the thing is, and just be as descriptive as possible about, you know, what does your career look like, what does your family situation look like, What are the, what are the character and values you stand for and exemplify? How are you giving back to the community? And we start to kind of create this life story well before our life story is even finished, and we have now started that process. And then you have to break those down in the shorter-term goals too. So every year I write my own, I write annual goals, and every quarter I write sub-quarter goals, and I have my kids write annual goals down as well, and so I've kind of forced that habit upon them, but I just really believe that you break down big, big items into smaller manageable steps.

Yep.

And it makes it easy for that first step, that all-important first step to get going. But if you did nothing else but write out these goals, that's an amazing first step that again puts you well beyond the vast majority of people in the world.

Yeah, amen, brother. You know, amen. That is awesome. That is awesome. And I remind— want to remind everybody, Limitless: 9 Steps to Launch Your Extraordinary Life. And you can get that at peteerupert.com, or you can get that at Amazon, Barnes Noble. You— all you have to do is Google it and you'll find it. And to his point, One, it's an extraordinary tool to find your extraordinary life, but at the same time, it does give some— the proceeds of it does go to a great cause. So look into all of that at PeteRupert.com. Pete, this has been fabulous. Thank you so much. What a great way to kick off the week.

Thank you, Bernadette. Really, really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on, and congrats to your limitless success too.

Oh, thank you. That's Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. And for everybody, please, PeteRubert.com. Look for his book Limitless: 9 Steps to Launch Your One Extraordinary Life. And next week is our Ask Me Anything episode, everybody. So post those stories, questions, and challenges out on our Facebook page or our Twitter page for Shedding the Bitch, and I will be sure to answer them immediately and provide you tips and advice. And then we bring them right here onto our first Tuesday episode of Shedding the Bitch Radio, and we dig down into them even further, and you have an opportunity to join me and have a conversation with us. So again, Shedding the Bitch, Ask Me Anything, next Tuesday, noon Eastern time. Be there, and I'll look forward to having us— having everybody back. And until then, have a beautiful, rich week. Bye everyone!

Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.

To launch your extraordinary life, and you can get that at peteerupert.com, or you can get that at Amazon, Barnes Noble. You— all you have to do is Google it and you'll find it. And to his point, One, it's an extraordinary tool to find your extraordinary life, but at the same time, it does give some, the proceeds of it does go to a great cause. So look into all of that at peteerupert.com. Pete, this has been fabulous. Thank you so much. What a great way to kick off the week.

Thank you, Bernadette. Really, really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on and congrats to your limitless success too.

Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, thank you. And for everybody, please, PeteRubert.com. Look for his book Limitless: 9 Steps to Launch Your One Extraordinary Life. And next week is our Ask Me Anything episode, everybody. So post those stories, questions, and challenges out on our Facebook page or our Twitter page for Shedding the Bitch, and I will be sure to answer them immediately and provide you tips and advice. And then we bring them right here onto our first Tuesday episode of Shedding the Bitch Radio, and we dig down into them even further, and you have an opportunity to join me and have a conversation with us. So again, Shedding the Bitch, Ask Me Anything, next Tuesday, noon Eastern time. Be there, and I'll look forward to having us— having everybody back. And until then, have a beautiful, rich week. Bye everyone. Thanks, Pete.

Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.