Jesse Elder On Fulfillment, Success, and B.S. Personal Development

Foreign.

What's up, fastlaners? Ryan here, and I have kind of an embarrassing confession for you. The first five years of my career, I went to a lot of conferences, and I got a lot of juice and jazz and excitement out of those conferences for about the first day and a half to two days. And by day two, I had a pattern of feeling really depressed at the end of the day. And people would comment, hey, you know, what's going on with you? You were so energetic yesterday. What's going on with you? And inside, I felt this internal conflict about the end of day two into day three of a conference. And that was because I would have these breakthroughs and all this fun on day one. But come end of day two, I felt like there was so much going on, I didn't know how to implement it all. So I must be a loser, and I'm always going to be a failure. And I felt like that for years. And I found out as I talked about that I wasn't the only one who kind of had this internal struggle of all of you are having all this fun and getting all this great information. But I'm so overwhelmed with everything that I'm learning. I feel like I must be the biggest loser in the entire room. So that is why, at Freedom Fastland Live 2015, I wanted to start the event with Jesse Elder. Now, Jesse's somebody you've probably heard from before. We've had him on the podcast a handful of times. And Jesse has done as much as anyone that I know to help me clear the noise between my ears and get really clear on what I need to do next. Not next year, not about my childhood, but what do I need to do next in life and business. He's a great next step kind of person. Because I get out of my own way and I stop thinking about five years from now. I stop thinking about the past. I think about what's in front of me. And that creates so much freedom to be able to assimilate what you're going to learn at an. At a conference, if you can just clear out that junk and be open to growing and being open to being in alignment with everything that's going to be happening at a conference that is so valuable for you to be able to download and digest everything that's going to be happening. So I had Jesse kick off the event so we would clear those blockages and avoid that feeling that I've had in my life of feeling depressed at the end of a conference. So Jesse comes in and he talks about the BS of limiting beliefs, how the idea of having a limiting belief.

Is a limiting belief.

So it's bs. And he talks about incremental success, which is so important because when you're in a room with millionaires and billionaires and successful investors, it's easy to feel like you've got to make monumental leaps. And you know what, you make a monumental leap just by being in the room because it changes your thinking. But making those incremental changes about where you're going to go next is so important for the long term trajectory. So that's why I had Jesse come in and speak first. He also was the only speaker to walk the room, walk in between tables and interact with the crowd. And it was a really fun way to kick things off. Jesse's always one of the most popular guests we have here on the show, so I'm very pleased and proud of to present his talk from Freedom Fast Lane Live. We're in the middle of a binge from Freedom Fast Lane Live 2015 to set the groundwork for freedom Fast Lane Live 2016 this December in Austin, Texas. I hope you'll join us and for now enjoy this presentation from none only than Jesse Elder.

We're joined by people who are running hundred million dollar companies, people who have built and sold billion dollar companies, people who are building breakthrough companies. These are my mentors. These are people that I look up to. These are those who have led the way towards a transition that I think is overdue. A transition of looking at what do we get and how do we create and how do we solve the world's greatest problems. That's my opinion. That's why we do Freedom Fast Lane Live. That's the goal of ours going into 2016.

I'm asked a lot, what do you have this team for? What is going on? Don't you just have like a podcast and a Facebook group? And there is so much happening behind the scenes of where we are going next in order to create that vision. And it starts here. And we're very excited to reveal that to you throughout the weekend and going into 2016. Today, you are going to hear from billionaire Jeff Hoffman. You're going to hear from Gary Vaynerchuk. You're going to hear from my best friend in the world, Mark Jenny. But to set the stage, there's one individual who I wanted first on this lineup. It's somebody who has made an incredible impact on me as far as my mindset goes. Somebody who the first time I met this individual, we had a conversation that has rung in my ears for the last two years and it's something I'll never forget. And the conversation went something like this. He said, life is the process of harvesting seeds that have been planted a long time ago. If you want to make changes in your life, the only way to do that is to start planting new seeds. And I thought about that for days on end and I had him on the podcast several times and he's become a dear friend. And that process of harvesting and planting new seeds has always stuck with me. And the idea of the longer term you can plan, the longer you can water very specific seeds, the longer that you can nurture something for the long term, the more successful you will be. This weekend we're going to hear from some incredible people. Some of them will challenge you. Some of them will threaten some of your paradigms. Some of them will make you feel uncomfortable. Some of them will make you challenge the way that you've done things up until this point. So to set the stage, I wanted this individual to get us going this weekend. So you guys ready to get this party started and introduce our first speaker?

That's better.

Our first speaker has become a dear friend. He is a mentor of mine. He has created a tremendous impact in my life. You can't interact with this person without changing in some way. He is the coach to more multimillionaires than I can count. He has been credited with all kinds of success because of the type of change that he creates between the ears of successful people. We as entrepreneurs sometimes forget the responsibility and the impact that we have. We have the ability to. To take an idea and to bring it into the marketplace and to make lasting impact in the world, in our customers lives, in our clients lives, in our family's lives. And sometimes we forget that because we're so focused on getting our next speaker is going to change that. Please help me welcome Mr. Jesse Elder.

Good morning.

These columns are beautiful and they assure that we can create little divisions between the groups because I can say something to you guys that they won't see and it'll be our little secret. So let's just do that. When Ryan and I first started, when he first told me about this event and he told me about the caliber of people that were going to be here, really, it was exciting. And of course, when he said, would you speak at the event? I said yes, in a heartbeat. Anything for you, man. And then I realized that, I mean, how many of us have a habit of saying yes to something immediately and then figuring out how the hell you're going to make it work later, by a show of hands. Anybody have that in your DNA? Welcome to being an entrepreneur. This is how it works. And so of course I said yes, because it's Ryan. And how can you not love Ryan? Ryan and I have had just amazing conversations over the last couple of years. And then I started really looking at the event and looking at who is here. And he and I had a lot of conversations around, what is your particular need? What is the exact reason why you decided to invest your time and your money and your energy and your frequent flyer miles or whatever to get here? What exactly is it that needs to happen for you over the next couple of days so that you can take not just your business, take everything in your life to the next level? And so I really began to meditate on that. I really began to think about what is it that needs to happen for all of us over the next couple of days in order for this to not just be another event for you?

Because you, I mean, I'm sure if you hated the entire event, I'm sure that you could somehow find a way to maybe get a refund.

Just waiting for something to hit the floor back there.

But you can't get your time back. You just can't. You can't get your time back. So I began to meditate on what needs to happen for this to be not just another event.

And I began to put myself in this state of allowing.

This is not another speech. As a matter of fact, this is improv philosophy. There's no script, there are no slides. This is a co creative experience. And if anything great is going to happen at this event, not just during the time that I get to share with you, but during the time that we get to have with every other speaker, if anything great is going to happen at this event, it's going to to happen as a result of what you're bringing to the table, not what you're consuming and not what you're writing down. Not just with the ideas that are coming, you go, oh, that sounds cool. I'm going to talk to my team about that bullshit. It's about what is your vibe, what is your energy, what is the level of expectation that you have, not just from the speakers, but what's the expectation that you have from yourself to go home and implement. Blessed are the implementers, for they shall inherit pretty much all of it.

You like that one?

And so there's. I'm very excited to share a few small details with you. That have made a huge difference in my life and the lives of the people that I've had the privilege to coach and work with. I'm also feeling a little bit challenged because this is like two and a half day training put into like a 4:45 minute deal. So I'm going to talk quick. Please feel free to write down any questions. I'm sure we'll do a little Q and A at the end, but I wanted to open with a story. When I was a kid, I was very, very shy. Very, very geeky. No longer as shy, probably 10 times geekier. But I decided I want to do martial arts because I always saw like these Bruce Lee movies. And I remember just getting all excited and thinking, I just want to, to learn martial arts. It'd be really cool. So my parents took me to this karate school and I was 9 years old and I remember talking to my instructor and saying, sir, I'm just so excited to learn. And he looked at me and he was this. You know, when you're a kid and you have a karate instructor, it's like they're walking on water. They're just like invincible. And so I'm just looking at this guy and he just looks at me and he was, I'll never forget, his name is Reed Hobbs. And he looked at me and he said, what do you want to learn?

I thought, that's a great question. I just want to be like Bruce Lee, you know, that's all.

He said, no, what do you want to learn? And I said, well, if I could learn anything, sir, I would like to learn how to do the splits. I saw that in the movie. I thought that looked really cool. I'd like to do the splits. And he says, okay, well, let's figure out where you're starting from. How far can you go right now? And I said, oh.

And he said, okay.

Everybody starts from somewhere. And he said, here's what we're going to do. So he gave me a regimen. He said, just go home and practice this. Go practice. And I would practice and I'd come back the next week and he would say, did you practice? I would say, yes, sir. And he said, all right, show me how far you can go. And I go.

But he was relentless.

Relentless.

And he said, keep practicing.

So I kept practicing. A couple of weeks went by, a couple of months went by, and I came back and I showed him and there's progress.

And he taught me a really important lesson because he made a big deal out of that incremental gain he made a huge deal out of this small improvement and he got as excited as a hardcore Korean War veteran taekwondo instructor can get.

He just kind of went like that, which to me that was like the equivalent of a standing ovation. I was thrilled.

And he just said, good, keep practicing.

So I was nine years old. I didn't know what else to do other than what my instructor told me, which was to keep practicing. So I became a stretching fanatic and I would just go home and stretch, stretch, stretch. And a couple months later, there's this. And my instructor didn't celebrate. And he said, look, you need to practice harder if you really want this goal, if you really want what you say you want, then you have to do more.

And it hurt my feelings.

I just wanted a pat on the back.

But he lit a fire under me and he said, just keep practicing. So I kept practicing.

And practicing.

And practicing.

And whatever is uncomfortable at first eventually becomes comfortable.

And so.

Your ability to get from where you are right now to where you say you want to go is not going to happen through intention. Matter of fact, there's a road that's paved with good intentions and it goes to hell.

So if you want to go to hell, just have good intentions. That's my misinterpretation of the Bible.

I'm the only one ever, I'm sure. But the idea is this, that if you have an intention for something, you say, this is where I want to be, but I'm right here. But I want to be there. But I'm right here, but I want to be there, but I'm right here. Here's the way this works. If you only allow yourself to focus on where you want to be. If all you do is look at what's next, you're actually sucking the confidence out of your existence. Distance. If all you're doing is looking at where you want to go and then measuring from there back to where you are right here. All that you can create for yourself is frustration. All you can actually create for yourself is some sense of stagnation. And I should ask the mic guys, do I have like a zone or are we good? If I cut out, we'll find out.

So all you do is look from where you are to where you want to be, then what you create is a gap.

And most people on earth live in that gap. Entrepreneurs. It's a thousand times worse. Why? Because you don't have normal desires, do you?

Bunch of life hungry freaks.

You don't have normal desires. You're not content with a Little. And why should you be? You're not content to give a little bit, you're not content to grow a little bit, you're not content to gain a little bit. And when you have a goal that's so big that it wakes you up in the middle of the night sometimes, or when you have an idea that is so fucking real in your own mind that it animates you and it makes you move and you get ambulated, to ambulate, to move from one place to another. That's where the word ambitious comes from. So when you have an idea that's so real in your mind that you can see it, taste it, smell it, touch it, you're there. And then you open your eyes after your super duper meditation and you look around, you go, fuck, I'm still in the same spot. That creates a gap. And as long as you're in that gap, you will always experience frustration, stagnation. You'll always experience a sense of lesser than, and you'll always be disconnected from your power. And so the only way that's possible for us as human beings to continually stay in our power, to stay in the zone, to stay in that state of flow, the only possible way for that to happen is, yes, have an idea about where you want to be. Make that real. Take time every day to go into the theater of your mind, imagine and experience, make a habit of actively appreciating those aspects that you see throughout your daily experience, and go, I like that, I like that. I like that. That's cool. I like that. And you're going to see that in entrepreneurs that you emulate. You're going to see that in other people that you haven't experienced to come into contact with.

But if you want to stay out of that gap.

Then you have to practice something.

And it will take practice. It's not just some switch that you flip. That's a great tactic for selling the hell out of personal development seminars, but it's not true.

Most of the personal development industry is very much like Monsanto.

And.

There is no magic thing. There is no thing that you're just going to go, boop. And everything's going to be done perfect. Unless you post on Instagram and then everything's perfect on Instagram. But if you want to close that gap for yourself, you have to practice this one master skill. Yes, you're going to have a vision. Yes, you have an idea. You're going to be around people this weekend and you're going to hear examples, and they're going to say this is where my business is at and it's going to be higher than yours and you're going to go, ah. And it's going to fire you up. Good, let it fire you up. But if you continually look forward, look forward, look forward to where you're not, all you can experience is that feeling of lesser than and that sucks your confidence. And confidence is the electricity of life.

On the day you have confidence, you could do anything. On the day you don't have confidence, it doesn't matter how good your systems are, it doesn't matter how great the team around you might be. Because when you're in a position of leadership, your job is to be in charge. Other people get charged up by being around you.

As the leader, your job is to say charge.

So your number one priority, the number one responsibility you have is to keep your own confidence high. And every time you look at where you're not and compare where you're not to where you are, the only thing you can experience is frustration, stagnation and this sucking of your energy. So if you want to create a sense of on demand confidence, if you want to have a sense of always on energy.

Then this is the skill you have to practice. You must always look forward.

Measure backward.

Look forward.

But measure backward. Because the only place that progress actually exists is, is behind you. Progress does not exist tomorrow, progress does not exist in the future. Progress cannot exist at some mythical place in the future that you hope to arrive to.

Look forward, but measure backward. And here's the interesting thing. When you practice this skill, when you cultivate the skill of measuring backward, and I'll give you some very simple tools in a moment to do this, when you practice the skill, you cultivate the skill of measuring backwards, then what ends up happening is you are continually giving yourself evidence of your success.

And as long as you're continually feeding your mind and feeding your spirit with this evidence of your success, the next step is that much easier. The next step has that much more energy to it. And this is how you collapse time. This is how you take something that seems so unbelievable. Adding another zero to your business.

Developing an even greater level of freedom.

Those things in your life that right now might seem impossible. Time is the least important factor in your experience of that five year plan. Ten year plan then.

Is not about how long it's going to take. You want to shortcut the time. You want to collapse time. If you want to become a time traveler and begin to alter your own reality and have it happening very Quickly and begin to draw into your life and attract into your life all of those things that you put someday into the future. Then you must master this skill. Look forward, measure backwards. Does that make sense so far? Okay, so let's do a little. Just a quick exercise, super simple. But what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to go back in your own mind, and I'd like you to go back over the last week, and I'd like you to think of something that occurred in your life. Personally, professionally, doesn't matter. But think of something in your life that was an advancement. Something in your life that. That represents progress to you. And it could be that you hit good numbers on a workout. It could be that you had a fantastic date night. It could be that you hit a business target or business milestone. It could be that you solved a puzzle, not a problem. There are no problems. There's only puzzles waiting to have your genius applied to them.

Words are very powerful. Use them carefully. So whatever it is that you experience as progress, think of that for a moment. If you'd like. Go ahead and write it down. It'll only take a second. Write down what was one.

Milestone, one piece of progress. Just take a moment and write it down. And if you don't write it down, totally cool. I totally support your right to be too cool for school.

All right, now what I invite you to do is share that with the person next to you. So just tell them what was your win? Some of you are rewriting. I don't want to share that one.

By the end of this weekend, you're going to be. You're going to be. Have no secrets.

All right? So share it with person next to you. Please. Go ahead.

If you haven't switched yet, switch. Let the other person go.

All right, that's good. Thank your partner.

Okay, you guys are gluttons. You just want to keep going. This is a free exercise. You can do this anytime.

Okay, it is free. But that one simple exercise over time, daily. That one exercise is called active appreciation. Active appreciation. And I believe that appreciation is to gratitude what running is to crawling.

Appreciation is to gratitude what running is to crawling.

Nothing wrong with either one. They're both phases of life.

But when you're a state of gratitude, and I'm sure that at some point this is semantics, the actual biochemical reality between the words gratitude and appreciation may be the exact same experience. But the challenge with the word gratitude is it has in it the etymology of the word has the word gratis which means free.

And there ain't no such thing in this universe. Everything happens because of something else. We live in a universe of cause and effect.

And so to take an emotional position, to take a spiritual stance, gratitude, is to be in a state of waiting.

And when something happens.

We are culturally supposed to fall on our knees and go.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

When I was 10 years old, I was baptized Catholic. Read the Bible a lot.

And in there, I remember reading that God created man in his image. I remember reading that. When I was 10 years old, I thought, awesome.

I'm in.

Then I remember reading that when Jesus said, if you have faith but the size of a mustard seed, you can do all that I have done and more. And I immediately went to this Encyclopedia Britannica that we actually had, like, all the freaking books in our house. And I'm like, m, m, M. Because I wanted to see, like, what is this mustard seed that we're talking about here? Like, how big is this thing? Because how much faith do I need? Because I want to do everything in my life. So I'm looking, looking, looking, and I go, there's a little picture of a mustard seed. I'm like, that's it. That's all the faith that you have to have. And then you can do anything. Sign me up for that.

And so I don't subscribe to this philosophy that says that we are somehow less than. I think the exact opposite is the truth. I think that we are the leading edge of creation.

There's this bullshit broken paradigm that says that. That the universe is done, everything is done, everything is complete, and we got to make do with what we have. And it's getting worse.

Bullshit.

It's not getting worse. Getting better. Everything is getting better. And you can prove it scientifically. If you look through the lens of abundance, if you look through the lens of relentless, brutal optimism, you will find evidence to support that belief.

And so this idea of sitting around waiting for something good to happen, and then when it happens, you go, oh, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Go look in the fucking mirror and say that.

Go look in the mirror and go. Good job.

You.

Sup?

How you doing?

Pretty good. You? Good. Next time.

And some people hear that. Not you guys, obviously, but some people hear that as. That's sacrilegious. That's blasphemous. Blasphemy. Blasphemy. Blast for everybody.

Because I don't think we can get it wrong. If there is a creator, if there is some divine architect that allows us to have free will, which we do have free will. We have free will, choice. And the power of choice is always yours. Then if that's the case, how weird would it be to set the game up? Or you can choose anything you want. Except that.

That'S, that's weird.

And I don't mean to preach. I'm just giving you my opinion. I just know that I'm right.

And I hope to stimulate some different line of thinking, maybe reinforcing things that you already know innately and maybe telling you things that absolutely piss you off and make you even more certain about what you do believe. Awesome.

But this idea of waiting around and hoping that something great is going to happen, and then when it happens, we feel so gratitude full.

Again. I'm not knocking the emotion. I think the emotion is the most powerful thing that we can do. It's the ultimate place of conscious creation is to appreciate what is to give your attention. The ultimate currency in the universe to give your attention to that which pleases you. Give your attention to those things that light you up. Give your attention to those things that make you feel good about who you are. Give your attention to those things that make you feel like more of you. And by practicing that focus, by practicing that skill of active appreciation.

What you appreciate, appreciates.

What you appreciate appreciates. What you give your positive attention to causes that thing to multiply in your own awareness. And as that thing multiplies in your awareness, it displaces everything else. So this idea that we have to get rid of all the bad stuff so that then we can have good stuff is flawed. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work to get rid of the bad stuff and then have this, those two white guys trying to high five right there. We're like this and hey man, how's it going?

And so this idea of let's get rid of all the bad stuff so that then we can have the good stuff, that's a flawed premise. Try this. Don't think any thoughts for a couple of seconds. Go ahead. Ready?

Now.

It doesn't work that way. You can't get rid of the stuff you don't want, so you don't practice replacement. Although the personal development industry would have you believe that if only you could solve your limiting beliefs. Just get rid of all your limiting beliefs. And if you get rid of all your limiting beliefs, then all the abundance that you've ever thought of, then it's coming to you. But this idea that you've got these limiting beliefs that you have to get rid of. That's the 21st century version of original sin, that you somehow have these limiting beliefs.

And if you have this idea that you have a belief that's limiting you that then where is your attention in that moment? Where is it?

It's on the limitation. And you can only give your attention to one direction or the other. You can't go two directions at the same time. So as long as you're giving your attention to your perceived limitation, that's where your energy is going. And then that energy is multiplying that exact same limitation. So the belief that you have to get rid of all your limiting beliefs is the biggest limiting belief of them all.

You're fine.

You'Re fine. There's nothing wrong with you. You are operating perfectly. You are operating perfectly to create in your own experience everything that you are currently getting. So if you want to create something new, understand how you're getting what you're getting and take total responsibility for that.

And as you begin to practice this skill of active appreciation, you won't need to replace anything that's not working. You will displace it by default.

You know what the opposite of love is? It's not hate.

Apathy, indifference. If you want something to go away, ignore it and it will go away.

I prove it to myself every spring when I say this is the year I'm going to start a garden. And then I decide that I want to go travel for three weeks. Not really compatible goals there.

If you want something to die, you ignore it and it will go away. It will exit from your life. So if you have some perceived limitation, something you feel is holding you back, you can either invest a lot of time and energy and you can go to seminars that create this artificial sense of drama and problem in you. And then you start to feel this drama that wasn't there before I came to the seminar.

And then you're going to go and release all of it. You go, ah, I had a breakthrough. It was amazing and I'm not knocking it. There's all sorts of different tools.

I'm just here to share with you that you're perfect and you are complete as you are.

In virtually every structure of help on the planet. The bigger they grow, the more bureaucratic they become. This is true of politics, this is true of religion, this is true of personal development organizations. The bigger they get, the more self serving they tend to to become.

And so I can't imagine there's a very good continuity program for a guru.

To say, hello everybody, welcome to the welcome to the Breakthrough.

Ultimate.

Limiting Belief Annihilation ceremony.

Welcome.

You're fine just the way you are.

Yeah, you fuck shit up. Welcome to planet Earth. Calibrate rapidly, that's all. Accept yourself 100%. You're doing the best you can with what you got, every second of your day. And when something happens that's less than you intended, learn from it, grow from it. Let yourself off the hook. Chill out.

Appreciate yourself. Love yourself more. Because you can't give somebody what you don't have to give away unless you're the government.

So love yourself. Accept yourself fully, completely. Engage in radical self honesty, radical self acceptance and radical self love. Those are your keys to liberation. And you're free. You're free. You are free. And you're so free you can even choose mental slavery. That's one of the choices on the menu. So choose that if you like. It'll serve you to a point, then you get tired of that shit and you'll start something else. Anyway, thank you for coming to the seminar. You are enough. Goodbye.

If that seminar existed, their continuity program would suck.

Because where's the upsell from there? Because there hasn't been any artificial deficiencies planted in you.

And so I believe in a doctrine of self leadership.

I believe that you are enough. And I believe that to the degree that you believe that your life begins to reflect it.

So when you stop comparing yourself to where you're not, get yourself out of the gap by practicing active appreciation, then what begins to happen is every day you begin to see more and more evidence of your intentions coming to you.

The universe is a well trained puppy. It'll bring you whatever you ask for. You just have to allow it. You just got to let it in. And if you're cursing something that's there that you don't want to be there, then you're ignoring every else that you've actually brought about. So your job is to be a collector of evidence.

Become a collector of evidence. Start to look for and notice all the things that are in your life right now that you brought about.

Even if it's something you didn't have anything to do with creating, the fact that you can perceive it makes it a reality in your experience.

Remember that age old question, if the tree falls in the forest but nobody's around to hear it, does it really.

Make a sound? The answer is no. No, it doesn't make a sound. Because sound is a vibrational frequency that only comes into reality when it strikes an eardrum.

Without the eardrum, there is no sound. There's just an endless wave.

So if you're not there, it doesn't happen.

Through your perception, reality is born.

And at any moment of your day, at any second of your life, you choose which direction are you focused on? Are you focused towards fear and lack and scarcity and not enoughness? Or, or are you focused on abundance, fullness, the amplification of your desires? And it starts by looking at the smallest thing and going, look at that. And you begin to bless that one little thing with the gift of your attention. And as you pay attention.

As you make it rain a new reality, then what begins to happen is that amplifies in your life. And as that amplifies in your life, what else does it do? It displaces everything else that you're not paying attention to.

The biggest killer, to conscious creation. Two words.

Two words will destroy your intentions, pulling them up by the roots and starting over again every single day. Only two words.

Those two words are.

Yeah, but.

Yeah, but will murder your dreams.

Strike those from your vocabulary. If you wish to collapse time.

If you wish to collapse time and begin to experience the fulfillment and the rush of your desires in your daily reality, not just your meditation. If you wish to begin to experience that and live in the home and drive the car and wear the clothes and have the conversations and have the connection and create the intimacy and have the freedom and have the impact and have the level of contribution that you know you're born on this planet to have. If you wish to bring that into your waking reality, then eliminate those two words from your vocabulary. Eliminate the words. Yeah, but.

Affirmation, destroyed by a negation.

Just leave out that last word. Just keep the first one. Yeah.

Yeah.

But don't you realize that the, the.

There was a terrorist attack today and you go, yeah.

And then when you get really advanced, they're going to say, don't you realize about the horrible thing that happened? And you go, no.

But don't you care about current events? No, motherfucker, I care about my current events.

Because the only people that I could really affect are the people in my immediate sphere of influence. My family, my friends, my customers, my clients, my community. And the only way that I can truly radically affect those people is if my house is in order.

Most so called social change is actually a bid for significance.

Look how much I care. Look how important I am. Look how sad I am about that thing.

Sad face.

Evolved spirit.

No weak ass spirit. Which is a choice. You can choose to be weak. You can choose to be a Spiritual weakling. That's one of the choices on the menu.

And it's a phase of development and there's no judgment about it.

But anybody who attempt to change the world without their world matching their highest desires.

Will have a lot of company.

Because it's much easier for most people to say, you know what, I'm going to go change that thing over there. I'm going to write him a check for 10 bucks. And there you go. Oh, yeah, I'm a giver.

If it's that important to get on a fucking plane, go do something. If it's that important to you, get all your friends together and say, hey, we're going to have a party. It's going to be in. Name your current zone of problem area and go do something.

But the way to help a sick person is not to put images of sickness into the minds of the healthy. The way to help sick people is to put images of health and radiance and vitality into their minds. Your body is a reflection of your thoughts because your thoughts, when they grow up a little bit, through sustained focus, your thoughts become feelings. And your feelings have a biochemical impact on every cell in your body. Every cell in your body right now is responding to the thoughts and emotions that you're practicing consistently. And you say, yeah, but I don't practice freaking out. Really.

I think you do. Not you. I mean, those other people.

You can only feel what you focus on consistently. And if you just refuse to focus on things that don't matter to you, if you refuse to focus on things that don't uplift you and bring you joy to, then what's left.

Are your desires. What's left are the things that are coming to you through inspiration that you say, you know what? That's a good idea. I want to make that happen. And then that's all that's left, is those things.

And then your life begins to take on this very, very interesting quality. Your life takes on a quality where you literally are surfing. You're just going through the flow, and you don't have the illusion that you're controlling the wave. There's no surfer on the planet that thinks that they're in charge of the wave. You're in charge of your board, you're in charge of you. And you ride through the conditions. And you can create something beautiful if you do that.

So am I saying to ignore problems? Not necessarily.

I am saying fill up your own tanks first. Because as your own tanks fill up and as you begin to practice this active appreciation and you begin to accumulate evidence in your own life of all the ways that you've already won, then what will happen is you will develop a bulletproof psychology. You will have spiritual armor that will make you impenetrable to any little sort of negativity, even if that little negativity is not little to other people.

And as you do this, then what begins to happen is things in your life start to flow. And when it starts to flow, it happens very quickly.

And then you don't second guess it. You can actually take responsibility for it. And you could go, there you are.

Money. Hi.

Waiting for you. Welcome. Did you bring friends?

Because as you give a positive, active appreciation to those things that you want, even if you see it in somebody else's experience, and you can go, good on you, that's awesome.

Then you're keeping yourself open to receive. And you keep yourself open to receive the idea. You're open to the inspiration. You're open to the energy of action.

And when you're in that zone.

When you're in that zone, then action isn't how you make things happen.

Action is how you enjoy.

What'S already happening.

When you're in that place of active appreciation and you're willing to accept.

All of the goodness that this life has to offer. When you're no longer willing to restrict yourself in the amount of joy and happiness and pleasure and well being that you can experience in your life, there's no upper end to that. It's an expanding spectrum. And you never get to the end of happy. There's always more. When you allow yourself to ride that wave.

You stop being surprised by it. You begin to develop a very strong expectation.

Not only that it is going to happen, but that it is happening. And that's what faith is. Faith is desire plus expectation. When you have equal parts desire and expectation, you live in faith. There's no sense of doubt. You know that when you put the idea out there and you maintain focus on it, a brutal, relentless optimism, that it is done, then you live in a state of receiving those seeds that Ryan was talking about. Those seeds are your thoughts.

And the moment you have an idea of what you'd like to experience, the moment you have an idea about the car you'd like to drive, the home you'd like to live in, the homes you'd like to have, the impact that you'd like to create in the world, the ripple effect of your own entrepreneurial ambition. And you have an idea and you see it and it's so powerful. It's done. It just hasn't showed up yet in space time. It hasn't showed up in physical reality. It doesn't mean it is not there. You allow it to come in and it will.

And if you just practice this a little bit every day.

Just let yourself doodle a little bit, let yourself write down, hey, what was good today? What were the wins that I constructed today? What. What were the small bits of progress that don't seem like the big thing? But I don't worry about the big thing. All the big thing is a bunch of little things put together.

And as you make a habit and a practice of celebrating those small progress, then those small progress add up and those things begin to multiply and accumulate, and pretty soon they begin to snowball. And next thing you know, people are going, how the did you do that?

It's inevitable. It's inevitable. And you know that that phrase, it is what it is. I hate that phrase as much as I can hate any. No, I'm kidding.

It's not. It is what it is. It is what it was. It is what it was. What's showing up right now is simply the echo, the residue of what started in your own vibration, your own idea in the past, and now here it is showing up. So if you want to have a different experience in the future, change what you're doing right now. There's a very famous quote in the personal development community that the past does not equal the future. That's bullshit. The past totally equals the future. You want to know what tomorrow looks like? Look at today. Because today is a reflection of what. Yeah, yesterday. And did you ever wake up and you go.

Oh, it's tomorrow.

Doesn't work that way. Every day of your life is today.

Today is yesterday's tomorrow.

So if you have this ability to shift your focus and you have this ability to shift what you're paying attention, to reprioritize the things that qualify for you, to give them the priceless investment of your attention as you reprioritize, you may decide that you don't want a TV anymore. You can watch all the Netflix you want on your phone.

I ended my fear of terrorism years ago when I stopped watching the news.

Very simple. And if.

The people that are training to end us insert current terrorist organization of choice. If they walk in here, we'll fucking deal with them.

But until then.

We got nothing to worry about. We got nothing to worry about.

And I'll share with you one final story of how I got this lesson and something that set me off in an entirely different trajectory, and is in many ways responsible for the experience of life and for the philosophy that I have the privilege to practice today.

I was 20, 20 years old, and at that time, I was working as a bouncer, obviously.

And I was working as a bouncer at this nightclub, it's called Sneakers Nightclub, It's San Antonio. And matter of fact, I thought about that a couple of days ago when Scott Wayland transitioned, right, the singer, he died and he played there. I remember watching him Stone Temple Pilots play there. So I was a bouncer at this place. And I was also training very heavily in martial arts, beginning to get into jiu jitsu and training mixed martial arts. And the UFC was like, kind of rising in popularity. And so the. There's all this buzz around it. And I was really working on one day opening my karate school. So my goal was I'm working as a bouncer at night, I'm teaching during the day, training like crazy, and I'm going to open my school. Well, the manager of the club decided it'd be a really cool idea to have Thursday night fight night. And so they literally put up two clipboards, two dry erase boards by the bar. One had the drink specials, and one had a place where you could put your name to fight. And usually it went in that order. People were like, oh, I could fight. All of a sudden, it's amazing.

And so I signed up and like, you know what? If I don't do this now, I'm never going to do it. I want to experience primal violence. I want to know what that's like. I really want to understand that for myself. So I signed up to fight, ended up fighting, won my first fight, won my second fight, and I was hooked. I thought, wow, what an incredible example of real time feedback.

Talk about whether or not your systems are intact.

Protect the mainframe no matter what.

And so I kept fighting and I kept winning, and I kept fighting and I kept winning because I was training. I was training mentally, emotionally. I would visualize the fight. I learned all these techniques for releasing and allowing stress to leave my body, but I was training very hard. So I was physically stronger and flexible and kept winning. And it all led up to this one night. And so this other guy had won all his fights, and I'd won all mine. And here comes the night. So I go to the club and I park around the back, and I walk in. As soon as I walk in, I could feel the vibe of the place is different. It's a combined beer sweat, tiger Balm if you know what that smells like, adrenaline and blood. You combine that unique concoction of odors and that's a very, very interesting thing. So I walk in the room and immediately I felt it. And I walked through the back and went to the little prep room and I'm just warming up and I hear the other preliminary fights going on and the crowd is like just, people are shaking. The place sounds like it's packed. I can't see it. And I'm back there and all of a sudden I hear the music going and. And they announce my competitor and he walks out and everybody's yelling and then it gets real quiet. And then they say, and now. And they do this big announcing thing and they say, jesse Elder. And I go out there and as soon as I came around the corner and into the room, I was not prepared to see what I saw. It was stacked to the roof. There was people literally standing on chairs, standing on the bar. Everybody wanted to see this matchup. And the promoters had done a great job of building the fight because this guy was this kickboxer, hardcore, like bad, bad traditional striker. And I was more of this guy that kind of was like a Swiss army knife. And I could kick and I could punch, but I could do jiu jitsu. It's kind of all these things. Also he had about £40 on me because there was no weight limit. There was no. We had little 4 ounce gloves, but there wasn't much safety equipment. There was three five minute rounds was the, the fight. So a lot of people came, they just wanted to see what was going to happen. And so I was feeling very confident in my skills. I'd won every other match that year. So I go out there and we touch gloves and we start moving. I already know my strategy. I know my strategy is going to be make him commit, give him a target that he cannot pass up so that he fully commits. And when he fully commits, my job is to shoot in, go in, clinch. Once you have the clinch, the Brazilians that I trained with have this wonderful phrase and they would say this, they would say.

The ground is the ocean and I am a shark and you don't even know how to swim.

So for anybody that follows MMA or martial arts, if somebody doesn't know how to fight on the ground, it's a very unfair fight. And the. And that was my opponent. So that was my strategy. He didn't know how to fight on the ground. I did. I'm going to bypass the physical imbalance and we're Going to eliminate his ability to use momentum and speed. And we're going to put him on the ground and finish him the way that I finished all my other opponents. So we're circling, moving, moving, moving, moving, moving. And all of a sudden, I see his weight shift. And here goes his weight. And I see it coming. And it's like all the water coming back from the shore and here comes the tsunami. And I see him shift his weight. And sure enough, here he comes. He's launching this rocket towards my head. And I'm waiting. And I will myself to wait long enough until I know he's committed. Sure enough, here it is. So just like training, shoot in, duck under, move in, get close. And I've got him in the clinch. And I. And I hear my training partners say, once we're in a clinch, we're going to go to the ground. And you're in my world then, because the ground is the ocean and I'm the shark and you don't. I don't even know how to swim. And I have this mantra in my head. I'm like, here it is. And so I'm holding. I'm just waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. He's going to slip, he's going to move. And I can't take this guy down.

And I'm wondering what's going on. Like, I'm going through a checklist here. Troubleshooting.

Like, no, no, I'm trained. I train with people much bigger than him. Something's going on. And then I realized what it was.

I smelled something besides the beer and the sweat and the adrenaline and the Tiger Balm.

His corner had been watching me fight all year. They knew what I was going to do. And they coated his entire body in Vaseline.

And I realized as I'm holding him, feeling my grip slip away, that the game has changed.

I held on as long as I could. He wriggled free. I lost the grip. And the moment I lost the grip, boom. I got hit harder than I'd ever been hit.

Thanks to good training, I didn't go down, but it changed the game dramatically. And I spent the rest of that five minute round waiting, waiting, waiting. I'm not going to duke it out with this guy, so I keep going back to apply that strategy. Shoot in clinch, miss, take a shot. Shoot in clinch. Moving, moving, slip, take a shot. Finally, at the end of the match, end of five minutes, I finally have this guy on the ground. He rolls me, I'm on my back. I have him in a triangle choke. Does anybody know What? A triangle choke is three people. Awesome.

So I've got him in this choke. I'm putting everything into it. And all of a sudden, the whistle blows. Time's up. I have to let him go. He stands up, we go back, and I'm gassed. I put so much into that first round. So we go back in the second round. Second round is a repeat of the first. We go into the third round, and I got nothing left, and I'm doing everything I can. And we're on the ground. He maintained a superior position. I was so tired. And I see him just getting ready to load up, and I've got my cover here. I'm ready to whatever I need to do. And for whatever reason, we're kind of in this clinch. And I look out of the corner of my eye, and.

The people that I saw were my family.

My family had come out to watch the fight.

And it just hit me that they'd been watching this entire.

Experience, and there's nothing that they could do about it.

And it just. It occurred to me what a. What a pain that I'd inflicted on my family.

By. By losing all the way up until that fight.

It was just. It was there and then was gone. And then we're holding. I'm holding, holding, holding, holding. Finally, the whistle blows. We both stand up.

The judges raised, the referee raised his hand. He won. And I went back to sit down, and my corner man comes up to me and he says, are you doing okay? I said, I don't know. I can't see very well.

And I can't breathe. I feel like a truck is parked on my chest. And he was so angry, he said, they cheated. They cheated. They cheated. And I said, man, it's hard to cheat when there's no rules.

So I accept it. Let's just deal with what is. You need to get me the hospital.

So they put me in the car. We went to the hospital. We get to the emergency room, and we're followed by my family, my friends, my students. There's like 30 people in the. The lobby, and they check me in, and we do X rays. And I'm there in the hospital bed. And as I'm waiting for the doctor to come in, I could see through the swinging doors, and I could see into the lobby. And I saw all those people who had come out to support me, and I saw the looks of anger and fear and pain on their faces.

But then I noticed something different. I realized that they were having their experience based on what they assumed was going on for me. And what was about to happen for me was an epiphany that changed my life.

I'm in the hospital and the doctor comes in. He says, Mr. Elder, you're very, very lucky that that wasn't a five round fight. He said the reason you can't see very good is you have, have a concussion and the reason you can't breathe is because your left lung is collapsed.

And he said, I don't recommend fighting again ever.

What I heard about your guy that brought you in, that's not going to happen. So at least wait six months. He said, I'm going to go and we're going to check some other things and I'll be back. So he leaves and I'm there in the hospital bed.

And I had expected to win that fight and the prize money that went with the entire season so that I could move forward in my goals of opening my karate school.

Not only did I not win the prize money, now I'm in the hospital with no insurance.

It was a bad night. And I'm laying there in the hospital bed and I'm sitting there, I'm laying in the bed and I'm just checking in with myself and I'm just checking in, I'm saying how am I doing?

And the answer that came back immediately was I'm fine. And that kind of got my attention because I thought, wait a minute, if I'm in hospital broken and broke and defeated in front of the most important people of my life and yet the answer I get back is I'm fine. Fine. Well, there's a, there's a paradox here because there's the me that got his ass kicked and there's the me that's fine. And I began to wonder, well.

Which one am I?

And I began to have these thoughts coming into my awareness and I began to think through thoughts that I'd never thought before.

And I started to have this, some sort of cosmic download or something. All of these thoughts started coming in that I realized that night in the hospital bed that I have a body, but I'm not my body.

That I get to inhabit this physical collection of molecules for a few decades and then, and then that will be over and something else will be there. But anyway, energy cannot be destroyed, it can only change form.

And I stopped being afraid of stuff that night. I stopped being afraid of making mistakes. I stopped being afraid of what other people thought. I stopped being afraid of being judged. I stopped being afraid of failure. And I began to embrace the totality of what I had learned that I actually am. And what I believe that you are.

An immortal energy. Call it a soul, call it a spirit, call it what you want. You are an immortal energy. We are immortal energies that animate this physical collection of molecules for a few decades.

But you can't get it wrong because you're never going to get it done.

You can experience life as a physical being and then perhaps you experience life as a non physical being. Is that true or not true? I think it's more important to ask what's useful.

Perhaps it's useful to consider that you can't make mistakes, you can only learn, you can only grow and you grow in proportion to what you appreciate.

Appreciate everything, need nothing.

Have it all.

The beautiful thing about listening to Jesse is that he makes you feel more like yourself, which he also says is the greatest compliment that people give him. And being yourself is so important in a group setting, setting like this. Or else you just feel kind of. I have felt inferior to other people in that type of a group setting unless I'm able to let my hair down and just be myself, which is what I felt like Jesse gave everyone permission to do. Hey, if you enjoyed this chat with Jesse Elder, there's a lot more that happened at Freedom Fast Lane Live. We've binge dropped some of the talks from last year year in this series, but really I hope you'll join us in Austin, Texas for Freedom Fast lane Live this December 2016. Tickets go on sale at the end of September but if you're on the Freedom Fast Lane newsletter you got an early bird registration with a discount. You can either go into your email box and get that or you can wait till tickets go on sale at the end of September. It's going to be spectacular. Peter Diamandis, JP Sears, Alicia Alicia Silverstone, Jesse Itzler, the founder of Whole Foods, John Mackey, as well as the rest of the incredible lineup, some of which we haven't even announced yet and it's the ones that we're saving for later.

Are no smaller names than the rest of the lineup. It's an amazing group of people that are all flying into Austin for three days to create really a world class education and building a business and investing the profits you will leave. With such an expansion of what is possible in your business and in investing. I would put it up against any other place that you could spend three days to build, grow, sell a business and invest the profits. And that's what we're about at Freedom Fast Lane. We are about defining the life you want building a business that supports it and investing for the long term, both personally and investing financially, because that is how there is freedom. You living life on your own terms, having a business that's growing, you growing and having automatic income that pays for the life that you want to have and the gifts that you want to give. That's what I believe in. And that's how I believe that individuals change the world. I believe that entrepreneurs are our greatest secrets to changing and solving all the world's problems. I think government gets in the way and the best thing that we could do is have empowered entrepreneurs taking on big challenges for government to get the hell out of our way so that we can fix all the challenges that plague us as a society. That's how we've moved forward in the past. It's how we will move forward together going forward. And that's why we need more entrepreneurs and more capitalism and more freedom. And that's why I want you at Freedom Fast Lane Live this December in Austin, Texas. I hope you'll join us. Tickets go on sale at the end of September@freedomfastlanelive.com if you found this episode valuable, please share it with somebody who would find value in it and I'll see you on the next show.