#TBT - Creating A New Normal w/ Jesse Elder

If we can approach life from a position of creativity and we see ourselves as a creator, not a competitor, then all of a sudden that person with the bank balance or the six pack or the marriage or the family, all those things that they might have no longer becomes a threat to our ego.

Hey, capitalists. In traditional Throwback Thursday fashion, we're re releasing one of our most popular episodes that we've had on capitalism dot com.

Enjoy. What we think we are capable of.

What we think is the amount that we can earn, the impact we can have, is all based on really a BS projection in our head of what is normal. There's no one better than I know to talk about this topic than my good friend Jesse Elder. Jesse's somebody I spend a regular amount and a good amount of time with here in Austin, Texas. And he's the guy that people go to when they've got noise in their head and they need to get it in line with their mission and their purpose so they can serve more people and go to the next level. So that's why Jesse was invited to speak at Freedom Fast Lane Live. This is not his full talk, but this is our Q and A session together after he gave his presentation. And it was one of the most popular ones. It was actually the first one at the event and it was a perfect setup for everything else. All of the other business topics that we talked about were in perfect, perfect context after laying the groundwork here with Jesse. So if you've ever had self doubt, if you've ever thought that there was a level that you couldn't hit because something was holding you back, you are really going to enjoy this session with Jesse Elder.

So, Jesse, thank you. One thing that I've kind of learned from applying how I interpret some of the philosophy that we've talked about over green drinks or coffee or whatever the heck we're drinking that morning is this idea that there's really nothing that's real because most of it is just a projection or an understanding in our own brain, which really messes with my mind at first. And, and then it's the most freeing thought ever because then all of the interpretations that I have that I perceive as being negative aren't real. They're just in my head. So we can just adjust it. I've come to so many events like this where when I'm around people who are at a level that are higher than me, I interpret that somehow about myself and then I'm caused to feel bad about myself. And as I've talked about that other people have said, I thought I was the only person who thought that too. So one of the reasons I wanted to have you first was because throughout the next three days we're going to hear from people who have created, sold and maintained truly breakthrough companies. And when you're operating at the level where you're just either trying to get a business started or at the million dollar level, you're just going full time all of a sudden, for some people, that's really empowering. When I was at that level, it made me feel like crap. So why don't you address that kind of mental noise that goes on through comparison through just what comes up from your surroundings? We both know, and we've both talked about the fastest way to create breakthrough change is to get around people who shatter those paradigms. That is never a comfortable transition. It always brings something up. So would you just speak to that for a second and, and how you address that?

Yeah. So the ego, which, the ego gets demonized a lot. It's actually very important. We all have an ego. It's the sense of the individual self. It's a lot of times where we get our self esteem and confidence. And the ego always feels threatened when it sees something else and it feels a competition. So if we see somebody else that has $100 million net worth and your net worth is a million, there's a comparison. And yes, 100 million is more than a million. And so. And that's a reality.

So.

But what happens is when we, when we see somebody else's reality, we see somebody else's experience. It really comes back to training ourselves and reminding ourselves that every single human being, them, us, you, you, everybody has an individual relationship with money and that there's no shortage of this stuff. They're printing more all the time anyway, so.

There'S no shortage to how much you can have flow in your life. So if we see somebody who is in better physical shape or they have a relationship that we would like to have that type of relationship or whatever it is, we can, our brain is going to go one of two directions. It's going to go towards a comparison and we're going to say that's bigger, I'm less this, therefore, and we can totally spin off in that direction. I don't have enough, I'm not enough.

We can totally get into that, that thing. Or we can little by little begin to adjust our sales. And when we see somebody that has something, if it stimulates jealousy or envy. Jealousy and envy are fraternal twins of Desire. So when we see somebody, we get jealous. What that is is actually desire. That's not yet codified desire, that's not yet harnessed. So when we feel jealous or we feel envious, which, those are different emotions. But when we see something that makes us feel less than, we understand that it's because we're seeing something we actually want. And if we then allow ourselves to make peace with that desire, we allow ourselves to own that desire. And actually it's very easy to get into an appreciation for that person for demonstrating that thing that caused us to feel the desire in the first place. And so that may seem like kind of a long framework, but ultimately it comes down to one of the first things that we talked about this morning, which is measuring backwards. Because if you measure backwards, then what that does is gives you evidence. And that's where confidence comes from. Confidence comes from evidence. So if you string back the breadcrumbs far enough, you can see how where you've come from. And now given this new desire that acts as a new point on the map, then we can adjust our efforts. It really.

I found it very interesting and you and I have talked a little bit about this. You certainly have experienced an incredible growth that you've created for yourself. And I've seen a lot of that with you by this level of total self acceptance. Like, you love yourself.

And you can ask Pam about that. She says that all the time.

Well, what ends up happening is when we do come from this place of total self love doesn't mean you don't doubt yourself or there's things you'd like to fix or change, that's fine. But when you're really coming from a place of self love, then yeah, you're going to do things. You're going to behave in a way that people around you, or at least in your mind people are going to start to go, well, who do you think you are? And then there's this implication of, well, Doug, aren't you a little full of yourself? And that's like the thing that we don't want to hear. But my take on that would be that if somebody were ever to say, aren't you full of yourself? Who the fuck else should I be full of?

I mean, that seems logical to me. Who else should you be full of? You should be full of yourself.

Once you become aware of this, and I notice you mentioned at the end that we're constantly, if we're unaware of it, we're making decisions or evaluations based on what we project other People's projections are about us, which is such a mind warp. But when I feel that come up, for me, the first thing that we tend to want to do is somehow judge the other person to bring them down so that our projection can feel better about it.

Yeah, very well said.

Or we feel we put the projection back on ourselves and then now we're projecting our own projection of our projection somehow. And when that comes up, it's like, damn it, I'm doing the projection thing again. And as soon as you become aware of it, all of a sudden you realize it's not real. And so that is dispelled. At least that's been my experience. I want to address the idea of incremental progress and incremental success. You gave the example at the beginning of wanting to do the splits. And for some people it's getting into shape, or it is having a hundred million dollar company or whatever it is. And so often we know what the action is, then we don't do it. Or for some it's just I don't know what the action is. So would you go back to that process of knowing you had the goal and having the coach that was completely unimpressed with your progress and just said, keep practicing. And how that has applied to business relationships, fitness, and how you'd address that for an entrepreneur who obviously wants more out of life.

So I think that.

There'S two pillars that we have to continually push because these are like the bookends for our growth as entrepreneurs. One is courage and the other is imagination. And imagination can oftentimes come from who are you choosing to be associated with having the idea of something? Yes, you can just get ideas on your own. So much more powerful if you see somebody and you know that they weren't always that way and now they became that way. Your brain isn't stupid. Your brain's going to go, that guy did it. That guy. If that guy did it. And all of a sudden you start to like, all your limitations don't make sense anymore. But being choosing very carefully, choosing who you're going to have conversations with, who. Who are you going to allow into your experience? And sometimes that involves making a very graceful transition out of certain friendships. And in my experience, it's always been cool to say, hey, I'm going to have this thing, why don't you come? It's going to be cool. And then they can make a choice about what they'd like to do. But in terms of not beating ourself up because we're not Enough.

This feeling of confidence, this feeling of knowing, like, true, really knowing that all is well. That's inside of every one of us. That core of knowing that it really is all good. Regardless of the bank account, regardless of the relationship status, no matter what Facebook says, regardless of whatever else might be going on out there.

We have this space inside of us. It's always there and it's always peaceful and it's always powerful. And you always know. There's a meditation that I teach, it's called the World on Pause. And it's a 12 minute meditation. And in 12 minutes, anybody can unhook from the projections.

Are we about to go into infomercial here? Because we're dangerously on. Like in 12 minutes, you can unhook yourself from the world. You too.

But at 12 minutes a day, you too can get off Facebook.

You too can become your own guru.

You can get off Facebook. But it really is as simple as allowing ourselves to focus long enough on that core and filling our own tanks from the inside out. And then when we approach the world, you can see somebody who's got regardless of how many zeros are on their net worth, and you can approach it from a place of appreciation because you don't feel a sense of competition. And the downside to competition is that it's inherently based on scarcity. It's inherently based on a zero sum game. Now, we can choose to enter that for the purpose of sharpening ourselves. I mean, it would suck if, you know, the Indians, all of a sudden they started playing and there was no clock anymore. Well, we don't need a clock and we're not even going to keep score. Just enjoy the game.

Do you know how baseball works? Because there is no clock in baseball. Yeah, okay. All right.

But with all of this, well, it's like after the 10 round fight, when the, when they have their bat, is that how that's.

Yeah, they have a bat. Yeah.

But when we. Is it innings? You can tell I threw away my tv. I legitimately threw away my tv. But what ends up happening is if we don't keep score. You do keep score in baseball.

Most of the time when the Indians are really bad, I stop paying attention to the score.

But yes, give attention to that, what you want back through the year. But when we can choose to enter things that. Where we get this incredible, like adrenaline and rush and we get excited because then we can tell, oh, we're ahead, we're behind, or we're behind and we. And we mobilize resources, but that's A human construct that doesn't exist in the material very much, so it doesn't exist in the natural world. In the natural world, competition doesn't exist. And so if we can approach life from a position of creativity and we see ourselves as a creator, not a competitor, then all of a sudden that person with the bank balance or the six pack or the, or the marriage or the family, all those things that they might have no longer becomes a threat to our ego. And we can rely on that and we can actually embrace that for the inspiration that it contains.

So let me, let me apply that into business for a second because there is this sense that there's competition and that there's, I'm at war with this person. He has to lose in order for me to win. And the only time that's ever real is when you're not creating, when you're coming from a place of taking. We can apply this easily to those who follow the podcast because I talk about Amazon because there's this perception of I have to rank or I have to beat this guy in order to take away his market share. And I look at him like, why don't you just create new market share? Why don't you just bring new people to the marketplace? Like there's a cap. At a certain point when you just look at a pie and you say, I've got to get as much of this pie as possible. Why don't you just create a new pie? Why don't you just go build a new piece? Well, and you can do perfectly, reasonably well eating from somebody else's pie for a while, but you're always operating in a place of scarcity at that point because you're not just making a new pie. You work with very high level entrepreneurs. I'm sure this mindset comes up a lot of, we like to talk about abundance, we like to get, give lip service to abundance. But when it comes to actually dealing in our daily life, most of us operate from a place of scarcity. So when you're working with a high level entrepreneur and you feel that come up, how do you address that?

So abundance is not a philosophy, abundance is a behavior. And those people that, that will say, I'm feeling abundant, awesome. How does that feeling translate into a different decision? And so, for example, one thing that matter of fact, I was talking with Garrett about this, with Garrett White. Are we plugging now or are we giving real life examples? Garrett White has a coaching program for men called Wake Up Warrior. And we worked together to architect that.

Movement. Essentially and one of the first shifts for him, he had just done, I think, the second event, and one of the first shifts was to go find a better venue. And he got hooked into it a little bit and he said, well, you know, I think about it, but then it's, you know, I gotta watch my margins and all this other kind of stuff. So we had a conversation around that is that what is the. What is the abundant choice? What is the abundant thing to do? The abundant thing to do is go and get the place in Laguna on the beach and let's, let's have it there. And he talked about that often over the next year. And he said that one decision, because abundance is a decision. It's a series of choices. Abundance is a standard that you hold for yourself, not just some mindset and feeling that led to a very different experience for the people that went through it. That led to a very different.

Series of choices that could come next. So for somebody that says, well, I feel abundant or I want to have this abundant lifestyle, well, go and do it. Start giving yourself the experience of it. Now, if you've never flown first class.

Do it. Just go and do it. And if you hate it, never do it again.

But don't judge it or don't say, someday I'm going to do this. Are you kidding? The difference is like, you know, depending on the flight is 200, 300 bucks, maybe, maybe less.

But the idea is just go and give yourself those experiences of abundance. So you have those files running in your head and pretty soon you have a new normal. You're not intimidated anymore by the bigness of it. And that, in my observation, that is the number one reason why the big money is always, always being pushed out in the future.

I want to talk about that in a second, but first I want to comment. I like to tell the story of a couple years ago, I decided to practice this and I decided to buy myself a brand new. No one in my family had ever owned a new car. I went out and I paid cash for a brand new turbocharged double sunroof Kia Sportage.

Abundance.

And this Kia Sportage, her name was Bruce.

And I still own Bruce. And Bruce is just this beautiful bright orange because I love attention Kia Sportage that sits in my driveway. And I found, and I worried sick about the $30,000 I spent on my Kia Sportage because I come from an upbringing of ski scarcity. I come from an upbringing of store away, save away. And in some ways that served me for many, many years. And in other ways that made me lay awake at night with lots and lots of money in the bank, worried about cash flows that month. And so that scarcity, in a way served me up to a point. And then there was a sense of every time I thought about flying first class, there was a flinch that came up. Flinch of like, but that's $500 that now I have to go replace. And all of a sudden I am back into operating in scarcity, even though we talk about living in abundance. So as. And I was operating unaware of that. In the last two years or so, I've become more aware of it. And we practice it by, like, buying a Tesla instead of a Kia Sportage. And I still own the Kia Sportage because Bruce is beautiful and I love her. But now I drive a Tesla because I noticed that when I drove a Tesla, I had different thoughts when I drove the Kia Sportage. For whatever reason, I mean, Bruce has some giddy up, the Tesla has more giddy up. And when I drove that, I just thought differently. For whatever reason, being in that experience made me think differently than when I'm around Bruce. And I still love Bruce, but I have different thoughts with Bruce. So we have talked about the new normal, and I love this concept. I think your exact words are the very reason that you call it big pushed it away from you. You need to normalize that shit, I think is what you say.

That's a good Jesse Elder.

I've been working on it. I've been working on it. I'm working on the splits now. So talk about that. Talk about the new normal and actually practicing that. Because I've seen this in risk taking. I've seen this in what you allow yourself to enjoy. We see this in relationships. What are you okay, asking for? As far as your fees, as far as who you approach, who you hang out with, we're all operating on some level of normal. And all it is is a projection in our head, usually based on comparisons by our wiring. And what we perceive, none of it's real. So how do you address creating a new normal or a new standard?

So back to the. Remember those two words that will just, like, kill your dreams? Do you remember what they were? Yeah, but so, yeah, but so when we. When we have this idea of big, big money, everybody has a personal number of what big money means to you. The problem with that, and the reason it keeps you stuck, is when you say big, your brain automatically assumes big equals difficult. And difficult takes a long time. So when your brain hears big, it immediately goes to long time. Meaning not now.

So every time you say, I'm going to make the big money, or every time you look at your number that you'd like to be generating every month in your business and you look at it and you go, that's big. Well, you have to, you have to release that bigness feeling. And so to normalize that shit is to.

That was good. That was a good impression of my impression of you.

We're just pinging back and forth. That's how we do it. But the idea is going back to association and going back to who you spend time with, that can have an awful lot to do with who your friends are, what are they comfortable with. And, and if your friends are comfortable doing things that are less free than you, then that's going to be a standard that you cannot escape. But if you have those one or two friends that are much more free than you, or have much more money than you, or are much more fit than you, and you're able to keep a beginner's mind and keep that core of self esteem and confidence intact because the score doesn't equate you. Money is a choice multiplier, but it's not you. You is a tool that you can wield for the fulfillment of your vision, but it's not you. And when we practice that sort of self acceptance, then we remove ourselves a little from the need to identify with the number. And when we accept that it's just a game and we accept that it's a powerful game because we can do cool with it.

This practice of even just saying to yourself, like just a very simple affirmation, affirmations by themselves don't work. But affirmations coupled with action work brilliantly. So to put in, put around your environment and just put a little affirmation that making whatever your number is daily or weekly or monthly, making this amount is easy and effortless and just the impression of those words on your mind, eventually that number is not going to seem like the big number that it was and you'll begin to relax around it. And when you're relaxed, creativity starts to flow. When you're relaxed, the risk doesn't seem like a risk anymore. It just seems like the next logical step.

I want to add to that that we live in a world where you can access pretty much the thoughts of anybody alive. And if you write down a number, there are quite a few people to where that is already normalized and they probably talk about it. You can pretty much follow them on Twitter in about two seconds. So that idea of normalizing it just because you aren't around them all the time, you can be surrounded by their thoughts in 2015, 2016, because it is constantly floating around. I want to wrap up by asking you, what's your perception or your relationship with risk? What does risk mean to you? Do you consider it a real thing? And what, if anything, is risky to you?

Good. Risk, I think, is another one of those culturally.

Culturally popular but inherently flawed premises. The idea of risk presupposes that you have two or three or you've got all these different choices, some are safer than others, and so you want to, you want to manage your risk or you want to take the choice that seems most profitable or less dangerous. Or if I can't avoid the danger, at least let me make peace with the danger. And so then I'll learn to tolerate risk. And we do this long big thing. But the flawed premise is that risk implies that you have a choice. When you are clear about your vision, when you're clear about your values, when you're clear about your why, when you are clear about the strategy, when you get a full yes in your body that just says this is happening.

Risk goes away.

Because the moment you're fully committed.

You don't entertain other possibilities. And when we stop entertaining other possibilities that compete with the one that we've chosen, the one that we've chosen becomes everything.

Once you've cleared out the noise, all of a sudden people just start to get in line behind what it is. Where you're going. When you are really locked into that direction where you are heading, that's a very attractive thing. And in the self development world we would say.

Things conspire to give you what you want. I just think that when you're. It's a really attractive thing to be really locked into a purpose and a mission. Especially in today's world where we're all projecting some sort of an idea and at some level we all know it's bullshit. At some level we know when people are faking or putting up a front and when you're really in line with what that purpose is and you're authentic about it. I think that is there's something very attractive.

That people resonate with.

And I think that's part of it. People are. I'm just like going to stutter here for a second. People are craving, craving authenticity, power and clarity. Because those three components, when they're combined are unstoppable. And so when we see somebody who's authentic and powerful and clear, we can't help but be attracted to that person because that's the quality in us that we wish to amplify. We want to experience more of that. We don't want to feel weird within our own private thoughts thinking that like, oh, you know, this is what I want to do. But authenticity is when you are being the you that you feel you should be. And that's a freaky concept for a lot of people because the word you is in there four times. It says nothing about them, nothing about they. And the two barriers, this is getting into a whole seminar now, so I'll keep it short. Here's the two barriers to really being fully authentic. Number one, you must, you must overcome your fear of disapproval.

If there's any fear of disapproval in you, then you're sacrificing your authenticity at some level. I'm not saying that you don't care about other people. You absolutely care about people. Care more about people. Just care less about what people think because that's their experience. Some people are going to love you, some people are going to hate you. And that has nothing to do with you.

So the first thing you have to do is remove or reduce your fear of disapproval. The second thing that you have to do is you have to remove the need for approval in the first place.

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