Travis Sago

Foreign.

Welcome to Freedom Fastlane. Today's the day. Today is the big interview that I've been working on for a year. Today we're going to be interviewing my mentor, somebody who has become a dear friend, is one of my. One of my very best friends, and somebody who has really taught me a lot about life and about business. And when I think about what I want my life to look like, I think about this person. If you don't know him, it's Travis Sago. Travis has been instrumental in my success, in my happiness, and he's been there for me when times have been good and when times have been difficult. So this is the person that I go to for advice and really just about every area of life. He's extremely successful, but most importantly, he's really, really happy. He's one of those people that has gotten what he wanted out of life and is very happy with it. And I ADM that so much. And I asked Travis to come on to Freedom fast lane and to talk exactly about that. How has he achieved so much and enjoyed the process and remained so content while still being a driver and still moving forward and doing awesome things? This is a good one. This is today's show with Travis Sako. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Freedom Fastlane. If you can hear it in my voice, I'm so excited to be featuring my mentor. You know, we talk a lot about mentors here on the Freedom Fastlane show. And today's guest, I would consider my closest mentor. He is a. I'd call him a business genius. He'd probably giggle at that. He's also probably the happiest person that I know. And when I think about people who I want to model, what I want my life to look like, I think about Travis Sago. Travis, thanks for being here, dude.

So we're gonna talk about this thing called happiness.

Well, you really are. You really are the happiest and the most content person that I know. And, you know, I've told you this many times, but even when I'm just around you, I feel like that part of me comes out, and I just. When I think about what my life. I want my life to look like, I think about Travis Sago. So, dude, just tell us how you do it. What's the secret to life, Travis?

Well, you know, it's funny because, you know, I thought about doing this with you and discussing this with you. Most of the people that I talk to, I think the same thing with you are, like, business people and entrepreneurs. And I can only speak for Myself, but, you know, a lot of my story. But in my 20s, you know, I was a very different person than I am today. And I'm in my 40s now, but I was a very hard charging kind of guy. And I didn't have time for foo foo talk, like happiness, because I was too busy trying to get that next promotion, make that extra money, you know, have the perfect body and all this stuff. So I was like, what happiness? What's all this foo foo talk about? You know, and the result, you know, if we want to talk about my credentials. And I don't even know if you know all this stuff about me, Ryan, but I'm opening up more and more. But, you know, my credentials in my 20s was I smoked two packs a day. I was divorced. I was very deeply in debt because I took on a lot of risk. So much in debt that I considered filing for bankruptcy. The only reason I didn't, because I didn't really have anything for them to get. I was $17,000 behind on my child support, which makes you feel really freaking good about your ego, right?

Adjusted for inflation, that's like $7 billion.

Exactly. So, you know, I had that whole thing going on. You know, I was.

Had hives on my arms, you know, from like, anxiety and stress and everything. And I followed all, you know, back in the 90s, I followed all the Anthony Robbins and, you know, all that great stuff. And I won't say that they weren't helpful, but I still love those guys. But slowly I started coming to a realization, Ryan, that.

I noticed I was playing life by the wrong freaking rules.

And.

Let'S kind of use that. Can we just use that as a para? I know there's all kinds of paradigms for looking at life, but let's take the paradigm. And this is what I'm really excited about. I think what I'm hoping for in this interview is to radically change the direction of people's lives just by presenting this new paradigm. And it is radical. And I think some people may be not ready for it, but if they are, I'm hoping we'll change a few people's lives here. But can we. Let's take a look at life as a game for a minute. As a paradigm.

Can we do that? Let's do that.

So let me use a metaphor or analogy. Let's say we're going to a chess tournament, and it shows you how geeky I am. I'm probably not the best chess player, but let's say we're going to a chess Tournament. And for some reason or another, we don't know any of the rules of a game of chess. And we go into it with the rules that we have for playing checkers.

So as we sit down with these guys, whether they're good players or any good or not good players, it doesn't matter. They have a fundamental. If they have a rudimentary.

Working knowledge of what the rules of chess is or are, they're gonna whoop our ass.

We're at a huge disadvantage. Right?

Yeah. Because we're gonna be, like, trying to jump their, you know, their pawns, and, you know, they're like, what the hell? What are you doing?

King me at the end.

Yeah, exactly. And this is an extreme example. Right. But let's say that we're playing a guy that's average at chess, and let's say we just don't know all of the rules. Specifically, let's say we have the general idea of how to play chess, but we don't know that the queen can move diagonally. Now, do you think we'd be at a little bit of a disadvantage there?

Of course.

Yeah, for sure. Right. And even in my knowledge, like, I know there's this thing called castling that you can do with your. Like your. Your rook and your king, but I'm never really sure what it is. So I'm at a little bit of a disadvantage when it comes to playing with a guy that really knows what he's doing with chess. So.

If we don't understand the real rules or, you know, a fundamental understanding of the game of chess, we're going to be. Probably be pretty frustrated.

And to top off that frustration, and here's where it really.

Intensifies, is if we believe that this chess championship somehow.

Holds our future, and we take it very, very seriously. Like, if we feel like if we don't walk out of this chess championship, you know, with that, you know, at least win, show, or place that somehow we're ultimate losers and that we actually have something huge to lose.

Then we can get very angry. Very.

There's a heavy weight of pressure.

Yes.

With. With that type of an expectation that something is that important.

Exactly. So. And you can take this kind of game analogy to anything. If you could, if you walk out on the baseball field and you think that the game is played by you, you have up to four strikes, you know, before you're out, you're gonna be a pretty pissed off dude.

Right.

And then you add to it. It's like, if you think that the whole.

Your whole Life depends on this.

You're gonna be pretty upset.

It's kind of like growing up in the Midwest. You know, we grew up knowing the game, the rules of a game called Cornhole. And when I asked Travis if he ever plays Cornhole, that means something very different in Arkansas, down in the south, is she.

Oh, my goodness. That was a. That's a good night. Yeah, we're kind of digressing.

That's a true story for all those of you who are not Ryan and Travis listening.

But now we have a Bago game in our garage.

Fair enough.

It's very, very fun, but yes.

For sure. So what we're going to be talking about here is kind of like where people kind of go astray. And I hate to be judgmental, and I'm not trying to be judgmental, because it's very, very innocent the way that we learned our rules. But.

The.

Consequences can be devastating. So.

Obviously, the rules to life, if we're going to put heavy rules, it could be very wide and lots of them, just like in a chess game or like a baseball game. It could take a while to explain those. But I really want to talk about two major misbeliefs or myths, and I call these the hoax. H, O, A X. And my Southern ness may not be able to pronounce it exactly right. The hoax.

Travis, before you go into the hoax, I just want to clarify. When you say the rules, what you really mean is the rules that we set up for ourselves in our life, right?

Yes.

So what you're saying is that maybe we could consider the idea that if we're struggling with something, then it might be the fact that we have the rules incorrect. The rules to the game of life that we've set up for ourselves might.

Be a little bit off. God bless you. And I hate to be like this guy that says, you're living your life by the wrong rules. So whatever I say, I'm leaving open to interpretation.

You know, I've helped. And this is a big paradigm shift. Here's another little metaphor. You know, when I was younger, I was putting together. I remember it was at Christmas time, I was trying to put together this jigsaw puzzle. I must have been seven or eight at the time. I still believed in Santa Claus. And it was around Christmas, and I was trying to put this damn jigsaw puzzle together. And I don't know if it was 500 or 1,000 pieces, but I was totally frickin lost, Ryan. I'm like, I don't know what to do with These, you know, and finally mom came down and sat down with me. Just, well, the first thing you do is you want to look at the picture on the box there. And that was a big revelation right there. And then she said, first thing you do is you see all these straight pieces right here. You want to find all of those first. And then you want to find there's four corner pieces. Do you see those? And then so you go and you find all those first.

And then you put those corner pieces, you know, lay those out and figure those out. And you put all the straight edge pieces first and then take your puzzle and turn them all over the right direction so you could see the colors on there. That's the next thing you do. And then match all the colors together. And then you see that kind of all comes into focus. So once you have an idea how to put that puzzle together and you have this.

System that you can use, it's correct. You know, I could put, I'm not saying world's master at putting jigsaw puzzles together, but I can put a jigsaw puzzle still to this day, just because I understand this model.

You understand the process.

Exactly. So let's take a look at the world right now. And again, I'm trying to do this with judgment, little judgment as possible, but. And this all goes through a filter. But, you know, would you say that by and large the world is.

More frustrated or more stress free right now? Ryan?

Right now I would say we're more frustrated than we are stress free.

And you know, it depends on where you're looking. And that's a key point too. But there is a lot of evidence of a lot of unhappiness out there, not just from the news. And I hate to filter my life through the news because it's very, very.

Myopic. But you know, anti anxiety medicines are billion. I don't forget how many billion dollar year industry. But they're selling more anti anxiety medicines than ever before. They're selling more antidepressants than ever before. And I believe it's because we keep falling into believing these hoaxes. So there's a mama hoax that all baby hoaxes are born from. Obviously there's lots of baby hoaxes, but we're only going to talk about one of those today. And it's one of the most. It keeps us from experiencing our happiness on a very, very large level. So let me go ahead and just say what the hoax is.

As simple as I can. And we can take a look at it and look at the implications.

So the big or the baby hoax, is that happiness.

Somewhere out there?

It is in that next promotion. It is in the amount of money that we make. It is in having the soulmate that we have. It is in having people's respect. It is in having.

People think well of us. It is in having the nice car.

And until we have those things, we can't experience happiness.

Not authentic happiness. Right. And we're going to come to that. But you're exactly right. So this is really interesting because a lot of people don't quite figure this out.

Until they reach some type of quote unquote.

Level of success. And it's usually inauthentic success, but let's say they finally get what they want.

Be it money, and they realize, oh my gosh, I'm still not happy, been there.

Or they get that soulmate, and then the soulmate turns into a roommate, and then a roommate turns into an enemy, and then we're not happy again.

And it's like, wow, it's like, okay, so what's going on here?

And.

The implications to this, Ryan, are huge. So let's take a look at these very, very broadly, if we believe. And again, this is very, very innocent. Even like some of our founding documents, you know, the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Right.

So we're born and we're raised and we're conditioned to believe this at sometimes the very core of our being, that if we can just have blank that we'll be happy.

So I take this to two extremes. We have real hard chargers and go getters like I was in my 20s. And I think that you're kind of the same way on some level.

Yes, sir, you bet.

And so what happens is for us, hard chargers on one of the extreme sides is we go out and start actively going out and seeking what we want. And there's nothing wrong with that. When you're planning it, you have to be like going to the beach and not going in the water. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But when we think that our happiness lies in that money, for us, hard chargers, when we don't get it fast enough or we don't get it.

Like we want it, or even if we get to the point where we say, oh, look, now I can get what I want, I can get this to make me happy, we have a tendency to become angry when things don't go our way, to become.

Stressed out if things aren't quite going our way. That's at one end, that's the guys that pop anti anxiety pills and drink way too much or.

Scream at their wives or their, their family, their friends because they're used to getting what they want. And it sets at one extreme. So that's the implication.

Well, I know and I've felt that way, Travis. It's been because you know, I consider myself in control of my own destiny. And when I set my and I believe that to be the case. But part of that and I guess part of my 26 year old naivety that when I set something out that I want, it's my responsibility to go get that thing. What I found sometimes though is my tendency to identify with that thing.

Yes.

As being a source of something that's going to make me blank happy. You're more fulfilled, have more fun, whatever it is. And then if I don't get that thing or it doesn't go along with how I expected it to on my expectation timetable, then I what at least for me, and I'm being transparent, is then I get a little bit self defeating.

Yeah.

Whereas somehow I must be wrong because this thing didn't come into my life. And since I'm in control of my destiny, I somehow am responsible for now the emotion that I'm feeling as a result of not having this thing. There's my totally honest response to what you're saying.

Yeah, I totally resonate that because we're kind of like birds out of a feather in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

Yes. And.

Had my thought there that was. But yes. And I want to be really, really clear here. For us hard chargers, you know, I'm a very, very practical guy. So I'm not like this Middle Eastern guy saying all of our problems are in our desires. To me that's silly. That's like going to.

The beach and saying I'm not going to surf. You don't have any desire to surf. But what happens if you say if I'm not the best surfer out there, I can't be happy or I'm going to be stressed out about that. That's the difference. Going out there and having super awesome time and realizing that your happiness, it doesn't come from outside. You weren't talking about really where it really comes from. But I want to go over these implications first. So that's on one extreme. The hard chargers, you know, if they don't get that, if they don't eventually see the rules correctly, can lead. I'm not saying it will lead, but it can lead to the anti anxiety meds and feeling stressed out and then it can swing different gamuts. But at the other end of the extreme scale, Ryan, is.

The people that believe that happiness is out there somewhere, whatever that is, that blank.

But they can't seem to get it. I can't get X. And so they get it in their head that I can't have X.

And then they just stop trying and they tend to get depressed. And those are the folks that will. Again, I'm speaking in generalities that kind of take the antidepressant method is like, what's the use? You know, I can't. What. No matter what I do, I don't have any control, you know, I'm not. I'm never going to be happy because I can't get X. That's at the one end of the scale.

That would be the person who's experienced some relationships that didn't go how they wanted, says, I guess I'm just not meant to be married and have children. I want that to be happy. I guess I'll just give up.

Yeah. And they kind of go through life kind of dead inside.

You know, and they. There's all kinds of different ways they can manifest.

You know, find that happiness. And it's an interesting thing, is sometimes it's helpful that, especially at the extremes, what people. What causes a lot of problems in our life is not so much the happiness, but a step down. It's just being okay. So people start reaching for okayness, and that's where they'll go out and pick up really, really bad habits to fill that empty spot inside of them.

So those are some of the deep implications of chasing happiness. Now, for you business guys and hard charters out there, there's a reverse implication of this hoax that I think is what's really allowed me to explode, not only in happiness, but in getting.

Results that I want, which comes. You have to do the happiness first. But let's think of it this way.

If you believe wholeheartedly that happiness is out there, maybe not even intellectually, but deep down, and you start to get some happiness, whatever that is. So say you start to get some money or you start to get some respect.

And you carry that around with you.

Can you see what the reverse implication.

Of that is, Ryan, I'm tracking with you so far? I'm waiting for my aha with where you're going right now.

So we go and we gather this stuff that we think is going to make us happy, Right? And it never quite makes us happy, but we keep gathering it. I thought I'd be happy If I had 100,000 in the bank. That's not good. If I only had 500,000, that's not good. No more. But what happens then? The reverse implication of this is if we believe that happiness is somewhere out there, then we also must believe that once we have some form of this happiness, whatever that may be, that it can be taken away and we need.

To defend what we do.

Yes, that we need. Yes, exactly. That we need to defend it and that it somehow can be taken away, which makes us fearful inside.

Very, very fearful. And especially.

For entrepreneurs and business guys.

Or business women.

Do you go after what you want if you're fearful?

Never.

Yes. You don't pick up. You don't pick up that phone to make that big call because somehow you believe that your happiness is on the line, your ultimate happiness. It's like going into that chess tournament and believing that.

Your life is.

Up for grabs if you do this right.

There's a. There's a tenseness that prevents us from doing any movement. There's. It's almost like. It's almost like fight or flight or freeze happens because we think our life is in line and we choose to freeze.

Yes.

Because we don't feel like we can move towards what it is that we want. Because it's so darn important that we must have some sort of missing information that will complete the puzzle that will allow us to take action.

Yes, sir. So. And this manifests itself in a lot of different ways. I had a very wonderful client last year. Really nice guy. I won't give his last name, but his first name was Alan. Just a super bright, brilliant guy. His whole. He comes from a family of lawyers and he's in law school and absolutely miserable. He says, travis, I hate the law. I hate law. I don't even know any happy lawyers. All my family is not even happy being a lawyer.

And you know what keeps him locked into that?

What keeps them locked in is believing that you need your family's acceptance or anybody's acceptance in order to. To be happy. So the implications, when we live by this hoax, that happiness is somewhere out there.

Not only does it make us miserable, but we can't even get the results we really want as easily. So obviously, kind of the answer is.

That happiness is already inside of us.

We are typically. And we're going to come talk about the Big Mama hoax here in a minute because this is actually a baby of the Big Mama hoax. But.

So we believe this thought that happiness is somewhere out there. When.

In my experience and people that I'VE shared this with, grabbed a hold of this and their lives just skyrocket. Is that a natural sense of well being.

And peace and harmony and strength is already inside of us.

And nothing can take that away.

If we don't let our thinking get in the way. And I'm kind of getting into the next.

Hoax there.

But Travis, I got a question for you.

Sure.

If that's true, that happiness is inside of us and that it is not in some outside thing, does that mean that wanting things is bad?

No, not at all. And again, this has been my experience of what skyrocketed me again, my bad credentials earlier on. But you know, the other side. What? Around my late 20s, I started having. Started really understanding like, you know, the edge pieces of this damn jigsaw puzzle. Right? And it was phenomenal. But, you know, I don't know how to say this without bragging, but, you know, now I have, you know, I have my millions, I have my nice house overlooking, like I have this wonderful relationship, which is all great, but I could walk out the door and have all that taken away from me. And will I not be like, shocked at first? Maybe, but I know I could get it all back. And it's not fundamentally affecting my internal peace and happiness. But I am not one of those Middle Eastern guys that says want and desire is the root of all problems.

I believe, and I keep saying we're going to get to the big hoax. But the fundamental is that you can go around when you have happiness and peace and joy in your heart. You're virtually unlimited now to go out and do and try anything that seems authentic to you, to go after your real dreams, because you know that can't be taken away from you. So it's kind of like going to. It's like kind of like going to a casino. You know, life becomes like, kind of like going to this casino. And this wasn't. Isn't my example. I've read this somewhere. But it's kind of like going to a casino. And they walk in, they say, Ryan, you're such a, you know, you're such a jovial soul. You just make other people want to gamble more. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to give you $5,000 every night when you walk in. And you can gamble that money away, but here's the deal. If you lose it all, cool, no problem. We're gonna still reserve a nice room for you. You're gonna have a nice dinner, just come every night and you just Gamble because it makes other people want to gamble more. But if you win a lot, then you have to turn that into the cage as well. So all we want you to do is come and gamble and you can't lose.

So.

If you play by those rules, you're going to come in and probably play a lot better game.

But it would be silly just to sit there and say, hmm, I'm just going to sit there and watch everybody else. You'd be like, you know. So in answer to your question, no, I believe that once you find that, and it's natural to us, it's innate inside of us, and we'll talk a little bit more about the proof of that here in a second. But that allows you to play the game at a much larger, much higher and more authentic level because you just can't lose now. You've already won. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I get it. It's kind of what I say is that most people walk around with this false idea of security, that security is this thing that they know they can't reach into their pocket and pull it out, but that it is a real thing. Security is a real thing. And if I do this thing, then I'm going to feel secure. It's very similar to happiness, but they're both just feelings, they're both, they're both just rules within ourselves. And when we realize that we're secure no matter what happens, all of a sudden we're free to do things that we never thought we'd be able to do because there's no, there's no more fear attached to it.

Right. And to carry this further, this is a talk on happiness. So it usually starts with we're out there doing all this for okayness, and then it goes up. Once we feel okay, then we, you know, either authentically or inauthentically, then it goes to happiness. And what we're really doing it all for, it's getting really, really woohoo. Now we're really all doing it for love. So what we're afraid of if we don't get what we want is not only we won't be happy, but we won't be loved. So that's where that security comes from. But Ryan, let's talk about this a little bit. And for any hardcore skeptics out there, I don't know if I'll be able to convince him in just talking about the baby hoax, but when we're born, before we start learning lots of different rules, before we can understand English and Everything. Probably about the ages of 2 and 4, we are very, very free.

We don't, you can tell, like babies when they're sitting there, they're naturally happy. Does that mean they don't cry? They do cry at times, but then they get over very, very quickly. Because.

Our natural default setting is peace and okayness. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally. I'm totally with you on that.

And then, of course, as we start to understand language and we start to understand other people's rules and programming and adopting those, then we start to set up these rules which may or may not be useful for us and make us understand that we're supposed to be out there chasing happiness. But as kids, we're very, very much at peace. And likewise, I do some meditation, but I don't believe you have to meditate to find this state. But I think what meditation is useful because it allows us to connect with that natural piece, that default setting inside of ourself. And really, the first step is to see it. I call it see it, experience it, and make the shift. So all I'm trying to get people to do right now is see it. But once you see it, like seeing the jigsaw, understanding how the jigsaw puzzle goes together, it is really helpful to start putting the pieces together so you experience it and then you have that shift. But I'm just trying to get to the sea part of it right now. But what I want people to see is that there's an inherent goodness.

In life. There's an inherent. And we'll talk about this a little bit more. But there's an inherent intelligence to life. Now, Jeanne and I were growing tomatoes in the back of our yard yet, and it's just fascinating because you plant a few tomato seeds and it doesn't start growing, you know, cucumbers or kumquats. There's some kind of intelligence to life that knows when you plant the seed, you give it the right conditions, it grows tomatoes. You know, birds flock south for the. For the winter. For the winter, the Earth spins on it. You know, somehow it knows exactly how fast to spin to keep us in orbit. And everything is this innate intelligence to life that if we just put our faith in that and not in this.

Belief that our happiness is somewhere out there, that just seeing that is really, really helpful.

Just seeing that there's an innateness to themselves.

Innate wisdom. Yes, yeah. And peace. And if you look at animals that don't have thought to tell us to make up rules, like, you should go out and chase your Happiness.

They'Re pretty darn peaceful, right?

And.

That'S kind of who we're meant to be too. So we keep skirting and dancing around this. But the baby hoax is actually born from the mama hoax or the big hoax. And mama hoax has lots of babies. But I kind of want everybody to understand it's kind of like talking about the chicken and the egg. Where do you start this conversation first? But we kind of started with the egg, so now let's move to the chicken.

And this took me a long time to boil this down into such a succinct concept. And this is really a radical paradigm for some people. And it's going to be rejected, especially by the most intelligent. And we'll talk about that here in a minute. But the big mama hoax.

Is that we should take our thoughts and thinking.

Very damn seriously.

It's like that chess tournament.

Not only do we, you know, we think the rules of the game are one thing, but we think that our lives absolutely frickin depend.

On winning this game, on.

Grabbing and reaching for that happiness. So it's not the thought. And thought is not our enemy. Thoughts are just thoughts.

But we've gotten sucked into this big huge lie that.

We must absolutely take our thoughts seriously. And as humans, we don't take every single thought seriously, which is really interesting. We have some thoughts and we're like, oh, okay, okay, that's cool. But then we have other thoughts.

That we put a lot of energy into that we take really, really freaking seriously.

And you know, my mom always taught me, don't start conversations on politics or religion or anything. And I don't really want to go.

There.

But I would say most of the misery or most of the nasty things that people do to each other.

Because they really taking a thought super seriously.

Been there too.

When we can just realize that thoughts are just thoughts. And most of the time thoughts are completely inaccurate. And I can't speak for everybody, but I know that I operate at a much higher level when I just assume that 99.999% of my thoughts are just complete BS.

Travis, that's interesting, because I don't know about you, I know I can only speak for myself for sure, but my thoughts are like a voice that constantly go all the time and are saying words all the time. It's the voice that can't shut up. And I hear what you're saying, but it is a very difficult process unless I am absolutely intentional about not listening to the thoughts. I think I am the thoughts.

Let me interrupt you Right there.

So. And this took me years to figure out.

Thought is not the problem. And you by and large cannot stop your thinking. But you can.

It becomes a habit. You can just not take thought seriously. Now, a really good example is we all do this. Sometimes when we go on vacation or it's the holidays, we will just say, you know what, I'm on vacation. I'm not gonna let any thoughts that I have today bother me.

Doesn't mean that we don't have thoughts. We just say, you know what, I'll deal with that later. I'm not gonna take that thought seriously. And we can do that on vacation. We can do that.

When we're watching a good movie. Sometimes we'll say, you know, you start thinking about whatever, and it's like, oh, I'll come back to that later, or whatever.

But. So you can't wrestle with thought because you're going to have thoughts.

But it's only a matter of how much energy and how seriously you take thought.

That gives birth to all these baby hoaxes. So it's okay to have to see that thought. It's like, well, if I can get this money, I'll be happy. But then you can, like, if you don't take it serious, he's like, oh, I'm having that thought again.

So let's use an example here. And it's kind of similar to the casino example, but let's say that you and I are over at my house and we're in the living room and I lay out a 2 by 4 in between you and me. Let's say it's a 20 foot long 2 x 4.

And I lay it out in between you. It's right on the floor there. And I hold up something you want. Let's just make it easy. We'll make it money because it's something easy. So I'm at one end of the 2x4, you're at the other end of a 2x4. It's solidly on the ground. I say, ryan, if you can walk across that 2x4 without falling off.

I'll give you this 20 bucks and you'll probably walk across that with no problem at all, you know, not even giving it a second thought. Matter of fact, you might even be a smart ass and do a little jig, kind of like you do and just be a little bit funny. Walk on one leg, do a little twist here, maybe do a little spin on your way over there. And then I hand you the 20 bucks.

Yep.

But.

Now if I take that, and we find a little area, like between two trees, and we say that it's 10 foot high. I say, okay, now walk across that thing, and if you're really good on balance and everything, you might walk right across it and go get that 20 bucks. Pretty easy. But you probably weren't going to do the twists and the turns and things like that, because now you feel like you have something really at stake there. You're taking that thought more seriously.

Now, if we say, okay, let's go to the two highest buildings in our town, and I'll stretch this thing across the two highest buildings in town.

Now, will you do it for 20 bucks? Ryan, you're standing there, you're looking at it, you want to be brave, but you kind of hear the wind whistling through your hair, and you're like, oh, hell no. What the hell are you talking about?

Right?

Yeah.

And now it's serious.

Now it's serious. Now what if I did? Okay, how about a hundred bucks? Will you do it now?

Still no.

Yeah. And so it just depends on what your risk level is. But what's happening is, is that you're taking that thought of dying very seriously. Now, in this case, you're, you're. You're very well justified because you're, you know, 100ft up or whatever.

But in most of life.

Our thoughts are, like, for me and my experience are 99.999% wrong. And they're not very good guides. You know, thinking is a very wonderful thing for figuring out math, you know, if you're trying to balance your checkbook or you're trying to win a chess game, you know, to balance in your mind. But they are horrible guides of leading you on your path in life and what kind. What's authentic and what's making you happy. Awful thinking is awful for that.

Like, think finding your purpose.

Right?

Yeah, stuff like that.

Constantly checking if you're on the right path or not.

More thinking.

I only laugh because you're so true. It's so true. And I only know it because I've experienced it.

Yeah, yeah, and me, too. And.

My first revelation with this was, you know, it's really. These events happen to us, and I think we've discussed this at length. These events happen to us, and we attach meaning to them, and it's like, oh, well, you know, the events themselves are neutral. Like, if it rains, that's really good. For the farmer that hasn't seen rain, he's going to be doing. Dancing a little jig. For the farmer who hasn't seen rain in a month. Right. And he wants to grow his crops. But for the sweet young bride who's a wedding day that she's been looking to for all of her life, that rain is a catastrophe. Right? And so I started having that break when I started realizing that it's the event. It's not the event that's causing me to feel, it's my thinking around the event. And then that got me to try to manipulate my thinking.

Yes.

And I found something hard. You cannot manipulate your thinking so much. But what's way more powerful is just to understand the nature of thought. When you understand where it's coming from and that it really.

Has very little power and very, very often is wrong, then you can move about your day a lot more free. Now, again, this is the see it, experience it shift thing at hand. The first step is seeing it, and then you have to experience it enough to where you start making that shift. So it's almost like a habit. It's like if you want to start learning to eat with your left hand for some reason and your right handed, it's going to feel weird, it's going to feel awkward.

At first you eat with that left hand, but if you keep doing it and doing it, pretty soon you're going to forget about it one day and you're going to start eating with that left hand. You become ambidextrous or what have you.

So seeing it is the first step. And then you have to, obviously, as you go through your life, you're going to say, oh, I'm taking this thought really seriously. And pretty soon you just start seeing that. You start not taking your thoughts seriously all the time, and you just live this.

Much freer life. You're not bothered by so much stuff because you realize that your thinking is like, craziness.

You realize, like Michael Singer says, that you have this crazy roommate living in your head. And every time you do do something, it's like, oh, that's not good enough. Oh, that's bad. Oh, you don't want why you wouldn't do that. And pretty soon you just don't take it seriously anymore. And.

You can almost become friends with those thoughts. You can laugh at the same thoughts that used to terrify you before.

Well, Travis.

I feel like we've defined the problem really well.

And part of me wants to know, okay, the action taker in me, the driver in me wants to say, okay, yeah, I get it, I get the problem. What do I do about it now?

So that's a really, it's a really good point and I've kind of already alluded to it, but we'll come back to it. Let me, let me.

Let'S knock down. Well, I'll do my best to knock down one obstacle first and then we'll talk about the steps as much as we can.

So as I've explained this to probably hundreds of people and I've taught it and where I get my most resistance, Ryan, is from super.

Really intelligent people.

Is where I get my most resistance. I'm not saying if you're dumb, you just automatically believe this.

And the reason this is, I believe is.

We'Ve bought into another baby hoax. We've taken some thinking seriously, that our thoughts somehow protect us and that we use our intelligence.

As a way to get what we want in life or to protect us. And there's really nothing wrong with, with that. But here's the thing, here's the key distinction. Thoughts are not our intelligence. Our intelligence, our wisdom comes from a different place.

It's not the same as thinking. You have this innate wisdom. You already. That's why self help doesn't work for so many people, because we're not fricking broken. We're already healthy. We already have this health inside. We're self healing mechanisms. Just like when we get a cut, we might disinfect it, we might put a band aid on it, but we don't sit there screwing with it, saying affirmations and writing it down and setting goals for our cut to heal ourselves. We are naturally self healing mechanisms. There's that innate wisdom. There's innate intelligence inside us already. It's not our thought. So I'm not saying not to look inside for our innate intelligence, but we cling on. I think what stops really smart and really intelligent people from grasping this is that they're really so deep into the hoax of intelligence is me. And it's my identity and it's how I got my degree and I got all this and everything that I have is because of my intelligence. And that is true. It makes it so diabolical. It's true to some extent because. But that's your innate wisdom coming through. It is not your thought. Thought is completely different. The nature of thought is just, it's just there. You can have weird thoughts. All of us have weird thoughts. It's just how much we take them seriously and we don't have to take them seriously. And again, so many of them are just plain wrong. Let's talk about a little bit about that. And then I really want to get onto the. The best action steps that I can get.

All right?

But, you know, we go home, we watch the news, and we say, oh.

Look. What. Look at the world. That's such a horrible place. We've got, you know, a corrupt president. We've got, you know, the stuff in Benghazi that's been covered up. We've got. The economy's in shambles.

And we lose. Our perspective narrows and we start believing these thoughts based on this perspective that we have that's coming through this screen. And most time it's coming through a screen, right? But if we were to step back and look towards what's really true.

In.

A wider sense.

What'S really true is that if you're watching the news, you already have probably 99% more than the rest of the world has. You've got electricity. There's hundreds of people bringing your electricity to your house. Right now, as we're doing this, the mailman is going to go by here a little bit. I've got a guy supporting me bringing the mail. I can go to McDonald's, and with like, I think they have the $2 menu now, but with $2, I can walk into a McDonald's and I can have 40 or 50 people wait on me like I'm a king.

We have, you know, the sun that shines. We have the earth that turns where it. We're just like this little.

We're just living in this amazing world, and we look towards that truth and not our thought.

Not what the news is telling us. Because for every bad deed that we see on the news, there's somebody giving. One of my friends in a mastermind just gave away a house free and clear to somebody. There's a family having dinner together. There's millions of families having dinner together. There's millions of people helping other people across the street right now. There's millions of people helping each other and supporting each other. Even people we don't even know who they are. I'm sitting here drinking coffee right now, Ryan, and I don't know how many hundreds of people it took to bring this to me, from the coffee pickers to the truck driver to the guy that made my cup, to the. The guy that engineered the ice cube maker to give me my ice.

And people say, oh, you're just doing that positive thinking thing.

Am I?

I don't think you're just looking at positive thinking. I think you're just finding evidence for a hypothesis.

Yes.

And again, these are all thoughts that I'm Having. But. But as I look towards the truth and away from my thoughts, as I look towards the truth and away from my thoughts.

I can find an experience that happiness, peace, okayness and joy, that's already inside of me.

What about the person who finds more evidence to the contrary? What about the person who says, you don't know what I've been through, Travis. That sounds all nice for you.

Yes.

You have your nice house and your car and beautiful wife. I don't have that stuff. I've got more evidence for the contrary, Travis.

Yes, and my heart goes out to those people because I've been there. And this is a very innocent predicament that we get ourselves into is why for the next.

40, 50 years of my life, God willing, I'm spending it trying to get this message across to people. But what's happening there? And I'm not saying that the feelings that you're feeling are not real. And by the way, that 100% of what we feel, it comes from our thought. We always have a thought before it makes a feeling. So what's happening is.

You'Re in the predicament of the big mama hoax. Which one? You're taking your thinking very, very seriously.

And we're human, and sometimes that is what we're here to learn. How not to take this thought or thinking that we have seriously. But you're also taking that baby hoax, that happiness is somewhere outside of us.

Seriously. And.

If you can.

See those thoughts that you're having, whatever that thought may be, you know, it's like, you know, I am. I don't know. Too many people can get themselves in a worse situation than I've been in. But even if you lost your house.

And that seems so horrible, right? But if you can sit on the curb.

And watch the movers come haul your stuff away.

And.

Look towards the truth.

You might have that moment of calmness and peaceness that says, you know what? I don't have to hire gardeners anymore. Make a big fat ass mortgage payment anymore. I can go move to a small little apartment and start all over again. And what an adventure that will be. Now, maybe I'm getting a little Pollyanna Ish there and positive thinking there, but, you know, we see time and time again in humans when the very worst happens, the unimaginable.

How the very best parts of our nature come out. I don't care if you look at 911.

Or.

When someone you know gets cancer and everybody rallies around them and there's an outpouring of love.

That'S our true nature inside. And sometimes it's those drastic.

Changes in fortune that really bring us back to what's really true. And what's really true is that peace and okayness and everything that we have inside of us.

So I feel for those people that are feeling their feelings for sure, because where that always comes from is a thought they're taking value very, very seriously. So what I would do is if I'm. And I do this myself, I don't want to be like, I'm some guru up here and never have a bad day. Because it's like watching a movie, right? When we watch a movie, part of the fun is getting sucked up in the movie. So if you're watching a scary movie, part of the fun is getting sucked up into that movie and forgetting ourselves for a while. But the interesting thing with a movie is if we get too scared, we can kind of pull ourselves back and say, you know, it's just a movie. Thank God.

Right? But it's the same thing with life. But that life is so much more seductive because we have smell, we have sight, we actually have feeling. We're living in this big 3D thing.

So it's very, very easy to get sucked up in this quote, unquote movie of life, say, man, this life really sucks, and not realize that we're experiencing our thought.

In the moment.

And that we can pull back from that. And if we didn't have all that thought we were taking so seriously, we can move freely about. And here's the thing. Once we. You know, if you have to have that savior, it's already inside of you. You don't think your way out of a problem. Like, how many. You know, most people say their best ideas come when they're jogging and they're in the shower or they turn their mind off because it comes from the inside of you. You already have all of the wisdom and the intelligence that you need to work through any quote, unquote problem that you have.

You know, it's really interesting that so much of us, we go to the gym and we'll lift weights, right?

And we don't say, oh, I'm going to do some bicep curls today because I want my biceps to be bigger. And then cuss the weights when we get to them, right? Damn it. Why does this weight have to be so heavy?

Speak for yourself, Travis.

Now, we might say, man, not up for this weight yet.

But when life puts something.

In front of us.

You know, it's only our thoughts we're taking. Seriously about what that something in front of us means.

So we can use that as. We can look at that as a rock that crushes us.

Or we can use it as a step that we step up upon and above in a way to make us stronger. Because once we. Again, once we don't believe the baby hoax, that happiness is out there, it's like, okay, you know, so I had a bad sales day today. That sales call went horribly wrong. But I'm still happy. You can't take that away from me. It's like being in the casino. Right. You've already. Because you're here. You've already won the damn lottery.

And I found, Travis. That when you come from that place.

There'S this space and this freedom around everything.

Yes.

Where then you just get to choose.

Yes.

And at that point, you just get to choose the things in your life that you want to show up. I. I want to earn more money. Okay. I get to go from this state, and I'm gonna choose that.

Yes.

I want to downsize.

All right.

Cool. That's what I choose. I want to be in this relationship. I don't want to be in this relationship.

Right.

And it becomes just a matter of choosing rather than this battle of, well, there's this, and there's this, and there's this and there's this, and the game that the mind plays, where it just overthinks everything and keeps us stuck. And I think that's what you mean when you say that when you master this, when you get happiness first, then all of the other things become a lot easier to obtain.

Yes. And again, I could literally talk about this for days. But let's just look at relationships. When we feel like we have a hole inside that we must fill. You can't have a satisfying relationship because you're. When. You know, I posted on my Facebook, well, not so long ago on my last 16th wedding anniversary, that, thank God, we realized that each other. We weren't responsible for each other's happiness.

We're complementary. But.

I don't depend on Jeanne to make me happy, and she doesn't depend on me to make her happy, because we know that it's just not the way it is. Right. It's like. But when you believe that you get into a relationship and then you get clingy or you don't like this about what they do because you feel like something can be taken away from you now that you got this relationship, this little bit of happiness, it's like, oh, now, don't take it Away from me. Right. But yes, you're exactly right. You're free to make those decisions. What keeps us trapped in dead end jobs that we absolutely hate is because we think, oh, well, I got my safety and my security here, right? And if somehow, if I let go of this, I'm going to be unhappy and miserable for the rest of my life. I'm not going to risk going after what I really, really want. And this brings me to my last concept here. Again, I don't want to spend too much time on it, but.

You know, meditation is great. You know, all these things that people do, there's, there's no, there's nothing that you can't turn into heroin. You know, if you can, you can jog, you can meditate. Some people go out and look for spirituality. But. And I call this the rumble strip. If for those of you not in the U.S. all of our highways have this big strip on the side when you start getting off the highway that your car like shakes and it's like this graded asphalt and you'll be like, brr.

And I believe the rumble strip of life is when you're on the wrong. You're varying off of the path and your life is like going.

And I don't care how much meditation you do.

It'S very hard to meditate and find a sense of peace when you're on that rumble strip. Right? But we stay on that rumble strip and we almost get used to it.

To the point where when we get off of it, it feels weird. So we go back to the rumble strip. We go back to that roller coaster life where everything's up and down and I'm constantly changing my happiness. One day I'm happy, one day I'm not. Because I've got this, I've got that until we just wear out. And usually that's when people open to something.

Like the concepts that we're talking about here. So I wanted to roll into those kind of like quote unquote action steps here.

Yes, please.

And hopefully people won't think that I'm being.

Sneaky or tricky.

So the biggest action step that you can take, and I've kind of alluded to this, is just to see.

Just.

To see the predicament that we're in.

Just like.

It'S the principles that changes everything, not the applications. So, you know, back in the way back, not even think it was 100, 150 years ago, Ryan. They thought that germs were spread by smell. Did you know that?

I didn't know that.

Yeah, they thought germs were spread by odor and smell. They thought that's the way diseases carried. That was really good for the florists and the Posey sellers because they would sell lots of flowers and everybody keep a flower and they try to sniff these flowers so the bad smells didn't get to them.

But not knowing that.

Disease was actually spread by germs, there was no need for surgeons to wash their hands. And millions of people died on the operating table because surgeons just didn't know to wash their hands or put on masks or to keep things sterile before they operated on people. So millions of people would die from sepsis this very surgery. This didn't do a whole lot of surgery unless I absolutely had to, because most people died from it and they didn't die from the procedure. They died because of infection and sepsis. So it's a little bit up in the air in history. Who actually figured this out? Some say Simo Weiss was a guy that figured out that a German guy named Simo Weiss figured out that germs were or diseases spent by germs. And the ironic story is that they considered him to be crazy and they put him in a nut house and he actually needed a surgery and he died from sepsis. So that was the whole ironic part of it. But later on, like Louis Pasteur did some work and such on that. But just by knowing.

The quote unquote rules the principle of how germs are spread, doctors could do something as simple as washing their hands and eliminate a lot of the deaths that occurred. But if you were locked into the paradigm of that smell.

Created disease, you would try to put more and more roses in your operating room and try to banish smell, and it's all for naught.

So seeing is actually the very first step.

Once you see the predicament, and hopefully we made that abundantly clear, and some people will see it, and some people will be locked into their paradigm so deeply they won't be able to see it.

But once you see it, that's really the first step. And it's the most valuable step that I can give to everybody here, people that I talk with. And sometimes you don't have the implications of seeing it. You don't start seeing for two, three, four days, then you start seeing more and more implications if you go to the next point, which is experiencing, experiencing it. So.

It'S one thing to see something and know it intelligently, but then it's another.

To experience it because we're kind of locked into our Habit. But what you want to do, you know, if you want to do it in action, step is just write some of this down and then remind yourself, you know, that happiness doesn't come from the outside. And when you see yourself and you can tell that we have these really great monitors in our body, they're called feelings. When you have bad feelings, stressful feelings, it's because you're taking a thought too seriously. That's all where it always comes from. And as you get in the habit, quote, unquote habit of seeing this and experiencing it more and saying, what thought am I taking so seriously? What could, what's the reverse? What could be the reverse of this being true.

And seeing that our thinking really leads us in the wrong spot? Then you start getting this lightness with you and you start saying, you know what, I've been wanting to ask this girl out for a long time and it's not going to make a difference.

To me in the long term. I'm just going to go ask her out, she may turn me down. I'm going to go do it when.

It makes no difference. Yes, then you're free to do it.

Yeah, you know what? And I'm not saying like I'm sick of being a lawyer, so I'm going to chuck everything out the window and I'm going to go chase my dream of being a yoga instructor and screw everything. Now you can do that. I mean, and you know, especially if your innate wisdom is like just driving and driving, you can't stand anymore, you've just had a heart attack, you know, which happens. This is our life signals that they give us, that puts us on different direction. Nobody thinks I can change until they have that heart attack. And all of a sudden everything changes, right? And things become so much clearer. But the key thing to do is just start noticing small things. Why am I so aggravated in traffic? What thoughts am I really, really taking seriously? That's driving me nuts about this traffic. You know, start with small stuff and work on the small stuff. You know, saying, wow, what thoughts am I taking seriously? Until you just start experiencing more and more.

And then I don't know if it'll be. It's a slow shift that starts to occur, but then you have this massive shift at some point to where, you know, we were talking about before, if you're eating with your right hand, you said if you come up with a good reason why to start eating with your left hand, maybe I don't know what the reason would be. Maybe you've lost your Right hand somehow doesn't matter. But it's going to feel weird at first, right? But sooner or later, if you keep on doing it, if you see that, yes, I can eat with my left hand, at first you don't believe I could do it, right? I just can't eat. I can't write with my left hand. That's ridiculous. But then if you keep trying, you start saying, well, I guess some people could read that. And then you keep doing it and keep doing it. Pretty soon you start experiencing that, yes, this really is true. I really can write with my left hand or eat with my. My left hand. Until you make that point where you finally make the shift where you sit down and it just becomes the natural way that you live your life.

So explain to me how that you're saying that. By practicing and being aware of our thoughts, we begin to practice and get used to the idea of realizing which thoughts we're taking too seriously and are affecting us emotionally. And then when we're aware of it, it's like somebody shines a light in a room. All of a sudden we can laugh at it. All of a sudden, we realize that it's just a thought, right?

Exactly. We're watching a scary movie, we're watching a stressful movie, or we're watching a sad movie. And that we can pull back from that. We can still. We can still experience that movie. You know, some people believe if you really understand how movies are made, you don't ever enjoy them again. I think the opposite is true. Once you understand how the trick is done, you could be even more amazed by how they pull off the special effects and how they make that emotion come out inside of you. But you're not in the movie, and you're not really afraid. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes total. It makes total sense to. To me. Because when you realize that you're not in the movie, all of a sudden you get to create the movie.

It was a big realization for me to even just have the idea planted in my brain that I'm not my thoughts. Because that voice in my head I identified with so closely that once, all of a sudden, I could step back and realize that biologically, it's the croc part of our brain that's trying to keep us safe. That hasn't evolved in a long time. It's just the safety part of the brain. Well, then when I realized that I don't have to listen to that voice, then I realize that I'm free to create whatever it is that I Want, I can create.

Yes.

That's where creativity is. And that's where the real you is. Yes, you is in that ability to create whatever he or she wants. Not the voice that is always chattering, saying, listen to me. Let me keep talking. Let me keep you safe.

Yes. That's not your savior. Your savior. You already have that inside of you. You are born with it. We're all born, these immensely powerful people that have talents and skills and gifts beyond our wildest imagination. If we just get our. If we stop taking our thinking so, so seriously. I'll give a real world example here really quick before we kind of wrap it up, I guess. But, you know, I was working with a guy, the same guy who's actually the lawyer fellow. And so I started helping him set up a reputation management company. I don't know how much detail we need to go into, but basically he helps companies and we actually specifically help plastic surgeons that when people leave a bad, unfair or bad review, he goes in and helps these doctors either settle the review or get it pushed down, the search results or what have you. But one of the thoughts that he was taking very, very seriously was that I don't have the credibility to go do this. And he had lots of SEO experience. He had lots of experience on how to do search engines. He had lots of all the experience he ever needed. But there's a big company out there called reputation.com but he's having this thought that I don't have all this experience that they got. And he's really letting them hold. Letting that thought hold him back. And so I said, have you ever thought that maybe these plastic surgeons have already been contacted by Reputation.com and maybe they don't want to work with the big companies. Maybe they're waiting for the small guy to come around and give them a customized solution. And that was just gave him just enough of a break. Hold on. That thought he was taking so seriously, that allowed him to go out there and talk with some plastic surgeons. And he started popping deals left and right. And you know, I love it when I'm right. That's one of my thoughts that I've got to. I've got to let go of. Right? It's a big helpful one. You can be right or wrong, it doesn't matter. But I noticed my ego still loves to be right sometimes. But it was exactly the case reputation.com would sign these guys on. They would send them this form. They had given this some cookie cutter thing, and they still had half the problems left. So When Alan walked in there and was a one man show and was honest with him saying, hey, I know all this stuff about search engines and I might be able to help you. Let's take a look at what you got. And they were just chomping at the bit almost to get some help. But he had that thought that he was taking very, very seriously, which kind of hindered his results there.

And it wasn't true.

And it wasn't true. And that's the thing.

There's two ways you can go about life, and either way, I guess, is a way to do it. But you can go around life thinking that all your thoughts are true or most of them are true. I found, and it took me a long time to realize that that's not a very useful way to go through life. What's been really, really freeing for me is to take every thought that I have and challenge it and look at least for the other side of it. Not only does that help you break free of thinking that all your thoughts are gold.

But it gives you solutions you never would have seen before.

So with that, let me just kind of. Ryan, I'm going to reopen it back up for you if you have any questions. But you know, I don't want to be tricky here, but it is really useful. I want people to see this paradigm shift is the most useful thing that they can do. But it is kind of hard in a world that lives by a majority of the same paradigm and the same rules to remember this long enough to make it an experience and to keep it going long enough to experience it until you have that shift. So if anybody kind of. And you'll know if you're latching on to what I'm saying, it's making a lot of sense. I don't have any actual program, programs or any way to take your money right now. And that's not what this is for. But if you need some help on this, I've got a couple sites set up. I mostly work with entrepreneurs and business owners that kind of feel like they've lost their mojo in life. And I call that Mojopreneurs. It's@mojopreneurs.com it's probably the hardest word next to sphag momonometer to spell out, but it's M O J O P R E N e u r s.com and then I've also set up a Facebook page where I'll keep you on track and try to remind you of these.

Thoughts and the mama hoax and the baby hoax and long enough to where you can make it an experience. And that's facebook.com mojopreneurs mojo preneurs Travis.

I know some people, by the way. I'm part of mojrepreneurs and actually I love the posts that you make on a regular.

Awesome. I'll be making more of them too.

Good, good. It's about time you joined this thing called Facebook and started posting your brilliance on there. But Travis, there's some people who are listening, who are dealing with what they'd consider a problem relationship or a crossroads in life, or they feel stuck, like they haven't been able to see the success that they wanted.

There's a tendency when you have a problem to think about it all the time. It becomes like there's a tiger in the room all the time. It's all you can think about is the problem. When that's going on. What do you say to that person in order to get them to take a step back and open up some space for some peace?

Yeah. So in context of this interview, remember that the 2 by 4 more than likely is really on the floor.

So if you're taking your thoughts too seriously about what this means to you, that typically what causes you to think about it all the time, does that make sense? So if you feel like that somehow.

Your thoughts that just keep on coming up, coming up, coming up, and anxiety and fear, that's why they're coming up, because you're really anxious or fearful of it. And typically we're only afraid of a couple things. We're afraid of not getting what we want.

Or losing what we have. And the only reason we're really afraid of that is because we take the thought so seriously that it means so much. So part of it is to get some. To remember that paradigm that you're in.

That your happiness is actually inside of you. So go out and get whatever works for you to see the thoughts, but not take them so seriously and try to connect with that deeper part inside of you that is actually okay.

And then to look at your thoughts that you're having and maybe look at the reverse of those thoughts, which typically the more anxious you are, the more fearful you are of those thoughts, it's the harder thing to do.

So if you're worried about losing your job, let's say, let's say pink slips went around.

Last week to everybody. You didn't get one. But now you got all these thoughts coming up. Right?

Right.

You got all these thoughts coming up.

And it's hard not to Think about, am I next? Is that pink slip coming for me next? Right now what's interesting is if you really hate your job and you're just there because your wife makes you, you're kind of hoping that pink slip comes away around, right?

So there's lots of ways to look at it. It's not the fact that people got pink slips and you're not afraid really of getting fired. What you're afraid of is all the thoughts that you have around that and what that's going to mean, that somehow we take our thoughts and we cascade them into.

If I get fired, I'm not going to be able to pay my bills and I'm not going to be able to feed my kids and my wife's gonna be pissed off at me and she's gonna divorce me and everybody's gonna lose respect for me. And we just carry this on is all these deep things, right? Because we take all these things so damn seriously. But if we look at it with a different. If we take some time and say, you know what, we have innate wisdom inside of us and I know that sounds all, you know, woohoo. But if we have faith that we already have the answers inside, we have faith that, you know, no matter if I get a pink slip or not, my life's going to go on, okay, we might just get enough objectivity to take a look at us and say, wow, you know, they just fired 12 people. I bet that leaves a lot of work. They're really scrambling to try to figure out how to get done. How can I be a part of that decision making process? What part? You know, I was really good at this guy's job and I filled in for him. I was really good at this guy's job too. Maybe this is assuming that you want to keep your job. Maybe I can go in and find ways to be of value and help them with this transition. So maybe, you know, if I'm doing like my supervisor's job or part of his job and help them with this transition, that will even not only lock me in better for what my position is, but maybe it could happen that I might even get a promotion later on because now they have lots more room for salary right now. Is that going to necessarily.

Guarantee your job? No.

But is it a lot more useful thinking than wringing your hands and being mad and being upset and, you know, taking the day off because you're so upset? You see what I'm saying?

I do. And what I actually like about this approach is that by creating A little bit of space between you and the thought or you and the problem, that that is where there is room for creativity to come in. And that's where solutions, real solutions come in. It's been very rare in my life that I've been able to think my way out of a problem.

Yes, I love that. I just posted this on my Facebook page and it was, you don't have a money problem, you have a creativity problem. And you can replace money with just about anything. You don't have a relationship problem, you have a creativity problem, you don't have whatever blank problem, you don't have that, but you just have a creativity problem. And you know where that creativity comes from, Ryan?

It comes from space.

It comes from. Yeah, it comes from that innate wisdom. And you know, it's a formless idea. You can't really put words to a formless idea, but it comes from that innate intelligence that's running the whole frickin world that makes the oak tree keep on growing. And it doesn't need thought to keep on growing. We're naturally healing mechanisms. And if we can just not take our fearful thoughts so seriously and get to that spirit space, creativity rushes through. You know, it was interesting with the last, I hope I'm not getting too technical here. It was interesting with this last big Google slap that we had where like people's businesses, you know, kind of got thrown off the first page of Google for various reasons. You know, people got freaked out and a lot of people just got out of the business. But then there's another group that looked at it and said, you know what? Of course they were shocked at first, like, oh my gosh, what do I do? But then they're like, I'm going to be okay. As a matter of fact, it's the best damn thing that ever happened to me because now I can go out there and I figured out, I went out there and figured out how to get those back and they started these new, I forget what kind of service they call it now, basically where they help de index bad links and they started up a whole new brand new business model.

Out of what most people, quote unquote would think is a problem. Right. The only thing that makes something a problem is your serious thoughts about it. There is no problems, really. And I know that sounds very Pollyanna ish, but the only thing that makes something a problem is our serious thoughts about it.

Well, Travis, I could talk to you for days about this.

I know I did.

There's really a lot more to say. But this was just focused on happiness. There's lots of baby hoaxes focused on achievement and money. But if you see them, the big mama hoax first, a lot of those other hoaxes will go away. So I was so happy to be here. I hope I change at least one person's life today.

Hey, Travis, thanks so much for being with us at Freedom Fast Lane. You will see me at Modrepreneurs, and I hope that everybody joins us there. Travis, thanks again, buddy.

Awesome, man. Bye.

Bye.

Man, I love that guy. And I could talk to him all day. And sometimes when I visit him at his house in Arkansas, I do talk to him all day. I'm so thankful that Travis was able to join us at Freedom Fast Lane. And how true true is what he had to say. You know, you are not the thoughts in your head. I'm reading a book right now called 10% happier, and one of the opening lines is, the voice in my head is a real a hole. Isn't that the case? You're not the a hole in your head. You are the awareness of your own presence. And it's even more true that happiness is nowhere except inside of us. I like to say you can't pull happiness out of your pocket. You can't pull success out of your pocket. They're just rules that we set up for ourselves, and you get to make the rules. And if you don't consciously make them, we can often be crushed by them. Hey, I'd love to hear your thoughts about today's show with Travis Sago. Head on over to the blog at Freedom Fast lane. Com and leave your thoughts there. Thanks so much for listening to Freedom Fastlane. I'll see you on the next show.