Achieving Your Next Level Of Mental Performance With The "Celebrity Savior" Robert Grigore

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Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to take your income, investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larson. You can get your free copy of our book @next level income.com just click on the book link. I even send you a copy if you put your address in. Today's show is sponsored by Mfin Summit, that's multifamily investor nation summit, coming up January 21st through the 23rd. It's a three day information packed event for multifamily investors with over a thousand attendees and we're going to have over 50 speakers. You'll hear from experts about finding deals, raising capital, underwriting strategies, selecting markets, and so much more. Go to mfinsummit.com to grab your ticket and use promo code NextLevel All Caps Next Level to get $100 off. Whether you're new to multifamily investing or a seasoned investor, you don't want to miss this event. Join me at the Multifamily Investor Nation Summit in January. On today's show we have Robert Grigor. Robert, AKA the Celebrity Savior, specializes in eliminating anxiety, fear, depression and more in as little as a single week weekend. Robert is a certified EMDR therapist. He's a speaker and the author of youf Need Therapy. Emdr. Real people with real Problems Getting real Help. He also runs an exclusive private practice dedicated to radically freeing top creative professionals from the unconscious prisons that sabotage their extraordinary legacies. I'm so excited to have you on today, Robert. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Chris. I'm excited to be here and thank you to the listeners as well for having me in your ears today.

Yeah, absolutely. So we first met earlier this year during an event called PodMax. We brought a bunch of podcasters together and when I learned about you, I was like, I have got to have this guy on the show because we talk about investments and money all the time and I just had a guest on talking about how to save taxes and that's cool, I love that stuff. But this is really about life and living life and living your best life and being happy. So I had to look up what EMDR is so maybe you can tell the audience a little bit more about what that is and what you do.

Yeah, most people want me to explain that. It was awesome meeting you at podmax and I'm happy to be here today too. So look how that all worked out. So EMDR stands for Eye Movement, Desensitization and Reprocessing. And as you can tell, it's a mouthful. So we just use the acronym emdr couldn't even have a sentence or a conversation with people who said eye movement, et cetera. So emdr, what that really is, it's a psychological processing therapy. What we do is we're actually accelerating the brain's natural healing process to process through trauma, which is stored maladaptively in the brain, right hemisphere of the brain mostly. And by doing something called bilateral stimulation, we're accessing both hemispheres of the brain, so it's alternating fashions to access basically the human's entire brain to work through a past event, which is the basis for your current distress, whether that be anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, whatever it might be. It's all because earlier trauma that started long, long, long time ago. We could even get into that if we want to. But in a nutshell, that's what it is. It's an accelerating form of psychological processing.

I appreciate you sharing that. I mean, it's one of these things. I think it's becoming more mainstream. I watched the show Billions, the series Billions, and you look and they have this therapist on staff. And to help people have better performances, athletes now they have coaches that help work through this and keep them there. And when you're talking about a game of seconds or inches or millimeters, it's so important. Who do you focus on working with?

So who I focus on is our top creative professionals. So that means it could be the obvious candidates are celebrity actors and musicians, but also professional athletes because they have to be pretty top form in order to do their work. As well as CEOs, entrepreneurs. There's an incredible amount of creativity that has to go into becoming an entrepreneur. So that's really the main people I work sometimes with coaches and others as they find me, but that's really who I'm after, who like to work with me.

I love it. I'm part of a group called Strategic Coach. And the coach in the group that we meet every quarter, he says life is an energy game and business is an energy game. And it really kind of, it was like that light bulb moment where it's like, you know, if you don't bring your A game every day, you're not going to succeed. But. And then they said you don't have to be on top every day. And they talked about how business and entrepreneurs are like athletes. And it's just so cool. I mean, you just said it right. You're hitting all these people, actors. I didn't even think about It. But I mean, they got to be so, so on, I'm sure. Yeah.

You really have to be dialed in in that top form or else you can't perform. Right.

Yeah. So I guess, Robert, tell me, why did you go into this field? What led you in this field? I think I don't need this therapy because you said right brain. I'm all left brain. I'm a numbers guy. I'm an engineer. I'm just kidding. But I think like you said, everybody needs therapy. But how did you come to this? Because for me, a numbers guy that likes to stare at spreadsheets and crunch and process, it's fascinating.

Cool. I appreciate that. And there's 50% of the population that are like, they're mostly left brain, but that just means kind of your default, you're more dominant side or you're more analyticological. I'm definitely more right brain. There's really two journeys. One journey is how I found emdr, and then one journey is how I found psychotherapy. The psychotherapy part is important because when I was growing up, I didn't know I wanted to be a therapist. I just wanted to be creative. I just had a natural flair for art and I just expressed myself that way. And actually the messaging that I got from my parents was, hey, Robert, you can do anything that you want, but it has to pay the bills, right? And you know, musicians don't make a lot of money unless you become, you know, world famous and actors. It was really hard to get that kind of job. So you best go into medical field. Like my father's a doctor or cousins who are lawyers, a good handful of them. But that was really based on my parents scarcity mindset. I love them to death. They have obviously the right intentions for me and they want my health and happiness, but they were unconsciously squashing my creativity. So I actually went the complete other direction, as a lot of kids do. I doubled down in my creative endeavors. So I got my outlets with painting and drawing. I used to do comic books. And really that was my only outlet emotionally because I didn't have a lot of guidance of what to do with my emotions. So I was just struggling all the time. And I've been suffering with anxiety and depression and addictions far before I even knew what they were. And I was able to kind of cope through that stuff was with my art. And that was really the first thing that helped me with it. I didn't even really know what was going on, though I ended up finding psychotherapy as a total whim like, I went into my undergrad following my best friend because I was afraid of school. And I didn't really. I wasn't doing very good in my high school, by the way. My grades were not great, like one A, maybe a couple Bs and stuff. But I ended up going into graphic communication management, which is essentially how to run a printing press, which is all but a dead field now. So I'm dodged a bullet there. And then I ended up finding philosophy as my entry point into psychology because I was so always a deep thinker. I was always asking those existential questions, why am I here? What is this all about? Why do I exist in a world I experience suffering? Because that's what I was experiencing all the time. Versus why is life, could there be another reality where there was no such thing as suffering? I was holding these pretty complex thoughts for a young person to have in their brain. And because I wanted to help myself, I needed to figure out, what's the point of why am I suffering? And then I ended up finding emdr, because as I went into psychotherapy, I found that talk therapy just, it was helpful to some degree, but it wasn't getting the results that my clients needed, per se, that it was like trying to take down a redwood tree with a spoon. It was working, but it wasn't going as fast as possible. So on a whim, I just went to a training for emdr and I almost left first lunch break because I thought it was total hogwash. It was just ridiculous that somebody can wave their hand in front of somebody's face and all of a sudden they're feeling better. It's crazy.

It sounds crazy.

Almost left. I almost left and I thought, Robert, you're spending 2,000 bucks or whatever for the training. Like, you just get your money's worth, get the credits for your college. They need to have to see it. And thank God, because research study after study after case study after story from my trainer, I started to. Okay, I'm going to sounding like it makes sense now. And there's 30 plus years of research behind it. Okay, I guess I'll try it. I tried it on my clients and it shortened two years of therapy for one of my clients. In three weeks. We were through his trauma instead of the last two and a half, three years that we've been spending banging our head against the wall. But this actually works. So it's powerful stuff.

No, I love it. And I've been on a couple other podcasts I've guests on and we've talked about my experience. So I like to say that effed up is normal. We all have our challenges and our experiences, and they affect how we go through life, which is what you were talking about. And I sought out therapy earlier in my life, dealing with the loss of my father, my best friend, and ultimately my mother, and some different things. And I realized that I was sabotaging some relationships that I was having. And it helped me kind of come to a realization of what I could focus on. And that was traditional therapy. I hear you say you can accelerate this process. To me, that sounds awesome because it's a challenge, busy professional, sitting down for an hour or two a week. So I'm just curious, how can you accelerate that process versus traditional therapy?

I really appreciate that. And first, I feel like I have to comment on. Thank you for sharing that with your audience. Because it does take people just like you that are in this position that your voice is reaching people and to know that you've gone through therapy, you've gone through troubles, and you're normalizing it right now for everybody. My God, that's one of the best messages I could possibly hear. Thank you so much for that. And then so to answer your question, how do I accelerate it so quickly? There's really three methods to it, three pillars of work. So number one, it's me you're getting me, me, me, me. There's so much that I've been through in my life I like to thank that I've been through 10% of what everybody can experience in their lives. We didn't even get to half of the stuff that I've been through. But everybody's got their experience. But because of the range of experiences that I've had allows me to empathize with my clients on a deeper level. So through. Over the. We were talking earlier, I think close to four decades of my life here.

My gosh, less than mine, though, I'll give you that.

That's right. That is right. Remember that, Robert. So, no, it's just a number and it's how you feel. But really, it's allowed me to really fine tune my intuition. So I can have somebody sitting in front of me now. And within 20 seconds, 30 seconds, I can tell exactly what it is that they're struggling with. And that's really important because you need to have the therapist that's gone through something similar to some degree or has gone through their own work. And that's the other thing too. I've had about a decade of combination of therapies, emdr One of them lately now, thank God, and talk therapy and all that together has been really helpful for me to work all of my own stuff, because I am human. And it's really why a lot of therapists get into this job, because we have our own issues to work through. And then what really happens. The real magic, of course, is the emdr, where once we have exactly the root issue, the sequence in the brain identified as to what it is, and that is its childhood environment. And it's going back further than that. Your parents, parents and their parents, parents. And so generationally we're talking, there's all kinds of things that get passed down. So we're identifying the main reasons why that person's feeling the way they are. And after we've solidified that negative belief system, that's what it is. It gets stored in the brain as a belief system about yourself. And there's a somatic component in everything as well. But we then sit down for a much longer time than the regular therapist will do. I call that pay as you go. Or you come in for an hour here, 90 minutes there, and you're right, busy professionals. From my experience, that's kind of unrealistic for the most part. Maybe for a little while you can do it, but then eventually it falls off. So we're going really heavy for three days straight. It's one of those Tony Robbins kind of immersions where we're going really, really, really, really deep, but we're actually going to the root of it, and we're using bilateral stimulation to heal it. So we're going to a place that people have probably never gone before, just because what I've seen is pretty incredible. So that's really what it's all about. It's high level, fast transformations because of those three main components.

So what do you talk about in your book and who, if you're thinking, okay, this is the type of people that I can really help them get to the next level in terms of performance going through that. Give us a couple examples there.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. So the book was really written for everybody. I just want this message to go to everybody out there. Because an EMDR therapist is basically level trained. There's a benchmark that they have to reach in order to become an EMDR therapist. And the message really is very clear. You don't have to struggle for years and years and years and years and years. I can't tell you the number of clients that have come to me and said, robert, I've been dealing with this issue for 20 years. And you're telling me that it can be eradicated in how long? It's like, yeah, I get it. The books with that I go into. The main question is first, do I even need therapy? Really? Obviously the title is Tongue in Cheek. I think we all need it. But once you cross that line, then we're talking about what type of therapy, what's really going on in your brain when you're experiencing distress, how's that all? What's going on there? And then what all about EMDR from start to finish. For the standard, EMDR can get anywhere from EMDria, trained, EMDR, international association trained therapists. And then of course, how to find the right therapist, because that's so important, right? You got to find the therapist that clicks with you. So again, all those tips are in there. So that's really why I've written the book and to make it really accessible too. It's like 100 pages, so you can read that in a weekend.

That's a good length. I see another book sitting there that's about 100 pages long, too.

This is one of my favorite new books, actually, right there.

Thank you very much for that plug. And yeah, if you want to get a copy, just go to our website, click on the book link if you don't have one already. But in all seriousness, I talk about in my book, my racing history and when I was racing and we were talking about this before the show today, I used visualization and I read sports psychology books and how your brain doesn't. It can't really discern whether you're experiencing it today or whether you're visualizing your head and kind of imprinting those wins. Like as a kid we used to do it, we'd run around and pretend we won. We'd throw our hands up and you can train yourself to be more successful. So if somebody's listening and they're saying, you know, that's great, Robert, I don't think I need therapy, but how can I use this to really accelerate my progress, whether it's in business or, you know, you mentioned athletes, and I want to know why you're called the celebrity savior. But if you're looking for somebody that's more performance oriented and maybe doesn't have their back against the wall thinking about thinking that they have a problem, how can this help somebody like that?

Yeah, it was great, great, great questions. So it'll help in so many different ways. One of them being that you talked about visualization and the brain has to have the end goal in mind, right? And people that's easier than others. And think about professional athletes, CEOs, entrepreneurs. You got a goal in mind, and you want to reach that goal. Let's call that the positive side of your mind. So your brain's going to go eventually. That's the sky. When you. If you're in a hot air balloon, that's the sky you're flying, right? That's. That's what you want. But if you don't cut those bags that are holding that hot air balloon, right, you're going to go a lot slower and you're going to struggle a lot harder because you're having so much resistance, friction. So there's a negative side from every. That positive goal, positive belief that's attached to it, meaning maybe I am good enough or I am successful, whatever that means to you, or worthy of love or respect, whatever that might be. There's a negative side that goes along with that. Everybody's heard of, or maybe I shouldn't say everybody's heard of this. Everybody has an inner critic in the back of their mind that always doubts them. Yeah, Chris, but, yeah, I know you want to run race, but remember that one time when you sprained your ankle on that weird hole that you didn't see coming? What if that happens again? So we've all got that mindset, and that is not something that just magically appears overnight, although it can feel that way. It. And this is one of the catches, right? People have had a lot of success. Sometimes they come to see me and they're like, out of nowhere, I can't perform. I can't function. You've heard of the yips, right? When talking sports, like, all of a sudden, Tiger woods can't make a putt. Best golfer in the world can't make a putt. That's called the yip. So then we have those negative beliefs that are saying something in the back of mine, like, you're not good enough. You're going to miss this putt, et cetera, et cetera.

That was right.

I know. It just came in my mind. Like you, I guess. Sorry. So the point I want to make is that if you don't eliminate those negative beliefs, then you're going to end up struggling. You have to work 10 times as hard to get to that finish line. So clear it away. Let yourself just soar. And then you'd be surprised how much easier things come to you that you probably have never even imagined. So a whole new world can open up to you.

Yeah. No, it's hard unless you've gone through it, to really see that and see the positive shift. And again, when you go through these things in your life and then you are able to navigate through those and get through the other side. I mean, one of the statistics I thought was interesting, my father passing away when I was young, children that have lost a parent, they tend to be more successful because they have this finite idea of time. But it can also be unhealthy. And there's all these little, little things that are interrelated. So I find it fascinating. And if you're listening, you're struggling with something, or you're looking to get to the next level, I encourage you. Take a look at Robert's book. Look through it again. I can tell you from personal experience, having gone through some of this process, you deserve it, and you can get through that other side. So circling this back to money, Robert. So we were talking about how it's one thing to make money, but if you don't think you deserve it, that you ultimately end up losing it. We hear the story of lottery winners, right? Like somebody's poor, they win the lottery, and then a year later, two years later, they're out of money again. So what is that tied to and how is that important for somebody that's going out there and doing that? You call it your money story, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And obviously there's a strategy, right? And somebody like Chris can help you with the strategizing of what to do with that money, how to invest it. Like, we're not talking about that right now. That's important, but there's a mindset around money. The story of what we've been told about money, if you win the lottery, and that's going to help you, maybe you got a debt or something like that, and obviously that's a positive thing. You don't want to be in debt or whatever, because that really sucks. But there may be a belief, like, maybe money's evil. If I have money, then other people are not going to have money. And I love this world. I want people to be happy. So when all that's going on underneath, for me, my money story was you have to work hard, you have to struggle for money. Not just working hard, but struggling. And you'll never have a lot. You're always going to be struggling. Comes from my parents and their parents. My grandmother on my father's side, Romanian. So she had three kids, I think, and she had to scrounge the ditches. She had to walk around all Day long in the heat, in these ditches, looking for bottles that she can recycle so that she could feed her family. And so when you're growing up in an environment like that, when literally every single scent means the difference between eating that day or not, you're going to have a very different perspective of money and you're going to. I'm sure she came home some days and said, oh gosh, this is really hard or we don't have very much today or we're going to have to go without. Or something like that must have happened because it motivated my father and my uncle and all that. Where one's a doctor's, a lawyer, it motivated, but they still had the belief system. And even though you're great position or you win the lottery, if you're not programmed to maximize that, to grow it, to see money as something that else that it could be seen like a tool, a lever that you can pull that you can access something else and grow it instead of trying to hang onto it because you have this scarcity mind, like it's going to go away and it's never going to come back again. And then I have to struggle. It's so hard to live life that way when there's a whole nother possible reality out there. So that's really what the money story is all about. When I think about it, that this is what's the stories that you've been told growing up. And I encourage you to think about that and think about what did your parents tell you about money? How about their parents? Where are they coming from? Or if they're a product of our environment. Exactly. So there's a lot that goes into it, but it's really. What are the negative beliefs that come up for you when you think about money?

Yeah, no, I think it's fantastic and I think everybody needs to consider that what your money story is, what your money rules are and what's going to happen if you end up being successful. What are you going to do with it? Because I got news for you, just having the money, it doesn't make you happy. And more of it doesn't make you happy. So I got two more questions for you, Robert. How did you get the name the Celebrity Saver that.

So people just started calling me that. But there's actually a story behind a celebrity. We'll call her Jane. So she calls me. I started getting a bit of a name for myself, sort of hotshot EMDR therapist in Vancouver. I was shortening my clients from two years Three years to three months, six months. And that was pretty good. I was happy about that. She says, robert, I'm so and so. I'm like, oh, cool. Nice to meet you. And then she says, so I've got this drinking problem and I can't perform unless I have an Ativan and I take a shot at whiskey or whatever it was. And I'm like, wow. So this answered my question at the time. I was like, do celebrities have performance anxiety? Guess they do. So that's the thing. So she calls me. She comes for my first session. I start her off just like everybody else. We do the first, you know, the first session, sort of history gathering, understanding what's her problem. She, Chris, she gets up before the session's even over, and she's like, you know what? I don't think you can help me. Not fast enough anyway. I got to go on, like, no. Okay. And she walked out the door, and I'm like, flat on my face. Guess I wasn't quite as, you know, hot, shoddy as I thought I was. Never heard from her again. But thanks to her, it lit a fire under my behind, and I wanted to help people even faster. Celebrity that needs me right now can come in and boom, you can clear the issue, and then you can go and perform. Like, that is such a huge gift of doing that for people. So that's one of the reasons why I'm called celebrity savior. Because these high level professionals, these creative professionals, they struggle just like everybody else, even though some of their issues are a little bit different. Like, what do you do when you're born into a legacy, a family fortune? That's a different kind of reality than a lot of other people deal with. So the other reason is really a mission that I look at celebrities like, there are real leaders. Politicians are important. Yes. But the people that I think really influence our culture are our celebrities.

How about that?

We follow them. They say, buy this car. I want that car. I'm going to do it. So that's really. And over the last decade, from my count, there's been over 150 celebrity suicides.

Wow.

And oftentimes, like, yeah, they've been dealing with depression, but, you know, he was doing fine. He was making great music, making good money. Yeah, yeah. But like you mentioned earlier, money doesn't. It's not happiness. Right. So, yeah, part of a mission now. So that's all about the celebrity savior part. Yeah.

Well, look, again, I can't thank you enough for being on the show today. If you want to check Out Robert's book. If you want to learn more about emdr, how to get in touch with him. What's the best way to get ahold of you, Robert?

You can write to my website. That's the easiest way. Grigorcounseling.com and everything you need is on there.

Awesome. We're going to link that to the show Notes and my last question. I told you I had two left. If you can go back to your 25 year old self and give yourself some advice, what would it be?

Everything in Google Invest, man, do it, do it, do it.

Why do you say that? Bet everything on Google. That's a good one.

Another funny story. I had registered education savings plan. I think it was like 15 grand or something like that in maybe 20 grand and obviously it was for school, but it was there. I actually, I think at that time I had changed my major anyway, so I had this. I knew nothing at all about investing like zero except that you want to buy low and sell high. That's all I knew. And so just put everything in Google because that's going to explode. Like people are starting to use it and it's going well. So I call my mutual funds broker or whoever his name is, I think at the time, whoever it was, and this is what I want to do and I think it's going to be really good. So I was listening to my gut. This is the key, right? I was listening to my gut and the guy said, Robert, that seems really risky because stocks are so volatile you don't know if they're going to go up, they're going to go down. Which is true. Which is true. Right. But the best avenue is to diversify a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there. Well, I guess that makes sense. And again, I can't give you financial advice but if I could go back, I'd say listen to your gut because by now I would have been freaking so rich and I could have done a whole lot of different things with my time. Although I will obviously say I wouldn't be where I am today and I'm very thankful for where I am today and this is part of my journey. But listen to your gut, your intuition is so valuable and gosh, I wish I had me now talking to my 20 year old self.

I love that advice. That's some of the best that's been shared on this, including the Google Park. That was good. You can go back and do that. Robert. I've really enjoyed the conversation. I wish we had another episode to record and there might be another one that we have here, but I'll certainly be in touch. Again, if you want to get ahold of Robert's book, check out his website. It's going to be in the show nights. Check out our website, NextLevelIncome.com and get a copy of our book. And if you enjoyed the episode today, please like it, share it and give us a review. Everyone, thank you so much for your time today. Robert, thanks again.

Thank you so much.