Marrying Meditation and Tech for Growth: Allen Imbarrato

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Thank our guest, Alex Imbarato— Alex, I did it again. Alan Imbarato of Key Systems. Alan, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

I don't know why I misnamed you twice.

It's okay.

You look like an Alex, maybe. I don't know. You look like an Alan, too. I don't—

whatever.

So will you give us your brief entrepreneurial history just for context so people know what your chops are.

All right. I started my company in 1986. I was a meditation teacher before that. And so I ended up developing a seminar called Winning at Work and at Life about how to take that meditative or calm place and bring it into the workplace. So I created a seminar and I ended up doing an infomercial on TV. Oh nice. Showing my tapes. And I got involved in my own passion in terms of winning at work and got involved with like the first Macintosh computer and ended up creating a software business after that. And I've been doing custom software and I sell products. We have an ERP, CRM, accounting software that we have clients all over the world. We run a point of sale for one clothing company, 60 stores worldwide. And I have a team of 15 programmers that work for me. But my passion was to bring what I was doing before in terms of personal growth, transformation, and tech, and merge it with tech. And I created an app in 2011 in the App Store called Stress Shifter. And now I've developed a new version of the app using AI called Keyflow.

Nice. Okay. So help me out. What was the reason, the impetus for revisiting your original love, your original passion around meditation and self-improvement?

Well, I've always been driven by purpose and transformation of consciousness and making a difference in the world motivated me very early where I joined an ashram in my 20s. Okay, so I'm sort of dating myself, but I spent 10 years, you know, developing and working on spiritual growth after I was very politically oriented. Before that, I was working in the peace movement and doing political things, and then I sort of evolved into the spiritual world. And then I sort of came out of that wanting to apply it in a more practical sense into the workplace. So those, those values, that vision, that purpose has pretty much defined why my company is called Qi, which means life force energy and bringing that life force energy and spreading it into the world.

You're going to have to excuse me. I don't know what an ashram is. Will you explain it to me?

Well, it's a Hindu version of a monastery. Okay. Okay. Like an Indian guru back in the '70s when those gurus, everyone wanted to get connected to a guru in India. So that was like the starting point. But, you know, basically I would meditate, you know, do meditation 2 or 3 hours a day and then do other activities to support that, bringing that energy into the world.

Okay, so why did you retool your app? You released it a long time ago. What What was the reasoning behind revamping it?

Well, the latest version uses AI, which gives me a lot of flexibility. I trained this AI agent in the Hall philosophy. We have a polyvagal theory behind it to transform stress that, uh, so I was given a lot more options to make the app very flexible. Actually, I released the app in the App Store last year, and now we're creating a new version which we're about to release, which is just basically a, a way to chat with an AI mindfulness coach that we've trained. So it gives us a lot of flexibility to adjust it to whether it's a corporate person, an entrepreneur, a creative person, a laborer, and it speaks in different languages and adjusts the tone, and it gives a lot of options to communicate a process where people can learn how to shift their stress into flow. So AI is something that we're adding to our regular software company, and we're bringing a lot of AI automations with our clients. Uh, so I became very interested in how to apply that to the app.

Okay, so you essentially, I'm going to paraphrase, there were new tools that allowed you to improve the breadth and scope of the app.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

You used another word I'm not familiar with. Polyvagal, I think you said.

Polyvagal theory. Yes. It's basically a somatic process of stress is really a matter of changing your state, not just changing your mind or changing your mindset. But it's, you know, basically what meditation does is it changes your nervous system and alters how you feel in your body. So polyvagal basically says there's 3 states. There's what they call a flow state. Then there's the fight-flight state where you're activated. And then there's the shutdown state where you're completely in a depressed, no energy state. So they defined it and have backed it up with a lot of science. And I was basically doing those things for— I've been practicing meditation for like 50 years. So they sort of like put science behind it. So that's why I'm connecting it to polyvagal.

Okay, so I'm going to read between the lines and see if I'm right here. You're saying that it's not just a mindset state, so it's not entirely in the brain, or what do you mean by that?

All right, well, a little bit about brain theory is we have these three brains, okay? We have the reptilian, the mammalian, and the neocortex. But part of the monkey—

I like monkey.

Okay. Yes. And then we have this thing called the amygdala. Okay. The amygdala is like a smoke alarm that just waits to go off, to get triggered. It remembers all your past pain and tries to protect you. So the brain has its ways of going off. It's like a signal. Stress we see as an opportunity to learn how to grow stronger mentally and emotionally. By giving you information that somehow you veered off the road. It's like going down the road in a lane and you see you're veering off. And so you have this sensor called the amygdala, which gives you a warning that something is amiss, that you've— you got to protect yourself. Okay. Right. I identified these 4 stress patterns or these stress, types that are commonly pre-programmed into your brain 25 million years ago. Okay, so we're running off this programming that is like basically a flaw that hasn't been updated in many years. But now we're applying that same brain into our modern tech, uh, modern world. And people who used to You know, it was originally designed for physical threats, you know, lions, tigers, bears. Sure. But now it's mainly being triggered by social threats. I mean, people are the main trigger. You know, people can judge you, people can abuse you, people can abandon you, people can reject you. You can get triggered by financial concerns, by health concerns. All these are social threats that keep our stress response system activate it most of the time. You know, some people say 80% of people are chronically stressed but don't know it because their cortisol keeps getting secreted, keeps being activated because your amygdala doesn't feel safe. And that's its purpose, is to warn you that you're not safe. So, but we're not necessarily just safe, not safe because of physical threats, because we're in a psychological space of not feeling psychologically safe.

So what would some of those symptoms be of being, you know, if there's 80% of us that are chronically stressed, perpetually stressed, what are— how do you self-diagnose? How do you know, am I stressed or not? Like, I don't feel stressed, but maybe I've just become accustomed to it.

Well, there's lots of ways to tell. There's, you know, basically inflammation is the big result of having stress hormones being triggered all the time. Cortisol is one of the main ones. But, you know, sleep patterns, if you're not sleeping right, if you're, uh, chronic disease as a result of chronic inflammation. So, you know, most people die from heart disease or cancer or diabetes or all these different diseases that accumulate over many years of chronic stress. So people are trying to figure out, you know, the cause of cancer, the cause of all these things. But a lot of it, you know, the CDC says 80 or 90% of all doctor visits are stress-related.

Okay, interesting.

So your sleep patterns, your energy level, having tension in your body, pain in your body. I mean, pain is the main symptoms that you can notice in your body in terms of your energy is being affected because your energy is being blocked in your body. It's not flowing. So that's why we call it Qi flow, life energy flowing again. Brings you back into the flow state.

All right. So I know a little bit about Eastern philosophy around chakras. You say ki, the Chinese, it's chi, different words, but essentially the energy flow. Which in, you know, frankly, in Western culture is usually frowned upon. I say frowned upon, dismissed, maybe not taken seriously. Seems a little metaphysical, you know, not real science. What do you say to that?

Well, the last 10 or 15 years, there's been a tremendous amount of studies on meditation, mindfulness, and these kind of things that it really validated. So most big corporations now have mindfulness as an accepted practice. Yoga is recognized, meditation, all these things have been validated. When I first started doing meditation back in the '70s, yes, it was very Eastern woo-woo type of thing. I mean, the Beatles first are known for bringing meditation, but it's come a long way, and now it's not so much woo-woo that mindfulness is being understood as a very valid way to reduce stress. And, uh, you know, there are lots of now, uh, 20,000, 30,000 studies that back it up in terms of how it reduces cortisol, reduces blood pressure, reduces all sorts of different factors. So sleep improves. So I don't think it's as far-fetched anymore as it could have been like 10, 15 years ago.

Well, I don't mean to be dismissive and say that it ever was not valid, but the perception was.

Yes.

I think there's also the— maybe the spiritual aspect. That people resisted. In other words, like, I can't participate in yoga because that is a spiritual practice. And I don't want to affect my spirituality. Right. But I think what I've observed and what I think you would agree with is, is that regardless of the spirituality, taking that, setting that aside, there are aspects of our body and our mind that these practices can improve, whether you agree with the spiritual aspect of it or not.

Yeah, it's a lot of it is terminology. And people are very attached, religion-wise, to their particular theology or their particular way of interpreting God, or how people describe— you know, a lot of people aren't religious, they want to be spiritual. But the fact is we have a life force energy that leaves our body at some point and activates our mind and our body. So if we were just our thoughts, there's something observing our thoughts. We aren't our thoughts. But most people identify or have an identity of thinking that they are their thoughts.

But yes, and their feelings.

Yes, and their feelings. But there's an observer, there's a consciousness behind all of that that's witnessing the thoughts and the feelings. That's the experiencer of all these things. So whether you call it your spirit, you call it your soul, you call it your true self, It doesn't really matter. What matters is that you grow it, you expand it, and you acknowledge it.

There are probably, I mean, I've heard some, you know, atheists that are like, believe that that's also a construct of the mind, that observer, that consciousness, So I would say not everybody would agree with what you just said. I agree with it. I wonder, you mentioned the life force, and I've never really done any research on this, but maybe you have and you can share it. Is there physical evidence, scientific evidence, if you will, of the existence of this life force, the spirit, if you will.

You may have heard of people having out-of-body experiences or near-death experiences, going out of their body, people seeing the light, coming back. There's lots of witnesses of that. If anyone has taken any psychedelic drugs in their lifetime, they'll have experienced that or different key peak performance experiences. People feel like they're really in the flow. They're just like completely a transcendental experience. Maybe people have little peaks of it or glimpses of it, but everyone knows it because everyone is alive because of it. Okay.

Well, let me ask you this is, is, and again, you may not know the answer to this question, But is this energy? I mean, like, when I think of energy, I'm thinking of, you know, the most basic form of energy is light. It's measurable, it's observable, it's quantifiable from a scientific standpoint. Is there any such measuring of this life force in a scientific or physical sense that you know of?

Well, you've heard of quantum mechanics, right? Quantum field. You know, there, you know, goes back, uh, E equals mc squared. Okay, so quantum physics and all these things are attempting to explain the quantum field, uh, in the scientific way. Okay, I experience it when I do meditation. I go inside myself and I see a light, okay, that there's a light inside of me that is very illuminating. It's very warm. It's very comforting. It's, you know, you can put all sorts of adjectives on it. But I, you know, when I do meditation, I have an experience of expanding who I am way beyond my body.

Okay.

Some people have not gone meditation and all they do is think and they don't have a transcendental or a transformational experience. You know, having meditated 50 years, when I, you know, I sit down, I can go into that experience. So for me, it's real, but everyone has to validate it themselves. You can't convince someone of it. You can't do it logically. You have to experience it.

Fair enough. So, so, so what, what you're saying is, so like Again, I can measure the light coming through my window, right? That energy, I can measure it. Not only can I observe it, I can measure it. There isn't the ability that you know of to measure this life force, except like in the case of something dying. I mean, obviously, that life force is gone. That's observable. Right. But the energy that you're describing— let me rephrase the question. You know, you talk about blockage, you know, where the energy is blocked and not flowing. Is there a way to say, to measure that externally, not internally.

You've heard of acupuncture, right? Sure. Acupuncture is 5,000 years old. It's much older than Western medicine. Okay, so, and they acknowledge that there's energy meridians in the body. Okay, I work, uh, with a qigong master. Qigong acknowledges all the organs, that you have these different pulses. So he comes and he measures all my pulses. He can tell me what organs are out of balance. So in that world, that's how they measure it, by the pulses in your body, how the energy is flowing, and they find the blockages in different organs. And then they— acupuncture puts needles in your body to adjust the flow of energy to heal you. Okay, so it's a different worldview, a different philosophy. There are all sorts of ways of doing aura readings. People have now photography where they can read your aura and show you different colors. There's ways of doing brain scans. There's, you know, there's lots of different tools, whether they're validated or people accept them or not. But ultimately, it's what, what you believe is true, that, that you do have an authentic self. And most people are identified with a personality, and they're trying to defend that personality and that ego, and they get into all sorts of reactions when they get offended or they feel like they have to control circumstances to protect themselves. That's based on an idea that that's who you are, is your ego. But when you understand that there's an authentic true self underneath that, then you lose the attachment to trying to protect yourself because you have experienced inside yourself there's a safe space to live in. And so your stress response system does not get activated because you are living in that flow of energy that's authentically who you are. And that's the transformation, that's the journey of being a human being. You know, we're not human doings. We're human beings. So it's that being part of us that needs nourishment, that needs to be acknowledged. Most of us, very early age, uh, were geared into approval and control. That, you know, we exist because we get other people's approval and, like, learn all these behaviors to be a good boy or a good girl and avoid disapproval of being a bad person. And so we get rewarded and validated because we learn to be good and we avoid being bad. But those are survival strategies, a way of surviving childhood. But now as an adult, we need to discriminate and discern, you know, what does success mean? What does it mean to be a good person? What, what do we really want? What is our passion? What is our purpose? Like you, you got in touch with your purpose and your passion and find out that authentic actualization of who you really are.

Let's pivot and bring this into entrepreneurship and specifically your experience as an entrepreneur and as a practicer of these methods. Where has it not worked for you? Like, or, well, I'll just leave the question there. Where has it not worked for you?

Okay. So I deal with software and clients have our software runs a whole company. It's mission critical.

Okay.

So a client calls me up and says they have a bug or their system is down or their system has crashed or something is disrupting their business. So if I get into a conversation with them and try to blame them and they're ignorant or they did something wrong, or I try to defend myself, that's where I go wrong.

Okay.

If I try to control them or control their response, But if I stay in a clear place and I don't take it personally and I just stay focused on solving the problem, then I don't react. I troubleshoot and I brainstorm and I get my team on it or I get myself on it and I help solve the problem and I stay focused. So clarity becomes the goal. Rather than trying to manage the perception of the client or try to control the client or assign blame, play the blame game.

Yes, I, I think, uh, one of the most more interesting books I've read recently, um, is a book by, uh, the author's name is Matthew Brody Waite, and the book is Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts. And his experience is he was a drug addict, went to Betty Ford, got cleaned up, became a co-founder of a software company, had a successful exit. But the book is comparing how he behaved before treatment, the similarities to how he behaved after treatment, the commonality, right? But how he chose to do it differently. And the first thing he talks about is the— as an addict, he wore a mask. In that, you know, it was to a psychopathy level where, you know, he basically showed whoever whatever they wanted to see so he could get what he wants. And when he became clean and was in the business realm, he realized that people wear masks there, too, and trying to present themselves a certain way. And his solution to that was radical authenticity, like being your authentic self the best that you can. But the second thing was controlling the outcomes. And so as a drug addict, he was hyper-focused on controlling what happened, like, I need my drugs. And so it was all about that. But as a leader, he realized, mm, there's a whole lot I can't control. In fact, there's very few things that I can control. But being clear on what you can control and can't control is key. And releasing the outcomes, like the things you can't control, you have to let go. There sounds like there's some overlap with what he's saying and what you're saying.

No, that's right on. You know, as a CEO, okay, you know, I try to produce these outcomes, customer satisfaction. So, I don't, my, if my team doesn't perform, then the client calls me and holds me accountable. So, but trying to control them and abuse them and make them wrong or judge them or make them feel bad or try to shame them or, you know, all these.

Are you talking about your employees or the client or the customer?

No, I'm talking about my team. Okay, all right. If I, if I use that approach to try to control them to produce the outcome that I want, uh, that's not going to really motivate them. They're going to like try to become more defensive, put on more walls, and still have more excuses and more stories. But if I have curiosity and I have, uh, an ability to question in a non-threatening way of not judging them personally, but keep focused on producing the outcome. It's a much more effective strategy. So I try to lead from clarity and awareness and just let them— I'm hiring them for their skill set. I have to trust them. So trust means letting go of trying to control externally and control, but move to more motivation, inspiration, support and clarity as a way to produce, having a clear vision. I mean, the most important thing about an entrepreneur is their big picture vision. Yes. And having a clear vision, that's the hard part, okay, is having a clear vision. What do you really want to be creating? What is the result? What is the outcome that you want? Then the next job is how to inspire your team, enroll them and get them aligned to that vision in such a way that they are connected to it and they want that vision just as much as you do.

Yeah, I found— I was introduced to this tool Cameron Herald— no, yes, Cameron Herald developed, called the Vivid Vision. And it was essentially— there's not a standard format, but Oh, yeah, okay. Is that by Cameron? Okay, perfect. Yeah, so you're familiar with it. I'll explain it to the audience. It's essentially a process for the visionary to clarify the vision to communicate it to the rest of the team. And when I first did this, A fascinating thing happened. I thought the vision was clear in my own head. But as I went through the process of trying to write it down, and expand on it and clarify it, I realized there were some holes. And I'm like, "Huh, I thought I knew what this looked like, but I really didn't." And then I was like, "Well, if you didn't know, it wasn't clear to you, how Could it be clear to anybody else? Right? So I think it's, for me, it's been very key to say to myself, like, don't be so sure that you're clear on your vision. Like, the process of communicating it will clarify it for you as well. So what's your experience with the visualization?

Well, as I said, I belong to this Pinnacle Global Network where I have a mentor and I have a mastermind. So I meet with my mastermind of other CEOs and we talk and you see those blind spots when you deal with other people have similar different businesses or completely than yours, but they all have similar issues. And then I have a mentor who I work with in depth to expose those blind spots or expose those things. But having a mentor, having a coach, like every professional athlete, no matter how good they are, professional tennis player, professional golfer, they have a coach. Okay. And most sports teams spend more time in practice or in film sessions than they do actually playing.

Absolutely.

But the problem is in business, we just are totally transactional. Always busy, busy, busy. We spend very little time in reflection and observation and debriefing ourselves. What are the lessons being learned to keep improving and refining all your business processes so they're more efficient or more streamlined? Because ultimately everything comes down to a process issue. There's a flaw in your process or your process needs to be improved. And getting your people and everyone aligned to the most efficient way of doing something. So, having that reflection time where you can observe in a nonjudgmental way what's working, what's not working is the way to grow your business.

Yeah, very— I couldn't agree more on that. You also talked about trust in your definition. One of the seminal books that I reread my leadership team rereads periodically is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. And he describes it— of course, he's got a great analogy, not analogy, allegory story, right? Like, so he's a very good way of taking these concepts and putting it into stories. But he visualizes it as a pyramid. And the base is trust. And to me, the way I define trust internally, because trust is a very subjective word, like I can trust you that you're not going to reach across the table and punch me in the face. But I'm going to trust you with my infant child? There's two different levels of trust, right? In a business context, and this is not Lencioni, this is just me, the way I describe trust is that you can say what you want that you think is productive without fear of retribution, anybody in the organization. So, you know, you can say something that maybe someone doesn't want to hear, You can call that criticism, whatever. It doesn't really matter. It's just something that someone may not want to hear, and you're not going to be punished for it. And that punishment could just be, you know, a stern look or silence, or like, okay, I'm not going to have a conversation with you anymore. Like, it could be a variety of things, but there's no emotional or actual consequences for having that conversation. What are your thoughts there?

Well, you're defining what it means to have a safe space. That's, that's building your culture. And that's when I say nonjudgmental awareness is, is the skill. I used to work with a guy named Tim Galloway, wrote the Inner Game of Tennis, Inner Game of Golf, Inner Game of Work. And that's the key skill in all these things is non-judgmental awareness. So what you're describing in terms of trust, his whole thing was, you know, when you're, uh, hitting a tennis ball, the trusting that there's a natural wisdom or intelligence in you, which he called self too, that just trusts letting— but if you're trying like in your mind, oh, I gotta, you know, avoid my backhand, or I gotta you know, hit it really hard, you know, or, you know, you're, you're trying to control it mentally. When you let go and you trust, then that's when things start to flow. Okay. And when you're talking in a meeting, like, you know, with my team, I work with a lot of Indians, and they're not as defensive as Americans. Okay. I have to be very careful my American guys, that I don't offend them, that they don't say something. But it's much more easier for me just to say things because they don't take things as personally. But you're right, it gets in the way when you feel you're going to be judged, or you hold back, or you feel like someone's going to attack you if you say this. And, and right now the world we're living in, it's very polarized and it's very unsafe. And it's very hard to feel validated. But if you have your little team and you build your culture and you want to reinforce that, we have like a no, don't be offended policy. You can't be offended. Okay, that's one of the core values.

I like that.

Yeah.

Yes. And it's, you know, you kind of implied this. It starts with you. You have to have that attitude first before anybody else will take that attitude. And, you know, in my organization, I knew the culture had taken root when someone— because I'm the owner, I'm the CEO— when someone raised their hand and said, Christian, I don't think you're exhibiting our core values, you know, because that demonstrates that, like, okay, they know what it is. They know that I'm not exhibiting it. And they have the trust that they can say that. And not get fired. That's great.

Right? That's great.

But it took a long time to get there, right? Like, I mean, and it was a lot of work on my end to not be offended, to not react, right, defensively. Yeah. But once you have it, you don't— you're like, I can't lose this. Like, this is key.

No, it's an amazing process. But, you know, if you are engaged in the process and you are striving and that's your vision, then, you know, every little thing is an opportunity to learn from. Every meeting you have, every interaction you have with each of your staff people, it's an opportunity to practice. But, you know, that's the thing is, in terms of practicing mindfulness is that, you know, you don't want to be triggered. Okay. Right. If you rage someone or get angered or put someone down, then there's usually a consequence.

Okay.

You have to go and clean that up. But if you can learn to stay in that calm place and observe a behavior and describe it in a way that doesn't threaten someone, but gets you to look at it and learn from it, that's how you're going to get more out of that person.

Yeah, and I'll say that my experience has been that when the business stopped growing, plateaued, stalled out, whatever word you want to use, it took me a while to figure out that the problem was me. And if someone in the audience is experiencing a situation in their business where they're not getting traction where they want to go, our initial reactions are to look at, well, the market, the customers, the economy in general, my employees, whatever. Start with the mirror. And I think mindfulness is a great tool. You know, for me, it was just asking the question, why am I acting this way? Why am I saying what I'm saying? Why am I feeling the way that I'm feeling? Like, you have to have that reflective posture, taking your ego out of it, and analyzing like, okay, what's going on here?

Yeah, one of the things that is a focus and why I joined the CEO Group is they say that if you want to grow your company 20%, you have to grow yourself 60%. That the whole thing is making a project out of understanding your own stories, your own interpretations, how they're interfering, your own mindset is the bottleneck.

Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's a tough pill to swallow. And I'll tell you, I think part of the problem is that what makes you successful as an entrepreneur initially is the ability to not have to do that. Right. So, so when you're starting out something new and you have all of the naysayers saying, well, that'll never work. And, you know, you haven't thought of this and I can't see that even working. Right. You have all of these things and you're being able to ignore it allows you to be successful initially. But that same characteristic of entrepreneurs then becomes a liability when you can't put that aside, put your ego aside, put your self-limiting beliefs aside and allow yourself to grow.

Well, that's the key word, self-limiting beliefs. I think that's the real issue is we have most of these beliefs gathered in the first 8 years and they weren't examined. We just got— they got pre-installed, right? Okay, before we discern. So, you know, you got trained: you're not good enough, you're never going to make it, uh, you're not smart enough, you're not pretty enough, you're not competent. And they sit in the subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind overrules the conscious mind.

Absolutely.

So until you observe them— and this, this is the key part of my app— is that We take people, the first step is to face that you are stressed, and then you focus to where you understand what is the limiting belief that's triggering you to feel afraid. So if you have a limiting belief, I'm not competent, then anytime anyone says anything, you feel afraid. Oh my God, they're going to discover that I'm really not competent, or they're going to reject me because I'm not competent enough. So, but the problem starts with you believing you're not competent. But what is that based on? You have your degree, you went to college, you've worked with this company for 10, 20, 30 years, you proved yourself many times, but subconsciously, no matter how much evidence you have, you still believe you're not competent. Okay. Right.

Right. No, I mean, and that's real. It's still real for me. Walked into a room for dinner with a dozen of my colleagues from EO that had been in our chapter for 10+ years. And it was just a celebration dinner. It was nothing, you know, no programming. But I had those thoughts and feelings of like, I'm not their peer. I'm not as successful as they are. They don't perceive me as being as successful as, as they are. Like, all of this bullshit that goes on under your brain. And, and like, at least at this point in my life, I can recognize that and, and set it aside. I don't have to react to it or, or, or act on it.

Yeah, that's brilliant. I mean, that's That— but see, the problem is everyone has that, but they're covering it up. Absolutely. They don't want anyone to know that's really what's going on under the surface.

Okay. No. And if you're— as an entrepreneur, if you're in any peer group that has any kind of vulnerability, what you'll realize real quickly is, like you said, they all— we all have the same problems. We all have the same feelings. We all have the same fears. We have those same aspirations. Hopes, like everybody's got the same things. It may look different, but that's one of the, I guess, most comforting things to get into that group initially is to like, oh, I'm not crazy. Like, I'm not the only one that feels this way.

So, that's what's so nice about having a mastermind is everyone admits that. Okay. Yes, we all got these things. And the thing is, I've identified that there's Underneath these limiting beliefs are these survival strategies. Uh, I call them being right, looking good, avoiding responsibility, and playing it safe. Those things drive us because those are our protection strategies, and they just kick in. So everyone is trying to be right in a certain way, trying to control things. Everyone's trying to look good. You know, you're just taught to smile, keep a a happy face on. Mm-hmm. Grind your teeth, go through it. Avoiding responsibility. Everyone has their victim story of their excuses, their reasons, and everyone wants to play it safe. They don't want to take too many risks, like you say, speak out and speak your truth. So once you expose these, then you can get through them. But until you own them and say, yeah, this is really what's going on, they continue to run you.. And we have this quiz that helps people identify their strategies and begin to consciously surface them so that they can get beyond them and they don't run them anymore.

Alan, I really appreciate your experience share. It's been a fascinating conversation. How can people find out more about Keyflow and you?

Well, you can go to keyflow.app, and there we have, uh, a link to our app in the app stores. But we also have a quiz that you can take. It's a 2-minute quiz, and it will help you identify your survival strategies and see exactly what's going on in the subconscious realm that will empower you to then have breakthroughs and get to what we call the flow state, which is your optimum performance state. So, you know, keyflow.app is the place to start.

Perfect. Listeners will have that link in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please share the podcast, rate the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.