Is Your Perception The Reality?

If right now, you decide that you are gonna find a new way to look at the things in your past or the things that are currently going on in your life instead of the obstacle, you're gonna look at that as a situation. It changes everything. Welcome to the Dean Graziosi Show. All success starts right here.

What is reality? I mean, seriously, what is reality? I've asked that question so many times. You probably have, too, if you're with me still, right here, right now, you're somebody who questions everything. And we should all the time, always question, always know that we're wrong. A lot of the times, what's wrong? What's right? What's perception? What's reality? Think about this. Think about if two people get in the exact same car accident, right? They're driving, they're in a hurry. Somebody pulls out, bam, there's a car accident, right? So what is the reality part of that? I guess the situation is there was a car accident, right? Let's call the accident the situation. One person gets out, and it's like, oh, my God. Why would you pull out in front of me? Heart racing, stress going, adrenaline already released. Amygdala hijacks the frontal lobe. And anger. Whose fault is it?

Why did this happen?

How could you do this?

And they're going, oh, my God, my.

Insurance is going to go up.

I don't have time.

I'm going to be late. I'm going to lose my job. This is your fault. Are you an idiot? What were you thinking? All the mess that goes with that. Start thinking about the insurance going up and got to get a tow truck and what am I going to do? And blah, blah, blah, the paint's not going to match after it comes back from the collision shop. That's the situation. So what was the reality then? Same situation. Car accident. Get out, and you walk over and.

Go, oh, my God, are you okay? Is everything all right?

And the person gets out all nervous.

Like, oh, my God, I can't believe I pulled out. I'm so sorry.

I just got fired from my job. And the person says, hey, hey, calm down. That's what we have insurance for. It's tin, it's metal.

Who gives a crap?

They make insurance for those reasons. They have collision shops. They to fix it, and it'll get fixed. No harm, no foul.

And you know what?

Whatever appointments we had, they'll have to wait. Things happen. Now, which one is reality? Reality is nothing more than your perception of a situation. If you lose your job, it could be the end of your Life. Or it could be a new beginning if the relationship ends. Could be the end of love or the beginning of the chance to find real love. If you lose all your money, one is, my life's over.

I'm not.

I have no significance. I'm embarrassed. Someone else says, hey, from the bottom, there's only one way up. So think about that. How you create perceptions around situations is really the key to your next level of life. The biggest thing. You ready for this? You ready? The biggest thing standing between you and your next level of life is the story you tell yourself and why you can't achieve it. If you said, hey, I want to make more money, but I want to fix my relationship, but whatever the but is, is your perception of that situation. And that perception is holding you back. If we can change the story, change the perception, we get to change your life.

I want to talk about your biggest obstacle that you had in your life. So last night, last night, my buddy Trent Shelton, I don't know if you know Trent, awesome dude, follow him on Instagram or Facebook. He produces amazing content, positive, inspirational, motivational. So last night I get on with Trent. He's got a gazillion people on we're on live on Instagram. And he says, gives me some great compliments. He said, dean, what was your biggest obstacle? What was your biggest obstacle in this, in your evolution from where you grew up and not having money and all that stuff to the success you've reached, Right? And here's the part I really want to again, this sounds like I'm talking about me a lot today, but I'm talking about me so you can see, right? A dream 20 something years ago, watching Tony Robbins and saying, someday I'll meet him. And now we're going to change the global conversation on education together. Think about that from there to there. Where are you? Where were you? And where could you go if you believe in it, Right? So I get on with Trent last night, back to Trent and he says, we're asking. He goes, what was your biggest obstor. Now, at any time in my life, and this is the part I want to relate back to you. I want you to start thinking, do me a favor, if you got your journal. I always have my journal right in front of me. I want you to write down some of the things that you think were your biggest obstacles in your life that could be your biggest obstacle right now or were your biggest obstacle in the past. Was your biggest obstacle in the past. So Trent asks me this, and then I started thinking and this is the part I want you to write down and think about. I started thinking about what was my biggest obstacle. I didn't come from a family with money, had dyslexia. So school was really difficult for me. I could never comprehend school. Always felt dumb, like literally felt dumb. When my seventh grade teacher, Ms. Thompson, called me dumb, I was like, she's probably right. Hated her, but she was probably right. I was always really small, so I got made fun of. My parents were married nine times between the two of them and I moved 20 times. By time I was 19, so I was all over the place. Right, so is that my biggest obstacle? That my family didn't have money? Was that an obstacle? My dad, he took the divorce from my mom really, really hard. And my dad was the youngest of 11 and was physically and sexually abused as a child. He never ever once touched me, never hit me, but emotionally he never got the work he needed. It's an amazing place now, but it was just a lot. So it was really tough as a kid. I'll just leave it at that. It wasn't an easy run and some of you have had way harder, but it was tough. Missed my mom, she moved away when I was 11. So I'm thinking like, it was like my. And this is different than usual, guys, you know, if you hear me today, I'm in a really heart centered, personal mood today. And that's why I might be all over the place. But you're getting the real me and the real things that move the needle in life, especially in mine. So it was like my life was going by in front of me at hyper speed. And I'm thinking, what was the biggest obstacle? Was it that relationship, my dad, where, you know, we, we got in a fistfight once? You know, I've never been in a fistfight with anybody. I didn't hit my dad, but it was, it got that bad. And then we didn't talk for a year and I still powered through and I didn't have money. And then I was like, what was it that. And then was the biggest obstacle. Going from cars into real estate and then finding the money for real estate, Was that the hard thing? And then getting the real estate done and then running a collision shop and a tow truck company and my apartments and building houses. Was that the tough time? Or how about when I started in the infomercial world selling my education and I just got momentum. I was funding the information business. I was funding the information business with my real estate profits and I almost.

Lost all of It.

And then when I finally got ahead, I literally had an accountant take all my money. One day when it was all gone, I was like, no way I'm getting through this. I'm done. And I remember thinking to myself, that's it. You thought you were so cool. This is self talk at its worst, right? You thought you were cool. I knew you weren't smart enough to do all those things. You should have listened to your family, should have listened to your friends. You should. That was for people more educated. There were people more smart. So I'm thinking of all of these things and I'm like, in my head and it's like all of that happened in seconds. Even though it seemed like I sat there for 20 minutes thinking of all these obstacles, all these things that went wrong, and going through a divorce in my life when I didn't want to go through, you know, I never thought that I would do that to my kids and the pain of that. So he's like, what is the biggest obstacle? And all that happened so quick. So I want you to start thinking of all those things, right? All the things in your life or the biggest problem, the biggest obstacle. And then as my. I know this sounds crazy, and I thought more about it today because I know I was talking to you guys, right? So then I thought about it today. Obstacles, biggest obstacles. They were all obstacles. But then I was thinking, what were my biggest fears? Because some of those obstacles resulted from fears or led to fears. Does that make sense? Obstacle. Oh, what if it doesn't work? Oh, what if I lose all my money? What if I'm alone for the rest of my life? What if I'm not accepted? What if they don't believe in me? What if I'm alone? All those things, right? So one thing happens, an obstacle happens. You can tell I thought about this like. Like I'm thinking deeper than I ever thought my life. And you're just getting a glimpse of that. I hope you're feeling this. The obstacle leads to the fear. Like I'm putting some of this together as I'm sharing it with you. So the obstacle leads to a fear. So now I want to ask you, and maybe you can write this down, what are the biggest fears that you had through your life? I had fears that when my mom moved away because it just was so tumultuous, I don't think she could handle it. My mom moved away. I had fears of never seeing her. And I had this deep level of being alone as a young kid, right? And I had fears that my dad would do something crazy because he used to get so mad. He had all that anger built up inside of him because of what his dad did to him. That it came out in really unhealthy ways. I feared something would happen there, right? I feared I would be broke and working in a factory someplace because that's my guidance counselor said was probably gonna where I'd end up. I feared when I started my first business. I feared when I moved from cars to real estate and I almost lost all my money. I feared when I went into the education business and infomercial because I saw Tony Robbins do it and I almost lost all my money there. I feared when I started making a lot of money and hiring more people. Now all of a sudden I had a 10 million dollar a year company and I'm employing all these people. I feared it could go wrong. Then I went to $100 million company and my brand, my companies and my brands, over 100 million a year. And my fear got higher and higher, especially when the economy dropped and all of a sudden the money wasn't coming in, but the bills were there. I feared I couldn't make it. So you're getting to see that fear lives in all of us no matter how successful people look from the outside. So now obstacles and fear. So what Trent says to me, what.

Is.

Your number one obstacle? And all of a sudden it's like, I don't know, there's 4,000 of them. And it hit me, it hit me immediately. And we had this amazing conversation. That's what I want to share with you today. It was so like breakthrough for me. I knew that you guys need to hear it today no matter where you are. Listen, I don't know where you are. If you're here with me right now, you could be doing amazing and you want to go next level. You could be struggling. Just want to get away from that. You could be in the middle. I just want to tell you this works. Doesn't matter if you're in my hundred thousand dollar, your mastermind or you're here. It's the same answer. What my biggest obstacle always was and yours is our perception of situations. It's our thoughts. Now you might have heard me write about this in my book, talk about it. But I want you to let this sink in. Today you could tell I'm in the most like I'm using. I'm really like all over the place. I love, I have way. I have so much enthusiasm today. But today it's coming through my heart. On a deeper level, it's your thoughts. It's your perception. You see, the same thing can happen to two different people, right? Someone can grow up with an alcoholic parent, and one can be an alcoholic because my dad was. And one could never touch alcohol because my dad was. My dad was a drinker, right? So it's perception. So I want you to think about something. All of those things could have been the final straw. Parents don't support me. I have dyslexia, didn't go to college. This is my life. Start a company, failure. People take advantage of you. Oh, could have been my life. Go into the infomercial world. Almost failed. Accountant takes all my money. This is it. That's my life. Right? All of those weren't obstacles. My perception of the situation was the obstacle. Those things weren't fear. My perception of the situation was the fear. I know it takes years to really understand what I'm saying. You're like, oh, Dean, now you lost me. Now you lost me. You don't understand what I'm going through. I got the bills, I have a mortgage, my two kids. That's not an obstacle. It's not a thought. That's a reality. No, no, I'm sorry. It is your perception of that situation. Hear me. We have to change that story. We have to change those thoughts. And the obstacle changes. Listen, when I moved in with my dad, he was in a really tough place in his life. And the littlest thing, thinking about my mom or could set him off, something that just wasn't pretty and something that would make me sick to my stomach and want to throw up and not eat. And I'd walk around shaky. Now that sounds like a really terrible thing. My dad's a good man who just never got the right help at a young age, Right? That could have been a terrible obstacle. It could have been the fear. It could have been the thing that ended me. And that's where I just ended, right? But guess what? I built senses back then. You guys are going. Some of you are going to relate to this. I built senses that I could tell when my dad was going to go down the wrong path. I had great dad and not so great dad. I can say great dad and crazy Dad. I, at 11 years old, started to sense when my dad was making a left down Crazy Town road. And I would be able to feel his emotions, understand him, let him feel understood, enter conversations that were going on in his head. And I was able to pull my dad back from going down that way through empathy and love and Put him down the right path. It was my self protection mechanism at 12, 13, 14, 18, 20. I knew how to do that. But guess what? It did. It's just one example. It made me have empathy, caring and love for teaching you. When I get on stage with my buddy Tony Robbins, there's 10,000 people in the audience. I feel like I feel their hearts and I know what they need. I'm not saying I'm perfect, I'm not saying I'm the best, but I feel it. I got that gift because of something I thought was an obstacle. I could have made that my obstacle. If I had a twin brother, my twin brother could be all screwed up and say, my life is ruined because of what my dad did. I say my life is amazing because of what my dad did. It wasn't the situation, it was my perception of the situation. When, if right now, you decide that you are going to find a new way to look at the things in your past or the things that are currently going on in your life instead of the obstacle, you're going to look at that as a situation. And it's there to build, it's there to create something. And you might be going through shit right now. A bad relationship, a divorce, a breakup, someone passing away in your family, money, tight, terrible boss. And you might say this is for a reason. But what if, if you can't find it in this moment, what if you just adopted the thought process, said, I don't know why this is happening, this is shitty. I don't want it to be happening. But it is. And I know a lesson will come of it. It changes everything.

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