03: Focus Your Mind with JM Ryerson

Welcome to my podcast called you'd Must Be out of youf Mind. My name is Dr. Don Wood. Everyone has experienced some trauma at times during their life. These traumatic events and experiences create a significant impact on how your mind works on a day to day basis. At the same time creates long term effects on your emotional and physical health. It will interfere with your ability to stay present and in the moment. After years of research, I used my knowledge of neuroscience to create what I call a memory reset. This memory reset reduces and eliminates the impact of the trauma and allows you to experience peace and clarity. My podcast will share many stories of people experiencing similar symptoms to you and how their lives have been positively impacted by our TIP program. I can't wait to share with you how the impossible is possible and why you must be out of your mind. And there it is.

So welcome to another podcast of youf Must Be out of youf Mind. As you know, we talk about the brain and the mind and the effects of trauma and how trauma can affect performance. And I am really excited today to have my guest JM because you do the same things that we're sort of looking in the same field. So I'm very excited to talk to our guest and share some experiences, share some ideas with you to help you increase your performance as well. So welcome to the podcast. Jim.

Awesome. Thank you Dr. Don. I appreciate it. And yeah, we're in a similar field, but I am not cool enough. I don't have doctor in front of my name, so mine is unfortunately not probably as solid as yours. Man, I love the doctor part. That's awesome.

But jm so what's, what's the context of. JM is obviously his first and middle name.

Yeah. So I was a slow child. My parents made it real easy. It's James Michael. But if you say that Dr. Don, I am in deep trouble. I have done something terribly wrong. So if you say jm, I'm doing okay. But yeah, I was. My parents made it real easy and just two initials.

That's cool. That's really cool. So I know, you know, a lot of people know who you are and what you've done, but you know, maybe you could just sort of give us a quick sort of outline of what your program is. I know you work with a lot of, you know, companies, you've built companies, you've got a lot of success in the areas and you know, just reading all your stuff, there's so many things that we have that we speak the same language. So I'm excited to Share it. But maybe if you could just give us a quick recap of. Of where you are and where you've come from.

Yeah, absolutely. So let's Go Win. Kind of happened. By happenstance, if you will. I wrote my first book, and it was actually for my two boys, and it was. It's called let's go win the keys to living your best life. And I wrote it for them so they wouldn't skin their knees, maybe as many times as I did along the line. And what happened was the gal I was working with said, man, I didn't think you're selfish. And I said, I don't think I'm selfish either. She said, if you don't share this work with more than two people, you're selfish. Okay, lesson learned. Let's publish. And that launched me into working with a bunch of really cool people. Somebody said the first coaching client was, hey, can you help my son lose weight? And I was like, yeah, I could do that. So we helped him lose 80 pounds. The next one was PGA golfer who had missed, like 12 cuts. Hey, can you help this gentleman make cuts? Yeah, sure. So we helped him immediately. He went and made four out of the next five cuts before the season ended. And so it just launched me into what I'm truly passionate about, which is inspiring people to live their best lives. However that looks, whether that's in business, which is my focus, I deal primarily with teams, entrepreneurs, and leaders. But truth be told, the system is really simple in my opinion. But it is just allowing people to unlock their full potential, to really achieve more than they thought was possible. And so every single day, doctor, I get to wake up and work with people on their dreams. I get to work with people to inspire them. They inspire me. And it is just so cool. As you know, man, I love the brain. I am fascinated by it. I am not a doctor, as I said, out of the gate. But I will tell you what. I have read so many neuroscience books. I am just fascinated by how the mind works and how we can help trigger to and facilitate things. Just simple little tools that we can do to really unlock our potential.

Well, yes, a great segue into what I was going to say is the same thing as I always talk with. If I work with athletes, I'll say, you know, and even CEOs, we all have another gear. What's interfering with our ability to reach that gear. And from what I have found from my research is generally traumatic events or experiences that they've had in their lifetime that continue to loop and that's really how I came up with my whole program was because and my first book is called you'd Must Be out of youf Mind. That's why we called the podcast you Must Be out of youf Mind. I love it.

We've got to get you out of your mind the way your mind has been working because it's dealing with a lot of older events that are interfering with your ability to stay present and in the moment. And that is going to affect performance. It has to. So I work with you talk about golfers too. I'm writing my third book. I've called it the 15th Club. And the idea is the 15th Club, right is your brain right and your mind. And if you don't use that club really well, it's going to affect your performance at some point. So I'd love to share some ideas on that. You know, and I think we've got a lot of common objectives. You know, we're trying to help people, inspire people to reach their best lives. And a lot of the times they like. I'm sure you found the same thing JM that they don't know why they can't tell you what is creating the problems for them. And that's why someone like you or me come in and help them.

Yeah. The loop you're talking about, I call them self limiting beliefs. So, you know, very similar ideas. You said it's so often we've inherited these. Whether it's a trauma, it's my parents a great example. My parents are amazing human beings. My dad is no longer with us, but really were just I can't ask for a better set of parents. However, we all bring that baggage in. And part of the baggage that I inherited was around money. And so my dad, I remember when the first time I made over seven figures in a year, I felt horrible. Dr. Don I felt like the lowest that you can feel, which is a really fascinating thing. And not that money is not my driving factor. It never has been. However, what I discovered in that is why do I think this way? Why is making money or a lot of money in some people's eyes? Why is that a bad thing? And it was all these hardwares because we would go by the country club and my dad would call it for the pretty people. Somebody would drive a nice car. That was for the pretty. So there was always this negative connotation around money. And I inherited that and my dad had inherited that from his grandfather, et cetera. And so once I broke that all down and realized, wait a minute, Money is just a thing, it's just an object. It's something that I can actually do a lot of good with. And once I did a lot of work I figured out for myself, and I'm just speaking for me, that was one of my self limiting beliefs because of these things I inherited because of these limiting beliefs that I inherited. And once I was able to get past that, it's like I could do so much more. But I didn't know where it came from until like you said, you really dive in, you figure out where that came from. And that takes a, that takes some work. Not necessarily a lot of work all the time, but for me it took, you know, several years diving in to figure out what was going on with me.

Yeah, I mean, you and I have the same background. I had amazing parents, loving human beings that just nurtured me, kept my nervous system fairly regulated. So when I grew up, you know, I didn't have any trauma. I didn't have any of those kinds of things that my friends were experiencing. And I thought all my friends had my parents. Right, they didn't because nobody talked about it, nobody shared those things. But a lot of my friends were dealing with emotional, physical, sexual abuse that I had no idea even existed. And that's really how I developed the program is when I met my wife, I realized she was living in a different world with a very violent, angry father. And we met at 18. So I started to see the effects of that and the fear that she was always living in, but she was high functioning, so she was, didn't get into drugs or alcohol. She just lived with this fear. And that felt normal to her. And it seemed so strange to me. I didn't understand that. And so that's really what I think a lot of people are dealing with. And not all of it is big T trauma, you know, the obvious big T kind of traumas. The second book I wrote, Jam, it was called Emotional Concussions. And that sort of sounds like what you just described. You know, your father wasn't intentionally trying to say anything to create a problem for you, but that had an emotional concussion on you that shows up later in life when you start thinking about money and success and things like that. But it was unintentional. So even with the best of intentions, as parents, we can say things that if you think about children, don't have enough life experience to understand what that meant. So when your father said that, you put a whole bunch of meanings to that because he's the authority figure and how easily Things like that can develop. And you think about, you know, I know you do a lot of work with leaders, right? And that's a big area that you focus on. So can you see how a leader who's leading a company could have those kinds of. We were talking about limiting beliefs, how that can happen. What do you see as typical kinds of limiting beliefs that show up, you know, for even the best leaders?

Yeah, man, that's a great question. I love this question because it is so prevalent. And the first one that comes to mind is the imposter syndrome. And it's amazing how often these really gifted, talented women, wonderful human beings are and what they can bring to the table. But they, they, they can't or they won't allow themselves to because they don't believe that they are truly that person. For whatever reason, even though they have been, you know, given the title, right, that they have been, they've risen to this level, they still don't feel like they are the leader that they truly are. And what's fascinating about is their intentions are actually amazing. They' they're strong. And once I can unlock a little bit of, hey, man, I just want you to show up as you. That is the whole goal. And the reason I do that is because the minute I can get them to show up as their authentic self, because we all have it in us, somewhere inside of us. If you unlayer take off all the masks that we've put on over the years, trying to fit in, trying to look a certain way, once you can do that and that inner you comes out, it is so attractive, people will follow you through a brick wall. And it's a scary idea at first, especially when I talk to leaders about, hey, I just, I want you to come through, I want you to be completely vulnerable. And that's a big key word that's come up a lot recently as Brene Brown's done her research and really brought it to the forefront. But, but when you get people to be truly vulnerable, to be themselves, then you start to see the leadership flourish. You start to see people really want to follow their lead and truly trust in their leadership. So it happens with virtually every leader I've met because we all start putting on masks. I don't know, fourth, fifth, third, sixth grade. It's somewhere in that area. And we just keep layering them on. And like I say, Dr. Dawn, masks are for parties. They are not for the real world. And yet so many of us are wearing all these masks, trying to look and sound a certain way and it's so much energy, brother. It's just. It takes way too much energy to do that. And so I break it down pretty simply with like, okay, I'm six five. That takes zero time, energy, and alignment for me to be 6 5. But with enough work, I could show you that I'm actually 5 8. If I really scrunched down, I took the time, spent a lot of energy, and completely put my back out of alignment, I could probably convince you I'm 5 8. But why I'm 6 5. It takes zero effort to be 6 5. It takes so much effort to be 5 8. And that analogy so often will get people to be like, oh, I'm 5 10, and I don't care about the height. That means nothing to me. Just the physical example of just be you. And it's so much easier to just show up as you.

Yeah, I see the same thing all the time. And a lot of it is coming from. It's a biological fear of wanting to fit in and be safe. Because a thousand years ago, if you didn't fit into the tribe, you died. So if the tribe excommunicated you for whatever reason, you were vulnerable, right? And then you're out on your own. You don't have that, you know, protection of the tribe anymore. So you can see why, especially as children, they try to fit in because they want to be safe. And so that's how bullying starts. And you'll say, like, how do these children who are nice, coming from great homes, or nice kids, and they get involved in this bullying? It really comes down. What I explain is they're trying to draw attention away from themselves. If we can pick on Joey, and everybody's focused on Joey, they're not seeing my faults, they're not seeing my fears and the things that I don't do well, let's just focus it all on that. Again, it's not intentional on their part. It looks intentional, but it's really coming from that ability and want to be safe. Because the number one fear for the human mind is uncertainty. We like certainty. And so if our world isn't certain for children, it doesn't feel certain. The only thing that creates certainty are their parents. And so if you don't have. You know, I've been on a podcast one time, they asked me, what's the best advice you can give to parents? And I said, make your home safe. I grew up in that home. Sounds like you grew up in that home. That did more for our success than anything. Right? Education and everything. Else, we grew up with a sense of safety. I felt safe in my home.

Yeah, you're. I mean, you're talking about the basic needs that we all have. And I so agree with you. And it is interesting. The subject of bullying is so fascinating because like you said, it's actually them just projecting onto that other person the hurt, the anger. And I'll. I always say, hurt people, hurt people. Now, that's really hard for a seventh grader or sixth grader to accept that this bully is beating me up or pummeling me or taking stuff from me or shaming me. And it's just their insecurities.

That's.

That's a lot for a seventh grader. Exactly. But it's true, right? And today, I love what you said earlier about staying present. And it's one of my favorite subjects, because these creative minds that we have, they're incredibly creative, but they're also incredibly destructive. And so as you work with, and as you said, keeping people present, it's so key for all of us. Like, I have a couple things going on right now, personally, that they try. Man, it pulls me away. And in the moment, my thoughts will run wild, and I'll create some. Some thing that doesn't even exist. And I have to say to myself, stop. And then I'll either write about it, meditate, whatever I need to do, whatever tool I use, but to stop that incessant chatter so that I can actually be fully present with my kids, with you on this podcast, with my spouse. And so often people are physically there, but they're mentally so checked out. So I loved what you said about keeping people present and that some of the most amount of work I spend on with people is keeping people present in the moment. Because my saying is always the same. Past is pain, future is anxiety, present is everything. That's Lao Tzu. That's not me. But I just simplified a little bit to say, look, present is everything. And that doesn't mean all your memories are bad. That doesn't mean that all your stuff in the future is anxiety. That just means if you can stay in the moment now, what an amazing life we can create.

Yeah, especially. Especially too, when I work with athletes, you know, golf. Let's take golf as an example. There's probably no better sport, right, To. To use that as an illustration of being present, because they tend to go off on their thoughts and they start thinking about things they. And I said, what you have to understand is the comparison between the human mind and animal mind. Animal minds are one Hundred percent present all the time. They're only dealing with what's happening now. They don't. So I always say the zebra cannot feel fear of a lion unless there's a lion present. Zebras aren't thinking about lions. They're not imagining lions. They don't remember the lion from yesterday. Right. So they're living in the moment. And so it's a perfectly designed system. We have the exact same system added on, but we added in this frontal lobe. That's our ability to use reason and logic and create an imagination. So that part of our brain keeps interfering with the old survival part of our brain and then constantly activating our nervous system. But there's nothing going on. So what I work on with the golfers is to show them how to shut that down. I love what you said with the incessant chatter because my wife used to use that. The way she said it is. After going through our program, the chatter stopped. That was really. And not schizophrenic chatter because, you know, that's something different. But it was that she never understood how I could just sit and be at peace and not really be thinking about anything and just chilled out. That made no sense to her. And so I didn't understand what she was dealing with because I didn't live her life. So I didn't understand that incessant chatter. But that's what a lot of people are dealing with. And they don't know how to shut it off. So you have to train the mind to do that. You have to. You have to go intentionally, right. And get the conscious mind. And what I say is allow. I tell our people, allow thoughts to come in that have benefit, appeal and possibility. Train your mind to do that. If a thought comes in that doesn't have benefit, appeal and possibility, we reject the thought. Just like any other muscle. You're training your mind to only bring thoughts that have benefit, appeal and possibility because human brains are instinctively negatively biased, because that's the way we survived. But we don't have to do that. We're not living in the same world they lived in a thousand years ago. So we can change that thought pattern, but you have to have intention to do it.

Yeah, it's really interesting because my wife doesn't have the incessant chatter the way I do now. She came from more of a culture of not necessarily they were loving. Don't get me wrong. They're amazing human beings, but it's. It's the Asian culture, so it was a little harder. It was not so much of a safe and put my arms around you culture as I did. And so it's interesting how you and I, actually, we wear it differently. And so she never understood what I was talking about. And all these times of me meditating, writing, she's like, why are you doing that? I don't understand why. Why does your brain go? I'm like, I don't know. But I know that, like you said, I think there's what, 50 or 60,000 thoughts that come through our brain a day. But those negative ones are the ones that will really grab a hold often, especially if you're dealing with something traumatic in the moment. Right. Like, I have a business partner currently that I think if, when all is said and done, we'll have siphoned out about 3 to 5 million dollars for me, that that's. That's happening. And so my brain likes to go create all these things going on naturally. But what I try to do is just calm the mind and say, look, I don't know, it sucks, but I have a choice of how I'm going to respond. And I can choose to be a victim, and I can choose to go down this really negative path, and everyone would understand, man, yeah, you're getting screwed. You could be a total jerk now, but what is that going to do for me? It's not going to do anything. What's happened has happened. I've found out now I'm dealing with it, and I get to move on. But. But being able to quiet down that mind and just focus on what I can do in this moment is so important because I can rewind the past and I can just turn myself almost crazy about what I could have done, what I didn't do. I can think about, oh, no, what's going to happen now that my net worth got hit now, blah, blah, blah. It's already happened, so I can't change that. I can only change what I do today. But it's funny, my wife and I will talk about it, and she's like, I don't understand. Your brain just goes and goes, goes. I'm like, yeah, nonstop. Unless I'm in that moment of quiet, unless I use some of these tools that I use. And she is blessed with not having that as much, which is fantastic. But some of us have to work a little harder at it.

Yeah. And it's really coming from practicing we can do it. You're just proving that you can absolutely do it. And if you find your mind wandering off, going into that negative bias, then you have to bring it back. And you can do it by doing whatever works for you. So when I work with the golfers, we have a whole system that I've trained them on to use to shut down that and be able to stay in that moment and hit that shot, you know, and I'll say to them, you know, you go to the next tee box after just missing a putt on the last green, and I show up on the tee box with a whole report on everything you did wrong on that hole. Right. But I want to charge it $1,000 for the report. Would you buy it? No. What value does it have now? It's just information, right? You don't need to buy that. You don't need to pay any attention to it. So your time or your attention is just like money. How much attention do you want to pay on it? And if you're doing that all the time, it's going to affect your game.

No, and I didn't mean to interrupt. It's so interesting when you talked about the animal and then the human mind. We look at again, we're talking about golfer. Golfers. The arguably the greatest golfer to, to. To play. You know, his name is Tiger. His ability to stay in that moment, to stay completely focused until his world was shattered a bit. Right. For. For years, I mean, just no one stood in that moment better, was able to drown out all the noise. And no one had more noise than him. And his focus was remarkable because he had trained his mind. So it's just I love the. What you're doing with golfers. And I love that animal human mind. And you can literally point to, look at what the greatest for almost 20 some odd years did you know, being able to shut everything else down but that shot, but that in the moment and nobody grabbed it better than him.

It was. He's the best at it. And I talk about, in the book that I'm writing, the 15th club, I talk about, could you argue that there's been three better ambassadors that have changed the game of golf more than Tiger, Jack and Arnie? And if you look at Tiger, right, his name, Tiger Jack was the Golden Bear. Right. And Arnold was the King. They all have symbols in their name that created a mindset in their mind. Tiger was the Tiger, not only for Tiger's mind, Right. But for his opponent's minds. So they would hear the roars of the crowd, right. When Tiger was making a charge on the back nine. Right. I'll guarantee you Tiger won tournaments because people lost tournaments. They just folded. I Mean, you just heard them talking about them. I remember hearing Matt Kutcher talk about the first time he ever played with Tiger. He says the hardest thing he had to do was to keep the ball on the tee when he was putting it on because his hands were shaking so much. Here's one of the greatest golfers in the world, and he's so intimidated by this guy. And a lot of it, you know, would he have been as intimidated by Eldrick Woods? I don't know. But Tiger definitely had a psychological advantage for Tiger and I think against his opponents.

Yeah, that Persona is fascinating. I never broke it down that way with those three. But I would agree with you. They absolutely changed the game, all three of those. And it is interesting when I work with salespeople and often, you know, in their role, because again, Tim, let's say Tim is. Has this maybe meek, maybe not as strong personality, but maybe, I don't know, we call him the King or Baba or whatever he wants, whatever that that thing is. He can create that confidence in a different way than Tim. That is a tool that I have used with salespeople. As much as I want them to be their authentic self. Sometimes in the moment, to get sales going, you have to get that other Persona in line first so you can start to believe that confidence. And it is interesting. And I know you do this work with them so often it starts with just reconditioning our minds every single day. You know, I do a mantra. My kids have done the same mantra every single day of their life. They won't go to bed unless they say it all to condition their brain to be these things. And it's so often people didn't have those tools or they still don't today to know, you know what? Sometimes we have to tell ourselves exactly who we are, what we are, who our authentic self is. Because we are under layers and layers of things people have heaped upon us or told us that we are.

Yeah, for sure. So what I do in our program is first, though, I work on. We have two memory systems. Humans have an explicit memory system and then the same memory system that animals have, which is that repetitive associative memory. Animals learn through repetition and association. They don't store details about events. So if you have a dog, the dog gets to know you through repetition and association, that they're loved and they're safe and they're going to get fed, but they haven't stored the information about that. That's why I say you can feed your dog the same thing. Every day, because he doesn't remember eating that yesterday. That's a new meal to him. He's in the present. He's going to eat right. We store all the details about that event and experience, and that's what's interfering with our ability to stay present. We have this unique memory system that keeps using that as a resource to recall. What I say is our mind's constantly doing Google searches about the current environment and then saying, what do we know about these experiences? Pulling in data from 5, 10, 20 years ago and then creating. Activating a nervous system to create responses, thinking something's still happening. So that explicit memory system is creating glitches and error messages for us. And so we have to get that updated. We basically have to do a reboot of the system, and then we're going to work on the new patterns and codes. What I say basically is habits and behaviors are just codes. Our brains are coding constantly. If we have a code built, the mind operates off of the code. So if you want to. If every time you hit the M key on your computer, your computer shuts off, you don't say, there's something wrong with my computer. You say, there's something wrong with the code. So all you have to do is rewrite new code, and then the M key doesn't shut off the computer.

We do. And, you know, you put it so eloquently. That's. That's why you got the doctor in front of your name, man. You can put a term to it. And I'm like, yeah, that makes sense, man. I. I don't say it as nicely as you do, but I'll tell you what, it's so true.

Yeah, there's just so many little things that we were just talking about. Confidence. This is something I think you'll be interested to hear. When I work with the professional golfer, I'll say, do you think you need to be confident to play good golf? And they'll all answer the same thing, yes, right? And I say, what if I told you that you don't need confidence to play good golf? And they say, well, I don't need confidence. And I say, no, you have a skill. Confidence is a byproduct of your skill. I says, it's happens what it occurs when, after you've executed your skill. I said, there's nothing you can't do on a golf course. I said, you can hit a ball in between two trees six inches apart, right? Let's see. The average golfer can't do that. So when you're on a golf course, I say, say you're 150 yards out from the green. You're going to hit probably a nine iron. So after you hit your nine iron, you didn't feel the wind coming down the fairway. You couldn't feel it yet you couldn't see it. So it knocks your ball down into the bunker in front of the green. So what just happened to your confidence? Now you start thinking, what did I do wrong? And then to your survival, part of your brain that becomes a lion. Now there's a lion on the golf course with you. And so all of a sudden, you start thinking about confidence. You don't need it. I said, you put the ball in the hole from the bunkers. They're not even penalties for you guys. I said, there's nothing you can't hit. I said, confidence is not your friend because it only shows up when you play well, and it leaves you when you need it. And I said, so trust your skill. And so I worked with one of the golfers, and he was leading the tournament after three days. And on the fourth day, first shot of the day, he hits it out of bounds, which is the worst thing to do, right? On your first. On the final day, first shot, and he's smiling, and his caddy says, tell me why you're smiling. And he says, I just heard Dr. Wood in my head say, your ball and your confidence just went out of bounds.

He didn't need it. He stripes the next shot right down the middle of the fairway. His skill didn't leave him.

Yeah, no, it's so. It's. It's so much fun to. To work with those guys, because any of us that play golf, we. We sit there and tinker and try and do all these things. But to your point, I had a golfer one time where I would get him so specific on exactly where he was going to hit the ball. And if we went through the process.

Every single shot, he could put it within he, I don't know, three yards of the spot. But if we didn't, and if he lost that focus for a moment, right? If he lost that pinpoint, this is exactly what I'm doing. The skill was always there, but again, the mind, as Yogi berra said, It's 20% skill, it's 80% mental. And so with the golfer, I was like, look, man, we have to be very, very clear on our intention. What are you doing with this shot? I'm going to hit it to this. This exact spot. And he could do it. Again and again and again. But it was, it almost became boring for him because he was doing exactly what he was doing. He was performing at a high level. But for some reason, man, he was conditioned that hitting it out of bounds, hitting these crazy shots, not staying focused. It's interesting how we like to be challenged as human beings. So when I could keep him focused, it was like, like you said, like Dr. Don. So there goes my confidence to this. That's, that's a great tool for him to just laugh and say, I had a brain fart. I just, literally just, there was a glitch and it, but they have the ability, unlike, you know, most of us, if I was playing golf, I don't have that ability to hit to the third tree, you know, 225 yards, you know, over the bunker. I don't have that ability. I'm trying to hit the club face and I'm hitting in a general area. But they do. And it's just, it's, they're fascinating people to work with.

There's such incredible athletes and you know, the average person watches it and go, oh, how could he miss a putt like that? Or how did he make that mistake? You just have no idea. Those golf courses are set up so much tougher than what we're playing. I don't know if you remember, this was years ago when Tiger woods won the Canadian Open. He hit that shot out of a bunker over the water.

It's one of the greatest shots I've ever seen.

Yeah, did you see the commercial they did after that?

I loved it called the commercial, but I don't remember how. I think it was a seven iron, but it was, I don't know how.

It was a 6, 220 yards or something.

Well, that's why I'm questioning the club, because I'm like, how can you hit the ball that far, that precise with that element? It's, it's one of the greatest shots I've ever seen.

Well, what I loved about the commercial though, Nike did a commercial on it and they said lessons with Tiger Woods. And then he comes up and he says, I'm going to show you how to hit a 220 yard six iron over water, right? And he gets into the bunker is you get in the bunker, you take your six iron and you hit it 220 yards. End of the lesson.

That's all you have to do.

Well, you know what's so interesting too? And if you want to mess with your buddies and you want to make a few More dollars on the golf course. Not the same shot, but let's just say you're, you're approaching a hole and there's water. If you want to help put your opponent in the water, just say, hey, look, make sure to watch out for that water on the right. And the majority of the time, that amateur is going to immediately put it right in that water unless they're able to focus their mind. That's how easily we are swayed and that's how powerful our minds are. As you know, Dr. Don, it's like the body wants to perform what the mind is telling it to do. So if the last thought is don't put it in the water, guess where that ball's going. Your body going to follow what your mind just said, which is, oh, I'm going to the water. Even though you said don't, you said water. That's exactly where it's going to go.

Yep. And that's what I always talk to them about. What's the dominant thought? So if the dominant thought is water, then the mind focuses on the water. And I remember hearing a guy talk about one time he was playing with Lee Trevino and he says he knew Lee Trevino, you know, was going to try to get into his head, take his money. And he says, so I'm aware of it, he said. And he was a psychologist, he goes, I, I know how this is going to work. He's not going to get in my head. And he says, for the first nine holes, he says Lee Trevino is complimenting them. Great shot, you know, really good. Love the way you did this, right? And he keeps waiting for it and nothing. He says they get up on the 10th hole, which is a carry, about a 200 yard carry over the water from the tee. And so he gets up on there and Lee Trevino, as he's getting ready to get up to hit his shot, Lee Trevino says to him, do you inhale or exhale on your backswing?

He says he put the ball straight in the water. Right. That's all he had to say to him. Right. It just messed up his entire swing.

Yeah, Trevino, the true Texas hustler, man that got that legendary stories about him. I love how much we could talk about golf because A, it's so fascinating to the work that we do, but B, they are remarkable and how much the mind in that specific sport and all sports, but because it's such a quiet, the ball doesn't move, which is different than every other sport. How much this, this 6 inches gets in the way.

Yep. And I know you talk a lot about leaders because you work a lot with leaders. And I love what you had said about vulnerability. Do you find that the best leaders.

Are the most vulnerable leaders, thousand percent.

Lasting? So the example I'll give. And this guy has been beat up through the years, but the example I'll give is Lee Iacocca of what not being vulnerable is. This man was a rock star, he was a king. He was a God in so many CEOs worlds, especially in the auto industry. And once that was cracked and he wasn't able to take the failure, I mean, it was just a quick downfall. Downfall. And he's such an interesting person to. To look at because again, that would be the. Although he had meteoric rise, the fall was as. As severe. And so, yes, to answer your question, I tell them about this gentleman if. Especially younger leaders, if they've never heard that name, because I want them to understand how important being vulnerable is. How you want to empower everyone around you to actually take your job. That is your goal is to replace yourself. And that's a scary proposition for. For a leader out of the gate to say, what do you mean? You want me to train somebody to take my job? You want me to empower them to. And I'm like, absolutely. Because if you're not doing this now, what can you be creating for your company? And when they finally really buy into the idea or the great leaders that are already doing.

Is so fun to work with. Because again, there is no scarcity mindset. It's all abundant. There is no lack of confidence. They are as willing to be a follower as they are to be a leader. And that's such a misnomer with if you think you have to have all the right answers, what a boring place to live. No one has all the right answers. And so the first thing, if you can be vulnerable enough to say, I don't know, I don't know the answer, that is one of the best things. When I see a leader say, I don't know, I'm like, okay, cool, we're working with something. But if they'll make up something or they come up with, they don't answer the question, they veer off. I'm like, no, no, no, no, you don't know the answer. That's okay. No one does. And so when you can be vulnerable enough to say, look, I don't know all the answers, but I have someone on my team that can or will find that answer. But when you're Able to be that open. That's when real leadership, real team building and the dynamics of that team are going to be so strong.

That's why when I, when I read that and the stuff about you, that's why I said, that's why I know you're a great.

You'Re going to help so many people because if you have that mindset that it's okay to be vulnerable, most people would think that that's scary and that you shouldn't be vulnerable because you can be hurt. When I read that you teach that, I said, I can see why you're successful because you're going to get the best leaders that way. Do you know Joe Polish? Have you heard of Joe Polish? He started the Genius Network.

I don't know him. No.

Probably the best networker I've ever met. My guy's incredible. He knows everybody. So I'm a member of his network, the Genius Network. And the thing that I love about it is Joe is so successful, he's so well connected, knows everybody, but he's the most vulnerable guy you've ever met. He talks about the things that he dealt with. He's very open about his addiction issues that he had at one point. He jokes, he is self deprecating humor, constantly joking about his insecurities and things that he doesn't do well. And yet very, very successful. And in the group of all these entrepreneurs that we get together, they're all vulnerable because they feel they're in a safe environment to be vulnerable. So he gets vulnerability out of these highly successful people and I see why it works so well. So that's why I just wanted to compliment you. I think that's fantastic that you do that. And you know, I really appreciate you spending some time here today and you know, so tell us about your. I know you have your podcast. People should definitely listen in on what you do as well.

Yeah. Thanks, brother. The let's Go Win podcast, it's just let's go when everything I do is let's go win. But we have awesome guests like, like, you know, I imagine Dr. Don if you're not booked again, my gal does that. So great guests like yourself on there and we get to tell stories, we get to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. And I'm so passionate about sharing those stories with the world because just like we had an amazing conversation today, that's my hope, is that we can just share a little wisdom or knowledge or experience that people can, can glean from. So absolutely, I'd love For people to check us out. Let's go win podcast or let's go win 365 on any of the social media platforms.

Awesome. Well, I encourage people to listen because I've learned a lot from you here today and I'd love to be on your podcast too. So I'm sure that's probably going to get arranged. We got some mutual people that we're working with. I'm sure that'll make that happen. And I thank you so much for your time today and any other things that you want to cover or, you.

Know, I'll just leave it with. Show up as you. I want people to find themselves and often that means just getting quiet. Just, you know, how often do you take time for yourself on a monthly basis? For me, it's getting away from and as much I love my wife, my kids, but I need to get away to always be clear on, on who I am, where I'm going, my authentic self. Because life is going to happen, right? The business partner is going to do it. I lost my dad this year. Things are going to happen. And so that's when it's even more important that you take some time for yourself to make sure to journal, to meditate, to hike on a mountain, go to a beach, it really doesn't matter. But spend time alone to really be clear on what you're doing, who you are, where you're going, what your non negotiables are, what your values are. Because then life becomes so much easier. And like the gentleman you just talked about, Joe. Joe's able to be just himself. And that's so attractive because when people see that.

That'S not a pretend Joe. This is Joe in the flesh. That is one of the most attractive qualities you can ever find. So I just encourage everybody to show up as you. If you don't know who that is, go find it. Spend a little time with yourself. Go. Dr. Don's program will absolutely help you with that, I'm sure. But yeah, man, I just, I want everybody to show up as them because that is the shining light that this world really needs.

Beautiful, great way to end it. I encourage Everybody. Check out J.M. ryerson. Check out his podcast. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast and keep checking in on us and seeing the new things and we'll keep talking about the brain and the mind. And again, another great. You must be out of your mind podcast. Thanks Jam.

Thank you.