Do You Dream Big Enough for Your Life? with Jon and Missy Butcher

Coming up on this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

You can't control the cards you were dealt, but you totally can control how you play those cards.

Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and this is a place for conversations that matter. And I believe today's conversation with John and Missy Butcher will be one of those conversations that really matters to you. Why? Because most of us haven't really taken the time to think about how to create a real vision for our lives, to create a map for how we get what we want, or even to believe that we can get what we want, which most people don't have. So John and Missy are an extraordinary couple. I've gotten to know them recently, and they have led extraordinary life that they have designed themselves to be exactly what they want, to do the kind of work they want as artists, to create the kind of family they want that is not the typical family to have an extraordinary relationship after 30 years, to really knock it out of the park in every area of their life. You know, there are billionaires who have horrible families and relationships. There are people who have great love stories, but they can't rub two nickels together. There are people who have, you know, great lives, but they don't take care of themselves and their health, and they're looking flabby and old by the time they're 40. But John and Missy said, we don't believe that. We believe we can have everything and we can get what we want. And it's just an extraordinary journey that we're going to learn about and why they created this extraordinary product, this path in a way that I personally have gone through called LifeBook, which is this life-changing course that takes you through every area of your life, deeply examines your thoughts, your beliefs, your attitudes about it, and allows you to start to think about how do I create that life that I want? How do I create the vision? That's always gonna be perfect. There's always ups and downs. And I think people often think that, you know, people who have these great lives just have it made. They just had everything handed to them. They're, you know, they're just like, you know, lucky. But it's not necessarily luck. It's about your thinking and how do we fix our thinking? And that's what your beautiful program, LifeBook, helps you do. And they've done this in so many different ways through so many of the companies they've built. They always give back to their community. They're helping inner-city youth. They're helping orphanages worldwide. They're helping with addiction problems through their Black Star program. So there's so much that they're giving back to the world, but I think their greatest gift is the story of their own life, which is inspiring and allows others to say, wait a minute, maybe I too can have a life like this. So welcome, John and Missy.

Thank you, Mark.

Wow. Thank you. That was a beautiful introduction.

Sure was.

Thank you, Mark.

Yeah, I had it all written down in my head. So the beautiful part about this conversation is that I personally I personally went through LifeBook. I went to your home where you invite us in. You create this extraordinary curriculum, small group of people, maybe 20 people or so, to journey through over a course of five or six days, every area of your life. To examine what matters to you, what your beliefs are, what your vision is, how the strategy you're gonna, what the strategy you're gonna use to get to that vision. And I've done a lot of programs. been into self-help and growth and development for years, but I'd never experienced something as crystal clear, as profound, as easy to follow. It's basically 12 areas and four questions in each area. And it's so simple, but it's really profound. And it unlocks the key to your view of life in a way that many other programs just don't. And I can tell you just in the three months since I've done the program, I've seen it manifest in ways that I couldn't believe both for my wife and myself. So for example, you know, the whole fitness health thing, well, I'm obviously into health, but the truth is I never really liked weight training. I had this limiting belief about it. I figured, you know, I don't like being in the gym. I don't like the energy there. I wanna be in a yoga studio, you know, like, and I kind of worked through all that and realized, no, this is actually powerful. And I got this great trainer, Terrell, in New York now, and I'm working out and it feels so awesome. That's great, Mark. You know, I kind of worked through that. So, I really, I want to kind of dig into your story because, you know, you and Missy have a really unusual story. You met when you were very young, you've been together 30 years. You have built this extraordinary life together, but it wasn't always like so straightforward. It wasn't like you were having this magical life. I mean, John, you shared with me last night at dinner about your family struggles that, you know, you grew up in abject poverty. Your mother had to walk three miles each way with a grocery cart and six kids dragging behind her just to get some groceries. your father was just living hand to mouth, starving artists, and not really able to be evolving and growing in.

An.

Environment that really helps you to succeed. It was almost the opposite, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So tell us a little bit about what it was like for you growing up, and then what was it that helped you shift from being a victim to being empowered.

Well, you know, I don't think I ever really viewed myself as a victim. I, you know, back then it would be easy to, though, right? Well, you know, now that's sort of the flavor of the moment. That's what everybody's taught, that they're a victim because of one thing or another. Back then it wasn't, it wasn't like that. It was just, this is the way life is and it's not easy. And, and you just have to do whatever you have to do to get through it, which we did. And Miss and I did get together young. I was in my 20s. My early 20s when I met Missy, she was 17. And we knew each other for about five years before we started a relationship. But yeah, childhood was tough. Teenage years were tough. Meeting Missy and starting our relationship was a major turning point. But what led to LifeBook was basically a massive nervous breakdown that I had when Missy and I were, it was the first couple of years we were together, right?

You were in your 30s.

Early, early 30s, I think. I was 30, 30-31. And basically what happened to me, Mark, I'll just tell you exactly the story. I was in a board meeting. No, actually, I was in a product presentation meeting in Los Angeles, the major Fortune 500 company making a presentation. And I'd been partying the night before, smoking and drinking. We lived like rock stars back then, right? And like late, late, late, I can give you the absolute recipe for a panic attack. If you ever need it, well, I'll tell you what it is. This is the recipe. You stay up till three or four, just totally partying. My breakfast that morning was three cups of coffee and three aspirin. And I walk into this meeting to make a presentation. Three cups of coffee, that'll get you- yeah, isn't that nice? To people that I don't know, on a product that I don't know a whole lot about, I was an investor in this company. And the bottom line is, at that meeting, in the middle of this presentation when I was addressing the room standing up, I had a full-blown panic attack. First one in my life, never had that happen to me before. And that just, it was like, it was horrifying. Have you ever had a panic attack?

No.

Well, but you know exactly.

But I've been anxious, but- no, no.

This is like, you- But I know what they are. You lose control of your entire system. You can't hear, you can't see, you can't think. It feels like there's a freight train driving through your head. It's absolutely horrifying. And there was no, Like, that was a crash burn meeting. I had to literally just sit down. It was humiliating. It was horrifying. And I remember coming back to the hotel after that meeting and telling Missy about it and saying, this, you know, what the hell just happened to me?

You were shattered.

And yeah, I mean, it was- It.

Was like shattered as a man.

Yeah, it was like, what just ha- I just completely lost control of my entire- and I did it in a public setting. and if that can happen to me once, it can happen to me again, and I am screwed, right? Which became a self-fulfilling prophecy. So over the next three or four months, not knowing that there was actually a physiological component, and that if I stopped abusing my body with poisons, that might help, right? It happened to me about three more times over the next six months, and it ended up generalizing. into just an anxiety disorder that left me housebound.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you had agoraphobia for about three months.

I literally couldn't leave the house. Couldn't drive out of the driveway.

And that led you to sort of say, wait a minute, what's going on with my life?

That's right.

Why am I having these experiences? And what can I do about it?

What the, how am I gonna get out of this?

So anyway, your product really probably should have been called Life Rats. As opposed to Life Book, 'cause you were basically were drowning in your life.

No, I was, I mean, you can't get worse than I was. Functional. I was present.

The beautiful thing is that was the beginning of our personal development journey.

Right.

And you're right, LifeBook was born out of that pain.

My dad literally, he was watching TV late night infomercials one night. He knew how, you know, I was like, I had to call everybody that ran my companies and basically say, I am done. There's no transition plan. You're on your own until further notice. I'm looking over the edge of a really super scary place right now. I'll give you a call when I'm okay. Bye. That was the transition strategy. So my dad found two personal development programs for me when I never listened to a personal development audio course or read a book in my life about this stuff. One was called Attacking Anxiety by Lucinda Bassett. Do you know her work? Oh, she's the best when it comes to anxiety. And the other was Tony Robbins' Personal Power, too. His great audio course that he made in this. in the 80s. And so my dad gave these two programs to me and said, John, I was just watching TV and I saw these, thought they might help you. And that was our very first exposure to personal development work. So listen to both those programs. They both helped. I got a little bit of a grip. I started making my way back a little slowly but surely from that disorder. Within six months, I was relatively functional again, meaning I could drive, I could leave the house, do certain social situations. I mean, I was a real, but I was on the edge of panic all day long. My nervous system was haywire. And that's when I asked myself, How am I going to recover from this? Where am I going to go from here? I'm at absolute, I'm at rock bottom. You can't get any worse than not being able to function.

And I think that's when we started asking those questions that we ask in LifeBook. It's like, well, what do we believe? What is How do we want our life to go? How should we live? Really? It's not going well.

It's not going, this isn't working.

So what should we do? So we really deconstructed everything and said, okay, let's take a good look at this.

And so the very earliest versions of LifeBook, and Mark, you probably know that Missy and I developed LifeBook for ourself.

We used it for a year.

You weren't creating a commercial product yet. We used this system for 15 years.

Before we showed it to one person. We never even thought about that. It was our job really to heal John.

And then to create the extraordinary life. So here's how it happened. At the very beginning, when we were starting to work our way out of this, and I very much mean we, if I wouldn't have had Missy, zero chance I would have ever made it through that. So, I mean, so we're working through this. We've got kids, we've got this beautiful relationship. We're trying to build a good life here, and we're in this together. So the first thing we did is we started to identify the categories of life that we would need to really get under us if we wanted to live a great life. Obviously health and fitness, obviously love relationship, obviously parenting, obviously career and financial. There's some obvious ones, but then there are some less than obvious categories that we discovered over the years. Like emotional, spiritual, intellectual, social, overall quality of life. So we spent quite a few years identifying the most important areas of life that we felt we would have master in order to have the best possible quality of life we could create together on this planet. And that was our goal.

Because it's so interesting you say that because most people don't even think of that as a possible aspiration. How do we have the most extraordinary life on the planet? And how do we create that? How do we design that? I mean, nobody even thinks it's possible.

But I think, Mark, it came from, it came from, it was just a continuum of the work that I was doing to get functional.

It's like, we're at ground zero. Right. With when you had this, you know, debilitating anxiety thing, boom, we're at ground zero. Well, let's start over.

It was almost like a, and then let's keep going.

Right, then let's keep going, how far can we go? How do you create something really awesome? If you're, you know, if you have a clean slate and you can really create it from nothing, it's almost like a blank slate. What do we want that to be?

Yeah, so it's interesting. And that's what we did. And then so what do we want that to be? And then, geez, this is working. Let's keep going with this. And so it was like, all right.

I feel like we discovered it instead of invented it.

Yeah, well, it was kind of both. It came to us and then we'd shape it. It would come to us and then we'd shape it.

So why is it important for people to do this? Why should people bother to create a life vision?

Because especially in this day and age, if you don't have a clear vision for your life, there are going to be countless gurus and corporations and political parties They're going to be happy to step into the void and fill your vision gap and try to get you to do what they want you to do. Every single advertisement you see, every billboard you see, you go into a grocery store, within an hour, you'll come into contact with 35,000 brands. Every single company out there, every single guru. Miss and I have been in the highest level entrepreneurial masterminds in the world, working with the biggest marketers on the planet. and we know that there are millions of the smartest people on the planet out there that spend all day, every day trying to figure out how to get you to do what they want you to do. And they don't necessarily have your best interest at heart. Coca-Cola and Big Pharma and, right? So if you don't have a crystal clear vision for the person that you want to become in the life that you want to live in today's society where you're surrounded by so many distractions, and so many temptations, you have no chance, no chance whatsoever to create an extraordinary life for yourself. And why do you think people don't.

Even believe that's important? I mean, because it's not something people walk around going, I'm going to create an extraordinary life. I'm going to execute my life vision. They might have a goal, they might have a New Year's resolution, I might want to lose a few pounds or I want to get a good job or get a little bit better pay.

But you're like, no, guys, there's another path here. I think that it is very recent in human history where you can even ask a question like that. Because, you know, before 1900, our job was to try to stay alive to where 36, which is life expectancy, and boom, now we can fall over. But I think that, you know, we now have the opportunity to ask ourselves a question like that. How do I create an extraordinary life? We have this little thing in our pocket that has the total sum of human knowledge and information in our pockets at the speed of light.

We all- I know my browser's a little slower than the speed of light. But yeah, I get what you mean.

All the information we need is out there. Our job now is to, number one, decide what we want, and then number two, decide what we need to do to get it, and what else are we going to spend our time doing? Yeah, I mean, so powerful.

So the things we never learn, in life, in school, or from our parents or often our peers or community are the most important things that we need to know to be happy, right? How to have healthy relationships, how to manage your financial life, how to manage your health. These are like foundational ideas that we kind of learn by accident, if at all, in our lives. And most people end up pretty unhappy and miserable because they haven't been thoughtful or intentional about it.

Right.

Right.

Take us through for you, what were the sort of insights that led you to sort of come up with these four questions? And can you go over what those are for each category and how those work to help people create this life vision?

12 categories of life that we focus on are, the first five are your personal life categories. These are you separate from the rest of the world. These do not require the cooperation of others. like your career, it requires the cooperation of others, parenting, your social life. These first five are you separate from the rest of the world. They're your health and fitness, your intellectual life, your emotional life, your character, and your spiritual life. Those are the five categories that are all you.

Well, it's interesting, you make health and fitness the first category.

That's right.

Because it's foundational.

It's foundational. It's self.

Because if you don't take care of that, it's hard to execute on the other things. It's how to be emotionally stable, intellectually curious, 100% to have a character that doesn't get batted around by ill health, which can happen.

Tremendous amount of thinking went into how to sequence these categories. And you're exactly right. Health and fitness is first for a reason. And your personal life categories are first for a reason. Because until you get your own stuff together, you're not going to have good relationships. You're not going to be able to create that great career. You're not going to be able to move into the world and show up in the way that you need to, to create the success that you want to create. So those are the first five and then we go into the relationships which are your love relationship, romantic love, parenting and your social life. Those are the next three categories we look at. Then we have the business categories, your career and your financial life, which are very connected but have to be thought of separately. We know a lot of people who have had incredible careers and completely jacked up financial life. and we can see it the other way around. -Yeah. -They are connected but need to be, you need to create a separate strategy for both of them. And then the last two categories are your overall quality of life, the house you live in, experiences that you have, the things that you want to be surrounded by. -When you live your life.

-You create chaos around you or healing, right?

-Yeah, that is right. -And then finally, your life vision, which.

Is what it all adds up to.

So those are the 12 categories. -There is one more though, we talk about that.

-Well, there is one more. Category 13, our secret category. That's an extension of our love relationship. That's an extension of our love relationship.

We might do a whole show on that sometime.

Yeah, for sure.

And in those 12 categories, the LifeBook process takes you through four questions in each of those 12 categories. And the four questions are, what do I believe about this category? What are my beliefs that control my behavior in this area of my life? That's an interesting one.

Kind of a big one.

Because everything derives from your beliefs, right? So, your- Yes. your choices, your actions, your responses to things all derive from your beliefs, whether they're good or bad. If you believe in limitless possibilities, or if you believe that your life is really constricted and limited and confined, well, that's what you'll end up getting.

Exactly right. Whether they're conscious or unconscious, whether they're true or not true. They literally are the things that make your life, that drive your life.

Henry Ford said, if you believe you can, or if you believe you can't, you're probably right. And so that's just, that's an example of how important your beliefs are. So that's the first one. I want to circle back around.

Yeah, I want to come back to the belief thing because it's a big one.

So what do I believe is the first question? What precisely do I want in this area of my life is the second question. With no fuzziness, with complete clarity. What do I want in my health and fitness? What do I want my love relationship? What exactly do I want? for my financial life. And that's really how- Getting granular.

-Born is not just, I want to be financially successful, but I want to make X in this same year.

Exactly, right? Third question is, why do I want that? What is the purpose behind my vision?

Yeah, because if it's some nefarious purpose, probably not going to work out.

Not going to get out of bed in the morning and get it done. Your purpose is your fuel. That's going to determine whether or not you are going to drive toward that vision that you've said you want.

Yeah. Why do you want what you want?

Exactly. Very important. And then the last one is what exactly do I need to do to get it?

Yeah.

Strategy. So premise, vision, purpose, strategy.

What do I believe? And they all build on each other.

Yeah.

Because first, it's like, what do I believe? Well, whatever you believe is going to be the base of your entire life. And then what is your vision? Well, that's based on your beliefs. Right? It's all, and then the next thing is, well, why do I want that? If I believe that, and that's my vision. I want that. Why? Because that is the fuel.

That is the fuel.

That literally is your fuel.

The self-limiting beliefs are the things that keep us from what we want. So how do people identify them? Because you often say they're unconscious. And how do you get rid of them?

Well, that's literally the question that we're asked most often during the LifeBook program. The first step is to get conscious of them. And that's a very difficult thing to do. unless you have a process like LifeBook. Because where you end up rooting out limiting beliefs is when you're going through one of these categories, say your financial life, and you're asked to describe what you believe about money, and you want to be wealthy, everybody wants more money than they have. That's just a standard across the board thing from every billionaire to people that don't have any money. Interestingly enough, everybody always wants more money than we have. But some people will discover in that process, geez, you know, I was taught from the time I was three years old, that the love of money is the root of all evil. And that's been a conflict in my psyche because I know that I want to have a good life and I want to make the money I need to be able to fund that good life, but I've got this thing holding me back. Well, yeah, you don't want to be evil.

You want to be good.

So let's deal with that.

And oftentimes, just being conscious, becoming conscious of A bad limiting belief can possibly- can remove it. Knock it out. Because your mind is like, your mind wants to do good for you, right? It wants to be, it's your- so.

The first step is awareness.

First step is awareness. First step is for sure awareness and self-acceptance. And, you know, okay, this is the deal. This is the deal. And then there are protocols. We have belief clearing experts in our community.

Yeah.

Lion Goodman, Marissa Pier, that can really help people because that can be a Sometimes, like Missy said, it's enough to just look at it and say, that one's gone. It doesn't make sense anymore. It's shallow.

It usually comes from some meaning we attach to something that happened once. So, I sort of learned very young that my stepfather was kind of a clean freak. And one time my mother asked me to throw, when I was seven, throw the soup in the toilet because there was no garberrators and disposals. And I flushed on the toilet, I came out of the bathroom and he's like, Did you wash your hands? I'm like, no. And he just went into a rage. He picked me up, he threw me against the wall, totally traumatized me in a loud booming voice. And I made the connection that, oh, if I tell the truth, I'm gonna get in trouble. It's not safe to say the truth.

Yeah.

And so, yeah. Then I learned along the way that I had to manage him by not doing things or saying things or telling things that would get him upset, because I didn't want to have that reaction. So then I learned to manage other people's reactions, which was very manipulative, but I was doing it out of self protection.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I generalize it to all of my relationships. Instead of being fully honest and having real conversations, I was, sort of trying to manage the response. And until I understood that and realized that I made the meaning that he was going to be like everybody else I met, I kind of conflated the idea that, you know, if he reacted like that, everybody else was going to react like that. Until I figured out that that wasn't true. It was just true in that situation with that person in that moment. It didn't mean that I could never tell the truth.

That's a beautiful example of how a limiting belief is born and grows. and can be extracted. Now, how did you deal with that?

How did you remove it?

Well, I was always aware of it, but I couldn't actually undo that.

Right, that's tough.

So I worked with a woman named Shelley Lefkoe and another, my life coach, Lauren Zander, around these things for years. But some of the things are just becoming aware of the lack of inherent meaning in actions that people had. in other words.

Got it.

There's no, there's no inherent meaning that my stepfather did that once. Everybody was gonna do that. Or it could mean that, you know, that I was bad or that he was crazy or whatever. Like, there's so many interpretations, and I had to sort of. Oh, yeah, that was one interpretation, but it may not be the only interpretation. And actually, it's not really true. There's no meaning, inherent meaning that I, if I tell the truth to everybody, that I'll get in trouble.

Exactly. Right. And so I'd be able to break that down, and it was.

You know, that is it.

It is sifting through. It is really sifting through your psyche and convincing yourself or just seeing the truth. Shining that light of consciousness is the first step. And it really can root out that stuff.

And then I had to learn how to practice it, how to do it, to not see that response in other people.

But I just want to take a moment to point out how huge the human ability to do that is. My favorite all time quote that anyone has ever said is Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor in the first century A.D. I think, stoic philosopher. And he said, if you're upset by something, it's not the thing itself that's upsetting you, but your assessment of the thing, how you're processing that thing. And this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

That's right.

It's the most empowering quote I've ever heard. We have so much power to be able to look at the meaning that we attach to things, how we process things. And we are in control, although it doesn't feel like that sometimes. And it's extremely difficult to do. Very, very difficult to do. When you're pissed off, you want to be pissed off. But you have the power to stop it like that.

And often we're reacting to something because of our assessment of it. 100%.

Of the meaning we attach to it.

And that's a very Buddhist notion too, which is that your perceptions of things are what causes the suffering, not the things themselves.

Exactly right, that's 100% right. And this you have the power to revoke, to change at any moment.

I mean, you know, it's interesting, both of you and your families had struggles. There was alcoholism, there was mental illness, there was poverty, there was, you know, major dysfunction, abuse. And somehow you guys, didn't really take on all that, but your siblings did. And you were in the same environment, but they chose one interpretation. You chose another interpretation, which led to a very different set of consequences for their lives.

Yeah, we lost three brothers to drugs and alcohol. And, I mean, it's prevalent in both of our families. And, you know, we're very fortunate and we're very grateful. And we also have worked hard. And, worked on ourselves.

But it's not easy because a lot of people coming from those situations, you just, why aren't you an alcoholic and why aren't you mentally ill? And why have you been able to actually shift your perspective and actually become empowered in your life, whereas everybody around you is falling apart?

Yeah, I think that early on Missy and I discovered Ayn Rand's work. Have you read Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead? And despite its many flaws, her contribution was incalculable when it comes to just the sense of life that human beings are here to do something great and to be something great. And that self-actualization is the highest of all the values. You can't control the cards you were dealt, but you totally can control how you play those cards.

Yeah.

So play the hand you were dealt like it was the hand you wanted.

Yeah.

Like it was the hand you would have chosen to begin with. Just freaking put that -Yeah. -And turn yourself into the best person you can possibly be. And if you do that, you'll find yourself in the unique position of being able to help the people around you if you want to and make the world a better place. And that's, I think, the highest that we can strive for.

-That'S beautiful. -Thank you, sweetie. -I was actually raised by two beautiful human beings, and they instilled in me Being grateful, self-responsibility, give more than you receive, just like super basic things like that that gave me, I think that gave me just this... -Your values. -Yeah, basic values. It is like, okay, I am going to take care of myself. I am going to be kind to others. I am going to give to others. I am going to be really grateful for what I have. So if all of us could just be a little bit more grateful for what we have, we would fix the world.

-Completely fix the world.

-Gratefulness is magic. It's a magic pill.

It absolutely is.

And it's true.

I remember everything.

What's missing?

A moment when I really had that insight. I was 20 years old. I was sitting on the floor of my best friend's apartment in college. And all he had was a little foam mattress, like a piece of foam with a blanket and pillow and a few clothes in the closet. I mean, it's really simple. and we didn't really have much money then and we were just sort of living life. And he said to me, Mark, you know, if you have enough to eat, you have a place to sleep and you have a few clothes to wear, everything else is gravy.

That's true.

And like, you know, the truth is that most of us have those things. Not all of us. You know, some of us don't have food security. There's probably 20, 30 million people who don't have that in America. You know, we not all have good housing, we don't all have enough to wear, but most of us do. And so we don't actually take the opportunity to go, wow, you know, I'm here, this life is a blessing. How do I sort of use it.

In a way that- Just being here is a blessing. I mean, it's not easy to get here.

99.9% of all species on this planet that ever grew up are extinct. We almost didn't make it a couple times. A couple times. And we're all- We almost didn't make.

It again right now.

We are.

We're all fortunate to be here. And we take for granted the look, if you have a toilet and running hot and cold water and a refrigerator in your house, you're in the top 1% of all human beings who've ever lived on this planet.

You live better than kings of olden days, right?

King Louis XIV had to piss in a jar in the morning. He lived in Versailles. He lived in Versailles, but he had to be in a jar. So, we need more gratefulness. We need more gratefulness.

So the whole process of starting with your beliefs is really a big one and we've unpacked a little bit. But the vision part is interesting, which means, you know, what am I allowed to think about wanting and how do I get to the vision of what I want? Because most people don't actually do that. They don't go, Here's a relationship I want. I remember, you know, I struggled through a couple of bad marriages and bad relationships. And there was a moment where I was like, wait a minute, I have never called in what I want. I've never written down what my vision is, what I want. I grew up in a family with very difficult relationships. My parents were divorced. My mother and stepfather didn't have a great relationship. I didn't have any role models. I saw certain things that I internalized in, in the way they related. And I really had a set of beliefs and behaviors around relationships that were am I doing that? I chose the people I chose. I did the things that I did to make them not great or, you know, was, was really, you know, driven by some of my own beliefs and attitudes. And when I sat down, I remember when I was like, no, I need to sit down and write down what I want for a relationship.

Mm-.

And I wrote it all down in great detail, like really great detail. And it's like two full pages of content. And at that moment is when I opened the door for having the greatest love I've ever known, which is with my wife. And I would never have been able to get that unless I named it.

Right?

So this is what you take people through in each of the categories.

In every category of your life.

Yeah.

And there's a magic to doing that. And we're not even sure exactly what that mechanism is. It's part spiritual, it's part physical. There is a magic to getting crystal clear on the person you want to become and the life that you want to live. What you tend to do is you tend to let everything else kind of fall away. Once you really discover that, you tend to focus on that. And that tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. prophesy. Your daily choices and actions start to align with it. The things that don't vibrate with it start to fall away. And eventually, if you do it right, getting crystal clarity on the life that you want to live and really keeping it in the forefront of your mind, making your choices and actions based on it, you will wake up one day and look around and say, Geez, what used to be a vision is now my reality.

It's really creating intentionality around it.

That's right. And I personally think that this is how we're wired. Like human beings are supposed to do this. We're supposed to self-actualize. We're here. There's no question about that. Right? But we, our culture has gotten to a point where there's so many distractions.

And we just, we were covered up.

Like, there's no rites of passage. There's no- no, none of that. Guide rails, there's nothing. Completely, and there's no role models. I mean, like you, you brought up a good point. I had really good role models.

My parents were in a loving relationship, good parents. So that was lucky that we had that. But there aren't really a lot of role models. Let me just say this real quick about role models though, because my role models actually came from history. and from literature. And that's a thing. That's a real thing. One of the things that we talk about in LifeBook in the social category is if you're not surrounded by good role models, you can go out there and find them by reading history. The great men and the great women of history that inspire you and that you admire and why and how can you be more like that? So everyone can have good role models, but some of us have to do some work.

It is true.

I found the same thing through biographies and history.

Yeah, exactly. It's a big resource.

Yeah, understanding, and, but, you know, when you look at, even at those lives, often they weren't coherent. In other words, look at Einstein. I mean, the guy had extraordinary contribution. He had beautiful sense of life and spirituality. He, you know, discovered their relativity in quantum physics. I mean, he changed everything about the world, you know, but his personal life was a shambles. Yeah.

You know, same with Gandhi. He was, you know, him and his son, he was Gandhi. had regrets at the end of his life for not being the parent that he wished he could be to his son. That's a famous story, too. That's one of the things that LifeBook creates. And again, I feel like we're so grateful to live in the best time and place in all of human history that made it possible for us to even conceive how can we create an extraordinary life in every important area. And then once we did conceive that, the resources we needed to do that were absolutely out there. It was just a matter of pulling it all together in one strategy. The good news is LifeBook literally is a system where it's completely ready-made for you. All you got to do is sit down, you know, Mark? Yeah. Sit down and do-- It's open source. Work through the questions. Yeah, that's right. And at the end of that process, you'll have created something extraordinary.

Yeah, and I went through it in person, which was powerful. But now you have it online.

Yeah, online is powerful too because thousands of people go through at a time and they're all sharing with each other. And the difference between live and online, live is awesome because it happens in four days like a shh. There's something about that.

It's all you do every day, all day.

That's right.

Online is awesome because you're doing two categories a week and you can really think about those categories while they're happening. and interact with the people that are going through it too. So they're both really interesting experiences and they're both transformative. Everyone that goes through and does this work because you can't bring this much consciousness to your life all at once and not completely transform.

Yeah, it was powerful because in that group, they were extraordinary people, very successful business people, leaders in their fields, creative people. I mean, people who really, you think, have their stuff together. And yet, while they did in some areas, other areas were just a mess. And to go through that with these people and sort of see them literally get peeled open like an onion, and start to look at themselves in ways they never thought, start to question their beliefs, start to imagine their lives in ways that they hadn't imagined before, was really powerful. You know, really powerful. And, you know, you think, oh, these people have their life together. And I, you know, I went, I'm like, okay, I'm pretty generally happy. Like, I have a great marriage.

You're conscious. You pay attention.

Yeah, I I really, you know, love my life. But I real also realized that, you know, despite all my successes, there were areas that I really hadn't fully taken on and owned and, and responsible for the choices that I'm making. or the beliefs that I had that said, oh, I can't have this or I can't have that. And it's not about having it all in the sense of a material sense. It's about, you know, having life fulfillment and, and how do you, how do you get to that place of. Exactly. Of being, being filled up, living on purpose, feeling alive and contributing. And you could say, well, this is a very narcissistic process. You're just looking about what you want in your life. And this turns out it's the opposite. You know what happens? in the process of healing yourself is that you become a contribution of the world.

That's right.

Just maybe- Give away what you don't have.

You've got to start with yourself. And if every one of us did that, the world would be a whole lot better place.

Yeah.

So, by actually working on creating a healthy you from the inside out- you-'re.

Doing the best work you can be doing.

You are. And you're also going to enhance the lives of the friends you have, your family, your children. your community and maybe even extend far beyond that. You'll have, like you guys do, do all these incredible contributions to helping or help from addiction, to deal with the tragedy of orphans, to help, you know, rejuvenate farms and, and communities through a Purity Coffee, which is one of your companies. I mean, there's just so much that can happen if you actually do that work on yourself.

That's exactly. Yeah, that's a key. We, we did this. We had this LifeBook for 15 years. It took us that long to Create that life for ourselves. And then we realized, oh my gosh, it's a system. This could really, this could, we could like share this with other people. They could do the same thing. There's nothing special about us.

I would disagree.

We did this, but you know what I'm saying?

We did this system. It's a, it's a thing.

It's a method. It's a method.

We discovered a method. It's a method. It's a structure. And I'm, you know, going to be 60 this year. I have never really had anybody walk me through in that way in my thinking, what my vision is, my purpose for wanting these things.

Can you imagine if we would have done it in our 20s, Mark? That would have saved me so much trouble.

Tell me about it. Tell me about it. So much grief, suffering. That's true. And one of the areas, I was once in a relationship where after like six months or eight months, whatever it was, my partner said, Well, you know, it was just, we had a little spat, and she's like, that's just the honeymoon period. It's over now. We have to deal with real life. And I was like, what?

It's so good.

And I was like, wow, that was a limiting belief that she had. Yeah, like an expiration date. I didn't really buy it. And yet, you know, your relationship has been one of the greatest examples I've ever seen of a couple that has been together 30 years, and you look like you just got together last week, because you can't keep your hands off each other.

That's true.

You're always saying kind things about each other. You're always looking at each other. eyes, you're always present with each other, you're always uplifting each other, and you haven't kind of entered this vicious cycle of degradation of relationship and disconnection and dissatisfaction. It's the opposite. It's like after 30 years, it's better than ever, hotter than ever.

It's 100% true.

And it's really wild. So tell us your secret.

Well, I don't know. I think that LifeBook is a big part of it. It takes a lot of work to create an extraordinary life. It really is a, It is a lifelong mission. It is a sense of life.

It is a hero's journey.

It really is.

If you are going to really truly self-actualize and express yourself, first of all, discover who you are, understand who you are, and then express the most beautiful parts that you have inside of you out to others. That is a hero's journey. Because the things that you come, like you were just saying, one thing that happened to you with your stepfather that took you years to work through. I mean, we have all had that. And if, like John and I did that work. We did the personal work. It took us 15 years. And the beautiful thing about LifeBook, I tell this all the time, is that we did all that hard work, but now we put it in a system that you can get it done in a year. You can do it online. You can do it in like six weeks. Six weeks, yeah.

If you do it, if you- Not 15 years.

Not 15 years. It doesn't take that long.

You do it on the fast track. Here's what I think happened to me and Missy. We decided early on that we wanted to create an extraordinary life for ourself, and we wanted to do it together. We created a life vision for us, like one unit. And then what's beautiful about a man-woman relationship or any relationship, but I'm specifically talking about a man-woman here, is that you can divide and conquer. If you have a crystal clear life vision that you're both working toward, Missy is incredibly talented and gifted at things that I'm not, and vice versa. We both have strengths and weaknesses, and we are able to both contribute in a huge way toward that life vision. So, our life is our relationship. It is the foundation of our relationship. It is the foundation of our companies, our kids, our everything.

-It is. And we talk about this all the time because we get this question a lot. But, one of the very first things we did when we got together, which I do not know why we did this, but we did, we said, this is going to be a sanctuary. our relationship is going to be a.

Sanctuary from the crazy, chaotic outside.

We had some crazy stuff going on outside of our, you know, our own lives with our families and other stuff. And we're like, okay, there's a lot of crazy going on.

So let's just say that no matter.

What, this is our sanctuary. Nothing gets in here. This is our sanctuary. This is our. You can be whatever. It's like what. What you were saying.

You.

You can. You go on all in. You can do the hokey pokey, that whole thing. Yeah, it was literally. We said, we're going. I'm gonna go all in. I'm all in here. I don't care what it takes, whatever it takes. This is my guy. Yeah. And vice versa. And it was like, let's do this. Yeah.

And so wherever we are, this is home. Yeah. Yeah. That's the foundation. That's where it all comes from. If this is okay, everything's okay.

Right, right.

And you just. And it expands from there.

It is so true. I mean, you know, when I first got together with my wife, she said, I want to have an extraordinary relationship, and I looked First I was like, well, okay, I guess so. But it just, it was like she just did not want to have an ordinary relationship. And then it became a very intentional process. And you guys really do this on a regular basis. So you have a structure that you put in place to allow your relationship to facilitate first, whether it's you, Missy, leaving cards for him in his coffee every day, or you making things for her for breakfast, or whatever it is, these little things that you do for each other, and then the structure of how you have built your romantic life, which is you, despite having four kids and grandkids and multiple businesses, you put a structure in place that's inviolable around protecting your relationship and honoring your relationship and then allowing time for it to actually grow. So tell us what are your tricks?

Okay, that's a key. I will tell you this. That is that's like, we don't, I don't know, how can you, we couldn't be more hard. Yeah, we're so hardcore when it comes to our basic love structure and our family structure. So it's like, okay, our relationship is the basis of everything. So if we, and love is an action. Love takes time.

John Mayer said, Love is a verb, right?

Love is a verb, right? So we set up all these things where we do date night once a week, For, you know, 25, 30 years.

No matter where we are in the world. We're living in Cairo. We're gonna figure it out.

It's like whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. If you're all in, you do whatever it takes. No matter what. There are no obstacles that are too big. So I would say we've been very hardcore and very strict.

Do you have date night? You also have like a weekend you take.

Here are our love rituals. We have a daily connection ritual, which is usually at five o'clock. We'll get it. cocktail and we'll walk around our garden. It's changing now because we're stepping into a new life vision. But the bottom line is Miss and I connect every day after the day to kind of just catch up and we have our little love connection for half hour to an hour and we do a lot of work. Number two is our number one strategy, number one love strategy of all time. We have had an overnight date every week for the last almost 30 years. Despite the fact that we've raised four kids and three grandkids and multiple companies and live in a different country every year with our kids during the winter to get out of Chicago, we've figured it out no matter where we are. And that has been the number one thing that has kept our relationship strong.

It's super strict. Like you said, we honor our relationship by having these structures where it's like, no matter what, it's like we don't think about it.

We have the date night, but you also have other periodic things you do.

Then we take a light vision trip once a year. We go to a a spa somewhere for a week or just somewhere beautiful in nature. And we spend the entire week talking about our life vision. We look back on the last year, see how we did, where do we want to go this next year, and we usually kind of set our annual goals and talk about our life vision. And we've done that every year for probably 20 years too.

Those are our basic foundational.

Then also, I would tell you another one that's really, I think, very foundational. is that we decided how we would treat each other early on. Like, how do I talk to this man? How does he talk to me? It's like, how would I talk to my children? How do I talk to someone I really love? It's really, truly that honoring. Like, I would never raise my voice at John unless I'm really upset or something like that. And that has happened. But let's not talk about that.

Well, it's real. It happens. But then you have a way of cleaning it up.

Yeah, it's like, this is this really is something that is the most important thing to me. So why wouldn't I act that way every day that I can?

You know, we're fortunate and you're in the same boat, Mark, the notion of going all in, where you're literally, the boats are burned. You are, from an emotional perspective, from a spiritual perspective, from a physiological perspective, you're just, this is the one for this lifetime and any others. And what that- Pokey pokey love. What that does though, if it's real and if it's true, is it just takes away so much energy drain that most couples have to go through, right? We've been here for almost 30 years where we just don't have to deal with any of that drama that so many couples have to go through because we are 100% all into this relationship.

Well, I also think that we've fought through it all. We've forged it all. We've earned it because I think the reason that there's so much divorce is because the first sign of any kind of, oh my gosh, this is a little hard. This is a little, we gotta work. It's like, oh, I'm out.

Most of us don't have the skills to actually know how to work through conflict, how to have honest conversations without hurting each other, how to ask for what you need, how to accept when things are different and differences exist. So it's a really important process to go through to learn how to do those things. And again, those little things make a difference. Like you're dealing with them. well, you're daily ritual of connection. I mean, I do that with my wife. We call it what's Up Below. You know, basically like, you know, it's not just that's good. I like that. It's not just like, you know, what happened today, but it's actually like what's really going on for you emotionally, spiritually, intellectually.

What are you sad about? What are you excited about? And it can be 5 minutes, it could be an hour conversation. I love it. This is where, you know, having a life vision as a couple is an incredibly powerful tool, because if you have a strong enough life vision, of this life you want to create together. And what I mean by that is five years from now, here's where we'd love to be living, here's the house we'd love to be living in, here's how we'd like to be running our career, here's what our family looks like, here's how much money we have in the bank, here's how I'm showing up from an emotional, intellectual, spiritual perspective. You know, really thinking through the life that you want to have five years from now. And one of the reasons that that can be so incredibly powerful for a couple is because if that's your North Star, that can help you get through so much of the little crap that cannot couples. You're both working to something incredibly important.

It makes all the insignificant stuff really insignificant.

That's right. Sacrifices sometimes have to be made in order to turn your life into something great. But we know where we're going and we know it's gonna be work and we're up to this task and some days are gonna be harder than others. we're going to have our victories and our failures on the way to that. But we know where we're going as a couple. This is where our energy is going, and that's magic.

This is great.

All right, so people have been listening to this podcast and wondering, wow, maybe I should think about having a vision for my life. Maybe I can have dreams that I want to have. Maybe I can be a better contribution. Maybe I can be more fulfilled. Maybe I don't have to just accept all my limiting beliefs. Maybe I can design a life where I can thrive and my family can thrive and I can have an extraordinary relationship and a great career. And it's not beyond reach, which many of us think. So that is the question I often wondered when I saw very successful people. How do they do it? What do they do? How does it work? What is their story? And the good news here is that you and Missy have created this extraordinary program. which is LifeBook Online, that takes people through the same experience that I went through myself with my wife and my family and friends in LifeBook in person. And it does it in a way that guides you through the whole process. So tell us about what people can expect if they were to go and sign up for LifeBook Online.

Okay, so it's a six-week course where we cover two categories of your life, per week. And these are basically 90 minute fully immersive movies that are interactive. So you're answering the four questions, what do I believe? What do I want? Why do I want it? What do I need to do to get it inside of these movies?

That's right.

And by the, so, so they're, which.

By the way, the same things you show when you do in person live course. So you're actually watching the movie the.

Same, except it doesn't cost $10,000 to do it online, which is nice.

It's essentially free.

Yeah.

And so basically you go through two categories of your life per week. We have a weekly live coaching call of Missy and me where the whole community, we have a question and answer. It's really amazing.

And those are amazing because the discussions, as you do.

The discussions are beautiful.

You get so much more out of hearing someone else's experience and someone else's experience and this strategy worked for this person. I mean, that's a really good- A.

Big part of it. So we take thousands of people through at one time. and everybody's focusing on their own life, which is one of the most, if not the most unique aspect of LifeBook, is how deeply personal an experience it is. As you know, it's not some guru telling you what you should want or what you should be doing.

-You'Re inner guru.

-You'Re inner guru, and you're literally filling up these empty buckets with the contents of your own consciousness. And so we take you through two categories a week online, You answer these questions, we have beautiful discussions, the whole community is supporting you. And at the end of that six-week process, you've done something amazing. You've created this 120-page book about the person you're going to become in the life you want to live.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. You put your pictures in there, your.

Vision, your aspirations, the body you want to have. Totally life-changing. Yeah, for everybody. And I think one of the great things about doing the online course is that it's very, you just have to show up and do the work. We take you through, we tell you exactly what to do step by step. Just do this one, do this exercise, show up on the call, do this, and it's very simple. All you have to do is really just show up and say, okay, I'm going to do this. Make the commitment to doing it, and then doing step by step with us, and like John said, at the end of it, you will have thought through your completely, your entire life, 12 different aspects of you, which all make up your one life. You've thought them all through, you've taken inventory, you've, you know, dissected what you.

Want in every area.

You've dissected it, then you're like, okay, these are my new beliefs. I mean, it's a profound experience, hard to even really describe it, you know?

What's really extraordinary is that you guys have been very successful. You've had these companies, you've had over $12 billion in revenue or more, and you're not looking for more money at this point. You want to give this away, and you want to give it away because you want people to have an extraordinary life. It's really beautiful. But there's a catch, which is you have to pay $500 to sign up, which you get all back if you actually complete the course. So it's an accountability tool.

It's an accountability place. So here's the reason we did that, Mark. And we're so, first of all, I want to reiterate that this is the exact content that you get in our $10,000 course. So this is a $7,500 per single, $10,000 per couple. This is that program. And we've put it online and the offer is this. You put $500 down. As you buy the course for $500, it's a rebate offer. And when you finish the course in six weeks, you can request 100% of your money back. And we rebate your money in full or you can continue your journey with us. go into the second level, go into membership. There's an offer at the end of the course if you want to go even farther and learn even more. But here's what that did. This is the important thing about that offer. 15% of personal development programs that are purchased are completed. 15%, 85% non-completion rate. We have over an 80% completion rate on our course because of that offer.

Amazing.

So yeah, so we're five times industry average.

But I get excited here because the reason so important is because the whole purpose of us having people finish this program is so that the people that do it will become self-actualized.

Self-actualized.

So if we can get, then it's like, okay, maybe we can take a dent out of some of these big problems we're facing as a human community. But each one of us has to be at a certain level of self-actualization so that you can help other people. you have to get the book.

So LifeBook is free, but it's free with accountability. And you have to do what you say you're going to do and finish the program. And if you don't, we keep your money. And that pays for the people that are accountable. And if you do what you say you're going to do and finish the course, you can request your money back.

And it's a beautiful model and we love it. It's great. And there are additional steps too. Once you've completed that, there's LifeBook Mastery and there's community. And there's a whole support structure for not only creating the vision, but how do you actually implement that vision?

It's exactly right. 100%. Look, you cannot fail with this course. If you go through LifeBook and really get clear on the person you want to become in the life you want to live, and then get into LifeBook Mastery and really learn how to bring that into reality. And our membership is about really mastering these categories one month at a time. You cannot fail to permanent positive shifts.

Wherever you are in your life.

It doesn't matter where you start. Absolutely.

It's so powerful. Thank you, John and Misty.

Thank you so much, Mark.

Creating an extraordinary life as an example for doing all the hard work so we can have an easier ride. And for being inspiration, both in terms of how you raise your family, your own relationship, the way you had an unconventional life that didn't follow within the guardrails that we all think we have to follow. and created this program for us all to learn from and to grow from and to be empowered by. So it's a huge gift to the world. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. It's been an honor.

Thank you, Mark. Thanks for having us.

You've been listening to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. We've been listening to John and Missy Butcher talk about LifeBook. You can find out more in the show notes if you want about where to find it and sign up. You can certainly learn about this program and try it out. And it's free if you do it. And if you love this podcast, Please share with your friends and family on social media. If you liked it, please leave a review. We'd love to hear from you. And you can subscribe anywhere you get podcasts, iTunes, Google Play, et cetera.

And we'll see you next week on the Doctor's Pharmacy.

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