Building An Attitude Movement: How To Become Excellent At What You Do With Gary De Rodriguez

In a world full of turmoil, despair and darkness, you need to carry the light. Season three of the Get Attitude podcast is where we will ignite your mind, your heart and your attitude. And welcome to the Gap, the Get Attitude Podcast. My name is Glenn Bill. I am your host, international best selling author, keynote speaker, and we would love you to share out this, this podcast. We would love you to like us, subscribe to us, tell all your friends, let's build that audience. Let's create the attitude movement that we've all wanted to get with. Check us out at the Attitude Movement on Facebook. Like us on Facebook at the Get Attitude podcast. And I'm going to tell you something, guys, you better buckle up because we have one of the biggest, greatest coaches in America that is ready to give you some wisdom. Especially your people who are leaders. Now a lot of you guys are like, I'm not really a leader. Well, trust me, you better be leading yourself. So when, when this gentleman's talking, he has coached some of the most successful people I've known in my life. He's been recognized and is an internationally acclaimed expert in the science of human excellence and known as the people mechanic. Gary Day Rodriguez has over a 30 year career in designing and integrating the most effective models of psychology based systems of success in leadership in human behavior, communication and team dynamics. So if you are an employee, if you are an employer, if you are a team member. Hey. Or if you're just curious about how to become excellent at what you do, I'm going to deliver for you today. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Gary D. Rodriguez. Welcome to the Get Attitude Podcast.

Hello, Glenn. How are you, my friend?

I am good. It's so good to have you here and we're, we're just so excited to have you and tap into the wisdom that I know you're going to bring. We always love to just start our podcast by asking the very simple question, what is your definition of attitude? And who was your first attitude coach?

Well, my definition of attitude is to stay focused on what you're choosing to create rather than what has been created in the past.

Wow.

If you stay focused on where you're going, you actually take all the neurological connections in your body, all like the trillions of them, and directionalize them towards that particular end result. So it's really important to focus on where you want to be, not where you've been. Wisdom from the past, bring it forward, collapse it into now, and then focus on what you want to create next. Wow. You stay there, you will actually begin to achieve amazing Results.

And so are you staying focused on the present?

Absolutely. And from this point, you have to know where you are first before you can actually determine where you're going to be. So define this first, which is all the wisdom from the past, and then focus on really what your legacy is going to be, where you desire to evolve to. From who you are now to who you desire to be.

I love it. And so tell me about who helped create this guy, Gary Day Rodriguez, and who was your first attitude coach, where you said, you know what? I think this is? I'm in the place that I need to be. This is 30 years ago. How did you get there?

I'm going to share a bit of a personal story because I didn't get here through an attitude coach. I got here through finding something intolerable. Many times when you are looking for your purpose, people like, well, what's your passion, where you want to be, what's your dream? That is true. And also purpose can be defined by what you find intolerable. So I launched my career at the very onset of the AIDS community and the AIDS crisis. When that all occurred, I found it intolerable that no one was doing anything. I put together the first AIDS educational seminar, brought down legislators from Sacramento, immunologists from all the major hospitals. We began to do free events, educating the general public on what was known at that time. Then I ran a rebirthing program. I taught a spiritual support group called the Course in Miracles, and then that turned into an organization called harp, which became federally funded across the United States.

Awesome. Tell us a little bit about harp. What does it stand for and what did it do?

Holistic AIDS Response Program. And we offered free services, multiple free services to people that were infected, their friends and their family, to lend them support. So that's how I sort of launched. And my whole thing was, how do you get people to resolution in a very short period of time? Like, you were diagnosed, you were a skeleton in three months. And so how do you get people to resolution in three months? They did not have time for a Jungian and 40 and, you know, psychotherapy. They had to get results fast. Fastest way to do that, of course, is to work with a subconscious mind. So I launched my career studying accelerated change techniques to get people results very quickly.

Interesting. And so what are some of the keys? Maybe a 1, 2, 3, on how to accelerate your results?

That is a very great, great question.

Thank you.

I was teaching a class last night, actually, to some international students of mine, and they were. They asked me this question about well, you know, it's about, it's about setting your mindset and your language, we understand that. And it's about setting your goals and going for it. And then I said, however, if you're trying to shift beliefs and you have very solid lots of evidence gathered at multiple experiences throughout your life that this one limiting belief has like years of evidence that your nervous system has gathered about it. And here you go. I'm going to shift my belief because this is what I would prefer. What my premise was that you cannot shift a limiting belief by just claiming it, doing affirmations. It won't work. It's like laying a silk sari over a pig. It's not going to fly. And so we go into a process called submodalities, which is how to begin to start creating using the language of the brain, which is some modalities, how to start being able to create really deep belief change work using that particular system. But you have to then really go to the next level down Glenn, which is how did that belief get formed? So think about it this way. From the, from the very beginning of our lives, we had very key significant experiences that happened. Like sometimes traumatic, sometimes not traumatic, but key significant experiences from those experience. Because we're meaning making creatures, we create a constellation of beliefs around each one of those experiences that begins to formulate from birth to seven this deep unconscious aquifer on how we see the world, the perceptions that we carry, and then how we interpret the world around us based upon that. So when you start looking at how we actually created us to be us, it's like opening up the owner's manual. You have to go first to if those key significant events are loaded with unresolved negative emotions, then what kind of impact is that going to have on my life? Am I carrying around this luggage behind me that I don't even understand anymore? Because it's so unconscious, created so long ago, but it was a foundation of what created you to be you. A lot of times people will run towards their goals, but they don't achieve them because there's so much luggage they're dragging behind them that actually has self sabotaging patterns that occur. So a lot of times when I work with people, it's like, let's do a little bit of the cleanup before we start actually running towards the finish line because we can get there much faster, much cleaner, with much less drama and trauma really. Because no one likes to stumble and fall running towards their goal. And they stumble and fall oftentimes because they're self sabotaging patterns in action. And those are always because the incongruency between what you got and what you're carrying with you. So I have this thing of do the cleanup first.

I love it. So talking about cleaning up first, what are the three most important questions that people should ask themselves?

Well, number one is, what is my purpose? Like, what am I really here to do? That kind of defines everything. The next would be what's been stopping me? And then the next is, how important is it for me to achieve this? And what are the results if I do not?

Right. So when very cliche. What's your purpose? How do you help people find their purpose? Because my guess is 30 years in the coach's chair, they go, oh, this is my purpose. And you go, well, actually, it's not your purpose. We got to do some more cleaning up. How do you navigate through that question? What is your purpose?

Well, I'll fill this out to you. Life leads, and life leads through the circumstances that are presented before us. I think that there is this great, incredible matrix rolling itself out and we find ourselves in certain positions that in our conscious mind, like, I'm not choosing this, but in the end result is, if you look in hindsight, it has a certain level of perfection to it all along. So if I looked at my life, I grew up in a highly dysfunctional family with bipolar mother that was alcoholic and drug addicted as well. And I had a lot of trauma as a consequence. I think I kind of spit my life. Looking at how do I first of all heal myself? Because I went through a long period of drug addiction. And, you know, there was rape, there was molestation, there was drug addiction in my life. And I thought, how do I heal from this and create what I know is percolating up inside of me? As I looked at all of the pain and anguish that I watched my family live through and myself as well, I began to start looking at that. I have to find an answer of how to unravel this. What caused that back there? So I went on the quest to do that. And then as the AIDS crisis happened, I went like, well, here's a whole other demographic of folks that are being completely thrown to the side and they need desperate help. And I could not go and be a tech guy. I could not go and be like a professor at a university. I had to look at what my life had actually molded me to experience and then start looking for answers there. So I really believe life leads us. Like right now, I'm in the process of writing a book that is all about how to heal trauma, because that is the birthplace of our limiting beliefs, all of our blockages, even our core values. And so when we're able to get to the core of it and begin to start working there, what happens is that we really start to be able to discover not from, like, this is what I'm choosing my purpose to be, but this is what life has led me to undeniably see and begin to start going, wow, this is what my heart absolutely, unequivocally wants to devote itself to, is how to help people crawl out of that particular space.

Yeah, I love that. And so when you talk about HARP and you know, a nationally funded government program that started with you.

Oh, it started with a group of us. There was like four of us.

But. But. And that's great. I get that there's four or five, but did you think that was going to happen? Or did it, like, did life lead you? I mean, it's so many people who are listening, right? Are like, I got the idea. I'm going to change the world. Me and my three people, we got to help X, we got to help Y. We know we can do it. You're actually a guy that did it. So, like, what's the difference? And what do you say to those people who have a noble idea that may be well thought out, but feel like I'm just not getting the traction? And, boy, not everybody's thinking this as cool as me. Like, what's your advice to you 30 years ago?

My advice to me 30 years ago would be like, you just never quit. You never quit. And this is like, when you feel like you found. Because I think your purpose is very much. And I'll. I'll just go a little 1960s on you here, but your. Your. Your purpose is something that is more of, like, a spiritual purpose. If you look at Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, you know, the very top human need right before he died, was a level of spirituality like, where. And I. What I mean by that is not religion. It's like, where. Where and what do I belong to that's larger than me and how. What's my impact in this larger system in which I belong? So when we start asking those kind of questions, I think it's vitally important that we look at then how do we begin to start moving that forward and define it for ourselves and have it be more of something that we can't live unless we do that, unless we have that thing accomplished. And it's like, how can we go on? How can we really feel any sense of satisfaction and deep reward? Most people live a life that at points of their. Of their life, they're looking at and going, there's just something missing. There's something really missing. I think if everyone really in the listening audience asks themselves, are we doing exactly what our heart is here to do? Are we doing what we feel our actual spiritual purpose is? Are we doing it? And it always is going to revolve around, are we helping other people? That's just where it revolves around. And so what my premise is is that if you feel in the depth of your soul that this is something that you must do, that is undoubtedly either part of or is your purpose. And if you're relentless about it, and if you know you're not doing it for, like, your ego or even for finances, you're doing it because you would do it for.

Yes.

That is when you know that you're on target and that it's something that you will not stop doing because you're not expecting a reward. The reward within itself is the actual action of doing the purpose.

Yeah, I love that. So good. And then as you're living in your purpose, you brought up something. Number one, how many people that are listening or in any sample that you would take are a product of trauma? I would just be curious if there is a number, what you would guess it to be. That's question number one. And then as we are going through and fulfilling our purpose and things are happening, the big word that I love that I think is so appropriate for this podcast is this thing called self sabotage. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. It's great. We're rolling, and then all of a sudden, I don't know, you go out and you do an eight ball of coke or you drink a, you know, bottle of bourbon, and then you screw up while you're all jacked out. You know what I'm saying?

Like, oh, I know exactly what you're saying.

Yeah, that's happening. So, number one, I'm just. Just want to just touch on how many people come from trauma and. And whatever insight you have on that. And then let's get into people that are killing life, and then the next thing you know, they screw it all up because of this thing called self sabotage. Go ahead.

Well, this will be an unusual answer. Perhaps everyone is coming from trauma. I figured, because trauma is actually different. There's different aspects. There's acute trauma, there's compounded trauma, there's Generational trauma. There's all these different types of trauma and there's more traumas as well. In definition, however, when you think of trauma, it's not like, oh, I got in a car accident or oh, I was beat up by this gang over here. It can be they've even proven this, that the, that the look on a mother's face, wow. An infant will cause PTSD in that infant.

Wow.

So what we have to start looking at, every single one of us have minor or acute or complex trauma or compounded small memories that end up being, being traumatic over time to us. What these things do is they cause us to create the beliefs not out of joy and expression and freedom, but out of fear. And so every one of us is running those particular patterns. And when we look at then the self sabotage, that becomes a place where people really begin to fall down. The bottom line is most people are dissociated from their core values because core values are quite unconscious. And so when we have our core values defined, the top five drive behavior, when we have them defined, and we create our own personal mission statement from that, that's not our purpose statement, but our mission statement. When we define that for ourselves, we have a, we have an anchor to guide our choices. But when we don't understand what our values are and we haven't defined what the anchor is for us, we'll do behaviors and rationalize it. And as we do those behaviors, what begins to happen is that our self esteem starts to plummet when they're contrary to our unconscious values. Our self esteem drops. I've never known anyone in a conversation with a group of people where they're all talking smack about one another or about one person in particular. I've never known anyone that walked away from those conversations going, oh man, I feel so inspired. I feel great. You never have that. People walk away feeling a little self righteous and a little guilty and a little agitated or even annoyed, but they don't walk away inspired. So what happens is that we have patterns that we program the subconscious mind with that we don't understand that we're doing. Because literally the subconscious mind takes a language literally and personally. 70,000 words a day are coming out of your mouth, either out of your mouth or in your internal dialogue. Every word your subconscious mind is taking as it is about you. And there's lots of different ways that we sabotage ourselves, lower ourselves, put ourselves into a victim position through the words that we use. And then when we speak ill about anybody else, we take it. Our subconscious mind takes it literally about ourselves.

Yes.

So we have this, these self sabotaging patterns that we're doing that eventually leads to I'm going to do like an eight ball of coke or I'm going to drink a vasque whiskey. I'm going to do something that's going to nosedive me because I'm having too much good. So I have to sabotage it because I don't deserve it.

And so how do you reverse that trend? Or is it, is it straight up pattern interrupt or do you have something you can tell yourself? Is there a Coach Rodriguez?

You know, I'm not, I'm not going to bullshit you here, Glenn, because a lot of people would take that and go, yeah, I have a process, you know, like it's a. Works miracles, you know, it's called ass.

Here we go, right here.

Here's the deal you built you, over how many years you've been alive, ah, conditioned your nervous system to create neural pathways that are from repeated thinking, repeated thoughts, and repeated emotional states. Your thoughts are electrical charges that flow down the path of least resistance. So the more that you have patterned those particular habits of thinking and speaking, the denser that neural highway is, which means it's formed a pattern that unless you starve that pattern off and you stop it, you'll start to dwindle that neural pathway. And then through habit, you build a new one. So it's not an overnight thing, but it is something you have to understand the biology of how you've built you to be you so that you can start building it differently. That's the first one. The next thing is that I'm just going to go to the, to the very most applicable thing for a listening audience right now.

Great.

I mean, tons of stuff that you do in the process of helping to unpack that and program this for the future.

Yes.

The thing that needs to happen is first you have to change your language. There's a little thing called the drama triangle and the creator triangle. Drama triangle. There's three positions. There's victim, there's villain, and there's hero. Oftentimes we go into victim. We don't take full ownership of the reality and the emotional states that we're creating. When we don't take full ownership, we get weaker. We go victim. We blame someone else or something else for the way that we feel. We generally look for some kind of hero. And that hero could be you, like a six pack of beer or it could be a line of coke. It could be. That could be the hero, like save me from this feeling. Or we look for someone to do that. Though the main place that we get to where our self esteem starts to rise. Because there's this little thing that is a law like gravity. You only attract to you the level of success you feel worthy of receiving. Very important thing I just said. Because if you're betraying your values, your language dysfunction is there. You speak ill about other people. You've done harm to other people. You haven't cleaned it up. What happens is inside. Because the subconscious mind is a highly moral being inside. You don't deserve to be successful. And no one knows this but you. This is why you can bullshit everyone else. You can hold up for fabulous masks of I'm the best guy ever or the best girl ever. Look how successful I am. I rock here, I rock there. But eventually you sabotage. And if you don't sabotage yourself in your business, you absolutely are a dumpster fire in your personal relationships.

Yeah. I can only imagine.

Well, it's true. So this is where we have to become congruent and authentic about what it is we're doing in leadership and what we're doing as far as wanting to be really successful entrepreneurs. Because the greatest level of success is to be able to earn enough money to do good out in the world.

Yes.

Make some kind of contribution to the community in which you're serving. To be able to say, I've got a scholarship program if you can't afford me.

Yeah.

And here's an online program that you can go do and you go do it for free. So that you start building this. This place where your heart and your spirit and your purpose can actualize itself across the boards in every demographic. Because everyone deserves to know how their biology of emotions works so that they can begin to turn it around the direction of where they're choosing to succeed and leave their legacy. Legacy. No matter what demographic, socioeconomic, demographic they are in, they deserve the right to know and actualize.

I love it. And that that's a great place to be. I want to. There's. There's no doubt you have coached over 11,000 people. What I want to know is this. Which One of those 11,000 had the most profound impact on you after working with him? And you can use an alias or whatever, but that's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. And I'm like so many times. And I think most coaches know this, that, you know, sometimes we coach because we actually learn more from the people that come to us than they're learning from us. So I'm guessing that you've had one or two folks that have sat in that chair across from you that you went, whoa. Either we did a great thing. Complete reversal. I just love to hear that story. And what's the lesson for our gappers here with that interaction with that person?

Yeah, I love working with C suite executives primarily because they have the biggest impact on the most people. So I had an executive fly in from Hong Kong and he did a leadership breakthrough intensive with me, which is we locked ourselves into my office for three days, 12 hours a day, and I drilled down to really what was the core issues that was really destroying this company. And what it was, was a. A relationship that had gone way south. And actually she was treating him really cruelly and he could not understand it. And he was broken. He was just heartbroken. Wow. And he could hardly function. And this is a, like a really good, really good guy, really good looking guy, like off the COVID of gq, you know, multimillionaire, you know, drives his Rolls Royce, had a chauffeur drive his Rolls Royce. And he's no schle, you know. And this, this young lady just broke him in two. And so we, we went through the process and we got down way deep. He realized the things he needed. I'm not going to talk in detail, but he realized those really deep changes that needed to happen in him. We did a lot of belief change, a lot of trauma resolution work, a lot of purpose work. A lot of him getting really online with what his legacy was going to be. By the parted, he was like, oh, like 100% better than what he was when he walked in.

Yeah.

He was like, how do we do that? And I said, well, a lot of it was your willingness because you have to be pretty willing to sit, you know, for 12 hours a day for three days with me. You have to have some balls to do that.

Yeah.

And then about a week later, he called me and goes, I need you to fly to Hong Kong.

Oh my God.

And we're going to roll out all your leadership training through all my management team. And then I need you to fly to Elkhart, Indiana, where our, where our sales and showroom is. And I need you to train everybody there. And then here's a coaching package. I want you to coach every single one of my executives in the Elkhart office.

Wow.

Okay. We'll do it. And that created this reverberation through the company. They eventually sold the company and these busy starting another one in Dubai. But what the whole, what the Whole process was, was you make the change, the leader has to make the evolutionary change. When the leader makes the evolutionary change, everyone underneath them, models them and then does something similar in values, in attitude, and how they treat one another. So we literally shifted the culture of the company in both Hong Kong and in the usa. I love it.

We're here with Gary Day Rodriguez. If you like what Gary's talking about, you need to check out his website. He's got a, a new online program called Creating Incredible Relationships. And just by being a gapper and listening to this, you get a hundred dollar discount if you enter the promo code empowered 100. Empowered 100. And I promise you that if your relationships are struggling, if you find that you're a person that doesn't know how to have a healthy relationship, going to Gary's. Gary's website would be a very smart thing to do. And it's called Creating Incredible Relationships. You can find it there. $100 discount for our gaffers because you're listening today. Let's talk about incredible relationships. Gary, what are the one or two? Well, maybe you want to talk about the program, maybe if you want and say here, here's, here's what we work on. But on a practical matter, maybe you say, guys, here's a couple things you guys need to know about incredible relationships. And gals, here's the thing that you need to know about incredible relationships. So when they're done with this podcast, before they go see your online course, they go, hey, I can use that stuff. So talk to us about incredible Relationships. What's that mean? And what are some helper helping points for us?

It's basically in, in two modules. One is, of course, you have to be able to be an incredible relationship with yourself. So that's the very first one. We go into values and a lot of the cleanup that we need to do. And that then gives you and puts you in a much better place. Less projective, less in the drama triangle, less. And in that whole sort of aspect, I can't have conversations that are effective. So we first work there. The second module is all about how to actually begin to start developing a mission statement for your relationship by identifying both you and your partner's values and then coming together and creating why the heck out of all the genealogical possibilities we could have been partnered with, it's you, like, what are we supposed to create together? Which gives them the relationship a higher purpose other than you please me and then I'll please you, right? You provide this and I'll provide that. It's more like, what is our purpose and why are we doing this together? And what is it that we both, as individuals can do more powerfully together than we can apart?

Go ahead. So real quick. I mean, obviously, if you have a partner, you should both be going through the course, not just one of you. That would be ideal, and that would be ideal. And do each of you pay a separate fee or how does that work? Like, does the wife.

Well, you know, there's no way to monitor that.

And, you know, most people just share and cheat, cheat, cheat.

Just. Just. Just share, you know, All I want to do is get that information out.

I love it.

Got one person and. Oh, do I have to buy another one? No, just watch it together, you know, that's awesome. Begin to start working toward it. But it's got stuff in there that literally people have said when live trainings that I've done, especially throughout Australia, they're like, what's in this course? Every single person on the planet needs to know because it is so revolutionary about the changes it makes in the quality of your conversations, the quality of your relationships, and more importantly, in the relationship with yourself. It makes just a radical change because there's stuff in there that is not being taught out in the relationship space that I been teaching for years and years and years. And, you know, quite frankly, until about 23 years ago, I could say I was probably one of the worst examples of how to be in a relationship. I couldn't get a relationship work to save my life. And then when I hit about 45, I thought, you know what? It's like, I better start teaching what I need to learn. And then I started developing the relationship courses and go, oh, my God. And then finally, I got well enough, met someone at 50, and we've been together for 23 years now.

Oh, I love it. Congratulations.

Oh, yeah, that's great.

Well, speaking about your life, and I'm not sure if you've listened to many of ours, we always love to conclude our podcast by letting people get to know you more and walking you through your life in an exercise that is unscientific and totally created by me called Knowledge through the Decades. And what we do is we walk you through your life and we ask you what the attitude lesson was at each stage of your life. And, boy, we've had some really, really fun talks. And so I'd like to do that with you.

Yeah, go for it.

And so we, you know, none of us remember childbirth, but I have a feeling that birth is something you could probably speak to very well. But what do you think the attitude lesson is of being born or reborn or being zero? What's the attitude lesson there?

For me, it's buckle your seatbelt and remain curious.

I love it. Okay. I love it. Remain curious is very good. Now I'm going to take you to being 10 years old. Would love to know what grade school you went to and if you remember your teacher. But was there a time when you were 10 or you know, 9 or 11 that stuck out that changed it for you. Where was it? Could have been bullying. It could have been you were a bully. Could have been you peed your pants in the middle of a classroom. I don't know what it was. But what was the attitude lesson at 10? What was the story that sticks out to you being that 10 year old Gary Day Rodriguez?

That's really interesting. I love this part of my life because I was a horrible stutterer as a child. Oh, wow. Like I could barely speak.

Wow.

So I had all these learning disabilities because of the trauma. And then I couldn't speak because I had so much. I had such a bad time expressing myself. And I made this little family. I know it's going to sound so ridiculous, but I made this little family of seals on a pink iceberg. And my teacher always remembers name. His name was Mr. Bowerman.

Awesome.

Came up. And it was actually way above this little family of seals, was way above what any other kid had done in that class. It was actually very, very realistic. It was really well proportioned. It was actually very good. And he looked at me and he said, oh, my God. He said, you are really talented. And then he enrolled me in the. The La Jolla Museum of Fine Arts.

Wow.

Summer school course for talented artists.

Whoa.

That was the very first time at that moment that I went from I'm so ashamed of myself, I can barely look at anyone to I've got something to offer that's uniquely me. And Mr. Bowerman, I'm sure he's no longer with us, but he was, he was the savior because I was in this. I have Hispanic last name and I was the only Hispanic kid in my school district.

Wow.

And so it was. There was lots of prejudice in my neighborhood and kids would throw rocks at me and parents would tell me to walk in the gutter because I was a dirty little wet pack. Oh. And here was this Mr. Bowerman going, dude, like, you are just like, you are a rock star. And I'm like, someone has finally seen something about me. And that turned my Life around. This is why whatever you can do for a kid to increase their, their, their spectacular uniqueness, do it because it could change their life.

Well, leave it to a teacher. And certainly, although you call yourself a Coach, you're probably Mr. Bowerman in disguise with a cake. Yeah, absolutely. That's just beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. Let's go to 20 years old. You're either in college, you're not in college. I don't know what you're doing at 20, but do you remember being 20 or turning 21? What was going on in your life? What was the attitude lesson when you hit 20?

The attitude lesson for me at 20 was I was, I was quite inspired by, by art. I've always. I'm a frustrated artist at the end of the day, so I kind of use, I kind of use my clients kind of life as my canvas and I help them paint a different picture for themselves to represent their, their purpose in their life differently. But what I did then was I was a full on full blown artist and I was making a living at it. I would finish all of my, my different aspects of the, the final projects for my courses and I would have, I would then have like the, the other department heads come and buy my, buy my pieces.

Oh my gosh.

I had shows on Madison Avenue and Fair Tree Gallery for the Arts. So I was, you know, I was pretty good at what I was doing and. Yeah, and I absolutely adored it and loved it. That's who I was at 20.

That's cool. And so were you painter or sculptor?

I was, I was, yes. I was a sculptor more than anything else.

Okay.

And that was, that was, I had lots of different mediums that I worked in. I also was a painter as well. I did a lot of mixed media stuff.

Wow.

It was, it was really inspiring actually to be in the art community because a lot of that creative stuff would just come out of me.

So was the seals your best sculpting or was there or like, like what was the one sculpture, number one, that you created that, that you love and what's the story behind that? And number two, was there a sculpture that you either saw in person or on a picture that took your breath away and you went, oh my God, how did he do that?

My favorite, my favorite thing is I, I took this textile class and I wove these three dimensional series of different insects in mixed media.

Oh, wow.

Had like stingers, gold stingers and horns and all kinds of wings, cellophane wings, and wove them all together. It was. And it was all mixed media, you know, and it was. It was very cool. It was very, very cool. That's what I exhibited at the Fair Tree Gallery. And my most favorite sculpture was done by my best friend. He was like, he was this Renaissance guy. He was teaching the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics at the age of 18 at the museum of man in San Diego.

Oh, my God.

He was the head of the Historical Society for San Diego, and he was a phenomenal artist. And he did a life size sculpture of a human sculpture, and it was just spectacular, like something Michelangelo would have done. He did bronze, and it was just amazing.

I didn't mean to go over to do that, but I was too curious. I had to figure it out. So let's go to age 30. Do you remember your 30th birthday? What was going on in your life? What was the attitude lesson that you learned at 30?

Well, I got married at 18 and got divorced at 27. As you do if you get married at 18 and at 30, I was just a wild pony.

Were you?

Oh, yeah, I was just a wild pony. So. And I'm not going to go into details on wild pony ness, but I was a wild pony, so you can take that however you want to.

All right, so experimentation, growth, and these types of things were the attitude lesson for you?

Yes, and I was also a naval architect at that time, and I was designing firefighting systems. I designed fighting systems for the hangar bays and flight decks of two of the aircraft carriers in US Fleet and. And lots of other ships. And so I was. I was kind of doing that whole gig flying around internationally and working on. On Navy ships.

Wow. Are you a veteran then?

Nope, Nope. This was through the largest naval architectural firm in the. Well, I don't know if it still is, but in the world, which was a company called Imrose and Blatt and Sons.

Wow. That is. That had to be something, but unfortunately, we don't have time to dig into that. But wow, it was fun. I mean, yeah, just incredibly tedious, I'm sure, but just the marvel of an aircraft carrier is something else. I mean, wow. All right, so now let's talk about being 40. What was happening at 40? What was your attitude lesson there at 40?

Well, I kind of woke up around 35 and said, what the hell am I doing with my life? You know, I feel this ache to do something, you know, bigger. And, you know, the AIDS crisis was in full swing, and I started studying then accelerated change technique. So I studied hypnosis to learn how to work with the subconscious mind. I got introduced to neuro linguistic programming that evolved into another process which is an evolution of NLP called Humanistic Neuro Linguistic Psychology. And then I have worked, I made a point to work with indigenous elders all over the world because they knew how to work with a subconscious mind. So I was, I lived in India for a period of time and I was initiated there when I was 22 and continued that meditational process, you know, process till today. I still meditate on a discipline. And then I was sweat lodge keeper for an Arika Rahadeshka medicine woman for 10 years. I traveled down to Australia and I had the great good fortune to meet with and work with the aboriginal law keeper down in Western Australia. I worked with kahunas on the Big island and in, in the sacred valley of Machu Picchu.

Whoa.

I just spent. Oh yeah. And then of course I studied the mystical teachings of Christ through a Course in miracles. I was. Bill Thetford, the man who co wrote the Course in Miracles was a mentor of mine. So I, I have had a lot of exposure to a lot of different belief systems so that I can find this golden thread that kind of runs through all of them, which I think is more the truth. And I really believe this is how people change at the very deepest level is they find that purpose that is self defined by them so that they can go forward and meet that legacy that they know they're here to do. And one of the gifts of working with a gay, with the gay community and in the AIDS community was I got to sit at the bedside of many people who had died.

Yeah.

And what I learned from that is some people clawed at their sheets to stay in their bodies and some people danced out of their bodies. And the difference was the people that danced out of their bodies knew they had done what they came here to do. And there's no more denial at the time of death. You either know you did it or you know you didn't do it.

Yes.

And for me, I. I've seen too much regret. I'm not going to die that way. That is an inevitability for all of us. And so my premise is let's build ourselves up so that we have no regrets when we dance out of our bodies and let's look back on the planet and see millions of lights lit from something that we have individually done.

Yeah. I love that. Les Brown's famous speech. Live full, die empty. Right. Don't die full of your dreams. Don't die full of your potential. Die empty, put it all out there.

Live your life to the fullest because you only have a number of breaths to breathe.

That's true. So, 50, you gave us a little insight. You got everything figured out. It sounded like you went on an incredible spiritual journey and educational journey in your 40s, and you met the woman of your life that you're still married to, is that correct?

I met the man of my life.

The man of your life.

Still together.

Well, congratulations.

Thank you very much.

So you got married in.

At 50? No, no, I, I, you know, no, I just for me, it's. It's like, it's not important to. To be married or have a license like that. There's a commitment of the soul, and that is what's most important to me.

Good, good. So tell me, what's the attitude lesson at 50, then?

The attitude lesson at 50 is the clock is ticking your ass, regardless of what has been stopping you. Do the breakthrough. Do whatever it takes to break through that and get to the absolute other side of it. And run, don't walk, to make the contribution you're here to make.

Oh, it's beautiful. That's so good. I love that. I can't go. I can't go down in that rabbit hole because it's just too damn good. Talk. Talk to me about 60. I think you're at least 60, right?

Oh, dude, I'm 71.

My man. Well, good. We got two more of these to go then.

I'm telling you. I mean, it could be. We could just go on forever and ever, right? So at 60, it really is. Gather the right team around you, okay? Gather the right team around you so that you've got support because you do not know everything. You gather the right team around you, you can do exponentially so much more. And if you're really committed to being successful and leaving that legacy, you have to gather the right people around you. And so that's what I did. That was a lesson I have. I have incredible people around me in my organization. There's lots of love in our organization. We believe in the mission. We believe in the purpose. We see too many miracles happen, and people are just like. Especially when they come on, like a new team member, and they come on and they. They see what we're doing and they experience some of the live events that I do. They go, oh, my God. It's like, I've never seen anything like this before. And I'm like, man, this is what we're up to. I mean, be part of this because you Being part of it is literally about holding up one of the best, most essential pillars to being able to get this work out into the community. In a way that's going to change, in my mind, millions of people's lives.

And so how many live events do you do in a year? Or does it just depend on the year?

It depends on the year. For quite a while, I was deeply involved in working in organizations. Now I'm doing more public events. So right now I'm right in the middle of doing a group coaching. It's called the ultimate mindset and group coaching Intensive. And we're just about to the halfway point of that particular group of people. I'm going to start another one in June, which I do. We do this incredible work within that. People are like, oh, my God. This is like, the change is like, so deep and so pervasive, and it's like, I would just need more of it. And probably end of August, I'll do a trauma memory resolution certification. Best to train people on how to work with trauma really effectively. The change is permanent, and I can't go into it much because I'm sure we're running out of time. But literally, I can sit with you for 15 minutes and you can have an event that destroyed your life when you were 10. Yes, 15 minutes. It will look like a black and white photograph in a photo album, and it will be neutral. And it's permanent change. I am not puffing myself. I have thousands of people that I've worked with like this, and I've trained hundreds of coaches to do the same.

And what's that technique called or what? I think my brother, who is a guest on. On, and he does a lot of counseling work, and he explained this exact same thing to me, which was very interesting. What's it called again?

The Trauma Memory Resolution Technique. Yeah, And I developed it. So it's. You can only kind of get it from my organization.

I'm gonna send you. Yeah, I'm gonna send you what he's got. I'd be curious to see what you think.

Yeah, I. I would love to see it, but there's lots of different ways of working with trauma. This one, historically, people have told me, especially veterans, it's the only thing that ever worked with their war trauma.

I mean, is it known as trt?

No.

Okay. Okay. Well, I'll. Yeah, I'm curious. I'll be curious to see what you think. Okay, so that is 60. You turned 70 a year ago. Congratulations.

The clock is ticking so loud that I can't even sleep anymore. So literally, I mean, I've got the energy of a 35 year old. I'm just like down to it. You know, get to the gym, do your three or four days of working out, come here, put In a good 10 hour day, see your clients, develop your products, get your book done. I mean, I'm pedal to the metal right now.

So you're loving it. That's great.

Oh my God. It's like my life is bigger and fuller than it has ever been. So still speaking at conferences, still doing workshops, still doing certifications. At the end of the year, I'll be doing like a two month, three month coach certification. It'll be coach for the deeper self. And that was. That's going to be where I teach everybody to coach like I've coached. I love it to teach people how to create really deep breakthroughs really fast.

So the attitude lesson at 70 is what I'm just starting, you know, I.

Know it sounds hysterical, but someone said, well, Gary, when are you going to retire? I said, dude, it's like, I feel like I'm just starting. Like I'm just so in my flow right now. I am like, I've got at least 85 before I'm going to like, you know, get all tattooed and move to Maui.

Well, hey, season three is called Carry the Light. And Gary, you, you just shared so much with us. You were so personal, so insightful. I know that you helped some people that were listening in and so just thank you for your authenticity, your care, your message. It was just beautiful. One thing we always love to do at the end of our podcast is give you an opportunity to just share your message of hope with that person that's maybe sitting in their car crying because they've suffered from trauma. And they came to the Get Attitude podcast and looked you up and said, I need to get an hour of this guy or the person walking on the beach or the person alone in their hospital room. Just love you. To just, you know, close our show with your message of hope for them and your message of attitude for the gappers who are listening right now.

Wow. Just let me think about that for just a moment. My message of hope is that the past is only represented by our memories. And our memories are only a series of pictures, sounds, and feelings. And then what holds that all together and makes it still feel painful is the meaning that we've wrapped around that experience. It is a construct that we created. Not good, not bad, just the best thing we could make up in the moment. And we have choice. We can create it completely differently to where it literally is. A cheering section for your future and who you've come here to be. Each one of us is a thread in the tapestry of humanity. And the more we awaken, the more we shine brighter. And the more we shine brighter, the more complete that tapestry of humanity becomes. It is in our trusted care to actualize ourselves, to pay it forward to as many people as possible to give that gift of our very special, unique gift that only you individually can give. You're meant to touch others and walk hand in hand into whatever we consider heaven to be. We have to walk hand in hand with each other. And we can do this by personally actualizing our own self and living from a place that everything that has happened past, present and to come is gently planned by a power that unconditionally loves each and every one of us. Choose to see perfection rather than what's not there.

I love it. Mic drop. That was awesome. Gary Day Rodriguez, God bless you. We, we just loved having you. If you liked what you heard today, go to Gary Day Rodriguez's website. You can just Google it. Creating incredible relationships. Hundred dollar discount. Hit empowered 100. We have it up there if you're watching on Spotify on our vlog. That was absolutely powerful and wonderful. Gary, thank you so much much for being on the Get Attitude podcast.

You're very welcome.