Survival vs Creation: Why Your Inner State Is Controlling Your Performance

What is going on, everybody? This episode is brought to you by Vita Coco. No, it's not. These actually aren't that, that good, right? If you have a real coconut, they don't taste anything like Vita Coco. I got these on Amazon. Isaiah and I were in El Salvador this year. We were in, um, Colombia. We went to— so we went to 5 South American countries. Super fortunate. Um, And then we started in El Salvador, but they had real coconuts in El Salvador. It was wild. We actually stayed in this Airbnb in a condo association in El Salvador. And our guy, Brian, he didn't speak any English, only Spanish. We were like, can you get us— he was like, puedo tener dos cocos. And he would go outside and he would— obviously not anything like this. The coconuts are way better in real life. He would go outside, he would chop coconuts down off the tree. We'd have these coconuts fresh off the tree outside. In our fridge. It was freaking awesome. But anyways, um, talking about today, um, I like these lives because I can just kind of talk about these different concepts. And I like, I like teaching because it helps me solidify my understanding of things as well. But topic today is living in stress versus creativity, right? Stress versus creativity. So that's the foundation of— we talk about becoming the creators of our environment and of our reality. It starts with understanding that a lot of us are addicted to stress and fear and all these things. We're addicted to them, chemically addicted to them. How is, how is that possible? Um, because when you think certain thoughts, right, it signals neurotransmitters in your brain. So you think a certain thought, it triggers, uh, you know, neural pathways in your brain which sends an emotion. So it signals a neurotransmitter, which sends a chemical cocktail, or what they would call a neuropeptide, to hormonal centers on your body and activates emotion. So over time, as you think in familiar patterns and feel familiar emotions, you're conditioning your body to feel a certain way. I think a lot of us are conditioned to live in stress and fear. I know I was for the longest time. That's why it was so— when I was building initially in the wholesale business, and I didn't have the mindset that I have now, but early on in the wholesale business, everything was just fear, anxiety, worry. And I would wake up feeling that way, and I'd go to bed feeling that way. And I think I was just— I lived like that for a long time, for as long as I can remember. I think it went back to when I was playing hockey, really. Like, I remember early days of hockey, I would, um, I, I 'Cause I got, I was a goalie in hockey and I played because I enjoyed it. But I think like the second I got into like a big stage, that's when I started to just like, I didn't know how to control my like emotions and I didn't know how to perform under pressure really. Like when I was 15, I went to like for hockey, I went to like the national camp, which is like the best people in the country go to the camp and do the thing. And I actually ended up playing well there, but that was the first time I think where I started feeling like extreme fear because I was with like the best people in the whole country. Playing at this tournament. And, um, and, uh, yeah, I remember being overcome with fear, being able to battle through it, but definitely not knowing how to manage it, right? And I think that was the foundation, 14, 15 years old. And it, and really it goes back to when you're younger, like 0 to 7 is really when you're, you're being programmed. But 15 years old at this tournament, not knowing how to deal with the fear. And just every time that you think these thoughts of fear and, um, and in worry and anxiety, it's sending chemical cocktail, right, neuropeptides to your body and it's programming your body to live in that state of being. And the more that we program our body with certain emotions, the more the body fiends for it. So, Joe Dispenza breaks it down so good in his book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. If you wanna dive deeper into it, he breaks it down so good, but it's literally breaking the habit of being yourself. That's what we're talking about because you are conditioned to feel certain emotions— fight or flight, stress, worry, anxiety, guilt, anger, sadness, whatever the case may be. And because you've been chemically conditioning your body like that, when you try to shift your thoughts to new peaceful thoughts or creative state thoughts, it's hard to do that because your body, like a chemical addict to a drug— literally like a drug, you're addicted to harder drugs or alcohol or caffeine, whatever the case may be— when you stop doing that, your body's like chemically feening for it. So what happens is you say, I'm gonna go, you know, I'm gonna be positive now. Maybe like you're, you're always— or say you're always angry, you want to be, um, more at peace. Well, I'm going to be peaceful, I'm not going to be as angry. And consciously you're like, yeah, I'm not going to be angry. But then 30 minutes later, when you stop consciously thinking about it, what happens? Your subconscious programming kicks in and you start feeling angry again because your body is like, whoa, like, why are you not sending us angry thoughts anymore? You've been sending us this chemical for years. We've even adapted our receptor sites to grow bigger so we could take in more of this anger chemical. What the heck are you doing? And then literally sends a signal up to your brain and basically signals your brain to start thinking those angry thoughts again so we can get that chemical again. So you literally— it takes repetition. It's a constant effort every single day to think new thoughts, right, and send new chemicals to your body to reprogram your body out of the state of stress and fear, anxiety, worry. And one of the biggest differences between stress and creativity is when you are in fight or flight— Michael, you are persistent, brother, wanting to buy or sell properties every single time. I am not looking to buy or sell properties. I got a whole team that does that. But besides the point, when you are in survival, right, you're basically preparing to fight, flight, or freeze, or go into hiding. So it's a, it's a, it's a primal function. It does serve a purpose for us, right? Because when we're, when we're evolving and we— or say we are in a dangerous situation, if we're truly in a dangerous situation, our life's on the line, we like to be in fight or flight. We like this mode because it takes all of our energy, puts it to our extremities, and it really— it literally grounds us into the physical world. When we're in fight or flight, it's grounding us into the physical world because it's like our life is in danger here on— in this 3D plane. So we need all the energy, all the resources away from our inner environment onto our external environment. So it's a good thing if you're actually protecting yourself from a dangerous environment, but after the dangerous environment passes, you need to revert back to the peace line state. And that's what we are not able to do as humans because we have an awareness. Like say something happens on Friday that upsets you. And here's the thing too, is like something will upset you. Your boss will say something to you or a coworker will say something or someone will post something on social media that triggers you on Friday. And okay, maybe you get triggered in that situation, but you will get triggered to the level as if you were getting chased by a lion. Like fight or flight because someone posted something on social media that you didn't like. Fight or flight because a politician said something that you're against. You're in this state of anger and fight or flight, and then you stay there. Instead of reverting to homeostasis, you're staying there. You're staying there on Friday, you're staying there on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and it will last weeks, months, years. You will be in the state of being. And when you're in a state of fight or flight, we're not meant to stay in that state. We're meant to go there rarely and then come back, right? Like a deer. Think about a deer. A deer is in a field and it's completely at peace, okay? And then a coyote comes running out of the woods. Boom, it's gonna go into fight or flight because it needs to flee and it needs to stay alive. Great. It does its thing. It's in fight or flight for 20 minutes, 30 minutes while it's running away, and then it calms down. 30 minutes later, it's back into peace and homeostasis. It's not thinking about the coyote that chased it down an hour ago. But we as human beings do that, right? Something happened and we come back to our peace, our baseline level of peace, and then we're thinking about the situation again and we're retriggering it into our brain. That's what we do. And there's no need to do that, right? It's like we couldn't process the emotion. The event happened. After we're back to a baseline level of peace, we replay it over and over again in our head. And we do this, we could do this 5, 10, 50, hundreds of times replaying this emotion in our head. And every time we replay the emotion in our head, our body is feeling like we're in that experience. So we are just living in the past basically, because our, our mind is just constantly replaying these past events. And every time we think about something, it's triggering an emotion, sending it to our body. And that's how we literally condition our bodies to be in in a certain emotion of anger or fear or stress or whatever, right? So now the good thing is we can reprogram our bodies. We can reprogram our bodies to live in peace and love and joy and abundance. But that's how your body is literally addicted to those chemical states and how we repeatedly go back to those things. We're repeatedly going back to those things all the time. Um, and the other thing is when you are in fight or flight What are you not doing? Anything but trying to, to, to live. Anything but trying to live. You're not thinking, you're not being creative, right? You're— the prefrontal cortex of your brain, which is, is responsible for like thinking and ideas and all this stuff, is shut off. It's literally shut off, meaning like it dims significantly so that you're, you're more in your primal state. So when you're in that state of being, that fight or flight, you can't really function throughout your day, right? You're shut off from the creative flow of intelligence. Like, you think about intuition in the universe and all these things. In order to access intuition and in creative states and to have energy to be able to execute, you have to be in a baseline state of peace and creativity. That's what it means to live in a creative state. Because again, when we're in fight or flight, this part of our brain shut off. We're thinking about our environment. We can't think, we can't execute, we don't have any energy. It's draining you. It is absolutely draining you. I can't tell you, like, when I used to operate in just fear all day long, I would run out of energy. I'd be dead by noon because it's literally like slamming your foot on the gas and the brake at the exact same time, like, weee. Just sitting there as the RPMs of the car are on fricking 8 all day long. So obviously you're going to be drained of energy. So that in and of itself, like when you are in a calm, peaceful, creative state, it is so much less draining. Think about how much less draining it is. You're not spending your— where attention goes, energy flows. So every time that you are putting your attention on something externally, some past event, XYZ, you're wasting energy. You're wasting energy. Energy that could be used to think about ideas, energy that could be used to execute your day, energy that could be used to invest in relationships that you care about, energy that could be used to invest in your own health. You're wasting the energy on these thoughts and ideas of past events, and you're replaying them over and over and in your head, over and over and over and over in your head. So that's what happens. One, and there's multiple things that are happening here. For one, you're not able to let go of that event. That's the first issue. That happened on Friday. Something upsets you, the first thing is that you're not able to let go of it. We talk about the L pillar in BUILD, let go of the past. You can't let go of it. It happened on Friday. Why are we still angry about it on Sunday? It happened. You being angry about it on Sunday does not do anything for you but make you miserable. Now, if there was some sort of injustice or something that wasn't right in the world, I'm not saying everything is right in the world. I'm not saying you can't get angry and you can't be these things, but feel the emotion and let it go. So that's the first reason. Something happens and we can't let go of it. And because we can't let go of it, we replay it over and over and over and over in our head. And because our body doesn't know the difference between a vividly imagined experience and physical reality, your body's reliving this experience over and over and over again. As long as you can't let go of that thing, your body's just going to relive the experience. And because we know that our thoughts create emotions, right? Our thoughts send— when our thoughts are triggered and thought of, that sends chemicals to our body to feel a certain emotion. We're conditioning our body, right? There's a book by Bessel van der Kolk or Kirk or something, and it's The Body Keeps the Score. And I haven't even read the book, but I'm, you know, I'm pretty sure the premise is that— I would look into it— that the body literally keeps the score of the emotions. These emotions are trapped in the body. Letting go of it, right? So event happens on Friday, it's Sunday, we can't let go of it. We replay it for days, for weeks, for months. And every time we're replaying it, we're ingraining that neural circuitry into our brain to think in that certain way, right? And we're conditioning our body with that emotion of anger. Or maybe you're guilty about a situation, maybe you're sad about the situation, or maybe you feel, you know, um, angry about something or depressed about something, right? Um, you're just conditioning the body, conditioning, conditioning, conditioning. And then over time, what does the body want? The body just want— just like you drinking caffeine all the time, right? It's a very simple, simple thing. You stop drinking caffeine for a day or 2 days, what does your body want? It wants the caffeine, wants caffeine. It's the same thing with this. You can't let go of the situation and you've conditioned your body to feel that emotion. So now we are— your body just wants to feel that emotion, wants you to think those angry thoughts. I want you to get angry, I want you to get guilty. I want you to be frustrated. It wants you to feel hopeless so I can get those chemicals. And that's like the cycle we're stuck in. And a lot of that is stress, right? And it's that fight or flight system that we're in. And then the reality is nothing— we don't need to be in fight or flight for like 99% of our life because the things that we are getting that seriously upset about that we are let— listen, nothing can disturb you unless you let it. That's the reality. Okay? Nothing can disturb you unless you let it. You have complete autonomy over your inner peace. No one can take it from you unless you let them. Okay? Unless you let them. I'm not saying there's not terrible stuff going on in the world and there's things that need to be fixed. There is. There absolutely is. But you being angry about it and you being frustrated about it ain't gonna change nothing. It's gonna make your life miserable. Instead, we need to operate from a baseline. You need to be the light. You need to operate from peace and love and joy and these things. And go out and make the change in the world that you want from that state of being instead of from an angry, you know, lower level frequency. That's the biggest thing. We're stuck in that— we're stuck in that loop. And then the other component is that because you are in that fight or flight state, you are not able to access creativity. You can't think clearly. You're at work and everything just feels super difficult. You can't think about anything. You're agitated, you're snapping at people, you have no energy, you can't really execute that well either. Your presentation is gonna suck, your sales calls are gonna suck. You're not able to operate at your full capacity because intuitively and creatively because all of your energy is where? It's not in your brain, it's not in your head, it's down at your extremities 'cause you need to go freaking run twice as fast as you ever have in your life. That's what your body thinks you need to do. You don't need to do that. And yet we want to be in this creative state of being all the time. Because think about the last time that you were just stressed out, or you go— you go— say you go into work angry or frustrated or pissed off or sad or whatever. Work seems probably 5 times harder than it needs to be, right? You, you know, nothing goes right for you. You know, you don't have ideas. Ideas don't come easily. The work feels harder to do. Everything is just much more difficult. But when you go into work and you're in a good mood, right, You're in a good mood, you're happy, you're going into work. I bet you notice that everything is so much easier. You have more energy throughout the day. You're able to execute better. Ideas come to you out of nowhere. It's because you're in this creative state, this elevated state. You're not in that fight or flight that's just shutting off your brain and shutting off your ability to tap into these other things. So that's why staying in this creative state is the key for your success in anything that you're doing. No matter what you're doing, you're an entrepreneur, you're building a business, you know, you're at work, you're with your family, your relationships. We always want to be in this creative, peaceful state of being. That is the goal with all this, is being in a creative, peaceful state of being. Have that be your baseline, okay? Now you're going to get into these other states of being. You're going to go into fight or flight and do all these things, but it's the reversion. We need to be able to revert back, and that starts with an awareness. It starts with an awareness that you are not your thoughts or emotions, right? So it starts with education first and foremost, understand that this is what's happening to us. We are conditioned in this manner. The second thing is it's a conscious choice every single day to have the awareness to go back every single time, have the awareness, have the awareness, have the awareness to go back and, or to recognize that you're going into the state. That's the first step of anything is awareness. It's like, even I talked to like the salespeople in our company, they have a, someone's saying, um, or someone's saying, you know, you know, you know, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. They have this little, um, this, this word track that they're subconsciously saying. I say, hey, the first step is you just need to be aware that you're saying this stuff. So put a sticky note on a computer that just says gotcha so you can remember that you're saying it, because you can't change what you're not aware of. So the first thing is awareness. Oh, I'm going into fight or flight. Okay, how can I get out of it? Now the easiest way and the quickest way is the breath. Okay, because the breath regulates the nervous system, and the nervous system is basically the bridge between energy in the quantum and your physical body. It's what interprets everything. Like, we know everything is energy. We know the field, everything's energy. Your nervous system is what interprets that. So when something comes in, an energy or something that triggers you into that fight or flight, your nervous system can't handle that. So the breath is what regulates your nerve. That's just science. I mean, that's straight up science. That the breath regulates the nervous system. Now, what you wanna do is just slowing your breath down slows your nervous system down. It makes sense 'cause when you're in fight or flight, you're, right, you're like almost hyperventilating, like your heart's beating really quickly, like you're breathing really, really shallowly and quickly. So just by literally sitting down, and maybe your heart's just racing, you are fricking livid about something, you are angry or you are upset or X, Y, Z, and, uh, heart's going, just being aware of your breath and intentionally slowing your breath down. And furthermore, if your exhale can be longer than your inhale, you're gonna— you're going to reset your nervous system from a sympathetic state— they call sympathetic state, which is your fight or flight— back into the parasympathetic state, which is like the— where you're resting and what they call rest and digest. So resting and digesting and doing these things. So the breath is the single tool that regulates your entire nervous system, and it's free, and you can use it whenever you want, right? So breathing in, maybe you breathe in for a count of 4 and you hold for a count of 4, and then you breathe out for a count of 6 to 8 maybe, and then hold. I mean, even just doing box breathing, which is 4 seconds in, 4 seconds hold, 4 seconds down, 4 seconds hold, even this, just those, that box right there, that inherently will slow your breath down. Furthermore, if you have a longer exhale than you do have an inhale, it's literally going to kick you down into your parasympathetic state and turn back on your creativity, and, and everything will be easier. Because what's the whole goal of all this? The goal is to just live at peace, folks. Instead of pressure, we are reprogramming our inner world so we can build a life, a business, relationships, anything from peace instead of pressure. Because that's what we're all searching for is peace, folks. Okay? Whether you're looking for a business or money or relationships or you want to travel or you want to get a following or you want to be famous, you want to do this and that, that, that, that, that. Unless you're very evolved, I'm willing to bet because you want peace on the inside. You think that the support of money is going to give you peace. You think the love of a relationship is going to make you finally feel at peace and you can relax. You think having kids and that responsibility is going to finally make you feel at peace. You think traveling around the world and being in a peaceful place on a river meditating is going to make you peace, or whatever the case may be, right? Meditating obviously does make you peaceful, but we're looking for things outside of ourselves to make us feel okay on the inside. And that's the fundamental error of everything in this world, is the fundamental error, is that we are looking outside of ourselves to try to make ourselves feel good on the inside. What is it? What does all this marketing do? Marketing is always marketing for emotions. Like, even like alcohol, beer, oh, it's going to help you relax. It's going to help you find peace on the beach, a Corona. But it's marketing for, right? Something that's going to save you time. Oh, it's going to save you time so that you can spend it with people you love and be at peace and enjoy yourself. Like, everything is marketed to try to make you feel at peace. But peace is a state of being. It's a state of being that you cultivate inside of you regardless of what happens externally. That's really what it is. It's regardless of what— and that's, you know, I don't know, I don't— that might trigger people and say, well, no, well, this happens to me, that happens to me. Listen, as long as you're complaining about it, you're a victim. You're being a victim, okay? And it doesn't mean that things that are happening to you are right or wrong, which are really just made-up terms, right or wrong. It's like, you know, everything's subjective. Some one person thinks this is right, you know, um, but we have to learn that to take control of our lives. Because as soon as we're being a victim and we're blaming other circumstances, we're blaming external reality, guess what you can't do? You can't change. There's no way for you to change because you've given all your power away. That's what Jocko Willink talks about in Extreme Ownership. We talk about in our company. Okay, maybe something was unfair. Maybe it was unjust. What are you going to do about it? You can sit there and wallow in it and complain about it because guess what? You're going to get more of the same. If you want to fight for that environment, you want to fight for that condition, You want to sit there and complain about it and do all these things, then great, you get to keep it. That's the reality. You get to keep it. So no matter how messed up things are, you can have the decision to figure out, hey, well, what can I do about it? Where can I take ownership? You know, I use the example too. It's like, say you're driving down the road in a car and the person in front of you just slams on the brakes, and you have to slam on the brakes, and the person behind you smashes into you. Now, technically speaking, rules of the road, it's the person behind you's fault for hitting you, right? And you could easily get upset and be like, what the heck were you doing slamming into me? You got to pay attention, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But guess what? Guess what? That doesn't help you prevent that situation in the future because you're blaming someone else. You're giving all your power away. What could you have done, the Extreme Ownership perspective of that situation? Well, Maybe if I was paying a little bit more attention, I would have— and I wasn't following this car in front of me so closely, I would have been able to hit my brakes sooner and not so rapidly so that the person behind me would have had more time to brake. That's the extreme ownership perspective. And we can do that with so many different areas of our life. And I think the biggest thing is people think that, oh, there's so much wrong in the world and this and that. And I agree. There's things that need to be fixed. And there's things that aren't fair and XYZ. But as long as we play the victim in these things, the more we can't change our lives. So I think wrapping it back to living in a stressful state, the more we're in fear and anxiety and the more that we hang on to these things, well, that, what that person did to me on Friday was wrong. It was wrong that he said that to me or he did that to me or she said that to me or she did that to me. Okay, okay, it was wrong. So what are we gonna do about it? Let's figure out what we're gonna do about it. So we're gonna draw a boundary. Don't talk to that person anymore. Or learn the lesson. What's the lesson here that we need to do? Get them out of your life, talk to them, figure out what you need to do, but then move on after that. So it's okay to feel angry and feel the emotion in the moment. Then after it's done, get back to your baseline level of peace, figure out, is there any action items I need to take from the situation? Do I need to set a boundary? Do I need to have a conversation? Do I need to behave differently? Decide what that action item is and move on. That's life. What happens is we're so tied up in all these events that have happened. And yeah, and that's one thing that you're holding on to. And then you stack up all these events. We have all these what Michael Singer would call some scars, these emotional imprints that are just triggering us 24/7. And we're not even living in the present moment. We are not in the present moment because we're just in our head about past events that continually trigger us. We're driving down the road and we're pissed off about something that happened a week ago, a month ago, 2 months ago. We can't let it go. And that's our entire existence. We're never actually truly in this present moment. We are just constantly thinking about these past events, right? And then taking those past events and worrying that's going to happen in the future. And we're never actually in this present state. So when you're in the present state and you're not— because where attention goes, energy flows. So as long as you are thinking about these past events, you're putting more energy to them. And again, conditioning your body with the same emotions and trapping yourself in the cycle. So to break it, you have to break the habit of being yourself. You have to be aware that you're in those emotions, understand that you are not your thoughts or emotions. You're the one who observes them, because that really helps you decouple from, from it. Like, if you're trying to, to, to gain a new baseline level of being, you need to understand you're not your thoughts or emotions. It allows you to, to create separation from those things. Separation from your thoughts, separations from your emotions, um, and, and not take them so personally. So instead of I am angry or I am sad, that's an identity thing, you're saying I am experiencing anger, I am experiencing sadness. That's the difference. And when you understand that, like, your awareness is the sky and those emotions and thoughts— my camera's going in and out— those emotions and thoughts are just clouds passing through the sky. That's it, right? The sky never forces the clouds out. It just says, oh, there's a storm coming in. Nice, there's a storm. There it is. And wow, it's a storm right there. Yep. And there goes the storm. The same thing with a negative thought or a negative emotion. Oh, there's a negative thought. Yep, there it is. I am not capable. Yep. Nothing ever goes my way. Yep, just a thought. And there it goes. Let the thought go. The emotion. Oh, I am angry right now. Wow, that's Interesting. Very angry. Yep, there's the emotion and there it goes. And that's all of life. But the problem is these negative thoughts and these negative emotions come in and then we hold onto them. And our awareness is just holding onto it and living it over and over and over and over again instead of letting that thing go. But yeah, that's how we get conditioned. And the goal is just to be in a creative state, creative state of being at all given times. We can live creatively. Um, there's infinite possibilities, infinite possibilities for everything that we are, that we are doing. Um, and yeah, when you stop putting your attention, your energy, and your focus on past events or events that you— that already happened that you can't do anything about, you free up all that energy because you're siphoning energy into the, into the past, into these things, right? I'm rereading Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza. We're not rereading, actually. It's my first time reading it. I've read The Break in the Habit of Being Yourself like 3 times. Um, but now this is Becoming Supernatural. He talks about that. He's like, we are never in the present moment. All of our energy and attention is thinking about either the past or the future. So if the past is all of these like fearful and angry and worried and depressed thoughts, and that's the past, that's all we're thinking about, We're thinking about the past and literally creating our future with that energy because that energy is going into those events, sending out into the quantum. That's a whole other conversation, but it's creating more of that in the future. And we have no energy left to actually change our internal state of being because we're so focused on the external environment. So that's what he talks about. Meditation is so important because meditation, you're sitting down and your mind is racing. You're thinking about what you got to do tomorrow, what you got to do yesterday, what you did yesterday, what you got to do in 2 days. And you're so fixated on your external environment, which is kind of keeping you trapped, right, in those familiar emotions. Because every, every time that you, you know, and he goes into the book too, it's like every time that you, you think about a relationship or a person or something you have to do, that's like a neurological network in your brain. Every part of your life, you know, driving the car, brushing your teeth, eating a food, going to the gym, talking to this person, going to work, it's a neurological network. Every component of your life is programmed into your brain, right? A neurological network. And that specific neurological network kind of just like fires on autopilot, right? Because it's so conditioned. So you know exactly how to feel in anticipation of your warm shower in the morning. You know exactly how to feel in anticipation of your coffee. You know exactly how to feel in anticipation of going into work if you hate your boss. You know exactly how to feel in anticipation of going into traffic if you hate going into traffic. So all these neurological networks are just programmed into your brain And with those neurological networks, you have an associated emotion tied with that because Joe Dispenza talks about the emotion is the, um, the experience, right? So we think about something, and then when an experience happens, we store it in the body through emotion. But so if all of our day, right, we have the same day, same routine, and everything that we do in our day is a neurological network in our brain, and our body is automatically, you know, thinking and feeling in these certain ways, that gives us a certain reality, right? Joe Dispenza says your personality is how you think, act, and feel, okay? Or think, feel, and act. That's your personality. And because thoughts are energy out into the quantum field and your emotion is the energy that draws that experience in, your personality creates your personal reality. That's what he says. Your personality creates your personal reality, literally. So, if all of these experiences in our life and our habitual routines are programmed into our brain and that makes us feel a certain way and the way that we feel actually dictates our environment, we're stuck in the same pattern every single day. And the only way to break that pattern and become a new self and to reprogram your internal state of being is to get to a place of what he would call no time, no space, No one, okay? So you have to, 'cause when you sit down to meditate, you're gonna close your eyes and you're gonna be thinking about, your head's going crazy thinking about everything, right? And it's actually a good practice to realize this is what goes on in your head all day long. You're never in the present moment. You close your eyes and you're thinking, that's what you're doing all day long, thinking about this and that, da da da da, and we're rarely ever just focused on what we're doing right now. Being able to get to that place of— and letting those thoughts go about your familiar future and your familiar past and all these different things. Let all that stuff go. You can start to imagine what it's like to be in a new state of being, a new state of mind, a new life. What would that life feel like? What would it look like? How would I act in that life? And every time you're in that state, you're able to start creating new neural circuitry, new neural pathways. About what it would be like to live in that life. You're creating new emotions. Maybe you're thinking of what it'd be like to have all the money or all this, you know, have this relationship or have this business or do this or that. What would it— visualizing, what would it look like, right? And because you're in this meditative state and you're not so focused on your external environment, all your familiar routines and habits and all those things, you're focused more on your inner world. Because all your energy isn't being siphoned out into those thoughts, right? So now it can be used for creative power to be able to imagine, hey, what would my life look like if I did X, Y, or Z? What would be the emotion involved in that? And every time you're doing that, you're rewiring your brain. We rewire through repetition, really. So the more that you do it, I say it's like a drop in the bucket. It's like a drop in the bucket of the new body, of the new identity, of the new whatever. And yeah, and part of meditation too is slowing your brainwave states down, which is huge. So there's 4 brainwave states. There's beta, alpha, theta, and delta. There's 3 levels of beta. Low-level beta is like when you're reading. It's like you're reading and you're kind of relaxed, or maybe you're watching like a lecture. You're very relaxed, low-level beta, but you're still thinking, you're still online. Mid-level beta is kind of like good stress, but mid-level beta would be like you're in a— you're networking in a room and you have to remember people's names, and maybe you're at a meetup and XYZ. You're not like overly stressed, but it's like a little bit of good stress, you know, maybe some butterflies. High beta is like when you're in fight or flight, you have the cortisol going, all the stuff, not a great place to be. Now alpha, alpha is when you are deeply relaxed in the creative state. You know, maybe you're just, um, yeah, alpha is kind of the veil between the conscious and subconscious mind. But, um, basically what we want to do is we want to slow our brainwave states to get down to alpha. So we got beta, right? Beta, alpha, theta, delta. The 3 levels of beta. You have alpha, which is when you're kind of like— that can kind of be known as like when you're dozing off. So like, say like you're like staring into space, right, and you're not thinking about anything. That's kind of like alpha. You're still consciously there But your, your brain waves are kicked down a little bit. Theta is basically deep meditative state. Your body is like pretty much falling asleep, but your mind is still awake. And then delta is deep sleep. And then there's gamma, which is way above. You get so deep in meditation. I've never had gamma. It's like when you're having a transcendental moment, maybe when you're like pineal gland is activated, you ship into gamma and the brain waves are like so high and you're having like a legit transcendental experience, mystical experience. But the goal is to slow your brainwave states down so your mind stops being so analytical and stops thinking about everything that you gotta do this, you gotta do that, because that's just the familiar. And you slow your brainwave states down so you can just be pure awareness and you can start to imagine and feel your new reality. And that's how you basically start. And then you realize, okay, 'cause you don't know like, hey, what would it feel like to be my new self? You don't even know. You don't even know. So you have to sit in meditation and calm yourself down and get to that state of being where you're not thinking about external things, and you can start to feel what it feels like. I mean, now at my point, I can kind of do that in the middle of the day. I instantly am aware of when I'm in fight or flight, and I calm myself down. You know, it might take me 5 minutes, 7 minutes, whatever it is, 10 minutes, go for a walk, but I get back down to that creative level of baseline, that baseline level of peace, because If I'm not in that baseline level of peace, I'm not thinking well, I'm not executing well, I'm not making good decisions. I'm not really doing much of anything very well when I'm in a stressful state. And that was like the beginning of the whole business, really. It's like in that state of being, and it was miserable. It's absolutely miserable. But I am thankful for that because I would not be talking about any of this if I didn't go through that. So Whatever, doesn't have to be a super long session today, but I just kind of want to talk about the difference between stress and creative states of being, creative states of living. Super important. And I wanted you guys to understand how you are addicted to these, these stressful fight-or-flight states. And we know we are because we are, we're conditioning our body. And the biggest thing too, one of the biggest things is using your breath. Using your breath to regulate your nervous system, go from sympathetic to parasympathetic just by breathing, just by slowing your breath down, right? 4 seconds in, if you can do like a 6 or 8-second exhale, it's just gonna kick you right down out of that fight or flight system. So that's just like, and it's a daily practice. It's a daily practice every single day to decide that when you're in those old states of being, whether it's fight or flight or, or guilt or whatever the lower level emotion is, being aware of it and then returning to the state of being that you want to be in. So, but the, the breath is that thing that regulates the nervous system every single time. So super powerful thing. Um, I got Gordon, buddy Gordon Thornton, coming on. I'm not gonna be doing anything next Saturday, but, um, Saturday after that, June June. I don't even know what freaking month it is. January 3rd. January 3rd, I'll have Gordon coming on, and he is incredible human. Um, he's on the same journey, all about the inner work. He was in real estate for like 20 years, but we talk about a lot about the same stuff. So it'd be cool to have him on, and we'll just talk about, you know, the BUILD Framework. I might ask him some questions for each of the pillars there, um, kind of see his response. But wealth of knowledge, excited to have him on. But Until then, I will see y'all next. Happy holidays to everyone. Hanukkah, Christmas, everything in between. Um, until next time, all the peace, all the power.