How to Master Your Thoughts with Tom Sterner

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When you're anchored in the ego, it's a very weak position. We're going to be a puppet and a slave of it. Well, I'm terrible at meditation. I tried and I failed. We're basically enslaved by the reality that we're creating. If you can't come up with 10 minutes a day, you need to clear your schedule. I'm having an anxious thought. I'm not the thought. The mind is a problem solving machine. Don't judge yourself and then don't judge yourself for judging because you're probably going to judge yourself anyway.

Welcome to Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. In every episode I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you lead your life and business on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself.

Enjoy the show.

Thomas M. Stirner is the author of the Practicing Mind, Fully Engaged and most recently It's Just a Thought. Emotional Freedom Through Deliberate Thinking. He has worked with some of the highest performers you could imagine globally and it's all about how to effectively operate in high stress situations and experience new levels mastery. In today's episode we go real deep and we talk about how we think that we aren't our thoughts, how to become more observant of our thoughts and how to really channel our emotions through managing our thinking. So for every leader out there, every parent, every high performer, today's show is going to bring you some absolute gold. Sit back and enjoy the show.

Foreign.

Welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you so much. I'm excited about being here.

I'm delighted to get this time to sit with you and to me, what we're about to chat about is the difference that makes the difference in, in leadership, in relationships, in professional sport. And it's how we master ourselves and it all starts within. So let's just start with this. It's just a thought. So what does that even mean? What does it's just a thought mean?

Well, it was actually a play on words, meaning that.

It really means it's not just a thought. You know, that's really what it is. I mean, we tend to look at are as a thought. As just a thought. Well, no, it isn't just a thought. There's so much encoded in that, that, in that thought and that electromagnetic energy. And we're either aware of it or we're not aware of it. If we're aware of it, we can become the master of it. And if we're not, we're going to be a puppet and a slave of it. So that was really what I was. Was looking to accomplish with the latest book. And the subtitle was Emotional Freedom through Deliberate Thinking. And I would say for the most part, people do not live their life thinking deliberately. They are. They're more thought by their subconscious, which is reacting to scenarios that are happening around them.

That's why I really love that we're chatting right now because you're talking about deliberate thinking. To me, that's thinking on purpose. So to think on purpose, we must have that emotional freedom. And when we look at decisions, decisions are often based and driven by emotions. So when people go to war and leaders decide we're going to war, often it's emotion that drives that. When someone gets down on a knee and proposes, often it's emotion that drives that. So how do we tap in and understand what's going on emotionally? And how does that relate to our thoughts?

Well, I think it's what we've really gotten a handle on in the last 30 years is the. The mechanics of thought. And, and what I mean by that is, you know, we all have. We talk about the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, or what we're really talking about different aspects of one entity, you know, aspects of our consciousness, of our general consciousness. And who are we really? Well, we're outside of that, meaning we are the one who observes the thinking. The problem is that for most people, they're in their thinking. They're. That's their perspective. They're in their thinking. So they aren't really independent from the emotional content of the thoughts. You know, you have to be outside of that in order to be able to make the choice whether this thought is going to take me where I want to go or it's not going to take me where I want to go. You need to be the gatekeeper of your thoughts so that you decide this thought gets through through that thought doesn't get through. So how does that happen? Well, you know, the subconscious mind is designed to, it's an elegant recording system and that's all it is. It doesn't, it doesn't think, it's not creative, it doesn't have a sense of humor. It just watches. And we need it. We need it. That's, you know, we don't have to learn to walk after we've learned to walk. We'd have to learn to button our shirt, you know, more than once, or put a spoon in our mouth. I mean, we need the subconscious mind. Plus it's a million times faster than our conscious mind. And that's the reason why when we're in fight or flight, we automatically flip over to the subconscious mind because it's so much faster and it can run programs at a very high rate compared to what it would take us if we had to work that out consciously. The problem with the subconscious mind is, as I said, it does not, it doesn't think. So what it does is it watches the relationship between what is happening outside of you and how that's making you feel. And it doesn't really pay much attention to the words. It's the pictures, the pictures and the feelings that happen. That's why in golf they say, you know, you don't say to yourself, don't hit the ball in the water because in the litter. If when you say that you have to see a picture of the ball going in the water to know what you don't want to do. Well, the subconscious mind doesn't listen to the don't. It doesn't listen to the conversation. It listens to what it looks at is the picture of the ball going in the water and the way you feel if the ball were to go in the water. And I actually had a, a golfer one time give me a scenario where he said, let's just say I'm on the 18th hole, I got a one stroke lead, I got to make a decision to carry this water into this green, which if I miss I could lose my lead because I'm going to have a penalty strip. He said, or I could play out safe to the fairway and then come in from there, which is more of a no brainer shot. And he said, my question is, should I take the risk? And I said, well, what's interesting about that is that the real kicker there is you said, should I take the risk? So what you've basically just told the subconscious is if I stand over here and I make the decision to take the ball over the water, Go get me the swing mechanics that I experience when I feel like I'm taking a risk.

And it's going to dutifully do that. And you're probably going to hit the ball in the water and then you're going to say, I just told myself not to do that. So, so the point is, is that the subconscious watches the feelings that the scenario creates and then it stores that as okay, when this scenario shows up or one that's very similar to it, this is how you want to feel because it assumes that everything you're telling it through your, your emotion is fact. It assumes that it's true and it's what you want in that situation. So what ends up happening is.

We'Re programming our future reactions to situations and we don't even know it. And so we're creating our own reality and we're basically enslaved by the reality that we're creating. Now the good news is that when you understand that, you can reprogram that just as easily. But you have to understand that loop is going on all the time 24 7. So in order to be able to change that and say, no, I want to be, I want to make deliberate programming. I want to know what I'm putting in there. Then you have to become.

Thought aware. You have to be aware of what it feels like to be the observer of your thinking and what it feels like to be in your thinking. And there is a definite difference in perspective. And it's a skill and you can learn the skill. And as you learn the skill, then you begin when you're, you know, the observer is impervious to. When you're in, when you're anchored in the imper, the observer, you're impervious to the emotional content that is going on outside of you. The ego, when you're anchored in the ego, it's a very weak position because the ego first of all is fear based. And that perspective is always trying to prove it's right. And it's also easily hurt and offended. So whatever happens outside of you, if somebody says something nice, you feel good. If somebody says something not nice, you don't feel good. If, if a stressful situation comes up, then you immediately feel stressed or anxious. It's a very weak position to be. So one of the things that I work with, with clients is to get them to experience being in the observer as quickly as possible. And once they do, it's an epiphany because then they really start to notice.

How I can't say I shouldn't Say, unproductive. Their thinking is because it's always producing something. Like if you hit a lousy golf shot, you had to do a lot of things, right, get that shot. Like, so you're always producing something. It's just you're not producing what you want. And so, and you know, when you, as you said, when you're producing what you want, when you're purposeful and you're deliberate, that's when, as far as I'm concerned, that's personal freedom. Until you get to that point, you don't have personal freedom because you're just a victim of, of yourself.

And it's interesting you say that now. I've read a book many years ago and in many studies within the book that said, the one thing that every human being has in common and it's at a subconscious level, is that we are all pursuing personal freedom. We all want to feel free, so.

And we all want to be happy. You know, if you look at everything you do, no matter how insignificant it might seem.

The root of it is to feel happy. It's like, even if it's, get this report done. Well, because you're going to feel relief, like, you're going to feel a sense of happiness when you get this report done. You may not consider that to be part of your quest for happiness and contentment, but the core thing that drives us for that, like, I need to make more money.

Why?

Because I feel stressed. I need more money. If I have more money, I won't feel stressed. I mean, all of those things, the core driving factor is, is, is to, to feel happy. And I think happy, you know, bliss.

Bliss is defined as being happy for no reason at all. And that's the state to me. That's when we feel freedom, when we feel free from any kind of burden. That's bliss.

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Yeah, no, I agree. And it's interesting, you know, moving towards pleasure, moving away from pain. And in terms of that human experience, that's one thing, what we're trying to do and that observe to become the observer for the listener that's listening right now or a person that's watching here on YouTube. Do you have any insights for them as to an exercise, how they could start to actually train that observer muscle?

Yeah, yeah. It's a very simple 10 minute exercise, you know, and I'll call it, I call it thought awareness training. And the reason I call it that is you could, you could call it meditation. But the problem that I have with that is that meditation has many meanings to different people and it has been a lot of connotations. And we're not trying, I'm not, I'm not interested in getting someone to have a perfectly quiet mind. We're not trying to have a transformational experience in the sense of a spiritual spirit experience or something like that. What we're trying to do, what we want to do is to become aware of what our mind is doing without our permission, which is a lot. And.

That'S what people find so interesting when they start to pay attention. In other words, one time I was working with a bunch of high schoolers and I said, we're going to do this exercise for two minutes. I'm going to set a timer on for two minutes. I want you to close your eyes and stop thinking. Well, obviously I knew they couldn't do it, but they didn't know they couldn't do it because it had never occurred to them. So two minutes went by and they came out of it and were just all chattering. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it no matter what I did. And I, I posed this question to them. I said, if you are using your will and you're telling your mind stop thinking and it's ignoring you, then who's really in charge during the day because it's not you? And that really hit home with them. And many of them got enough of a taste of reduced thinking by trying to do this that they started meditation practices because they wanted more of it, because they're so, their minds are so agitated and overactive because of all the social media and constantly staring at phones and all that sort of thing. So getting back to the exercise, what I have people do is sit in a chair, like a dining room chair, something that has kind of an upright back so that you can support your back against it, feet flat on the floor. You can put your hands on your legs, you know, like palms down, or fold them, you know, like this and in your lap. And then I tell them I want you to close your eyes and watch your body breathe for 10 minutes. Now, what I do with my clients is I give them a white noise recording. It's a recording of ocean waves. There's nothing sublimated in it, it's just ocean waves. So they kind of phase out the external world. And just close your eyes for 10 minutes is all it takes. And I want you to just sit there and watch your body breathe. Now, when you haven't done this before.

There'Ll be a certain temptation to try to control the breathing because you've never paid attention to it before. So now you would think like, well, maybe I should take deeper breaths, maybe my breathing should be slower. And I tell them, look, you can take a few cleansing breaths, you know, kind of deep slow breaths and let it out and then just forget about it and then watch your body breathe. Now the mechanics are very simple, but what will happen is, and what will become apparent very quickly is that the mind is a problem solving machine learning. It will say, this is boring, I already know how to do this. And it will go looking for a problem, and when it goes, you'll go with it because that's what you always do. And you've done it since you were a child and no one's ever taught you to not do it. So what happens is, is you will leave that focus of watching your, your body breathe and you will go with your mind Wherever it goes to the grocery store, to some show you want to watch tonight or a conversation you need to have. Whatever it is, it. It'll take you with it. And then there'll be a magical moment. And this is where people fall down. There'll be a magical moment when you wake up and you realize that you're in the store or having a conversation. You're not. You've lost complete attachment to watching your body breathe. And that's when everything happens. It's also when everybody falls down because people think that's a sign of failure, but it's really a sign of waking up. Like when you catch yourself and you wake up and realize that you're not on the. Your mind has pulled you in and you're no longer on the task. You're not in the observer. When you catch that, that's when you re anchor with the observer. Now you are the observer because you have to be the observer to notice that your mind isn't doing what you told it to do. So it's in that moment that the two things happen. One is the wake up, which is noticing what your mind is doing without your permission. And then you have to pull it back, which is willpower, onto the task that you have designated to do. And the reason you use such a simple thing is because you need a point of relativity. So I don't. That's the reason why I don't want guided meditations. I don't want things that are going to make you think, you know, because that's what a guided meditation does. There's nothing wrong with guided meditations, and they have their uses. But to me, if. If you're saying, now watch it, you notice your feet or they relax and all that. You're having to think and process. I don't want that. I want you to just notice if your mind is thinking and what it's thinking about and notice what it feels like to notice that. And then as you do that, every time you catch your mind and you pull it back, it's like a repetition at the gym. And you get stronger and you become more anchored in the. The observer. You get more aware of what your thoughts are doing. And you do this for 10 minutes a day. And you'd be amazed what happens in two weeks because you begin to notice, I'm having an anxious thought. I'm not the thought. I'm having an anxious thought. Like, what am I going to do about this anxious thought? Now you have the privilege of choice, which you didn't have before. Because it was a cycle that you were in and you weren't outside of it. And you didn't know that that was going on. You just went with the anxiety and you experienced the anxiety. That loop is a behavior that's habituated over time, and in order for you to break it, you got to get outside of it. And it's that just simple exercise. And you know, people say what they, they misinterpret is they will say, like, well, I'm terrible at meditation. I tried and I failed. You can't fail. There is no such thing as failure in this. Like, it's like some days your mind is like crazy and you're either under stress or upset about something and it just wants to think, think, think and solve this problem, solve this problem and, and so you're going to be chasing it a lot. And that's normal. I've been meditating for 45 years. I've studied all kinds of meditation with all different people. I still have days like that. Like, it doesn't bother me though, because I don't judge it. It's just like my mind is in that state today. And I'm just going to get more reps in why I'm, you know, why I'm working at this. And then there's other days or other times when your mind is relatively placid and you'll feel like, ah, this is not hard. And I tell people, look, you need to pick a time. If you can't come up with 10 minutes a day, you need to clear your schedule because this is going to change your life and you're worth it. I mean, you are definitely worth it. So take the 10 minutes. Whether what? A lot of my clients, they'll do it in the morning. You know, they'll do it in the morning, maybe before they have their coffee or something like that. I think the problem, or one of the best things to do is just, is to pick a specific time during the day that you're going to do it. Because if you get up in the morning and you say, yeah, I'm not sure exactly when, but I'll find time today that, that just never seem to work because you get tied up in the day's activities and you just keep putting it off, putting it off, and then another day has gone by and you haven't done it. Now, I also tell people, look.

I know it's difficult to understand this and, and to live with it, but you're never done with this, like, because they say, how long do I have to do this for the rest of your life, that's how long you have to do it. And, you know, it's funny, they get upset about that, like, for the rest of my life. And I'm like, well, there's lots of stuff you do every day. You brush your teeth every day. You take showers every. Well, that shower takes you 10 minutes by the time you get in the shower and do your, you know, do your thing and get out. Like, this is no different. You know, you do things every day that you don't even think about because you just accept that you have to do them every day. And so this is just one of those things. If you want to be in control and you want to experience mental freedom and you want to be able to be a deliberate thinker, you need to do this. And. And then the other thing is, there's going to be days when it just doesn't work. You don't feel good or something unexpected came up, you know, whatever. And you don't judge yourself for that. You just didn't do it. So you start again tomorrow. And so I tell people, look, don't judge yourself, and then don't judge yourself for judging, because you're probably going to judge yourself anyway. Like, so just accept the fact that, look, okay, I missed yesterday, you know, and I missed today. Tomorrow I'm going to jump back on the, you know, back on the horse, and I'm going to start again. Like, as long as you keep coming back to it, then you're. You're being successful. Successful. And let go of the idea that I couldn't stop my mind. Like, so that has nothing to do with it. Like, I want you to just notice how. What your mind is doing, because it's. When you can do that, that's when you'll start to notice. You'll be outside of the loop and you'll start to notice, you know, when you react to something unfavorably. And when I say unfavorably, I mean you're not comfortable with it. You feel like you could have done better. What I tell myself is, isn't this interesting? I taught myself to do that, you know, Like, I taught myself to react this way when I'm having a feeling. When I. If I feel anxious or like I'm struggling, I will say to myself, I. I actually taught myself to feel this way in this situation. Like, if I taught myself to feel this way, I can teach myself to feel a different way and. And to just really live in the truth that you are. I am not my thoughts. I have thoughts. Some thoughts I do create because the observer does create. We. We're creative. We do analysis. You know, we. We create music, art, you know, or decisions. We make decisions, you know, through analyzing things, you know. But I think it's. What they're saying is about 95% of the thinking that we do during the day is not. Is not creative thinking. It's just programs that are being played from the subconscious, and we're just living them.

That makes sense. And I've heard four terms, so conscious, subconscious, and then unconscious and non conscious. Are you familiar with all of those? And what do they mean?

Well, conscious is obviously you. You're the observer, you're making decisions, and subconscious is basically an aspect of your. Your consciousness that is.

That is programmed. It's. It's programming itself based on what it's observing from you, and then it's replaying those. Unconscious, you know, to me means you're doing. Which is the state you're living in when your subconscious is running the show. You're unconscious of the fact that your subconscious is making all of your choices. Yeah, I don't. I've never heard non conscious. You know, to me, non conscious would be like if you're having an operation, which I'm sure you know, and you're under anesthesia. I don't know what non. What the context of. Of that term would be. I guess if you were to look at a deep state of meditation, you could say, you know, like, in a deep state of meditation, you don't have thoughts and your mind is perfectly still. So I guess that somebody could say that that's non conscious. It depends, you know, because like I said, there's. There's some. There would be.

Somebody would look at. Would look at that. And what their idea of that would be might not be the same as what somebody else's would be. You know, when you say what is non conscious? But the other three, I think, are pretty. Pretty straightforward.

Yeah. Well, thank you. And this idea of cognitive fusion where like, hey, there's a thought. Oh, that thought's reality, and I am that thought. So this exercise of meditation can help us to diffuse that and to essentially go, okay, I'm not. My thoughts. So are there any people that should, in your research and experience, avoid meditation? Is it unsafe or unhealthy or not comfortable for certain people on a spectrum or anybody that's, you know, from a psychological standpoint, where meditation is not safe?

No, no, I have not. I've never found that. In fact, I actually have had, you know, when they've done studies with people, autistic people, you know, if they can get them to do some sort of meditation practice, and young kids, they found that it has made a tremendous difference in them. In fact, I had a woman contact me years ago. I had, when I first got into this, I, I have a. A pretty big recording studio and I also have a background in recording engineering. So I had made. When I published the first book, I made this meditation cd, which I was selling on Amazon. And, and a woman contacted me and told me that she had bought the CD for her son, who was. And she was just sharing the story. She said, you know, he's in third grade and he was a real problem in the classroom. And she said that this, the school wanted him to be medicated and for adhd. And she said that the pediatrician did not want that. And so she said, I thought, I'm going to try meditation with him. So she took this, the CD that I, that she bought from Amazon that I'd done, and she showed him, she said the first few nights I had to do it with him because he couldn't really get the idea of closing his eyes while he was doing that. She said. But after that, she said he enjoyed doing it and he just did it himself. Well, she said, the reason I'm telling you this is it completely transformed him in the situation. What they found out was that he was just ultra intelligent, and so he was completely bored with what was going on, and they ended up moving him, I think, up a grade, like, because he was just so smart. So she said, you know, he, he, he does this meditation every day now, but he was, the school was diagnosing him as having adhd. So, you know, I don't, I think in, in what we're talking about here, especially because it's not a guided meditation, it's just you getting in connection with.

What am I, you know, what is my. Your mind's doing it. Whether you know it's doing it or not. You know, all you're doing is you can't. I said, in the practice mind, the first book, I said, you can't change what you're not aware of. And that's all you're doing here, like, is becoming aware of, you know, what is my mind doing? Just like those high school kids, their mind was running all day long and they weren't even aware of it because they were in their thoughts. And, you know, many times your thoughts are filled with painful emotions. You know, your reactions to Situations are painful and those are reactions that you've learned and that you have installed and you're re experiencing them, you know, over and over again. And to that's a real concern because you know, we know now that you know, every thought releases chemicals into your bloodstream and hormones and everything. And so you know, when you, when you remember something that's painful, as far as your body's concerned and your brain, it's happening, you know, it releases all of that back into your bloodstream and your, like I said, your blood chemistry changes instantly and the, the shock on your immune system, everything is, is happening. And so many people are going through their life and they' not only not aware of that, but they're powerless to change it. The powerless to change it because they're not aware they can change it. So like I said, I think this is one of the most exciting things about this time. Because if you look back, you know, for thousands of years in the east, you know, we, we, we called these people mystics. They didn't call themselves mystics, we called them that. They were scientists, but they didn't have technology. So all of their, their science based exploring was done with what they had, which was themselves. And they would look in their body like they would sit quietly, you know, for seven hours and do nothing. Like what happens to your brain when you do that? Like, well, they found out like, see, we wouldn't do that in the west, you know, like so, so I gave an example and it's just a thought where they brought in. It was an article that I read and they wanted to see what happens in the brain with what they considered, I think they called them Olympic meditators. Now most of the people they had were like Tibetan monks, but some of them were just average people that were highly evolved in their meditation practice. And when I say highly involved, I mean they meditate a lot. Like they spend a lot of time doing that. So they brought these people in and see now.

We have the devices, the technology to watch what their brain is doing. So what happened was they found that these people were going into a gamma brainwave state. And so the researchers were just dumbfounded. They said we don't even know what that's like. They said the average person only reaches that state maybe second and a half, two seconds a couple of times a day. So for someone to be able to willfully put them intentionally put themselves in that state and be able to stay there, like we don't know what that feels like. We don't know what they have, what information they have access to, we have no idea. Now what's interesting about that is these guys, like, if you just look at these monks, they've been doing that for thousands of years. But because it's a conscious experience, they had no way of communicating the experience. You know, it's, it's like, well, if you've never been to the beach, you know, how do you describe the sound of the waves on the shore to somebody? You know, it's a conscious experience. If you've never been in love, if you've never lost somebody to cancer and you know that you were close to, you can't. It's beyond linguistics. And this was beyond linguistics. The experience is beyond linguistics. So they couldn't share that. So because they couldn't share it, we didn't think it was real because they had no way of proving it. Now we have this and we realize, oh, it was real. And so now in the west, we're comfortable investing ourselves in all this stuff because we don't feel like it's a bunch of hocus pocus. And I just think it's interesting, you know, like, if you go back, like 30 years ago, 40 years ago, my parents didn't know what meditation was. I mean, they really had no idea what that was. They weren't, they had limited educations, they came through the Great Depression and they didn't have a concept of that. And when meditation first started, you know, it was like hippies. And it was just like, nobody really took it seriously, you know, like in the Western world. And now it's like, you know, it normalizes your blood pressure, it increases plasticity in the brain. All this stuff has come out and so now, you know, people. If somebody says, do you meditate? Well, of course I meditate. Like, who doesn't meditate? Like, you know, like, I mean, that's the way we look at it now because we have all this, this, this peer reviewed science and that the weakness in empirical science is that it always lags behind this personal experience because it has to depend on technology to produce the data. So if you look at that, it's like you can't, you, you can't prove there's bacteria if you don't have a microscope. You know, you gotta have, you know, it's like, so you gotta wait till you could do that, you know, like, or, you know, like, if you're saying, like, yeah, there's, there's a billion stars up there. Yeah, but when I stand out in my backyard, I only see 50, like watch. Because your eyes don't have the light gathering ability. You know what? No, that's what I see. I look at it there and that's what I see. You know. Then you put a pair of binoculars up there and you go, holy cow. They're really. They are there. I just couldn't see them. You know, like. So that's what I'm saying. Empirical science, it's. I'm not saying it's not good but I'm saying that it, it does come from a different perspective. It needs time to develop technology to produce the hard data that growing up in the west we're comfortable with. But now we have this data about how our minds work and what power you really have. And you have to understand it's a faculty. It's a faculty and it's a skill. And the only reason you can't do it is because you haven't done it. And you haven't. You didn't know you could do it. But it doesn't mean that, you know, I mean look at electricity. Electricity would heat your house 10,000 years ago. It would do everything it does today. It was. But it was invisible. Nobody knew it was there. You know, now that we know it, we're using it for all this stuff. We have this ability. You know, we have this ability. We didn't know we had the ability. We didn't know it existed. Now that we know it now it's up to us to get on the train and say, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna push. I'm gonna master this stuff and, and I'm gonna bring this faculty into my daily life so that I have the power to do this and I have more control over what I'm experiencing.

100 and I really truly believe that we do love getting data and science to back up what we can already see does work. So for the listeners that's listening or watching right now, when you talked about gamma. And so these brain waves, so obviously our brain, I imagine we're going to theta maybe a few times a day when we wake up, when we're going to sleep, maybe in the shower. But what are the different brain wave states and what do we experience during those?

Well, some of you know, you have, you have the different brainwave states and some are. When you're highly. The names don't really matter so much as, I mean the gamma they really couldn't explain because they don't know what it's like to be in gamma. I would imagine it's.

You have access to information that you couldn't. Your brain, in a normal waking state, can't decode. So you would have access to stuff that. That you may not even be able to bring back. I don't know. Like, you know, there are. It's just like, you know, you. Again, like, you have experiences like falling in love. And you know when you. When it's happening, but you can't bring it. You can't externalize it. So. So there's a part of you that gets access to those emotions and, and everything that goes with it, that, that whole paradigm, but it's limited in terms of what it can bring back. And I would imagine that the gamma state is the same way. Your decision making.

Your ceiling for decision making may broaden and go higher. You know, your. Your peripheral awareness may expand. There's all sorts of things that, you know could be happening there that it's. Like I've said to people, you know, the problem with present moment functioning is when you're fully in the present. You don't know that you're in the present because you would have to be thinking about the fact that you're in the present. So as soon as you say, hey, I'm in the present, well, you're not anymore. Like, you know, so when you're in the present, you're not aware of anything except what you're doing. You know, and everybody's experience that they get so engrossed in something that they're not thinking about a whole bunch of different things. They're just thinking about this one thing that they're doing. It might be a conversation they're having with somebody. It might be a craft that they're working on. But the other. The other states, brainwave states, are, you know, there's a state when you're in sleep. There's a state when you're falling asleep, and there's a state when you're in your normal waking state. Like. Like what we're doing right now, or you're having conversations. So. And we go in and out of those during the day. And again, the problem I have with linguistics is that we're always trying to capture.

Something that is. I don't want to say it's ambiguous, but it's abstract. And we're trying to put it into a form that we can relate to. I mean, interestingly enough, you and I can look at the color blue and say, that's blue. But we have no way of knowing if you see the same thing. I see you. We just know that we call that blue. And so we, you know, being able to bring that stuff outside is very, very difficult. Just like all of our experiences, you know, in different things we have our own interpretation. And that interpretation is filtered through number one, our own physical five senses and their limitations. Some people have higher frequency hearing than other people do. So people hear stuff that other people don't hear and dogs hear stuff that we can't hear. Some people see, see colors different. You know, some people see colors very vividly. They make great graphic artists. Other people don't see, you know, they're more colorblind, you know, which isn't really like you can't see colors. It's just you, they're usually, it's usually red and green, but those wavelengths are different. And so they may see one wavelength of red, but another wavelength would be a little bit more towards gray. So you could look at the colors, say purple. And because it's red and blue, you wouldn't see the red, you'd see the more the blue. So that's, you know, again, when someone tries to describe that to you, there are so many variables in that. So I think that when we talk about different brainwave states, that's just our way of trying to quantify through science. You know, I mean, we can look at it on a, you know, on a scope.

What do we, what do we think that person's experiencing, you know, when they're in that, that particular state? But, and for the, for some of them, you know, I think we're pretty accurate. I mean, we know where we can take people when they're asleep and measure their brain waves and we can say, yeah, they're everybody that's asleep is in this state, you know, like. But when you get into the more.

More recent studies, like with the gamma, I just don't think we know.

And for those who are just starting on the meditation journey, who are not the Tibetan monks quite yet, will they be able to change their brainwave state by doing 10 minutes regularly over a period of weeks and months?

Yeah, Ye. And probably what will happen? Yes, the answer to that is is yes, you can.

You know, if you meditate every day and let's just say you do it. One of the advantages of doing it at the same time, let's just say it's 7 o' clock in the morning.

What will happen is your, and the reason I like the, the breath based, you could use a short phrase if you wanted, like I am still. You just hear, you don't actually say it in your, you Know, with your mouth, but you just hear it in your head. Like transcendental meditation. That was really popular, you know, back in the 70s, late 60s and 70s, is a phrase, it's a primordial phrase. But I think breathing, the advantage of breathing is that.

If you meditate at 7 o' clock every day, what happens is, is when 7 o' clock comes and you sit down, it's like your body and your mind already know what's coming and that you drop into that state much quicker. And then if you're in a stressful situation at work, you got decision making, you got to go into a meeting and you're stressful. If you center yourself and you start watching your body breathe, your body says. Has a response to it. It says, oh, it's time to be still, to relax. And the anxiety has no room in there, you know, it can't get in there. So it really builds up this resistance to it. And so, I mean, I've done it when I'm standing in a long checkout line, you know, I'm like, I'll be here for 20 minutes. You know, all right, well, I can either sit here and go, I can't believe this is taking this long. Well, that's not going to do me any good because it's not going to change anything. I still got to stand there, you know, so then I'll go into. I'll start focusing inwardly and pay attention to my breathing and watch myself. It's really kind of an amazing experience because I have been in situations that could be really stressful. And when I start to do this, you become impervious to the stress. The stress just can't get in. Like, because you're in. You're in the observer, and the observer is impervious to that. And the observer doesn't feel those feelings. And like I said, it sounds. In this world today, it sounds like, how can that be? But again, it's been around for a long time. It's not new technology. It's just that we've discovered it. And, and you know, and using this, you will experience it. And as you begin to experience it, then, you know, it moves from a belief to a knowing. Because that's the problem. You're like, right now, I'm telling you this. It's a belief. What's a belief? Well, belief is information. And because you haven't consciously experienced it, it has to have a certain amount of doubt in it because you haven't experienced it. You know, as soon as you experience it. Now that Doubt's gone. That just gets removed because now you've experienced it and you know that you can do it. You know that you can experience it. And so then it becomes a knowing. So we all have knowings in our life. Like, you know, I can ride a bike. You know, I may have not ridden a bike for 10 years, but I know I can ride a bike because I've ridden the bike, you know, but if somebody had never ridden a bike, and I said, look, believe me, you can ride the bike. The gyroscopic forces will keep you up, you know, and they. They listening to you and shaking their head. But it's a belief, it's not a knowing yet. Until they get on and they start moving the pedals. And all of a sudden, son of a gun, it is staying, like now it's a knowing. So this stuff here that we're talking about, and that's the fun part of working with people is because you work with them and that you. You get to watch them go from a belief to a knowing, and then they become motivated because, like, I want more of this. This is like, really cool goal, you know, I want more of the ability to do this and, and I want to get as deep into it as I can. It's like almost like a sport, you know, Like, I want to get as good at this as I can get. So what do I got to do?

Well, there's a couple of scenarios I want to try out on that front. So let's say you're a leader and you have to speak at an event or a conference. Got a thousand people there, maybe there's staff, maybe there's some external sponsors and whatever there. So you're starting to feel nervous. In fact, it's beginning to get out of control. You're on in, in three minutes time. You're thinking, what if I stuff this up? What if I can't see my cues? What if I go over time? What if they don't get my jokes? I don't think I'm a good speaker. Oh, my goodness. I actually feel nervous. I can feel the sensations. What could they do in that moment to manage their thinking, their emotions?

Well, that's pretty hard because at that point.

There'S a lot of things they could have done before that that.

Right.

But when they get to that point there, they're going to have to. The only thing I can think of is.

I remember the first time I had to do a big venue and.

And I had, you know, I had played in bands and everything. I Mean, I had played in piano bars where people were yelling at me. I mean, I've been in all kinds of scenarios where, you know, I was the focus and people didn't like what I was doing, you know, like, so I thought I was pretty prepared for that. Like, I didn't get nervous. I didn't feel like I got nervous, you know, getting up in front of people. But I was in the green room, and I remember the guy came and got me and said, you know, you want to get up on stage, just stand on the wings because we're getting ready to do this now. I didn't think there was going to be that many people there because I was relatively unknown. But when I got into the wings, I mean, I could hear the raucous of the people out there. And I later found out that people had driven through several states to hear this talk. And I was. Because the venue was big and they had done a lot of advertising for it. It wasn't necessarily because of me. And. And I remember having this moment like you just described, you know, like, what am I. I don't know that I'm ready to do this. Like, what if I'm not funny? You know, what if I forget stuff? Or what if these people are like, what is he talking about? Like.

And so what I said to myself was.

Be yourself. This. What? Like, the reason I'm here is because what I've written. And so in other words, if it was someone else, like, you're there because you earned your way there. Like, I earned my way here. Like, that's the reason why I'm up here. And they're not. Like, I'm here because I earned this spot right here, there. And. And I. And I accept that I earned this position. You know, I didn't. And I paid for it. Like, I've been there, I've paid my dues, I've done everything I needed to do to get to this place. And that's why they came to hear me. Otherwise they would. They wouldn't have come. So. And I said, just relax and be yourself, because you can talk about the stuff I'm talking about. I know. Like, so just instead of feeling like I gotta. Getting all sidetracked with this, acing this and doing all that, like, just be yourself. And. And when I walked out there, where within a few minutes, I was at total ease, you know, I tell people that if you look at this from a sports psychology point of view, because it's the same thing. It's.

And I use this analogy A lot. Like if you're a basketball player and you have two shots, you got to make one of them and you're shooting foul shots, you know, you have to make one of them or your team loses. So all the weight's on you and you go out. So that's a stressful situation and you go out, out and you make the first shot and you miss.

You're, now you're at a crossroad. You can take that information and you can analyze it and what I call do observe. Correct. You just did, you observed it. And now I'm going to make a correction. I'm going to analyze what I saw. Ah, it was, you know, it was short, it was left, whatever it was. And I'm going to use that data for the next execution. Now that's one path you can take. The other path you can take is slamming the ball down. Negative self talk. I can't believe I missed that. I've done this a hundred times in practice and I still missed it. Like now everybody's looking at me and all that. Now when you do that, what ends up happening is you have surrendered not only to the situation, your self control, but you've surrendered a pretty large portion of your cognitive of decision making because your brain is processing all that and it's, it's having that conversation. And as it's having that conversation that that information can't go into your shot computations because it's not there. It's like RAM in a computer. You know, you've pulled all this RAM out to have this negative talk in your head. And so to me, that is just not going to work. So what I tell people, you know, is getting mad going to put the ball through the hoop. No, in fact, it's going to really impede your possibility of getting the ball through there. So from, if you can be just practical for one moment and say again, I don't like where that's taking me. That is not going to take me where I want to go. The best chance for me is this direction. Let me think about what I did, let me be calm, you know, like, and start to exercise some discipline. And again, if you're meditating like we said every day, you'll see that before it even happens and you will be able to stop the flow of that. So if you're getting ready, you got to go out on stage. If you were meditating on a red, that's why I said there's a lot you could do before if you were meditating, you would notice I'm having an anxious thought. I'm not anxious. I'm having an anxious thought. That's why I tell people, when you're feeling that way, if you could stop that thought, if I could touch you on the head and stop that thought, would you choose to do that? And they go, yeah. I said, so the thought is happening to you. That's what's. It's happening to you. You're not the thought. You're outside of the thought. The thought's happening to you. That means that you have the ability to decide not to let that the thought happen to you. Now, that doesn't mean it's effortless. It's a skill. You know, it requires understanding the mechanics and executing them just like a good golf swing. I mean, that's what it is. And you start from a place on all skill building. You start from zero skill. You're here, you guys, no skill. And then you're moving on this linear line of mastery. And so your expectations should be.

That you should perform at the level that would be realistic for the amount of time and effort that you've put into building the skill. And I tell people, like, don't misinterpret the sense of struggle, because there we're back to words again. You know, what is. What does struggle? One of the things I tell people is, look, your interpretation is going to create your experience, and your experience is going to impact your performance. So if I say the word struggle, most people go, I don't like struggle. I don't like struggle. But what is struggle? Struggle is a feeling. It's a feeling you get. Now, we call it struggle. But the subconscious is giving you that feeling. It doesn't know that that feeling is upsetting you. It's just giving you information. It's just data. That's all it is. You're interpreting that as bad. This is bad. I don't want this. No, but all that is really coming in is data. And the data is telling you what you're up against, your threshold. This is as good as you are right now. If you were better at this, you wouldn't be feeling struggle. The reason you're feeling struggle is because you're right slammed up against your threshold, which is where you want to be, because that's the only time you have the opportunity to push your threshold. You can't push your threshold when you're way back here. You got to be up against the wall. And so if you interpret that feeling, you can still call it struggle if you want, but if you Interpret that as is, this is what I've been waiting for. You know, I. I saw this. I think it was John Rom, you know, who won this, this tournament. And, you know, he came from behind and he won it. And the. And the guy asked him, he, I think he want. He had to make this last putt. And he said, you know what, what were you thinking?

I always love that because I'm thinking probably when I got to win this tournament. And that's probably what he's thinking. But anyway, he said, said. He said, look, you have to find. You have to find the process you need to be successful, and then you need to fall in love with executing it. And that's such a great line, you know, you need to fall in love with the process of becoming better. And he said, and then he said, when I had to make that putt, he said, I love it. He goes, this is what I train for. This is what I want. I want this moment. I want this moment where everything goes on this one putt. He goes, because I want to be good at that. That when can I be good? He can't be good at that unless he's got to make that putt to win the tournament. And so if you can take. You're walking out on stage. You know, if I said to you, would you like to be good at this? You would say, yeah, I'd like to be good at. Well, how do you get good at this? I don't know. You gotta. You gotta do this. Like, you can talk in front of the mirror all you want and, you know, in your house, but sooner or later, you gotta walk out on the stage. And if you want to master that, you gotta embrace the experience and say, I love this. This is what I want. And when you interpret it that way, then your experience of it changes and your performance changes. You go out there and you. And internally, because you're anchored in your observer, you're saying, I love this man. I love being here. Like, I just love being here. And you just keep saying that and keep feeling it, and then your subconscious goes and gets the performance that goes along with that. I mean, that's what's so important is, you know, you need to be thinking before you go into something thing like the kid I said about, you know, should I take the risk? You need to be telling the subconscious, what do I want in this performance? So you're walking up in there and you're like. Like, it's always, you know, you have the blueprint, which is, what do I want? And then get the feeling. What's the feeling? What would it feel like if you blew this thing apart? Like you were so good, it was just like you just blew it out of the park. What would that feel like? Get that feeling. And that's telling the subconscious. Give me that, give me that performance when I walk into that. And, and that's how you do it. But if you're, if you're in your thinking, you're going down, you know, like, if you're in your thinking and you start getting panicky and scared, like you're in the thinking, you have surrendered all of your control in that moment to the circumstance and you're just going to plummet and, and you're not going to have any control and you're going to feel like you don't have any control and you're going to feel like there's no way to control this. Yeah, there is. Is. The other is you just haven't figured it out yet.

That's so powerful. And you said something earlier around your feeling actually creates a biochemical release so in your blood it can be picked up. So we've talked about performance. Let's talk about health and impacting future health. So can our thoughts negatively impact us from a health standpoint? And also reversing that, can we program and think about and channel great thoughts that can actually improve our future health?

Absolutely. That's the whole study of epigenetics, which is the mind body kinetic connection, you know, and you know, when you feel nervous or you feel stressed, you know, your body, everybody know, I think everybody knows that your body goes into fight or flight. I mean, one of the. So what happens? Well, the body shuts the immune system down because it doesn't need it. It, like if you go back to the pr, the primordial times, you know, like, and they say like, you know, off a lion's chasing you, you don't need your immune system, right. Then, you know, like if the line eats you and you're sick, that's the line will deal with that. Like, you know, the thing is you got to get away from there. So, you know, your, your adrenaline starts to flow, your blood goes into your extremities, running, fighting like. And the blood goes out of the front of the brain, it goes into the subconscious, it goes into the decisions it's going to have to make to keep you alive. That's why your decision making goes down. Like your cognitive abilities go down because now you're on autopilot, you're not actually thinking you know, you're just reacting, you know, constantly. So again, if we just go back to this, if you're not aware that that's hap. You can't stop that from happening unless you're aware that it's going on. I mean, again, you know, this is. We always come back to this. You know, you. You thought awareness is the core fundamental for everything. Once you get that and you realize I am not. I'm not my thoughts, you know, I want to be the deliberate creator of the thoughts that I have. How do I do that? Because if I'm being thought, then I am a victim of the emotional content of every thought. And so when you talk about your health, you know, if you're constantly being bombarded with thoughts that you interpret as stressful and you allow them to flow, as I said earlier, your blood chemistry changes just like that. And, and as far as the body's concerned, the trauma is happening. You know, if you've. And this is one of the things. If you, you know, like, if you look at heart math, for example, which they're, you know, three and a half decades into that, I think it's a fascinating thing. And it has. It really has something to do with this. You know, it started, I guess it was in the early 90s. The neurocardiologist just found out that the heart has its own version of a brain. Its own stores memories, it has, like, its own nervous system. And. And it. It.

When they looked at the communication between the heart and the brain, so it's like, really, it's like just the center of your consciousness. Like, the brain is not. Your brain is more like your laptop. You know, you're outside of the laptop. You use the laptop for. For analysis and computations. But your consciousness is not in the brain. And.

An interesting thing just to diverge for a second. There was, you know, Dr. Wilder Penfield was one of the people that mapped the brain. And so they were doing this experiment that I remember, I think it was Deepak Chopra talked about. And it was fascinating where they would stick a probe in the guy's brain, and they would say, okay, I'm gonna. You know, because the brain doesn't have pain receptors, so you can work on it with a person awake. And so they were sticking this. This probe into this guy's brain. They said, like, I'm going to make your left arm raise. So the guy would stick the probe in. That left arm would go up. And the Penfield said, are you. Are you raising your arm? And the guy said, no, I'm, you're, you're making my arm go up by sticking this probe in. He goes, well, can you do something else with it? And he goes, yeah. So he, he moves it back and forth. He says, okay, well I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick a probe in this side here and make your right arm go up. Can you, you override that and not let your arm go up? And he goes, yeah, I think so. So he puts the probe and the guy, the arm doesn't go up. So this, the, the whole thought there was, where's the commander? Because the commander isn't in the brain. You know, the commander is able to. Over. The brain is telling the body to do things, but the, but somebody's overriding it, like, and that's who you are. And so, so anyway, they're looking at this communication traffic between the heart and the brain. And what they found was that the heart does most of, the, most of the conversation. It was a very high amount, I think it was 75 to 80%. And the brain would take care of things like respiratory, blood pressure, you know, and releasing hormones and things like that. But the heart was make. It's like the consciousness was in the heart. The heart's making the decision. Now something else that's fascinating about this is that the heart produces an electrical field and the electrical field extends outside of us. So as they describe it, in, in that electrical field is data. It's information about you, like your concept of yourself. Whether you're feeling confident, whether you're feeling weak, whether you're feeling anxious, you know, all these, this information, whether you're telling the truth, it's all in there. Like. And so, so we are able, our neurosystems are built, they're wired to, to receive this information heart to heart, and to, to get this information. Now, so now we know that this thing that we used to call hocus pocus intuition is actually science. It's actually a physical thing that is happening. And, and the mouth can say whatever it wants. That's why people can lie. Like, so the untruth can come out of the mouth. But the heart, the truth, that's all it puts out is the truth. So you can be talking to somebody in a situation and something doesn't feel right by what they're telling you. But that's because your heart is picking up communication from their heart. So I think that this is like, it's really interesting because they're talking about how this impacts your health, mental health and physical health, because there's A relationship called coherence between the brain and the heart. And you know, most people would think like, well, my heartbeats 80 beats for a minute. But those beats are not like a music metronome. They're not equidistantly spaced. They, if you look at them like so might be like this, then like this, but they just equal 80 in a minute, like. And that's incoherence. That's one way of describing it. When the heart and the brain come into coherence, then they're evil, evenly spaced. And the whole, your whole nervous system, everything comes into synchronization. And when that happens, you have obviously better health. Your immune system goes up, your decision making goes up, your peripheral vision goes up, you have access. It's sort of like the gamma thing. You know, you're, you have higher functioning cognitive ability. There's all sorts of stuff that happens with this. And you can learn, you can learn to bring them into coherence. It's not hard. Again, it happened. It's about how you focus your mind, what you're thinking about and you, you know, and if what they found is if, you know, when you're having thoughts of fear, anger, anxiety, you know, the coherence just goes, it just goes crazy. And that impacts your immune system just basically shuts down. So this is why it's so important when you look at, to monitor what are you exposing yourself to? Number one, if you, you know, I tell people, control what you can and let go of what you can. So don't be exposing yourself to stuff that is just constantly make, that you can't change, that's making you feel stressed and anxiety because that puts you in a fight or flight, a fear state which compromises your immune system. And you know, they're finding that we can, we can strengthen our immune system and our bodies have this intelligence to heal themselves. We, we're just in a state right now. Like there are certain indigenous people around the world that just accept that they don't, they don't need all the pharmaceutical stuff that we have. You know, they assume that they can fix themselves with their, with their mind. We are, we don't live in that, in that realm. And so we're still in this realm of. It's a belief, you know, I would, I wish that was the truth. I would love to be able to do that. But it's not a knowing yet, like, but it's shifting, it's shifting to that because there's all these new sciences out there that are really digging into this and they're finding out so much about spontaneous healing and people like Joe Dispenser, you know, Dr. Joe Dispenser is a perfect example of that. Where, you know, the guy was in a triathlon and he was hit by a car and then run over by another one. And he was. It was when he was biking and he would have been paralyzed, you know, and he laid in the bed and made this. He had a couple of diagnosis and because he was a doctor, knew what they were talking about, and there was only one. One scenario that could fix it, medically speaking, you know, with surgically. And he decided, you know what? I can't go anywhere. I'm gonna see if I can. If I can fix this with my mind. He said, because he had been studying this stuff and he was. He said, like, you know, this is a good opportunity for me to try this. And he did, you know, and he did so something that most people would think was absolutely impossible, but it's like the.

You know, the, The. That line in Star wars, the Empire Strikes Back, where, you know, Yoda tells Luke to raise the. The X Wing fighter out of the swamp. And he tries and he's like struggling and he can't do it. And he turns around. I can't. It's just too big, you know. And then Yoda raises it and Luke says, I. I don't believe it. He said, and that's why you fail, you know, like, so, you know, this stuff here, you know, like, you need to get excited about this stuff, like, because we're really showing with empirical science, because this stuff is being studied. It's being backed as being documented. There's. There's repeatable studies that are, you know, experiments that are being done that we all have this ability. We have this ability. We've always had. We're back to electricity. It's always been there. We've always had this ability. We've just. We haven't addressed it and. But we do have this faculty. We have far more power than we realize. And I think, think one of the things that I wrote about, and it's just a thought, you know, that I stated, is that when you look at Heartmath, they have done all sorts of things where they get groups of people around the globe to. To, quote, focus on lowering crime rate in certain areas, like, you know, and. And they. They've been able to do it. And so it's important that we have to understand that we. We've. We've thought our thinking is private, but it isn't our thinking a thought is electromagnetic energy with data in it and it goes out of us. And if all of us are putting out fear based data that everybody's feeling fear and it's like a, you know, putting a guitar in a room with 20 guitars and plucking the E string over and over again, it just intensifies because all the E strings are vibrating now with this frequency and we need to be paying attention to what am I contributing, what kind of thoughts am I having? And I, I had an Uber ride the other day. You know, I had to do what I had to do this long interview and when I was coming home, the guy asked me what I did and I, I told him I was a writer. He said, well, could you write a book? He says that stops people from being so angry. He said, because everybody's getting so angry and, and it's the truth. I mean people we need to be paying attention to these angry thoughts are going out of us and making that person. Our hearts are all, they're all listening to this information. And it's, and it's, it's done neurologically. It's not, like I said, it's not a bunch of foo foo. It's stuff that they can measure and they can actually see it. They can see the, the energy coming off of people like, and they can see it being received. So this is just, I look at it like this is where we were with sports psychology in the late 60s and early 70s when people were, they didn't know it existed. They, when I. Sports psychology isn't what they didn't know existed, but they didn't understand. Like in golf they just went out and played great. And some, some people were better than others. And you know, now they know, you know, you've got, it's one shot at a time being in the present moment and all this sort of stuff. And if you want to get to the highest plateau of your performance, you have to be in the present moment. Well, nobody thought about that back then, but now it's like you're not competitive if you're not operating under this paradigm. And so right now we're in the emphasis of this and it's moving, but in another 10 to 15 years every, this is just going to be so la di da like you know, meditation. Like it's like everybody's just going to accept it as this is just a fact. And the kids are going to all be doing it because they're going to be raised with it, probably be taught in schools. So it's an exciting time. It's a really exciting time.

It really is. I've got a young boy who just turned seven yesterday and we talk a lot about thoughts and positive psychology in a way that is comfortable and kind of fun for him. But I do believe you're right. In 15, 20 years, this will be just status quo, normal. We'll know these facts and figures. The science will be there. Really interesting that you bring up Dr. Joe Dispenza. I've been reading and watching and studying and listening Joe's work for four or five years. I really love that brain heart coherence piece. To start with, it was. Made no sense. His work made no sense to me.

It was way over my head.

But when I started to go a bit deeper, it absolutely makes sense. So you've been studying this for many decades? 40 years. And that's just, to me, simply incredible. Particularly in this day and age when people struggle to focus for more than four minutes, never mind four decades. So before we wrap up, just a couple of last questions. One is.

Where do you want to finish up with your work when you leave your work, when you leave this planet in the physical sense? What do you want to be sitting here for the human race to have, have?

Well, my, my thought on that is I want to. This is more broad based, but I, I guess I'll be more specific in a minute. But I want to learn everything that I can and I want to communicate it to as many people as I can. I enjoy this kind of stuff. I enjoy these kind of interactions. I enjoy talking about this stuff because it makes me think and working with people. I come up with scenarios and I've worked with people with all kinds of mind issues, you know, people that.

Have real deficits in, you know, on the spectrum, people that have suicidal thoughts, I mean, all sorts of stuff like. And may. And it might just be getting through a divorce, you know, or interviewing for jobs, you know, like, or.

Getting nervous over a putt. I mean, it really covers the whole, you know, the whole gamut, you know. But I really, I can't get enough of this stuff. I am as active in researching this stuff now as I've ever been. I started this because I was so lousy at all of it. You know, when I was growing up, I was very undisciplined. I was never in the present moment. I was always starting things like challenges. And then I would burn up. I'd be really excited and really invested in and I would burn up that incentive and that invest, investment, investing Feeling. And then I would be left with who I was, which was someone who wanted all the benefits of practicing but hated the practice. So I didn't like. And I really realized that.

This is not who I want to be, you know, and that was. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was like, tom, you got to change something here. Like, you know, you. Like. I was taking piano lessons. I wanted to be a jazz pianist, and I really was really involved in music. I'd had some lessons when I was earlier. I had a certain amount of natural ability, if you want to call it that, you know, But I really wanted the. The skill level. And I absolutely hated practicing. And it was like, how do I get from here to there? Like, why do I hate practicing? Why am I so on this? What is discipline? Like, why do I. When I'm practicing, I'm thinking, I don't feel like doing this. Why is that? Like, because I want everything it's going to give me. Why am I experiencing all this resistance to this? And. And that was what started me on the quest was to figure all that out. And. And I really got a handle on it by, you know, So I was 17, 18, then. By the time I was maybe 23, 24, I had really gotten a handle on it through Eastern thought and Zen, and then into sports psychology and then later into neuro, the neuroscience stuff.

And.

But way back then, it completely changed me. And my. My head was such a. So much nicer of a place to go through the day because I felt like I was in control and I was accomplishing everything. Everything I put my mind to, I was accomplishing. And I looked at something new. People have asked me because I, you know, I do so many different things. I'm a pretty decent, decent sewer. Like, I used to do a lot of canvas works when I was, you know, a salesperson. I played several. A sailboater. I've played several instruments. I have a pilot's license. I. I mean, all these different things that people sometimes say to me. Is there anything you don't know how to do? And. And I say, there's nothing I want to know how to do that I don't know how to do. There's plenty of things I don't know how to do. But I love, like, when I go into something that I have no idea how it works, works, it doesn't look daunting to me. It's just a process that I go through, and I love the process. I just fall in love with the process, and I Don't expect. I don't go into it with this. I don't misuse the goal, which is being attached to this moment out here. When you attach yourself to the moment, you have the goal, instead of wanting to be in the process of achieving it, you put yourself at a war with that. Like, now, everything that you got, you look at everything you got to go through to get to this moment, as this burden is, and a new nuisance. And I don't look at things like that anymore. I used to, but I don't look at things like that anymore. And it's completely. Again, interpretation creates your experience. And so my performance in the process is. I always feel like I'm right where I should be. I don't feel like, why am I here? Shouldn't I be farther along? You know, like, no, if I should be farther along, I would be farther along, like. And so I can let go of all that. But so my feeling is I want to teach people. I want to learn. And I know a lot of people don't have time, and I have a head start. I know they don't have time to research all this stuff. So it's like the old. I watch that movie so you don't have to, like, you know, and then they're going to talk about it. So I'm learning this stuff so people don't have to do all the research. And I enjoy talking about it. But the one thing I would say if there was just one thing, it's to stop living everywhere but right now. You know, when you give yourself permission to be in the. In. In the present moment, and you realize that you're not incomplete, I think that's a gross misinterpretation of the way we are supposed to feel incomplete. If we didn't feel incomplete, we'd still be living in caves and not around fire because we wouldn't have invented it yet. You know, like, if you look at all the great things, the technology we have, the arts, you know, Stradivarius, violence, they all came from somebody feeling like, there's more, I can do more. It can be more. I can be more. That is what has brought us along. And we're supposed to have that feeling that we call incomplete. Again, it's a word that's trying to describe a feeling. We're supposed to have that feeling. It's not going to go away. It's not supposed to go away. You need that feeling. Otherwise you would be apathetic and just sit around and. And never strive to be anything. And never be creative. What is creative? Creative, your energy when you're creative is feeling like, I, I think I could do that. I'd love to try that. I think I can run faster, you know, I think I can jump higher. I think I could fly an airplane. You know, all this stuff comes from. I, I can be more. And that can be translated is I don't have enough. And, you know, so when you, when you switch that around, your interpretation is different. You stop feeling like. And the marketing media certainly uses this. It's like, you can't be happy now, now because you don't have this. You're not driving this car. You're not making this much money. Your house isn't here. You don't go over here for a vacation. So you can't be happy. So you've got to get to this stuff here. And that's because we're selling it to you. But when you realize that, look, I am, I'm infinite, you know, in what I can do. And I'm just going to, you know, perfection to me is the ability to expand infinitely. Otherwise, we're limited. Like, you know, if we, if we can't expand infinitely, that means I can only get. If I'm taking the. If I'm a musician, I'm only ever going to get to where I can play this Mozart. Pete, forget about Franz list, because that's. I'm never going to get there because I'm limited. Like, no, it's. It doesn't work that way. I can get as far as I want and I don't know how long it's going to take. Why does that matter? You know, like, I just think it's. It's fascinating when people, they get so attached to this moment where they think they're going to feel realized and for the rest of their life they're going to be happy because they got to this goal. Goal. When we can all look back on our life and I'd have this cell phone I had, had this first car. You got all that stuff, and it didn't. The feeling never went away, you know, like, because it's not supposed to. So stop looking for it to go away. Relax, take a deep breath and say, I'm right where I. Where I need to be, and I'm capable of expanding infinitely. And that's the perfection. It's a blessing.

And Tom, I've got one last question. I feel like you may have already answered it.

You got right ahead of me, actually.

And I ask this of everyone on the show. So we fast forward many many years into the future. It's your last day here on earth and you know, it's your last day and a very young person, maybe under the age of 10 that you really care about comes up to you and asks how do I lead my life on purpose? What would you share with me?

Them?

I would say that.

They can't do that unless the self awareness is everything. They have to understand.

That they're cave. They're capable of infinite works and in order for them to achieve that they have to become aware of who they really are are and, and the thoughts that they have is not who they really are. The, the who they really are is an infinite being that lives forever. And so when you, when you can do yeah, you have to be there, you know, like, because if you're not there like then you're always looking at what you have and accomplish as a limitation. And I just think it's really important for, for someone if you want to lead, you can't lead if you're not in control of yourself self, you have to gain self control. And how do you gain self control? You have to become aware of who self is. You know, self is not, you know, self is not what other people think of you. You know, self is not your fears. Self is impervious to that and lives forever. So you have to get to that place, you know where you're there and you know that and then you can, then you can relax and just point your. Like I say to people, you know, when you gain, when you start to gain the skills skill, then what? Well you got to figure out what you want to aim it at, you know, like, you know, where do you want to aim this skill that you develop when you have self awareness and you have thought awareness. Like okay, so what do I want to accomplish now? Now I'm going to aim this skill at that and I'm going to fire on that and that's where I'm going to go. And then when I finish that I'm going to go here and I'm just going to keep going until I drop. Like. And I think that I thought you were going to ask me.

If, if I could go back in time and meet anybody I wanted, who would that be? Because I've been asked that, you know. You know, and I, my answer to that is me. I would like to go back to when I was a teenager and tell myself how everything was going to turn out. I mean you're meaning like not, not necessarily every situation but I Mean it, that it was. Everything was going to be fine, you know, like. Because when I look back on. Well, perfect example of that is, you know, I had a very successful service business and I was making a lot of money and I sold all of that. I had two business properties with $100,000 in tooling. I walked away from it all to write the first book and to publish it. And I had two daughters that were going to be going into college within a few years. I mean, there was no real, no support. I mean, very few people supported me. Everybody thought I was having a midlife crisis. And it was crazy. And I was like, I think I can do this. You know, I think I can do this. I got a story to tell. I really, I really think I can do this. You know, when I. Well, I was very naive and, but enthusiastic, you know, like. And what I didn't real, I was thinking, because I didn't have enough information about what I had to accomplish, I thought, well, you write the book and what is there a couple hundred million people on the Internet every day? Well, geez, you know, if I sell them on Amazon and I have a website, if I sell, If I reach 0.001% of those people, I'm going to be, you know, very comfortable, you know. Well, it never occurred to me that nobody knew who I was, so nobody's going to be searching for me. It didn't matter that there was 100 million people, you know, whatever, because they weren't looking my name up, because they didn't, they didn't know who I was and they never heard of my book. And so I went through. I mean, I was hemorrhaging money, absolutely hemorrhaging money. And I was cash rich because I had built this business and I sold it. So I had all this cash, but man, I'm just writing checks out, you know, every month, mortgage payments and all sorts of stuff, stuff. And nothing is coming in like 17 bucks a week and book sales and everything. And it would have been nice if somebody had said, yeah, but just give it a year and a half and it'll be. You can easily last that long. And it'll be number one in stress management a couple times on Amazon. It'll get picked up by a major publisher, It'll be in 12 languages, all this. But I didn't know that when that was happening, you know, like. And so I was. For me, it was like, like I didn't feel like I could go around and talk to people about it because all I was going to get was I told you so. You know. So I basically had to shoulder that, you know, within myself and, and that's the kind of thing, you know, like to trust yourself and feel like, you know, you are supported. Your energy is as much support as you ever need. You know, like if you're in touch with it. So anyway, I think what's really important is the awareness that you're not, not your thoughts and you're not how much money you make. You're not this. The. The physical status and material status. I'm. I always get a chuckle out of when I see people driving a certain car or something and I remember and they're so convinced that everybody's impressed, you know, like by that. And I remember I had a client who was worth this was back in the early 1970s. He was worth about $35 million and that was a lot of money back then. And I. And he lived in this little townhouse and he would go up to the diner and sit there and read the Wall Street Journal and non presumptuous clothes and no one would ever look at this guy and know what kind of money he had. He would go all over the world and he could have anything he wanted. Like, like. But he told me so I find it so amusing he said that the people are so convinced that because they're wearing this, these jeans or whatever. He goes that they're so important. And, and I. That's because they're not in touch with who they really are. And so I think it's really important that that. And I really tried to work on that with my own daughters. It's like, you know, you're, you know you're not your hair today, like whatever it is that's, you know, that's upsetting you, you know, you're not that, that whatever crisis that you're managing today is like a step back and ask yourself how important is this going to be six months from now? You know all those sort of things because you can look back in your life and there's a string of things that in the moment felt like they were the most important thing in the world. And whether it was something you need to have or something somebody said to you and now you don't even think about it anymore. Like so you really look at things more from an eternal perspective. That's a long answer to your question.

That's incredible answer. And Tom, thank you so one, for creating the space to share your insights and wisdom today and two, for writing your most recent book and I'll be sure to put the link to that in our show notes, whether that's here on YouTube or if anybody's listening here on Apple or Spotify. I'll put a little link there in the show notes. People can connect in with you. I'll put your website and your book details as well. But I just want to say a massive thank you and I love connecting.

Yeah, I absolutely. I was looking forward to this all day and I really appreciate the time. You know, most interviews are not that long, so you don't get to go into as much as. As we did today. And I appreciate the fact that you let me talk so much now.

It's incredible. Thank you so much. Look forward to reconnecting again soon.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thanks, Tom.

Okay.

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