Unleash Your Inner Genius, with Marc Allen

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. 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.

Great leadership starts with great thinking. Thought leadership has been around for millennia. In today's session, you're going to get to meet Mark Allen, a worldwide best selling author on thought leadership spirituality. And he actually has his own publishing firm, New World Library, New World Publishing, that publishes books for Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra and many of the world's greatest influencers, thought leaders and change makers. You're going to learn today how to think differently to create the most amazing future for yourself, for your family, for your organization. So sit back and enjoy.

Mark, a massive welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you, James. I'm delighted to be here. I'm really impressed with what you do.

Well, thank you. It's amazing. I mean, I could say that right back to you. It's amazing what you do. And in fact, I read a book and it really did change my thought processes, changed my way of looking at the world. And that was I'll just lift it up for everyone that's watching as you think. And so this was obviously James Allen was the original author, but you jumped in and made this really applicable to our world and our way of thinking. So I'm so excited to talk about how you think and where you think the world is headed and how on an individual basis we can think in a way that helps create our outer world.

Yes, yes. That book changed my life. When I look back on it in about my mid-20s, somebody just gave me a copy. The original is As a Man Thinketh. And I, I read it and immediately started repeating the two poems in it. There's two poems. It opens with a poem that summarizes the book and I, I learned later this is Like a traditional Buddhist, Tibetan Buddhist practice and all. In fact, a lot of their books open with poem. If you get the poem, you don't need to read the book. So I. I meditated on this poem. I repeated it hundreds and hundreds of times, and it sums up the whole book and the book, the poem is. Mind is the master power that molds and makes and we are mind and evermore we take the tool of thought and shaping what we will bring forth A thousand joys, a thousand ills. We think in secret and it comes to pass. Our world is but our looking glass.

It's phenomenal.

And I think that then is really at the core of ever since what I came to understand and how I came to really change my life. And then what I teach today.

It's powerful. And so when I read the book, I understood that if I could comprehend and really understand the poem, the book would make sense. So I read it, and I read it three or four times, and still I was like, I need to read the book.

Well, I did, too. Yes.

So if you, you know, if you feel like that was a transformational book for you, so what started to happen in your life after you started to really click onto what the book was about?

Mm. I think the book kind of simmered for years. Then I went to a great weekend workshop where I learned a lot of things, including the core belief process that I've written about that really helps you see what deep underlying beliefs you're holding onto and how they affect your lives, good or bad beliefs. And we often have a bunch of contradictory beliefs. So often.

We know. I think a lot of us sense that we are unique and we're gifted in some ways. And I think everyone is a creative genius in their own unique way. And a lot of people will believe that if you tell them that. But then we have all these other beliefs. Oh, I don't have. What it takes is so often. It's so hard. Life is a struggle. All these other beliefs. And so dealing with those deep beliefs is definitely something that.

Really affected me when I was 28. And then really the day I turned 30, I ended up doing.

Doing four things. And they changed my life. I looking back on it, and it took me years to see this, but I was a very different person in the evening of my 30th birthday than I was in the morning. I woke up in the morning. I lived in poverty in a little slum apartment. I had no job, no money. I'd had a rock band that had broken up, and I tried about 10 different careers in my 20s and everything fell apart. I had the opposite of the Midas touch. Everything fell apart. And I got fired from jobs. So I literally woke up in my 30th birthday.

My usual attitude was like, oh, I gotta scrounge my rent together. I gotta get my rent. How do I get my rent this month? That was my visualization for every month. And I remember looking back, I remember even thinking, you know, it's kind of magical how I just barely got my rent together every month. I just barely. And I remember thinking, maybe that's magical. Maybe I am creating that. Maybe that is creative visualization. So on my 30th birthday, I decided to take it up several levels. You know, in fact, a quantum leap in what I was visualizing. And so literally I spent most of the day alone, pacing up and down. I couldn't have a party. I was. I knew I just need to think about my life because I was 30. This voice said, you're not a kid anymore. You're 30. You know, somehow at 29, it was cool to be a musician, unemployed.

With no money whatsoever. But turning 30 really changed me. And that day I paced up and down and I did four things. I. I remembered this game called Ideal Scene where you just imagine five years have passed and everything has gone as well as you could imagine in your life. What would your life look like?

I did that when I was like 22, around a campfire during a disastrous Back to the land experiment. This couple, as we were sitting on the fire, just said, let's play a game we play at church camp. Let's imagine five years have passed. Everything has gone as well as we could imagine. What would our lives look like? We went around the fire. Everybody said something. I have no memory of what I said. So it had no impact on my life whatsoever. But the day I turned 30, I thought, this is a good idea. But this time I grabbed a sheet of paper, I wrote it down, I put Ideal Scene. And much to my amazement, because I'd had no interest in business or money. In fact I had all these negative beliefs about people making money. And.

The first thing that spilled out was I have a successful publishing company that cruises along and that publishes great books that really affect people's lives. That's the first part of my Ideal Scene that spilled out. I was amazed. I knew nothing about business. 000. I'd never taken any course related to. I was a theater major in college.

So.

I wrote my whole Ideal Scene then. And it even included a Big, I lived in a slum apartment with bars in the window in not a nice neighborhood of Oakland, California. And I, across the bay, north of San Francisco is this Marin county, this beautiful. It's 75% undeveloped, open, beautiful place with a mountain going down to the ocean. And I said my ideal, I live in a big, beautiful home in Marin county with a beautiful view. And I listed everything. And then the second thing I did, I realized within my ideal scene were a bunch of goals. Start learning about publishing companies and start learning about real estate. Start writing a book. Part of my idea. Okay, I'm also writing books and I'm putting out my albums of music. I'd written and played music, but I had never recorded anything. So it was a lot of starts. But I made a list of goals. Then I made a list of goals as affirmations. I'd read about affirmations quite a bit, mostly from a Unity Church minister named Catherine Ponder, who wrote a bunch of books in the 70s. And that's where she really taught me about the power of affirmations. The power of the spoken and written word is what it is. So the third thing I did, I took my list of goals and I wrote them as affirmations. I am now creating a successful publishing company. And everyone I ended with a phrase Catherine Ponder had given me in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in its own perfect time, for the highest good of all. And I made a list of affirmations. To this day, I carry around my list of affirmations with me. And then the fourth thing, it actually sort of took a few days to start happening. But I realized as I affirm things, plans started to emerge. And I made one page plans for each of my goals. A one page plan to start a publishing company. In fact, I could tell my entire plan I've learned to this day I do one page plans and tell everybody. Get a one page plan for whatever you dream of because it's for your subconscious mind. It doesn't have to be detailed and lengthy and you don't have to know. All I knew for my first business plan.

The goal at the top. I am now creating a successful publishing company. And I thought about it and okay, the only two things I could think of were read a used Business 101 textbook because I knew nothing about business and talk to people that I knew, like my dad, who knew more about business than I did. That was my plan. That was my entire plan for my publishing company, step one and two. And I took those steps and then once I'd read something and talked, I learned how to start a business and the whole thing just unfolded step by step.

It's incredible. There's four simple steps for you who are listening right now, there's four simple steps that you could take and run with Mike.

That's.

To me, that is so priceless. It was the 3, 0, the 30th birthday. That was the catalyst for this moment.

Yes, yes, yes. To this day, really, in all my books, it's. I always get back to that day and those four things, that's, that's what completely changed my life. So literally, I, looking back, I was a different person. At the end of the day, the beginning of the day, got it scrounged together in my rent. The end of the day, I have a dream and I'm focusing, I'm taking a plan. I'm going to create a successful publishing company, write books, record music, get into real estate.

Incredible. And so it all started with a thought.

Yes. Amazing.

And then when did you see some of the fruits, the physical manifestations of that thought? Well, how long did that start to take?

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show. Notes.

I kept affirming in its own perfect time. And it definitely took a while, but by the end of the year, I had our first little catalog for our publishing company. It was a legal size sheet of paper that we just folded three times, so it made like a little brochure. And it had two books in it, the first two books that I wrote. And.

It had creative visualization by Shakti Gawain coming soon. It took her two years to write the book.

So we had three books. One wasn't published. I had two albums of music out. And then I threw in like four other things. I thought, I threw in everything. I thought, I'll try six different things. Something is bound to work. So we had a note card, literally A note card. One note card we published that had one of my favorite pieces of business advice, which is cut the shit and do the thing.

Yes, yes. A director once told me that. And I. I had it mounted on my desk.

You know, if you've still got any of those original note cards, I'll buy one from you.

I still. I know I don't. I have one on my desk.

So.

Good. Cut the shit, do the thing.

Yes. Cut the shit and do the thing. It was great. And we had mini posters and even.

Gypsy love charms. Shocked. And, I mean, I wrote a song that had this actual gypsy love charm in it from an old book. So we had the charm and we put in rosemary oil because that attracts love. So I don't think we sold. Maybe we sold one. I think we sold one or two or so. So. But that was our first little catalog. We put it out and our first year sales were $800.

Well done.

Yeah. Our second year sales were 3,000. And then, then Shakti got out Creative Visualization and we suddenly had something that sold word of mouth. Because we had zero promotion. We didn't send out like review copies or do anything, except I found a distributor who got it in stores. But we didn't publicize the books in any way. It was just Shakti and I part time really when it started, but it just grew. And then some other great authors started coming to us. Once we had Creative Visualization out, then all these other wonderful writers started contacting me.

That was great. And as that started to happen, as those great writers started contacting you from your thought when you were 30, what did that do to your self belief, your inner confidence when people started reaching out to you?

Right, right.

Yeah.

I realized, and I think this is true of all of us. I have something really unique to say and my publishing company is really unique. It's a great partnership with every employee. Every employee gets a good share of the profits. So every employee thinks like an owner. The whole business model works beautifully. And yes, I got very confident. I remember my first book, though. I took it to the Bodhi Tree bookstore in la, which was this huge metaphysical store.

So many people have said to me, oh, you were so innovative. Creative Visualization was like the first book of this whole new age genre. Wasn't. And I said, no, there were thousands of books out. It was one of the first ones that sold a lot. But a whole bunch of other books were out. Even Autobiography of a Yogi, you could count as, you know, that was out. I don't know what in the 50s. But I remember I took my first little book to the Bodhi Tree Bookstore and I looked at that, looked at the thousands of titles. And I walked out in total shock thinking, why? What, what right do I have to. Why even try to publish anything? Because there's thousands and thousands of books out already. There's like a million books published every year. I was, why? And I thought about that for just a minute or two. And then the thought came. Well, whatever I do will be unique. No one will write the books or publish the books I publish. So.

And I was thinking small. I was thinking about, oh, there's thousands of books out there. But I wasn't thinking, yeah, there's also 320 million people in this country alone and a whole lot of people in the world who read a lot of books. So there's a vast, vast market for any kind of creative work.

And so that's really crucial. What you just said, I think is powerful because so many of us will have an idea and it could be transformational for ourselves or the people around us. Then we go, I think someone's already done it. Or, why would someone read my work? Or, hey, the market is saturated, so we defeat ourselves before we even get started. Now, you almost did that. You sat there for a moment and doubted yourself and doubted your success or your idea. But a thought, literally a thought, an inner conversation changed that. So how did you develop that technique? How can others develop that?

I just, somewhere along the line, I started talking to myself. I would just. And I find I do it walking, and especially outside. I like to walk out if I'm pondering something or have a problem or something, which Eckhart keeps saying, there's no problems unless you create it with your mind. It's just a situation. You know, I have a situation, but I will literally, sometimes I'll even do it in meditation. But I'll just get quiet and then I'll ask myself a question, and then I'll just listen. I'll just listen. And then I usually get. I usually get an answer. Sometimes it takes a while to get an answer. But I've had these dialogues with myself for years, that's for sure. One, One answer I got a while ago was that, you know, it is all just about thought and it's all so simple. There's just two essential things. The way I. The older I get, the simpler I see it. There's two essential things to creating wonderful success in the world. One is dare to dream of it. Dare to dream, even write down Your ideal scene. Dare to dream of the career you want, the relationship you want, the home you want.

Your.

Your ideal. Dare to dream. And hopefully you'll end or begin with a life of inner peace, too. I've come to realize that's the most important part of my ideal. Some, a real inner. I know you talk about purpose a lot, and I've reflected on that a lot too, how there's an outer purpose and an inner purpose, and that's the goal, that's the ideal. So that's the first essential step. Create your ideal. The second one is deal with the doubts and fears that inevitably arise with nearly everyone once you dare dream, because those doubts and fears do come up. Oh, who are you to do this? You know, you. You didn't have the right education, or you don't have enough money, or, you know, you. Whatever. Whatever comes up will come up for everyone who dares to dream an expansive dream. So you deal with those doubts and.

Fears, and how do you deal with them?

Oh, there's all kinds. We've been doing it all our lives in all kinds of ways, you know, but the one thing I found when I was 28, this core belief process I mentioned is great for getting down to your deepest fears and your deepest core belief. You even ask yourself, you know, what's the worst that could happen? And you really get into that.

That.

I think that's the single best thing I ever did. It's just eight questions. I can whip through the eight questions and.

Please, I would love this.

Yeah, I mean, this. This process I have done hundreds of times now with hundreds of people, and I've done it dozens of times with myself. And it. All it is is being totally honest about eight. Asking yourself eight questions. One, what's the problem? What's the problem? What's. And you pick one. You know, it works best when you are really upset or agitated about something. That's when it really works best because you got this emotional juice behind it. But it can be any problem in your life, career, relationship, anything, family, anything. So you just, what's the problem? And you just take a couple minutes. It just takes a couple minutes because we know just exactly what's the problem, you know, and then we just ask ourselves, what are you feeling physically when you feel. When you worried about this problem, what are you feeling physically? And you just like, look within and just tune in your body. Just like, oh.

Like. I remember doing it about money. When I was. I started the company, I used a lot of credit cards. I was 65,000 in credit card debt. And this was the. This was the 70s. So I felt in today's dollars, that's probably about 250,000 in credit card debt. And I did not have the income from the company. I didn't have enough income to even pay the minimum amounts on each card. And so literally, for about maybe two years or something, I. I survived by. People kept sending me new credit cards. I've got a new credit card from a new bank, and I'd run down, get a cash advance and pay off all the other cards.

Okay.

Stack of bills every month that high, you know, so it was getting overwhelming, and I even. It was not working. And then our distributor went bankrupt and didn't pay us for six months worth of sales. So the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, and I was on the verge of bankruptcy. And so then I thought, oh, I got to do core belief process. So, one, the problem. Okay, I just told you the problem. Two, how are you feeling? And I realized my stomach was just churning. I think if it would have continued, I probably would have gotten an ulcer. I had this, and my neck and shoulders were tight. Then three, you say, what emotions am I feeling? And you just name the emotion. You don't dwell on it. But I realized, oh, I'm frustrated.

I'm irritated, I'm pissed off. Even, like with my dad, that I couldn't call him up and say, hey, dad, can you send me $10,000? Because he had nobody either or he had just enough. So I never had any family support. But so I. You realize that you just look at your physical body, you look at your emotions, and. And then we say, we used to say, what tapes are running through your head? Do you just run what repetitive thoughts are going on and on and on and on? In a way, you've touched on that with a problem, but it just makes you aware. 90 some percent of our thoughts are totally repetitive. And. And when you got a problem.

You'Re often just running, running, running the same thoughts, the same even disaster scenarios. So you just go on and on. And it never takes longer than three or four minutes with anybody to really do it. But you just say every thought that's been going through your head that's related to the problem, you know, okay, then five is a really good one. I think this is maybe the essence or a key to the power of this process. You ask yourself, okay, what's the worst that could happen?

Oh, well, of course, I could go bankrupt. You even say, okay, if that happens, what's the very Worst that could happen. Very. You throw you open that closet of your worst fears. And I came up with, well, I could be a drunken bum in the gutter in la, dying slowly a painful death that no one even cares about, or people were just stepping over my body on the street.

That's kind of the worst thing. And.

Often when you really get into the worst one, you even start chuckling because you realize, well, that's probably not going to happen.

But it's good to look at those fears. Look at those fears. Then you ask the sixth question. What's the best thing? What's your ideal scene here? I have done this hundreds of times with hundreds of people. Every time, almost every time you get into the what's the worst scene? People are, well, I could go bankrupt. I could do. Then you say, what's the best that could happen? And they go.

And it dawns on us. We have not even thought of what's the best that could happen. We're so involved in the problem, we haven't really been daring to ask what's the best? Not only a solution, but what's the best solution? You know, what is your ideal scene in this?

So it's incredible.

Yeah, it is incredible. It is. It's amazing. And everyone who does it has the same experience I had with it. Oh, I haven't really been. I mean, I've been. I've had a few, like, random ideas, but I haven't really thought, okay, what do I really want to happen here? You know, what's my ideal?

And I. That's where I thought, well, okay, my ideal scene is I get another distributor. And this voice in my brain said, duh, you know, why didn't you know that, you know, five months ago when they didn't pay you for the first month, you know, but so literally the next day I got another distributor. Much I've been with them ever since. They're great. So my ideal seat, I get a distributor and we make a profit and I get a bonus from profit sharing big enough to pay off all my checks. And, you know, my ideal was right there and very clear. Okay, so get your ideal scene in mind then. Question 7. Why isn't the ideal scene happening? Why isn't that happening? What's. And that gets you right down to your core beliefs, you know, I said, well, I'm an idiot. I'm. I'm out of control financially. I'm a fool. I'm a fool with money. And you nail then that deep core belief, that deep, I like to call them Underlying beliefs. Now, because core sounds so solid, you know, it's because these beliefs can and do change over time. So my underlying belief was I was a total fool with money. Then question eight, what affirmations? Or you could even just call them counter statements. What statements can you tell yourself? Can you think that totally counteract and contradict those deep beliefs? So with me, it's okay, I'm a fool with money. Okay, I am sensible and in control of my finances. I'm creating total financial success in an easy and relaxed manner in a healthy and positive way in its own perfect time for the highest good of all. That was, I literally did that while I was driving down the freeway. I did the process and I just pulled over on the shoulder of the freeway to write it down because I thought I'll forget it, you know, because the words, when you find the right affirmation or counter statement, every word should feel really good to you. And if it doesn't for some reason, keep playing with the words, playing with the words until you find something that it literally feels like it empowers every cell of your body. The right affirmation. When I said I am sensible and in control of my finance, I had never in my life been sensible, any control of my finance. But as soon as I started saying that, sure enough, oh, it's easy to be sensible. All I need to do is make some more money and make more money than I spend. That's how to be sensible. It's very simple. It's not complicated.

It's amazing what a powerful process.

Was. Life changing. Definitely life changing.

And once you get to the affirmation stage there, how important is it to build repetitions with the affirmation?

Yeah, people often ask that and I think it varies with the individual. You just have to repeat it enough to. So your subconscious says yes to it. Some brilliant person and I forget who. I maybe I never even knew who. But someone once said that our subconscious mind is like an incredibly powerful five year old. A five year old will believe whatever you tell it, you know, he or she'll believe there's monsters under the bed if they're five, you know. And our subconscious mind is like that.

Yeah.

So if we tell it, if we're moping through the day saying, oh, this sucks, this is really difficult, you know, our subconscious believes that. Then if we start saying I'm sensible and in control of my finances, our subconscious really picks up on that, really picks up on it. So it is all, it's all about the power of thought. We Tell our subconscious I am creating total financial success. It says yes. But then if our next thought is, it's so hard though, it's so difficult. Our subconscious mind said yes, it's so hard for you with those thoughts. Yes, exactly. I really think that's the process and it's that simple.

Incredible. I've got a five year old son just by chance. I can really relate to that totally. And the subconscious mind. So how does that function? So for someone out there who's like not really thought about their subconscious mind and how it impacts their life in reality that they see, how does the subconscious mind function? And when you're feeding it and programming it and giving it commands through affirmation, what happens after that?

The way I see it is that it just.

Well, it's all, it's functioning all the time. I mean our, the way I see subconscious mind, it's the same thing, the same force that took that sperm cell and egg and started driving whatever that power is. The, our subconscious built our whole system and our subconscious mind keeps healing. All our, all the healing systems that we have, even in the nervous. All the systems that we're, we're not conscious of at all. They're just even breathing or heartbeat. It's all subconscious below our conscious level. We couldn't exist if we were conscious of it all. We, you know, have to direct. Oh we got a scratch. We have to direct our healing system, you know, our incredible. I see it as an incredible subconscious force, you know, I mean our healing systems have. I was just here. If we have a scratch, there is like these little nano machines that immediately build these long band aids.

Cell band aids that they put over the scratch. And you know, just all of our, our bodies are so amazing and so much of it is subconscious and somehow, I mean.

There'S the mystery underneath it of the whole process of creation. The force of creation. What? How did you know the Big Bang happened in the first place? How did all these simple elements, mostly hydrogen and helium from early stars, keep combining, combining, combining and ended up creating this earth and creating life. And that's the mystery of it all. The mystery of all. And I don't think we can ever understand what that force is, but I know we can set it in motion with our thoughts. And that, that to me is what the subconscious mind is. It's, it's the force of creation that is constantly operating throughout our bodies.

So powerful. I love that. And in our pre call we were just chatting about some stuff you were doing and you were up in British Columbia Catching up with Eckhart Tolle. So you had all these authors like Eckhart and Deepak and so forth, come and actually use your publishing firm to publish their amazing books. And the reason I want to talk about that is because obviously the people that you surround yourself with have a direct impact on the way that you think and the way that you carry out your thoughts and your subconscious programming. So who have you been around in the last, say, 15, 20 years, maybe longer, that have really impacted you in such a profound and positive way?

Oh, definitely Eckhart. Eckhart has been the greatest. I think he's the greatest teacher on earth. He sure is. For me, he's really helped take everything.

To a new level in my life from including inner peace and including financially. The book is sold, I don't know what it is now, 10 million copies and just keeps going and going and going all over the world. 50 foreign editions.

Amazing.

It's brilliant. It's the best book I ever read. So definitely Eckhart. I looked through the whole length. In the beginning it was Shakti Gawain, she was my girlfriend. And we took that, we did the core belief process together and took that seminar together. I was 28, she was 26. And that's where I met her. And.

She ended up having an impact on my life for sure because she was tenacious about consciousness growth and she really affected me a lot early on. But yeah, the last 15 years, Eckhart.

Incredible. And he really walks his talk. He's just a delightful guy to hang out with and.

I just love him.

And for people out there, you know, for the person that's listening right now going, hey, I don't live near Eckhart. I don't have a connection with Eckhart. What can we do as individuals who maybe don't have really healthy people around us? What can we do to get those Eckharts and those Deepaks and those Mark Allen's into our minds? How can we let them become our mentors?

YouTube. YouTube's incredible. I, I often do that. Sometimes I'll just want to hit a Eckhart inspiration. So I'll just, I mean, I've got a bunch of. I Even I have CDs of his years still. But now it's just, I just go to YouTube, do Eckhart tolle and you can even do it specifically, I just like you can do Eckhart Tolle on anxiety and a whole bunch of incredible talks will pop up. And.

YouTube is amazing because, you know, you really do get it's like hanging out with somebody, you know, it's just like. I mean, now I'm like hanging out with you right here.

Yeah. It's kind of mind boggling, eh?

Yeah, it is. It's great technology. It's wonderful.

Yeah. That's amazing. So for the person that is listening, that's one thing to think about is saturate your mind and surround yourself with people through the use of YouTube, podcasts, online courses, books, all those important things.

Yes, yes.

Now, please tell me about your most recent book and what inspired it.

Oh, boy. Well, the last big book that I did that I'm still really behind is called the Magical Path. I had done visionary business about the business and the millionaire course about creating a career. And then I started. I thought it would be kind of a small book, but when I was 21, I found this magical bookshop.

In Madison, Wisconsin, and.

I found a little book called the Art of True Healing by a man named Israel Regarding. And it turned out to be. It's a course in Western magic. And I remember sat down with it and he has these meditations to heal your body. And.

I. It healed my body. I was in horrible health when I was 21. Horrible. The last two years of college nearly killed me, almost literally. I. I almost OD'd on massive quantities of methadry, crystal meth. Horrible, horrible for your health. And I wasn't even aware. Well, finally I was totally aware that it was destroying my health. So I finally. I quit doing it. And right after that, I found that book. I couldn't even walk up a flight of steps. I remember, without stopping halfway up and just pausing because my heart was going.

It was very, very bad for my heart. And I mean, one day I even. I nearly OD'd. The guy that turned me onto it did OD. And one day I just. I passed out. And I don't know for how long, but I woke up and I was on the floor on my back and I couldn't move. I couldn't move a muscle. My heart was going like this and I could not move. And literally this voice in my head said, I think this is bad for your health.

You think?

And right after that, I found the Art of True Healing and I did this. He called it the Middle Pillar Meditation. You can find that on YouTube if you go. Mark Allen, Middle Pillar Meditation. I've got the meditation right there. The first time I did that and I forget how long I spent. Maybe a half an hour and maybe less or maybe, I don't know. What? But I remember I was sitting in a big chair and I got up afterwards. You. You basically imagine healing energy flowing through your body from the top of your head. Then you even circulate healing energy around. And I do really think it affects your subconscious healing system. Right. You can direct the healing anywhere in your body that needs it. And it's. It's a very simple but powerful meditation I did that. I got up out of that chair. I felt healed. I felt 20 pounds lighter. Remember, my heart rate had really slowed down. My blood pressure had been, I'm sure, through the roof with meth. But I said, whoa, this works. This is healing my body. I could feel it. Literally, it felt like I could feel vibrant healing energy in every cell in my body.

So.

So from there, that I really got into some things in Western magic and over the years did quite a few things. And I just had this idea, you know, for the people interested in a whole other way to approach creating the life of your dreams can be through. You can look at it as your magical path. And I thought that's exactly what I did. So I didn't do any research for the book or anything. I just started putting in everything I'd done over the years. I thought it would be a little short book at first. And it kept growing. I kept waking up at 3am and thinking, oh, yeah, I did that ritual. I did a magical circle and a ritual, you know, imagining I'm the entire universe. And, well, and I. I ended up creating a. Let's see if I. Yeah, I have it here. A very substantial book.

Beautiful book.

Yeah.

And it's.

It's. It ended up being like.

Close to 300 pages, 275 pages of something incredible. Very. It's very substantial. And, you know, some people love it. The people that want to believe that all creation is a magical process and we can consciously tap into it.

I just want to congratulate you on actually sharing that with the world. And thank you for that. Because I feel often leaders, I work with CEOs and athletes and people that are leading different companies and organizations, and sometimes it's quite easy to get caught in this linear view of the world. It's very transactional. It's very black and white.

With these leaders. What would you say to them? These leaders that have been brought up thinking in a very linear way and thinking it's black and white, how could you open their mind and their consciousness to go, hey, there's actually another way to get the same result, maybe with less friction and less forcing what would your message be to those leaders?

I know when I was 15, I saw Hamlet in Minneapolis. And I remember walking out thinking, it's true, absolutely true. I know that there is far more in heaven and earth than we can imagine, you know, than we can dream of in our philosophy or imagine. And I think it opened my mind a bit. And then I read it was Rilke at first and. And Eckhart's been saying the same thing lately about the two levels of consciousness, the horizontal and the vertical. Most of our lives and our thinking, it's all on horizontal level. Even our business plans are. We're mostly like this. And it was Rilke at first in some novel of his. I read this young couple, we're discussing this, that it's very, very good to focus our consciousness on the vertical, the vertical meaning the entire universe, and realize we're an essential part of the whole thing. And it's why, just like gazing at the moon or even a mountain in the distance or a night sky.

It opens up our thinking totally. We do need to be very linear and very focused at times. It's all that left brain stuff. It's very, very important and very powerful. Very good. But there is all this fabulous. Right brain stuff that is the way I see it, just totally connected to the whole creation of the universe.

And it's more exponential. Like when I hear you speak, I'm like, that's an exponential leadership. That's exponential impact. So if a leader was, let's say they run a Fortune 500 company. What you're saying is rather than think, always thinking tactically, because we got to think tactically or horizontally is from time to time, it might be nice to challenge that thinking and think, okay, how does my leadership position and the organization that I represent, how does it connect with the universe? How does it fit in to transforming humanity? Transforming the universe?

Yes, yes, yes. You know, how does it fit in? Yes. With the whole universe, with our entire Earth. What is the impact that we want to have with the entire Earth?

And every one of us can have a tremendous impact for good. I'm convinced of that.

I'm with you on that. And that's my mission. I shared that with you in our pre call to help transform humanity one leader at a time. And I feel that you can impact a million people by talking to one person, having a great conversation, and that spreads. I've got a question for you that's been in the back of my mind for a while. So thinking and thought leadership and subconscious programming is your sphere it's what you do. It's what you're amazing at. Someone like a Richard Branson and Elon Musk, you know, people that are doing these quite phenomenal things.

Yes.

What is going on in the way that they think.

What.

What do you think helps them think way differently, way more vertically than us?

It's because they have fewer doubts and fears than most people. They can just get amazingly expansive. I've even, like, I've thought, okay, I built my company to a certain level. It's really good. I could really, you know, I'm a multimillionaire, but I could be a billionaire if I wanted. How would I do that? And I started thinking, you know, vertically and got all these ideas, and then I realized, oh, one of my goals is also being lazy. I'm pretty lazy.

That was part of my experiment to the day I turned 30. I realized in my ideal scene, near the bottom, I put, oh, yeah. And I have a life of ease. I don't work too hard. I only work when I feel like it. And I'd been a musician, so I knew that was musicians hours. Like, I don't do a thing until one in the afternoon or something ever. And I don't do Mondays. And that was part of my goal. And I remember doubts and fears coming all up about that. And even my first wife reflected those doubts and fears, saying, you know, if you worked a little harder, Mark, if you got up an hour earlier, you know, you'd probably do a better job, be more organized. And so these doubts and fears came up. But I. I said, no, that's part of my dream. I am affirming I'm lazy. I only work when I feel like it's. And I've done that ever since I started the company, and it totally, totally works. So I said, okay, being a billionaire.

You know, Elon Musk is not lazy. And Richard Branson, they're not lazy people. They have amazing energy, but they just think expansively. Just so wonderfully, expansively that it's incredible. I think it's, you know, it can be an inspiration to. To all of us, you know?

Absolutely. And you mentioned something really powerful earlier in our conversation about questions, the power of great questions. So if someone wanted to think expansively, exponentially, what question would they ask themselves? Or what set of questions could help them to think more vertically?

Right, Right. Well, whatever their dream is, whatever area, whatever, they can just say, how can I expand this? How can I expand this? If. How could I? You could even work backwards. I think when I decided to be a millionaire, for instance. I knew. I told my subconscious I was creating million dollars in liquid assets. And it was like I gave my subconscious instructions and then I felt my subconscious totally accepted it. And then it. I almost have the image. Your subconscious works backwards. It's like, okay, in order to be a multimillionaire, you know, you got to do this and that. It sort of accepts it. And the odd image I have is it kind of works backwards so that then you. You start seeing the first step, second step, but you keeping that, that end in mind and everything, you know, that's powerful.

Mark, I can relate. You mentioned a lot about being a musician. So I'm a drummer. I started drumming when I was eight years old, nine years old.

Oh, great.

Love it. Drums. What helped me travel the world and. But we had a competition. It was the World Solo Drumming Championships. And I remember at 10 years old, in my mind going, I want to win the World Championships. And then my subconscious mind started to go, you can do that? You're going to do that?

Yes.

And then the next steps were not premeditated, they weren't forced. The next steps were practicing two hours a day, four hours a day, doing the basics, stepping forward. And all of a sudden it was like that goal kept, that subconscious goal, kept just moving towards me, moving, and I wasn't forcing it. And on the day that I was fortunate enough to win my first World Championship, I was like, wow. Like, I didn't force that. That kind of. I set it as an intention and I did exactly what you just mentioned. It's one simple step. And it was reverse engineered. The goal was reverse engineered.

That's a great story. Yeah, that's exactly how it feels like it works to me, too. You get that intention and then every step just seems totally obvious and simple. You know, it's. In fact, I often think, duh, why didn't I think of this earlier? You know, once I get a clear goal, oh, just do this. And sometimes I do have that thought, why didn't I think of that few years ago?

I love it. And it's so interesting. I had a client recently who was really obsessing on the end goal, a pretty substantially huge end goal, and was starting to fall short on some of the milestones along the way, and then started to doubt and started to build fear and started to get stressed. And I was like, hey, your subconscious knows what the end goal is, but what are your daily actions? What are those things that you need to do each day? And he started rhyming them off. And I said, okay, that first one, have you done that today? He went, no. I said, okay, let's forget about the big one, the big bold goal that you set in the future, and let's just measure and focus on today's steps. And I know, and I have faith that he will achieve that incredible, monumental outcome if he just focuses on the next step.

Yeah, that's brilliant.

What's on the, on the cards for you? Just before we wrap up? What's. What's the next exciting milestone, the next exciting thing that you're working towards?

Well, I've been talking lately. I just did an hour podcast about how we all can have the power to change the world. And how do we change the world? I want to see the world substantially change in my lifetime. And I've been thinking, you know, there's like four levels that the world is changing on, but one, the individual level. Every individual can do something. Can do something. Every end of. I don't care if you're a homeless, you know, poverty kid, you can pick up the trash or something. We can all do something. Then there are all these nonprofit corporations that are doing incredible things now. Support them, then. Corporations. The corporations are incredibly powerful. If they would practice the three P's rather than just the P for profit, you know, and this is getting well known. And the three Ps, one planet and people, if they support all their people, give profit sharing to every employee, if they cleaned up all their neighborhoods, if. I mean, corporations could transform the world very, very quickly.

You know, as government. And of course, some do good things and some don't, but basically lobbying corporations, if you work in a corporation to make more conscious changes and doing something yourself, we all have the power to really do something substantial to help make this a better world for our children.

So beautifully put. And if you. Just a last question. If you had to give a young person, whether it's a child, there's a young person in your life, some advice, and they asked you, hey, Mark, how can I lead my life on purpose? What would your advice be to them?

I just always say, dare to dream. Dare to dream the most fulfilling life you can imagine. And your purpose will be in there. Your purpose will be in there. Dare to follow your passion. Dare to dream and go for it. And then doubts and fears will arise. Okay, that's the work. That's the work.

That's amazing.

You know, dreamers change the world. There was some quote like that, like, oh, James Allen said that. And as you think dreamers are the saviors of the world said. Yes.

So true.

So true.

Well, I want to thank you not only for gracing us with your presence today, but also for the amazing work that you do through New World Publishing, through the great books you write, through the other authors that you share their work. It's simply phenomenal. And you are transforming human humanity one reader at a time.

Well, thank you, James, really. And thank you for all you do.

You're.

You're doing wonderful work now.

Much appreciated. And I look forward to connecting with you in person. And whether it's in New Zealand or whether it's in the States, I look forward to connecting.

I'd love that.

I'd love that. That's amazing. Thank you so much.

Thank you for all you do.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button. And I'd love to if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders. It's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.