190: How Successful People Think Smart by Dr. Jill Ammon-Wexler

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It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Jill Ammon Wexler to the show. She's the author of how successful think 7 ways you can develop their mind power. Jill, welcome. How are you today?

I'm just great. Enjoying the sun. How about you, Jason?

Good. Doing the same thing. You've got an incredible resume. You served on Jimmy Carter's special commission on women in business.

Yes, I did.

Been consulting for 45 years on these topics. So we're gonna have an interesting discussion. Tell us a little bit about your background.

I was initially going toward becoming a physician and stumbled into the mind through a meeting that was happening at Stanford. It was just a very informal meeting. Students from Stanford, UC Berkeley and San Jose. We were studying the brainwaves of meditators, Jason, and what we discovered, I mean, just blew the top right off our heads. We discovered alpha brainwaves and went wild. Thought we'd hit the mother load.

And can you imagine if you had back then the functional MRIs we have today, you would have. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, we had very primitive equipment compared to what we have today, but still it was very exciting and it literally changed my life and changed my career path. Although I had done all my pre medical studies, I immediately came to the conclusion that I wanted to study how the brain influences our behavior. And it just became a burning passion of mine at, at that meeting.

There's a lot of ROI here, a lot of return on investment. If we can learn how to more successfully use this incredibly powerful tool between our ears, we can do amazing things. And you know, you mentioned Stanford. Did you go to Stanford?

No, actually I was at San Jose University, University of California at San Jose and completed my first two degrees there, then went on after that to Columbia.

I've been very interested in the work of Dr. Carl Pribram who you're probably quite familiar with at Stanford. Oh y. And his holographic brain theory and how it applies to goal achievement and you know, even the more, you know, catchy phrase nowadays, the law of attraction. Let's dive in and talk about this. I mean, what are some of these Seven ways. And why do you call it, you know, first, maybe the title of the book is interesting to me because it seems like a play on words. Seven ways you can develop their mind power. What do you mean by that?

Well, basically speaking, the people that I've studied through the years, just an amazing people, especially in the very beginning folks in Silicon Valley that were just entrepreneurs, company presidents, judges, performing artists, fascinating people. And I discovered very quickly using eeg, that they all shared very similar brainwave patterns. You don't have just one brainwave, for example, you don't just sit there and you aren't in alpha. Basically you're creating whole scope of brainwaves simultaneously. Well, I discovered that this group of people had a great similarity in their configuration of brain waves. And from there that directed all of my subsequent studies about what is different about the brains of these winners. And can normal people learn to do what they do? And I quickly discovered, yes, there are ways to train that.

That is probably where we go into the seven ways. Okay, highlight those for us if you would.

Well, I'll just run right through them. Basically speaking, the most important thing that I want to open with is that you can train your brain to duplicate the special ways that beginners have developed and use their brains. You aren't just born with that brain, it's developed and used. And the seven ways that winners brains are extremely different is number one, their functional balance. They have developed an ability to simultaneously balance and use both sides of their brain. Now, Jason, ordinary people can't do this. They're either right brained, they're right, they're left brained, they go back and forth. A winner can focus and use the whole brain simultaneously. It's amazing.

Of course, I'm sure you're familiar with like the holosync program and binaural beats and those types of things that claim to help us put the brain together, the two sides of the brain together. Why is it so important that we use both sides? I mean, do we need both sides at the same time? Or are some tasks really suited for one side or the other?

Well, some tasks might be suited for one side or the other, but Marion diamond years ago studied Einstein's brain and discovered that he had a massive, massive amount of glial cells, which are the cells that basically create the highways in your brain. Those glial cells were tremendously thick, supporting the communication between the two sides of the cortex, the cerebral cortex, the left side and the right side. Now, there's some people that do not have that highway System. It's not normal. It's developed, it's there in terms of being able to use it simultaneously. I'll tell you one of the things that happens when you truly have a balanced brain. And I've seen this not only with the people I work with, but also in myself. When you have that balance, there's almost like an aha experience that goes along with it. Jason. You can almost feel a flash of light in your brain. You may feel a sense of vibration. And the insight that comes with it is awesome. Okay, so it goes across the two sides.

My first question is, with that. You say that insight, that flash of balance, that aha moment, if you will, is that something that, you know, we all experience occasionally, even if we've never tried to train our brain to use both sides simultaneously?

That's possible.

Okay.

It's possible that in a moment of great insight or even religious insight, that that could occur. Most normal people don't report that happening in their life, but it doesn't mean it can't.

People who have trained this. And of course, I'm going to ask you how we train this, and I can't wait to hear. But the people that have trained it, are they always functioning on both sides at all times?

Not by. No, not by any means.

Oh, okay.

No, this is a state that they can generate, that they can enter into more likely on demand, as opposed to the normal person that you know. It's like a gift that comes and it's gone. It is learned. The ability to control it is learned. For example, you look at Tibetan monks, you can bet that they go in and out of that state. And in fact, I know of one religious leader that practically lives in that state.

If one can do this, and if it's so powerful, powerful and beneficial, wouldn't you just want to stay in the state all the time? Or does it take. Does it take effort to stay in that state?

It would take effort. It would take effort. It would take energy. It would take. Basically speaking, the individual I spoke of that pretty much lives in that state. That is not a state where you would remember to get out of the way of a speeding bus.

You can't live there. That's a state you might want to enter into if you are making an extremely important decision.

It seems like our creator gave us so many great tools. And why wouldn't this just be natural that we would be able to use both sides of our brain? I mean, why are the hemispheres separated and why wouldn't they work together?

Actually, the hemispheres are quite different. The left hemisphere, for example, if you go down into a molecular level, there are almost vertical stacks there that basically create a capability. This stack for this one, the stack for this one, the stack for this one. That portion of the brain is one plus one equals two. It's rational. It handles that aspect of our being. The creative side of our brain, on the other hand, is very interconnected with glial cells. And this creates an ability to literally swim around that side of your cortex to create new combinations of thoughts. Not one plus one equals two. One plus one might equal two and a half over there, and it'll make sense and it will equal two and a half. So you have two different aspects. You know, there are certain people, for example, you look at an engineer, mathematician, they're probably using those vertical stacks and literally going through them looking for analytical answers to things. If you want to be creative, you fall over onto that other side, and that's where you begin to generate alpha brain waves and go into altered states where you can allow yourself to flow into your answers as opposed to logically, analytically breaking them down.

You were talking about the seven steps, right?

Let's go to step two. And this is very, very pronounced in successful people from all walks of life. Jason Winners in any avenue of life have an extremely refined ability to really focus on an activity. They single tax, they do not multitask. Multitasking can be very, very expensive in terms of being able to solve a problem or to do something creative. Because if you break your thought process and go on to a multitask, it can take up to half an hour to refocus and come back to your init task. So refined, focused, extremely refined.

I wonder about that, though. When it comes to things like driving. It's been said that once we learn how to drive and we're, you know, relatively good at it, we're in an alpha state unless we need to really pay attention to something in particular. But generally, isn't driving a sort of an alpha state?

It could be an alpha state.

Okay, when we're in that, my question is, the reason I ask is this. It does not seem to me, regardless of what anybody says, at least for me, dangerous to drive and talk on the phone, or dangerous to drive and listen to music, or dangerous to drive and listen to an audiobook. Dialing the phone may be dangerous, but actual having a discussion on the phone does not seem dangerous.

The minute you think a thought or the minute you open your mouth to say a thought, you are in beta period.

Okay, okay. So talking is Beta.

Talking is beta. Talking to yourself is beta. So in terms of being in an alpha state when you're driving, not necessarily, not necessarily at all. You may be quite stressed. It depends on traffic and the conditions. So I really have to say that beta is something that. That's the normal state that most people live in.

Beta is not that effective. I mean, alpha. Is Alpha the only one that's effective?

Oh, no, no, Beta is very effective for logical analytical tasks and for communicating. You can't really communicate too well without it. Above Beta, you go into Gamma. Gamma, the beta, Gamma division there really looks at passing up into stressed brainwaves until you reach about 40 cycles per second. And that particular brainwave frequency which is in Gamma equals a frequency that is often produced by Tibetan lamas and monks when they go into altered states of consciousness. It's interesting, there are breaks there. And then below the beta, of course, is alpha. And alpha is pretty much creativity. It's more relaxed thought process where your mind would drift rather than hammer for an answer. Below that you fall down, down and end up literally into deeper brainwave states. Most people go into a state of sleep as they go down, whereas the minds of winners, the people that I studied, can actually hold all four brain waves simultaneously. They can have delta brain waves without being sleeping. And incidentally, about down in that level is where things like ESP occur. I've actually measured that and where altered states begin to appear. So these leaders, the thinking leaders, have access to deeper thoughts and deeper aspects of their self than the normal person who walks around in Beta and gamma.

So how many total states are there? Or how many total states are we aware of at this point?

Probably infinite.

Oh, oh, there's a name. So it would span beyond the Alphabet?

Yeah, it probably would. I mean, we are aware of Gamma. But the fact is, then you have technology limitations. We have so much more to learn about the brain than we know now. It's almost silly. It's ridiculous. I've spent 45 years studying IT and every week there's something new.

This may be as unlimited as space exploration. There's a lot here.

Yeah. If you look at string theory, for example, I mean, string theory is telling us they go beyond quantum mechanics and they're telling us basically there is a web, a matrix that creates the entire universe, and that we are each of us a dot on that matrix, but that at the same time we have access through consciousness, which is thought to everything that is connected to that matrix. Which means we have no limits. We Create our limits, we create our reality. It's basically speaking what's happening is metaphysics and science is just coming right together. Want to go to number three?

Yeah, yeah, I'm really.

Let's.

I can't wait to cover these number three. So number three is the unstoppable motivation in the brain, right?

Exactly. And for most people, and you've probably experienced this in your younger years yourself, you get motivated, you're hot on a project, you're going for it, you hit a bump in the road, and you think, why am I even doing this? You know, and that's a common problem of why. Really, super, super motivated people, the winners will just go right past that bump in the road. They have found ways to take the ordinary, the boring tasks that they have to face and to tie those to the big picture, which then makes them more interesting. Oh, gosh, when I get number C done, I can go to D and I'll. That's where the action is. So that there's a very steady motivation. And bumps in the road that would knock most people right off their horse are not that important. Not seen as that important.

Winners are persistent.

Persistent and motivated, and they don't stop.

Forgive me, but that's just somewhat kind of trite, right? I mean, that's not a. You know, that's not a big technical idea, right?

Actually, that is a technical idea. Okay.

All right.

That is directly related to a brain state. It's related to a particular neurotransmitter in your brain. All of what I'm saying is directly related to the actual state of the brain. Now, in order to be motivated, in order to be focused, to feel enthusiasm, etcetera, you need dopamine. Dopamine is not dopey. It is basically the, you know, it's what gives you that motivational spark that looks. You just burn through a task. And there are ways to do that. You can basically feed yourself in a way that creates a higher dopamine level. You can eat protein, you can avoid sugar. You can take tyrosine supplements, which is something that I enjoy doing, because tyrosine in turn, creates sustained increases in your dopamine levels. And you can get that right at a health food store.

Okay, so tyrosine as T, y R.

A C I n e T Y.

Or you can get out in the sun, sunshine, also stimulates the production of vitamin D, which is required for the production of dopamine.

Okay, so dopamine is the persistence supplement, then.

That's what you can call it.

Yeah, yeah. And it's an internal. I mean, it's something that's manufactured internally. I suppose that tyrosine just helps increase the production of it or something.

Exactly, exactly. And if you're, if you're tired, if you're stressed, that will knock those levels down.

Proper sleep is important too.

Sleep is important. It's not a joke.

Okay. How much sleep, by the way? You know, there's so much debate about that, how much we need.

Well, you know, there really is a debate about it because some people function so well on five or six. Some people need eight hours. I think that's a very personal thing. And how do you feel when you get up? Are you clear or are you groggy? If you're groggy, you're not getting enough. I find that I really enjoy a 20 minute to half hour nap in the afternoon. It just really regenerates everything for me. Other people take a nap and they wake up and they say duh.

Right, right. Yeah.

So you really have, you have to feel into what works for you.

Right. It's different for everybody.

Yes, very different. But basically it's based on brain chemicals. There's no guesswork here. This is all chemically based on how your brain does what it does for you or doesn't.

So persistence is a scientific thing. I'm glad that you made that connection. So thank you for doing that. Okay, so let's look at number four.

Okay. Number four is outrageous flexibility that these winners have in their brain. And again, this is not ugum boogam. What we're talking about is again, brain chemicals. And what happens when you stretch it. For example, I'll go back to Einstein's brain. He had massive, massive highways of glial cells that were packed with an abnormal amount of neural networks. And he built that brain when he was a young man. He was considered to be beyond being educated. He was so brilliant. He was just not together. And his teachers had a terrible time with him. So basically speaking, Einstein was a self built genius and he did that with flexible thinking. Now he, for example, and many others down through history had a way of sitting in a chair and he would allow himself to go into an altered state of consciousness. Now, I can tell you right now, he was going all the way down into Delta. And the way that he would do it, to maintain consciousness so that his thoughts would be up there with him on a conscious level. He would hold a little black pebble in each hand and let his hands go over the chair, you know, over the arm of the chair. If he dropped one, it would wake him up. He trained himself to be able to hold that state of consciousness. So basically speaking, most people, as I've said, and you know this to be true, live in. In what we call the comfort zone. They don't like challenges. They have certain habits. They drive to work the same way. They think the same thoughts. They go home and watch the same TV programs and drink the same beer and read the same magazine. And that's the ritual. Now, the ritual is easy and it's comfortable, but the fact is, the leaders, the thought leaders that I've worked with, don't stick to those rituals. They challenge themselves. They challenge constantly to force brain growth. Because here's what happens. When your brain thinks a thought, it creates a neural network. If that neural network is not used, guess what? It's gone in about three to five seconds.

Wow.

Three to five seconds.

It does not stay. Is the neural network. I mean, the neural network is physical, right? That's the. They talk about the plasticity, right? Or the elasticity. I'm not sure which.

The neural network is physical reality, okay? It is in your brain. But the thing is, it's plastic. It changes.

Okay, so let me understand something. So when you think a thought, Jill, you're literally changing the physical composition of your brain just on one little thought. Absolutely amazing. That's incredible.

Now. Now, here's an interesting thing about the brain. The brain likes the comfort zone. Why do you think people fall into the comfort zone? It has certain neural networks, Jason, that are very well established. I want a Budweiser. Okay. Budweiser. I don't think. I didn't say hams. I said Budweiser. So those networks are well established, and they are there. Those networks create the basis of what we call our habits and our beliefs.

That marketers and the branding companies and the advertisers love this, by the way.

You got it. And your brain will go first to those networks automatically. When you want a beer, you go into the bar, you say, I'll take a Bud.

We're all Pavlov.

You don't say, let's see, what kind of beer do I want? There's no question. So that's the basis of your habits and your thought process. Most people live in those places.

I want to ask you, because I think this applies to pretty much everybody listening, myself included. We all have, whether small or large, addictive behaviors, and they're not serving us, okay? I think everybody has their little addictions. Some people have really big, bad addictions, okay? But you know I don't know that any type of addictive behavior is good. I notice it in myself sometimes. You know, I do this or that or I think this or that. Even little addictive thoughts. How can we rewire, assuming we want to, those neural networks? Because those. Those have got to be the basis of addiction, right?

Yes, they are. Well, look at it this way. Picture yourself walking through a meadow. You walk through a meadow the first time, and, you know, you leave a little trail through the grass, and it's gone in three to five seconds. You turn around, you walk back over it. Well, maybe it takes a little longer before it's gone, because that's the second time. The more times you walk on that path, the more times you use that neural network, the more established it is. The only way you can undo a trail through a meadow is to stop using it. So the only way you can undo an addictive habit is to replace it with something else. So are you going to create a new addiction? Well, maybe a new addiction should be something that would be more positive. Such as, I know I can stop any behavior I want and create something new. So that. That would become your new neural pathway. As a pathway is not used just like a path through a meadow, it begins to diminish, and the neurons that were used are scattered out and go elsewhere. That's the thing of plasticity. Your brain is plastic. You can change it.

Then the question becomes, can old dogs learn new tricks, as the saying goes? Because I assume we've got more flexibility here when we're younger. I have a feeling you're gonna say that. Maybe not. Maybe there's hope if we're older and, you know, like the alcoholic who's been drinking all his life or her life. You know, that's a pretty tough thing to change, isn't it? Especially with the chemical that comes from the outside. That changes your body composition, too.

Yes, it does. It changes your body composition dramatically. Yes, it's going to be harder. And yes, it depends on one's motivation. It comes back to, do you have fire and desire enough that you will immediately stop that behavior and create an alternative?

Maybe there's a scientific part, and I think there is. I think maybe that's the overall macro. Look at this, is the fire and desire. Because what I was getting at with the addictive behaviors really, is an alcoholic using that as our example here.

Right.

You know, they can never take a drink again, from what I understand, because they'll just fall back in. It'd be nice if we could sort of, you Know, I'm just gonna say it kind of flirt with our addictions once in a while, you know, to have a little bit of a release, maybe. So, you know, if. If we know that this isn't exactly the best behavior for us, but it's not something extremely destructive, can we kind of go back in and maybe enjoy it once in a while and then jump back out of it? And we're just making the pathway better every time we do it, right? Yeah, that doesn't work that way. We're playing with fire.

We're playing with fire. And guess what? You're gonna burn your fingers.

Right? Boy, I wish you would have given us an easier way out, Jill.

Actually, it takes the fire and desire. Addictions are born in a millisecond, Jason, and they die in a millisecond of decision.

Decision.

Now, I can tell you an interesting story about Anthony Robbins.

Yeah, sure.

Everyone thinks, oh, my God, he's so together and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anthony Robbins as a young man was very heavyset, very overweight.

I've heard the story. Yeah.

And was sitting in a motel because he was so poor, a flop house probably. And got up one morning and was dressing himself and just became so disgusted with his behavior, he picked up a shoe and threw it at the wall. Then he picked up another shoe, threw at the wall, and said, that's it, I have had it. And he made an instant decision, fire, passionate decision to change his life. So, you know, there's no way around it.

Here's the problem. Here's the problem. Usually, like Anthony Robbins was in his comfort zone. The alcoholic is in their comfort zone, if you will. And the problem is it usually has to get so dire and so bad, and then it gets harder to rewire because there's just more neuro pathway wiring. And, you know, the longer you wait, the longer you're in that comfort zone or that addiction. I guess the comfort zone is an addiction in a way. The harder it is to rewire. So the thing to do is, you know, notice proactively, hey, this is not exactly good for me. And before I go down this path too far, I'm gonna change it now.

Right?

Nip it in the mouth.

Now is always better. Now is always better than tomorrow. Tomorrow has a way of not arriving right.

You know, the sixth or the fifth thing, if we go back to that list that we're working on, the seven things is creativity. And I will tell you, the people that I've worked with through the years, especially the higher level folks, including the Ones on Jimmy Carter's list actively, actively, actively have stretched their brains. They use their creative muscles in just outrageous ways.

Should we all be subscribing to, you know, lumosity.com or those?

Lumosity is not going to teach you to be creative. Okay, Basically what I recommend you do, creativity is very connected to your central brain and also to your right brain. So creativity, you can build your creative muscles, but what you have to do is determine that you're going to respond in new ways to challenges, in new ways to problems, to allow yourself to develop new connections in the brain and especially in the regions of the central and lower parts. So creativity is not just a right brain thing. It also, it can stimulate whole brain integration that we talked about earlier and strong ties to down into your emotions. If you close down your emotions, you're closing down your creativity. Because creativity utilizes the limbic system, the emotional system in the center of your brain.

So you're really saying we should all be more emotional.

Allow yourself to be more emotional. Allow yourself to feel your emotions, Allow your emotions to come to the surface. Because there is a just such a tie between emotions and creativity, you wouldn't believe it. People that are shut down emotionally are not tending to be creative. They just aren't. So what you want to do is, you know, spend time to explore unfamiliar topics, challenge yourself. People that are very logical, I recommend that they go and take a painting class or take a poetry class or something that will totally put them in the other side of their brain and allow them to expand that. And also, I've done a lot of brainwave studies that basically speaking, when you have one of those aha insights that lights up the whole surface of your cortex, what you're doing is you have a high gamma brainwave spike. Now, this level of gamma brainwave creativity is when your neurons suddenly connect and they create an entire new neural network that reaches up into the gamma level, okay, that enters your consciousness and is occurring in the right cortex. This is all measurable. It's all measurable. And you can develop this by concentrating intently on a goal or a problem and then let it go. Relax. Just relax and go into an altered state. Just let it go. But don't go to sleep. That's when you're generating alpha, and that's going to set the stage for that, those novel connections that are going to occur. So just allow your mind to drift, and you can always do what Einstein did. Hold a little rock or something in each hand so that you keep yourself from falling into sleep. Because sleep is not going to generate creativity.

There's got to be a way to use what I'll call the dead time. But it's not dead time. I know it's super important, and that is sleep. What about sleep learning, playing audios while we're sleeping, Would that just disturb us and diminish our sleep quality? Or is there some way you can hack sleep, if you will, to learn more while you're sleeping or to use the power of your dreaming? You know, I mean, I read a book on lucid dreaming. I don't really know how to do it, but it sounds like a great skill.

The interesting thing is when you're doing lucid dreaming, you're not asleep.

Well, okay, fair enough.

There's really no way that I have discovered personally either a science or an art of actually using sleep training.

So just leave the sleep alone. Now, what do you think? I asked, I mentioned at the beginning, but what do you think of things like binaural beats and holosynch?

Oh, I'm glad you asked.

These things that promise to make your brain work together, both sides, right?

Well, I use brainwave training extensively and I have for 45 years. One of the first things I discovered is that binaural beats, unfortunately, you very soon find a way to turn them off. Your brain does it. Your brain gets bored and says, I'm not going to listen to that anymore, and turns it off. It's much more effective to use isochronic tones, which I also like to use in many of my brainwave trainings that I do, and to introduce some music and some change, because the brain loves changing stimulation. It doesn't like the same old thing for hours and hours. It shuts it off.

The binaural is pretty boring. The holosynch is nicer to listen to.

Yeah, holosync is a little bit better.

But where do we get these isochronic beats? Is that what you call them?

Yeah. Actually, I have two places that you can come and I recommend that anyone that's interested in the brain come to buildmindpower.com. okay.

And just for. Just for disclosure purposes, are you involved with that? Is that your.

Oh, yes, that's my. That's one of my websites. I have over 10.

Okay.

And actually there's a free course they can get there that they'll enjoy. There's articles there that they can read, and in addition to that, there are products and they will learn a little bit more also about the audios. Or they can go to Quantum Leap Audios and learn more about the audios that I use. I have many, many different audio collections. Some for creativity, you know, whatever. Full range.

What was that? Quantum Leap. What?

Quantum Leap. Deep Audios.

Okay. And are these things where you know, you down. It's an MP3 download or a CD or something, or do you have an app for the iPhone?

MP3s and they do play on iPhones and pads and computers, all that stuff.

Okay, let's talk about the remaining steps. We have a few more steps, I think.

Okay, let's go to resilience for that. Basically speaking, that is a learned trait. And I often think of of Martha when she had her encounter with the government a few years back and basically met the press and had lemons in her hand. And what she said to them is, my mother always taught me to make lemonade out of lemons. There is an unstoppable resilience that comes with this winner's brain. And basically speaking, you can take winter and knock them to the ground and they're going to get up faster than anyone else. And sometimes the harder you hit them, the faster they'll get up. Now obviously that's a learned skill that comes as you develop your brain. It's not something that's necessarily automatic, but it is learnable. And the ability to deal effectively with challenges is very important. It's a refined skill. Especially if you look at investors. For example, I'm an investor, I know how it is. Sometimes you win and sometimes you're going to get kicked in the shins. And that's the truth. And if you stop the first time you get kicked in the shins, you're not an investor anymore. You're a loser. So basically speaking, alpha breaks, I think are one of the most important things to build resilience. To not identify what's a failure if it happens, to immediately call it a lesson, a learning to restructure anything that kicks you in the shins into something that you have learned that's going to take you forward. And that's an attitude.

I think a lot of this comes down to just self talk too, doesn't it? Because if we tell ourselves in a convincing manner that we're persistent and we get up after we fall down, then we, we're just going to become that person, right?

Yes, we are. And the way that that works is let's take a little sidetrack here and take a look at that. What you're talking about is really affirmations in a way. There's a person that wants to Become a successful investor, a successful tennis player, you know, whatever. And if they spend five minutes a day saying, I am a successful investor, I am a successful tennis, tennis player, you might presume that this would be helpful to them. But the truth is, the minute they put that down, if their brain then comes back and says, yeah, well, I lost, you know, 25,000 on that last deal and blah, the brain will return to negative thoughts unless you are very persistent. And I mean, you have to mean it. You have to put someone, put the monkey on your shoulder to watch for those negative messages. And they come in the subconscious mind. And when, the minute you hear it, turn it around and say, no, I am a successful investor. I learned from that. So that you have to restructure your thought process and you can't just do it five minutes a day and expect it to do anything for you. So perseverance furthers.

How long do you need to do it then? I mean, if you get something, you.

Have to do it all your life. As long as, as long as those negative little things sneak around in the back of your mind, persevere. Because, you know, each of our devils live within us, each of the things that encourage us to fail or give up or not try again or, you know, I've fallen down 95 times on these, on the skateboard, and I'm not going to fall in 96. Every time you find a negative thought, go after it. Go after it and mean it and just. And watch for them and turn them around and you will find that you'll have fewer and fewer and more and more positive thoughts happening. It's reconditioning the brain. It's elasticity. Your brain will pay attention to the path that you pass over the most times. That's the simplest way I can put it. One more thing that really sets winners apart, and that's future orientation. The winners in any field are not looking over their shoulder at what happened before. What they're looking at is what is my goal? What are the two things that I have to do today to move forward on that? Have I done them? Okay, let's go do them now. Where am I going? They focus on what it is that they want and, and where they're going to get it and not what has happened in the past. You know, past successes are okay, but don't focus on just a past success. Focus on how you're gonna use it to go forward.

The future orientation. I can definitely see that. You know, I recently had Dan Millman on the show the Peaceful Warrior Great book, great guy, great movie. Yeah. He or Eckhart Tolle, they would say live in the now. So how do you reconcile that future orientation with the live in the now advice?

Basically speaking, you're creating your future in the present moment. Like Alan Watts. Alan Watts said be here now. Unless you are present in the present moment, you're not creating the future, you create it. Basically speaking, we are probably about, you know, maybe 15 seconds ahead of ourself anyway is what the evidence seems to appear is that we're living the future already. So be here now is an excellent thing to say. It's what the religious leaders say. It's what Ellen wants you to say. Just be here now and you will be enlightened and you'll know how to move forward. And then next five, next five minutes now. Be here now.

So that future orientation isn't about having long term goals for the next five, 10 years or even the next year. It's about having a goal fit 15 seconds out.

Well, you can have a goal for the rest of your life. There's nothing wrong with goals. Goals set your mind to what it is you want to accomplish. But if you are here now, what if you suddenly discover that that's not really the goal that you want anyway? Being totally present in the moment is an expanded consciousness. And Millman would tell you that, you know, any of them would tell you that you are expanded when you're in the present.

There's just one more thing I want to ask you about. I know I'm keeping you a little long here, so I hope it's okay.

That's okay.

It's your fault because you're so interesting. So you have to take responsibility for being interesting.

You know, I take responsibility fully.

The thing I want to ask you about, we've alluded to it a few times, just throughout the conversation, I think, but the law of attraction type of stuff, I find that to be missing. You know, that and I'm really referring mostly to the. The secret, I guess when I say that that was so popular a few years back, I find that to be missing certainly some important parts. You know, it's just not the whole picture. You can sit around and hang out at New Age conferences and you know, say you're attracting prosperity. And all the people I know that do this, they're not generally very prosperous. There are those who think and talk and those who do, maybe. But when it comes to the scientific side of Carl Pribram and the holographic brain theory stuff that I discovered so Many years ago. I just think, wow, I mean, that seems to make some leaps in logic that we have not yet discovered. But hey, in 1960, going to the moon was magic. What do you say about that? You know, how do you have goal achievement? And we've definitely alluded to that in this talk. But maybe wrapping some of it up or adding to it, I see law.

Of attraction and goal achievement from the standpoint of the brain, which is logical. That's where I come from. And when you talk about the two again, what I want to go back to is the path through the meadow. It's really that simple. Are those law of attraction people actually creating a neural network that will take them where they want to go? Or are they doing their oogum boogam this thing today, that thing tomorrow, try something else the next day. Not really committed to believing that they are achieving it, they are wanting it for the future. And they spend maybe five minutes thinking I, you know, I, blah blah, blah. But then the minute they turn away and go back to their life, there's this little voice in the back of the mind that says, yeah, yeah, yeah, you want a new house, but you can't even take care of the one you got. Or what do you mean you want a new car? You know, what do you need a new car for? So there is the distraction that comes up. Doesn't matter. Whether it's law of attraction or goal setting, it doesn't matter. It's the same, same, same. Are you committed? Are you on path? Do you really know what you want and are you taking the steps to create it? Regardless of the bumps in the road, regardless of what anyone else says, are you using your full brain in the most officious way to create and manifest your goal or your law of attraction goal? It comes down. It's the same. It literally is the same. It's not oogum boogum. It comes down to what's happening in your brain.

You didn't really talk much about visualization. Talk about the neural pathway. I guess so that really. I guess we influence that neural pathway through visualization, through self talk.

Right.

And through actual live experiences too.

Right, right. Through things that we read, things that we focus on. What you focus on, you will create. Basically, we create our lives according to what we focus on. Again, that comes to the law of attraction, that comes to goal setting. That comes to what you're visualizing, comes to what you're affirming. It all comes together and it's all brain science. You know, how effectively are you using your brain to accomplish what it is you want to accomplish.

I want to compliment you. Your interview was excellent and you have so many books and the reviews are numerous and very, very high on Amazon. You know, I get suspicious whenever I see a book with like, you know, eight reviews. But your books have, you know, over 100 reviews many times and that, you know, four and a half stars. So very good, very good stuff. I'm looking forward to diving into more of your content and so you can find a lot of it on Amazon.com, but I'm sure you want to give out one of your websites and tell people where they can learn more. You gave it a couple of the audio websites, but I don't know if you have a more general one you want to mention.

The more General1 is buildmindpower.com and I think they really enjoy that website. And also there's a free course there, a 12 part course. It's not just a lightweight, you know, yada dada. It's a very meaty course that they're welcome to pick up.

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