AIPIS 220 - Testing Your Ego Strength & Ego Drive with Peter Sage

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Welcome to the show. This is Jason Hartman, your host. And every 10th episode we do something kind of special, kind of different. We what we do is we go off topic. So regardless of which show it is on the Hartman Media Network, whether it be one of the financial shows, economics, real estate, investing, travel, longevity, all of the other topics that we have, every 10th episode we go off topic and we explore something of general interest, something of general life, success, value. And so many of our listeners around the world in 164 countries have absolutely loved our 10th episode shows. So that's what we're gonna do today and let's go ahead and get to our guest with a special 10th episode show. And of course on the next episode we'll be back to our regular programming. Here we go. It's my pleasure to welcome a returning guest back to the show and that is Mr. Peter Sage. He is an amazing person, a serial entrepreneur, author, master trainer, educator, philosopher, public speaker, talks about fields of human behavior, personal development, psychology of success. He's started and founded and built over 20 companies in the last quarter century, diverse industries. He's shared the stage with Bill Clinton, Richard Branson, Kofi Annan just has, has a rather amazing life actually. So he's had a recent adventure that most people would consider pretty negative. And we're going to talk about that today as we talk about how to deal with adversity. And of course, we'll touch on some other stuff as well. Peter, welcome back. How are you?

Jason, Absolute pleasure to be here. It's wonderful to connect. I'm great, thank you.

Well, most people would think the experience you just finished, you call it an adventure. And most people would consider that an amazing label for what happened to you. Tell the audience what happened to you. I mean, you're. Should we call you an ex con now?

Not technically, because I still don't have a criminal record. I mean, it was fascinating the way things unfolded. I was in a typical legal dispute and anybody in who's anybody in business these days understands the power of litigation. Litigation, it's nothing more than a tool. It's got nothing to do with who's right or wrong.

It's a mess. Yeah.

Why does Apple sue Samsung over patent rights? It's so that they can get their products blocked at the Berlin Fair. It's not about who's right or wrong. I found myself wound up against a bit of a David and Goliath situation where I got a Fortune 100 blue LC company now doing 140 billion a year, took a little bit of exception over a business deal we'd done six years before and decided to, you know, sort of knock on my door one day with a freezing order to squeeze me into a settlement.

Yeah. So, Peter, so you were in a deal, you had a deal with Hewlett packard, their Fortune 100 company. Huge, huge company. Obviously, lots of money, lots of lawyers. And that was six years earlier. And what just, you know, like in a sentence, just tell us, what was the dispute? Like, were they suing you for like a collection matter? Did they say you breached the contract or, you know, what happened?

They said that I resold some, some goods that I wasn't entitled to resell and there was no contract, there was nothing preventing me. And so they were just trying to get some extra profit that I'd made on the deal as far as I was concerned. But they're using the legal system to manipulate me. So I kicked back and my ego got in the way. And when I was in court, I thought it would get thrown out and I basically found myself ended up being in contempt and was sentenced to. Well, ended up serving six months in one of Britain's toughest jails as the only non criminal in the jail. I was a civil prisoner. That was unexpected. I didn't see it coming. As many adversity sort of, you know, don't arrive announced. And yeah, one minute I'm running a business with 50 staff adding value. I've got my wedding happening, I've got seminars happening. In the next minute, I'm in jail.

Wow. Wow, that's amazing. So, you know, when you're found in contempt, though, it's because you didn't participate in part of the litigation. You know, I had a litigation where I was suing an insurance company once and they found me in contempt and it wasn't my fault at all, it was my lawyer's fault. He just disappeared, Peter. I mean, the guy just disappeared. Now, of course, I filed a bar complaint against the scumbag and, you know, hopefully he'll lose his license. I mean, I had another lawyer years ago that did lose his license because he was such a weasel. It's scary how your lawyer can get you into trouble through literally no fault of your own. And what I find is that, and I don't know if this is this way in England, but in the US the judges don't really place the blame on the lawyers much. They place it on the parties and it's not the party's fault at all a lot of times. So yeah, I, to pay a sanction. I was really upset about that and you know, I'll probably never recover it from the lawyer who's disappeared, but, you know, hopefully he'll at least lose his license over it. But yeah, it's. So, so what happened? What did you not participate in? Is that the way it works in Britain or not?

It was, it was down to a freezing order. And it was, it was things like, you know, I should have provided bank statements, which I was happy to do. And I signed, I ended up signing to Hewlett Packard, all of the authorities for them to go get them. But because two of the banks didn't respond to that letter, six months later they file a contempt charge for me. I'm like, well, guys, I gave you permission to go get it. That's what you want. It was that kind of stuff. It was all smoke and mirrors and I really thought it would get thrown out. But no, I went in there basically, instead of apologizing to the court, I went in there with my back up against the wall, kicking back against what I thought Hewlett Packard were doing, which was basically really taking liberties because they had more money. That was my mistake. It was my ego that essentially got me caught up there. But I found myself next minute inside one of jails with, you know, we're talking everything from terrorists to mass murderers to, you know, rapists to all of that kind of stuff that you normally see on tv. It was like, it was really like Prison Break. It was that kind of wow, wow.

Sort of surprising that over a civil matter they put you in such a harsh prison. I don't know, maybe that's the way the system works in England. But in the US I would usually think it's you know, kind of club fed concept, you know, but yeah, no.

I should have been there for a week before transferred to an open facility. And I was actually there for, for just under five months and served my last sort of five, six weeks in an facility. But in that sort of four and a half, five months, I had an amazing time I really did. I went in there without the identity of a prisoner. This is a huge part because identity plays such an important part in how you deal with life. Yeah, it's the governing factor in how we see ourselves. I went in there as a secret agent of change. You can't resist what happens. Crying over spilt milk is a waste of time. The milk is spilled. You can't undo it. So resistance to what is is futile. So, you know, when I walk down the steps and they slam the door, I mean, okay, I'm here. What do I do about it? Yeah. And so I take all the energy of resentment, all the energy of pity and self, you know, sort of woe is me and channel that into, well, if I'm here, what am I? Clearly, I try to help people. That's what I do. So maybe I'm here to help people that wouldn't normally get access to my work. Yeah, let's go to work and do that. And that's what I did. And I embarked on this secret agent of change kind of mission and had the most incredible sort of four to five months in that jail that I would never have had the opportunity to, to participate in or enjoy had that not happened.

So, you know, there's an old saying that I really try to live by. Everything in life is what you make it. It's not what is that counts, it's how you take it. And, you know, you seem to have really mastered that under very difficult circumstances. How did you do that? A lot of what happens to us in life is, or how we perceive it obviously is just self talk. If we keep telling ourselves with our conversations in our head, you know, that this is terr. It's unfair, you know, I'm bitter, I'm angry about it, you know, then certain results will follow. Peter. But if we tell ourselves, hey, you know, this is an opportunity, it's, you know, kind of, you know, hey, listen, if you're in business nowadays, probably, you know, if you're really trying to make it happen, you're stressed. And, you know, you could almost look at this as kind of a break. I mean, I don't know, it's a different kind of stress, maybe depending on who you're with, but.

Yeah, yeah.

Again, understanding that stress only lives in one place in the universe, and that is in the mind. That's it. Everything else just is. You know, the tree doesn't stand there worrying if it's going to get blown down by a storm tomorrow. It just deals with whatever happens and what we Forget is that life is a growth centric experience. We're here to evolve. And the only way you evolve is through adaptation to challenge. Yeah, we've got 400 million years of fossil records that guarantee that. That's not arguable. The strongest trees grow in the strongest winds, not the best soil. So when adversity show up, because we've been conditioned into this 20th, 21st century level of certainty that just doesn't exist, we feel that we have the right to be comfortable and unchallenged. And as every parent knows, the unchallenged child remains juvenile. You have a situation where stuff is going to happen. We can't control that. So if you're trying to, I've got news for you. Life is going to throw you curveballs. Not because it doesn't like you, but because you know it's your personal trainer. If you hire a personal trainer and go to the gym and you don't throw up at the end of the session, you want your money back. But if you have a perspective, let's say you're doing a deal, a real estate deal, and all of a sudden you put all of the importance on, it's got to close because you need to pay your mortgage on Friday and the deal goes south. It doesn't matter what happens. It only matters with what you do with what happens, as you rightly say. So you've got one or two ways to look at that. You can either say, well, what can I learn from this? What's great about this? I've not noticed yet. Ask yourself better questions. Or you can go. Instead of digging and reaching for an insight, most people reach for a. They reach for a distraction because they don't know how to handle it. They start future pacing negative scenarios and then what ifs. And at that point you're done. Because the only thing you can ever do, Jason, is experience what's in the outer world through the interpretation of the inner world. Two men sat behind prison bars. One saw mud, the other saw stars. The environment is almost irrelevant. It's how you deal with the environment internally. And that's it. And again, identity plays a part. Do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? Do you see yourself as a superstar salesman? Or do you see yourself as somebody who's trying to make it in the world because the world's trying to beat you up? The world's ultimately a mirror. It's going to agree with everything that you put out there. Oh, sure, life's hard. All you're going to attract is evidence that you're right.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, Peter, it amazes me how in life some people get so discouraged over little tiny things. I'll share two examples for you to comment on. One time, I remember I saw the movie many years ago, Gladiator, with Russell Crowe. You know, we all know the movie. I walked out of that movie with a buddy of mine, fellow entrepreneur, who, who said, look at what these people went through. And I can't even get my salespeople to make a darn cold call. You know, they're like, afraid of rejection when, you know, these people were obviously the gladiators. You know, they're putting their life on the line. I mean, it's just insane what they went through. So that's one. One thing that I thought was a very interesting comment. And then the other one is, you know, in one of my companies, we help people buy real estate nationwide and build real estate portfolios. And it amazes me sometimes how these little tiny bumps in the road, you know, someone will come in with big plans. You know, I'm going to be a big landlord and I'm going to, you know, work my way up to 200 units, and this will be my awesome retirement and so on and so forth. They got all these plans laid out, and then the first sign of a problem, you know, the tenant doesn't pay rent for a month. Oh, I got to evict a tenant, or they trash the property, or the property manager doesn't, you know, doesn't do what I want them to do or whatever. It's like, oh, never mind. I'll just, you know, forget about that. I'll just do something else. You know, my, my whole plan for my life and retirement and financial welfare is, let's just throw it out the window now. I. That's shocking to me. I can't believe it.

Yeah, and you raised two great points there, and I'll address them individually. The first one is what I call contrast frames. And I wrote about this in the letters that I wrote from prison to people that are in my coaching groups to teach them how I was dealing with this level of adversity and sort of sailing through it. One of the first things I did is I went and ordered and had my partner send in five copies of Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, which gives the.

That book is awesome. That's. Everybody should read Man's Search for Meaning. Phenomenal. Life changing.

Everybody in prison should read Man Search Union. Because by the time and I was handing these books out And I donated them to the prison library people. I defied anybody to read that book in Pentonville, which was the, you know, the 200 year old prison I was in. A bit like Shawshank. I would challenge them to not read that and cry with tears of gratitude at how lucky they were to be in that prison and not Auschwitz. It's a contrast frame. Everything is. Compared to what?

Oh, Peter, I'm so glad you said that. That's what I say all the time. It's like one of my famous quotes. Compared to what? You know, people are complaining, this thing, that thing, the other thing. And it's fair to make observations. I mean, we've got to do that. Otherwise, you know, that that's important to just say, this is wrong, that's wrong, without comparing it. But the thing. By asking ourselves the right question, compared to what? That question, I believe inspires gratitude for where we are. If you think this is wrong and you know, people love to be about Trump and the government or whatever, right? Compared to what? Compared to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao. I mean, compared to what? You know, I mean, compared to Pol Pot, you know, come on, people, seriously, your life is not that bad. You know, it looks like you're having gourmet coffee every day, basically live in a free country. It's just insane, you know, and you.

Can, you can also use that phrase. And when it comes to health, you know, health's one of my passions as well. And people say, oh, should I drink coffee? Yeah. Well, compared to what? Compared to a McDonald's milkshake, then coffee's better for you Compared to drinking a live cucumber juice, then, yeah, take the juice. Should I eat this? Should I eat that? Well, compared to what? And it's always a great way to be able to start you thinking from a contrast perspective rather than just start, say, complaining or focusing on the fact that life isn't the way you want it to be and therefore you're getting stressed. Your second point, with regards to salespeople and things like that that fall out of bed on their dream the second that they hit rejection. A lot of that has to do with not having the balance of what I call ego strength and ego drive. Ego strength is rejection armor. You need people to say, right, today I want to get 50 no's because I know that that'll take me towards my goal. And the key to that is understanding personal and concept rejection. Just because somebody says no to you doesn't mean to say or says no to your deal. Doesn't mean to say they're rejecting you personally. And most people, because their identity is what they do. As soon as somebody disagrees with them, they take it personally and they're out of the game. So ego strength is required. Ego drive is the ability to get out of bed in the morning and go knock 50 doors. And if you've got ego strength, but you've got no ego drive, you can handle rejection, but you're unmotivated. If you've got ego drive, so you're up at 6am and you're hitting the street, but you've got no ego strength. Again, second door that you knock on that says no, you quickly it. So having that balance as a healthy sort of entrepreneurial drive and spirit is critical. But you're going to get taken out of the game if you believe that when somebody says no to whatever it is that you're offering that you take it personally. And the ability to sidestep that is huge. I've always said, you know, one of the people that I love to hire as salespeople are Jehovah's Witnesses. Why? Because they are so used to having the door slammed in their face and people saying no and they don't even blink. They smile, they. They thank the person for slamming the door in the face. They move on. They make incredible sales.

Well, and not just that, you know, the Mormons too. I mean, they're just very persistent. I mean, listen, folks, if you can sell religion door to door, you're an amazing person. Okay? That's incredible. That's an incredible accomplishment. It really is. So, yeah, good point, Good point.

So, yeah, my question to the listeners would be, you know, how do you see yourself in terms of your identity? Are you someone who likes health or do you see yourself as an athlete? That's going to be the tipping point when you go to supersize your meal or take the salad. Do you see yourself as an entrepreneur even though you don't have a business, or are you trying to start a business to prove that you can be an entrepreneur? If I lost everything, which I pretty much did, going inside, doesn't change my identity of an entrepreneur. I go out and find a business because that's what entrepreneurs do. I don't need to go and get one to prove that I am. Most people are driven by what I call goop. Goop, the good opinion of other people. They need to validate themselves through other people's agreement. And if you're playing that hamster wheel, I got news for you. It's life's tough because you're always trying to adapt to get agreements, approval, validation, recognition. That's a fast track to nowhere. There's a lot of aspects to being able to deal with life, deal with adversity, to recognize that, you know, either a, it's all learning and feedback. So, you know, thank you. I don't know why this happened. My life would be different. But to paraphrase your earlier point, you know, things work out best for the people who make the best of the way things work out. Yeah. There's no free rise. It's not meant to be. We're here to grow. And to grow, you need a gym. And life is our gym.

Right. You need some adversity to grow. And, you know, it's, it's, it's. You look at like spoiled children who never had any adversity in life and they're just incapable. They can't do anything.

You know, they're a social disaster.

Yeah, yeah, they're just like babies. I mean, you know, I know quite a few of those types of people. And it's. If you're a parent, you gotta give your kids some adversity almost intentionally. Like it's a lab, you know? But, yeah, very interesting. Hey, Peter, I gotta ask you about something else. And I'll tee this up. So it's maybe kind of funny and startling to people. I want to ask you about sex.

No, what I mean by that is in your book, you hit on something that Napoleon Hill, the famous author of Think and Grow Rich and so many other great books, talked about. Sex, energy, transmutation. He calls it sexual transmutation. Now how did that apply in this situation? You know, what is it? Just elaborate on that a little bit for people.

No, absolutely. I mean, you have to recognize that sex hormones are the strongest drivers of behavior in the human physiology. The urge and the desire to, you know, testosterone will drive people. That primal instinct will override logic. It's a rear brain function.

Oh, sure, sure. And testosterone is present in women of course too. It's not just a male thing. You know, even though men have a lot more of it, obviously. But, you know, women have it too.

But, but that urge has probably been more responsible for more, for more conflict in the world than just about anything else. So how do you channel that now? Because you can either use it in a way that's. It's like a human personality is like a water balloon. You know, you squeeze it one way, it's going to express itself, the other, you can't compress it so if you've still got that sexual urge, that drive, you can use it to channel into getting out of bed and maintaining discipline and putting into my workout in the cell, putting into creativity so I can write letters for hours, so that I can meditate and stay on point and really channel that drive into something that is productive, that is high level of consciousness and useful, rather than waste it at a low level of energy and frustration that it could lead to walking out and wanting to punch somebody or punch the wall or scream or be short with somebody. So I had to consciously take charge of that process while I was inside. Otherwise I was at the mercy of whatever my hormones and then my mood or attitude or emotions want to do. That's a pretty dangerous dice to roll when you're in somewhere like Pentonville.

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Tell us though, can you make another comment or two on how you do that? Like, what's the technique? So we get this idea that, look, I mean, this is the biggest drive in any human being is sex drive. Okay. Right. Right after you have food, water, clothing and shelter, that's what's next. And, you know, you could argue that everything you do in life comes out of the sex drive. Right. So it's like really important that it is managed. It's a very primal thing, obviously. And this is why on the, like the political spectrum, I just think all this talk about, you know, mostly on the right, you know, is about, you know, this behavior, that behavior and these rights and those rights, you know, you gotta just give up on this. This drive is just way too powerful, folks. Whatever someone's preferences or whatever. You gotta just like be a libertarian about this stuff because you're not gonna legislate it. Okay. It's just silly. Yeah, it's too. It's too powerful, you know, and while.

You can't legislate, you can educate.

Yeah.

And, you know, for the natural urge of the human being is to, you know. Well, let's put it. So why are we here? Ultimately, my belief is that we're here to learn how to grow up so that we can choose love instead of fear in ever more challenging circumstances. That's kind of the essence of why we're in Earth School under, you know, which is my philosophy. And so we need to learn how to love more. And we get that because, you know, if a man and a woman don't learn to cooperate, the human race is going to die. So, you know, it's inbuilt into our biology now at a low level of consciousness that expresses itself as primal urging. It expresses, expresses itself as lust. At a high level of consciousness, you move far more into an expression of unconditional love and unity and oneness. And so where you are on the journey of emotional and spiritual maturity will reflect your expression of how you manage your sense of sexuality and expression. Is it about you or is it about being able to contribute who you are to the greater good? If you take mena, I think that the first sign of sexual maturity for a man is when they finally understand that, you know, when you have a situation where a man finally understands that it's not about him and his end game, at that point he starts to open up to the fact that this can be an incredible experience of adding value where 1 plus 1 is 11 and yet you take it to higher levels. And so that comes with. It comes with maturity. It comes with emotional maturity. And that isn't guaranteed with age, unfortunately. Yeah, so yeah, breathing.

Comment on that. There are a lot of children walking around the world in adult bodies.

Yeah. And part of that is that, you know, we don't. Our school system isn't set up to teach emotional maturity. Set up as a cookie cutter model out of World War II, sorry, post industrial revolution, that took on the model out of post World War II. But that is a self directed initiative that one has to undertake. You know, not everybody's playing the spiritual game, not everybody's playing the personal evolution game. A lot of people are paying the fear and scarcity game. And unfortunately it is a choice, but most people aren't aware that it's a choice. So to be able to control your level of sexuality is really the starting point to self mastery. Because if you can't control that, I've got news for you. You're not going to be able to get out of bed in the morning when it's cold and your mind's coming up with excuses to press the snooze bump.

Right, Yep. No question about it. That's like so many things in life, life, there is not really a solution for a lot of things. There's just management. You've got to manage things. You know, that's a sign of maturity, is to be able to manage things so you don't cave into every little desire you have. You know, be it what we're just talking about or otherwise, you know, every little greed or. I remember Earl Nightingale gave me a great quote many years ago and I just love it. It's. Here's the quote. It's a gentleman is someone who has the advantage, but doesn't take it. And that can apply to business and life and everywhere. You know, that's a sign of a maturity. Like a mature person looks at the long game, they look at the long term view. They're not victims to their instant gratification all the time. And whether you're investing in real estate or opening a new business or, you know, having a relationship, it's like the difference between, you know, do you want to win the battle or do you want to win the war? You know, and I'm not saying that in the sense that it's a violent concept or warring concept, but. But that metaphor is the short game or the long game, the small game or the big game, you know, so that's always the choice we face many, many times a day in every area of life, isn't it, Peter?

Part of the game? Yeah, it's why we're here. And if we don't learn it this time around, you know, probably we've got to reset the class, you know, next time.

That's the parallel with school. It's the parallel with I call Earth school. There is no end game as such. This is the journey. It's like a dance. We don't set a destination in the middle of the dance floor to reach to. No, we enjoy the song. We become better dancers as a result of enjoying what it is that we're there to do. And too many people are trying to get to an end game. It's like health. There's no end game with health. There's a constant sense of relationship to health that allows you to manage yourself in a better than you did yesterday. And that's okay. You don't simply say, okay, I've taken my vitamins, now I'm done. I went to the gym last week, now I'm done. That's the physical equivalent, is quite easy to spot. So it comes to the spiritual growth. We're not done. We don't just sit down, want to be enlightened. You don't go to a football game and just want to get the results. You enjoy the experience of growing people that go to the gym, enjoy going to the gym for majority of them, whether you're the gym junkie. So one has to be. Not take it too seriously. Not beat yourself up for not getting to where you think you should be based on other people's opinions and really just make manage your journey through life as best you can. Appreciate the adversities. The bends in the river are always going to be there. Yet your Job's to be a good sailor, not to which way the river winds.

Yeah.

Great advice. You know, Cervantes said the journey is better than the end, so that's great, Peter, give out your website. And by the way, where are you located?

I'm actually right now based in England. Looking to move to Europe, I think, in the next sort of few months.

Well, you mean continental Europe. You're obviously in Europe already, but yeah, yeah.

Website is petersage.com. in fact, right now you can go and download a copy as a gift from me for the inside track, which is the. The letters that I wrote in inside that really delineate all of the tools that I was using, the insights that were happening in real time and how I was being able to use the situation to my advantage and help other people do so, too. And I break down everything from the suicide interventions that I did to the people I got off drugs to. I won national awards in there for some of the work I was doing. Again, it was certainly an adventure, but I wanted other people to be able to do that in their life because, as you say, the contrast earlier is great. We're not living under Pol Pot. You're not living in a place where you can't be told what coffee to drink. So if you can see a parallel where you can use someone like myself going through adversity at that level.

Yeah.

Next time somebody flips you up in traffic, you've probably got a better tool set to be able to handle it.

Yeah, yeah. Good stuff, Peter. That's fantastic. Great information. Thank you for coming back on the show and sharing this amazing, amazing experience or adventure you had. Very few people would look at it this way, but I think you really helped our listeners today kind of shift their focus. You know, it's all about focus and asking the right questions in our conversations with ourselves. So great stuff. Good to have you back. We look forward to having you back in the future. Peter Sage, thanks for joining us.

Thank you, Jason. And thank you for doing what you're doing with the information you put out. It's always a pleasure to work with people that are so committed to serving their audience.

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