Ep. 180-Crafting a Purposeful Life: The Power of Coaching and Mentorship with Ajit Nawalka

Wow, welcome back to another upcoming episode of the You Winning Life podcast. I'm Jason Wasser, licensed marriage and family therapist , and as you know, we're getting close to episode 200 of this show. And one of the things I first want to thank everybody for is listening and sharing and being part of my mission of getting really incredible people who are sharing their life, their wisdom, and their experiences with everybody out there. Because I can't just accomplish it all within my therapy practice every week. I only have a certain amount of hours a week, and there's so much, uh, wonderful things that I'm learning and growing personally with that I want to share with everybody as much as possible. And having this podcast is the platform in which I presently chose in order to help me get that information out there. And today is going to be no different. Today we're hanging out with the founder of Evercoach and the Dharma Coaching Institute. He was also one of the co-founders of Mindvalley. Where he previously was the CEO and a major leading voice in the coaching space. His name is Ajit Nawalkha, and he has spent the last many years working, helping formulate coaching programs, working with both coaches and people, both from the— helping them learn how to coach and helping those in the business world and personal development. Really achieve and excel. He's an author of multiple books and has an incredible presence on social media, including, uh, being in Forbes and Entertainer magazine and speaking on stages, including his own podcast, Master Coaching with Ajit. So I very much look forward to you guys getting as much value out of this, and I'm super excited to be sharing this with you. And If you have been thinking about doing some therapy and perhaps even some coaching for your professional life or your business or some dynamics that are going on that you'd like to make changes with, I do have some spaces available over the next few months to take on a small handful of new clients. So please do not hesitate to reach out to me and We'd also love to hear your feedback on our guests on the show, on things you'd like to hear, on things you have questions about from things you did hear. And always feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, Jason Wasser LMFT. And our website, thefamilyroomsfl.com, is a great place to find out about all of the therapy and events and all these other things that we're doing. But please, we'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear from you. And without further ado, Please enjoy the episode. All right. Well, first of all, welcome and thank you for hanging out with us today.

Thank you so much, Jason. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah.

So, so as I said in our pre-conversation, those are one of my favorite things to have is the pre-conversation because sometimes something comes up that you would never even consider asking. And, and here I am now. I'm a therapist and the coaching world has become, you know, I joke that everybody in Florida has their job and they're a realtor. And everywhere else in the world, it's becoming a thing where everybody's becoming a coach. And we as therapists, we struggle with that because, you know, we have training and master's degrees and licensure and rules and regulations and CEOs, and a lot of that has evolved in the, in the coaching world. But I would love to hear one, just your experience of, from your background growing up and the family you have and the culture you have, you know, where that fits in, where self-help, self-development first became embedded in something that you knew was part of your purpose and part of your potential?

So I discovered personal development much later in life. So where, where I, where I started was I, I grew up in India in a household of 23 people, uh, which is called joint family in India. It's not unheard of there. It's, it's a common practice. Uh, but the way I approached it was was from a reality where I felt that I was constrained for space, that we didn't have abundance, that we couldn't do things that we wanted to do, or I couldn't do things that I wanted to do or have things I wanted to have or live the life in a way that I thought we should live and every human should live, not just me. And because of those questions that I asked myself early on or those situations that I found myself on early on, I became a sponge from people who I thought to be more successful than I was. People I thought were ahead of the curve, people who were learning more, growing more, who had the things that I wanted to have. And so because of that frame of reference that I started my journey, I got introduced to mentorship and questioning things very early on. But the idea of personal development, I only kind of— the first book I was ever given to, and it was the only book that I read for a very long time, was Who Moved My Cheese? when I was like 21 years old. And that was the first personal development book I read. And then I didn't read any book for many, many years until I joined this company that was a tiny company at the time, and now it's a big enterprise called Mindvalley. And then I got reintroduced to the idea of personal growth and really started to inquire as to, and this is now about 15 years ago, I really got introduced not only to books, but to personal growth work. And so, so I, I started doing all that work and, and that has really tremendously helped me. And about 8 years ago, I switched directions because I hired a lot of coaches because I was going through a dark night of the soul type of journey in my life. And, uh, and a lot of coaches really showed up for me and helped me not only as life coaches, but health coaches, as business coaches, people who really educated me in different fields of life and worked with me in many different fields of life that really transformed my story from then on. I mean, I was wildly successful before that, but deeply unhappy. And now I dare say, but I'm very happy, very successful, very content, and very joyful as a person and live the best life I never imagined I could have. So coaches helped me tremendously. That got me introduced to the idea of coaching, got me interested in the idea of coaching, and that started my journey as a coach. So now I act as a business or a personal coach to people, and at the same point in time, I run an enterprise called Mindvalley Coach, which helps coaches get better, get certified, get started in their journey. I do wanna, if that's okay, I'd like to reflect on the opening comment that you made, if that's okay. Is that okay, Jason?

Please.

Yeah. So in passing you said, or what I understood of what you said was there's across the world, everybody is a job and then they are a coach. Well, I would wish that that was the case. And the reason why I say that is because while we are inundated by life coaches and business coaches on Instagram, they're actually far too few. There are far too few people who actually spread the messages of positivity, message of growth, message of personal development. And so it's true for therapists as well. There are way too few. They're not too many, they're too few. And the reason why you feel inundated with such messages is because usually people who have an affirmative positive mindset, tend to create more. It's just known by data, right? If you're more positive, you live longer, you create more, you tend to do more things in life. And because of that, when you turn into a coach or when you turn into a coach mindset or a therapist mindset, you tend to have a positive mindset, which effectively means you tend to become a creator. Guess what happens if you are a creator among many consumers? Your content is seen more.

Mm-hmm.

And so suddenly you think the world is like this. It's not true. If you look at the people who are followed most in the world today, even they're not positive creators, they're artists. But that doesn't mean everybody's an artist, right? Everybody's not going out in the world and saying, oh, everybody is only buying from Kylie Jenner. No, that's not true. She's just more famous. And that tends to be that if you follow her, you tend to follow more of whatever she says. But even Kylie Jenner turns her hat sometimes and talks like a coach because Inherently, she needs to have a positive mindset to create anything successful in life, right? So thinking there are too many coaches is actually a, a thing that comes up in our mind because of social contagion that we get into and social container that we get into. It's actually too few coaches in the world. We are a population, I think 8 billion people in the world. There are less than, less than 200,000 coaches in the world. That doesn't even scratch the surface of the number of coaches that are required to change society overall, to to be more affirmative, right? So if you really think about from a context of society, context of what is required in the world, we will probably not be done until we have 100 million coaches in the world. And there, we are not even close to that. So we are not even started that journey. We probably have 2,000, and that's also me pushing it. We probably have 20,000 or 30, or maybe, maybe 100,000, let's say globally. That's all we are talking about. That is very, very, very few. That doesn't even make a dent in the universe. That's, that's nothing.

It makes so much sense, right? Because growing up, I played sports and we had coaches, right? But what made them a coach? They decided to offer their time, effort, and energy and wisdom. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they were better at playing the game than we were as elementary school kids. It means that they had a particular knowledge and wisdom in an area that they were able to share.

Yeah.

And to guide and hopefully, right, stand on the side and cheer and, and coach, right? And uplift you on. And I, I see And I actually just had a conversation with— so my graduate school here in South Florida, Nova Southeastern University, one of the courses they've added subsequently recently over the last couple of years— I graduated in 2005— they do have a coaching class now as a credit course in the graduate level, doctoral level course. There is a reason why this is happening. There's a reason why these tools are needed to be taught. The cool thing is, and one of the one things that we, you know, I mentioned that I took a training with Rich, with Rich Litfin, right? Everything I saw him doing, I'm like, oh, that's really cool. That's just you know, a lot of it's solution-focused, solution-oriented coaching, which came out of the Family Therapy Systems training. It was exciting to me to see someone doing it so well. And it made me happy that this information and knowledge is getting out there. And therefore, right, it was like, okay, so this stuff can work for people, especially when you take away the thing of like, it's not therapy, right? The stigma of that, which I think agreeing with you that we need more people out there helping other people. So it's a really cool thing to see, right? The vantage point that I was looking at is like, you know, there is, there's dangers. There are people who, even therapists and doctors who shouldn't be doing what they're doing. But I'm so glad to see, and this is why I was so excited to talk to you, is because the community that you're participating, you've helped create, you're helping evolve, is making sure that they're, that people are getting real, legitimate, amazing support. Training to help other people get the support and training. So talk to me a little bit about that, right? Because I really, I feel like from what I've experienced over the last many years, watching a lot of content coming out of your, your businesses, in your communities, has been incredible. And yet, you know, I know that there are people out there being like, well, coaches and therapists and stuff like that. So walk me through from your mindset. And again, this isn't to disprove people who are the naysayers. But tell me why you focused on the areas and the arenas. Like the answer you gave was just such a wonderful, we need more, we need more light, we need more happiness, right? It's very Dharma and very right.

Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And, and I think, um, so I don't necessarily see people as naysayers. I think there's a, this, there's a, usually we don't invest enough time in understanding what is what, and also we take one experience as a catch-all experience. Let me, let me expound that a little bit more. So to me, the therapeutic world is the world that deals and mostly focuses, not completely, especially nowadays, I'm seeing more and more therapists that actually are also taking a coaching hat for that matter. More therapists are writing books that almost sound like coaching to me as a coach, right? And, and, and what I've found is The, if I go to a traditional therapist, their entire focus stays on your past.

Mm-hmm.

And because their entire focus stays on their past, they almost don't consider that maybe it is not doing a service to the person that they're working with because it's just keeping them in their past hole. They think they need to let go of every stone in their bag instead of just dropping the bag and moving on, right? To give a metaphorical example. Sure. And I'm not saying everybody is the same, is not. And to me, therapy deals mostly in helping you get rid of that bag. Like you have a baggage that you're carrying, let's get over it. From my understanding of therapy, it is based on Freudian psychology principles, right? Is, is Freud the, the, the, the fundamental—

but when you have that world of psychology, traditional old school psychology, right? You have that one world, right? The pathology, the diagnosis. The beautiful thing is, just to reclarify, is my training at Nova Southeastern and Fort Lauderdale Systems postmodern family therapy, cybernetics, is all of leaning into that solution-oriented solution, right? The thinking of, right, the, the meta of, right? It's not the problem. It's your belief about the problem. That's the problem.

Perfect.

So you and I are aligned in all of that.

That's where therapy and coaching also intersect. The, the newer way of doing therapy, which again, like, I'm not saying that's why it's very important to notice where somebody's coming from and where they're going. To really be able to comment on the nuances of what is this and what is that, right? So coaching does nothing to do with past. Like, I don't, I don't ask a question about why you are the way you are and all that. I might do that to build a relationship with you so I can understand you, but I ain't trying to help you lose your bag, right? My point is to say there is no bag. And it comes from, if I have to correlate to the timeline, it comes from Alfred Adler. Mm-hmm. Who was psychologist at the same time, had his own research, his theories, and his understanding of the world was there is no baggage, there is no past. You don't have to worry about it. The only thing that matters is now. So if you decide right now, everything's already different, right? So if he was today, and I'm kind of probably butchering his world and he might be turning in his grave as I butcher it, but if he was here today, he would say there is no trauma. Trauma is a story that you told yourself enough times, hence you have trauma. Drop the story, drop the trauma, and go on into the future. Now, I would never advise anybody that, right? Because I'm, I'm not a therapist. And the moment somebody says trauma, I said, talk to a therapist, or here's one to talk to, right? So I would never attach, I wouldn't trigger it. I wouldn't go into it. And that's not what coaches should do.

Right.

And that's where the problem arises is somewhere along the line, because it is such, it's a hypothetical science, like most sciences, right? There's a lot of hypotheticals that are in there. There's a lot of understandings and different understandings of things on how words are being said and so on and so forth, is somewhere along the line, people who were either interested in therapy or were therapists started, which were right in the sense of they started doing coaching, but a lot of coaches thought that was okay to dig them into therapy. You know what I mean? So while they were not trained on any of the therapeutic models and hadn't done the research, like say you have done, or training like you have done, they just simply thought it's easy for me. And I do see that, and I do call people out when I see that, is they dwell in the past so much that they re-trigger trauma for people. And, and that's what it makes us unsafe as a coaching model. And that's also why we became so passionate about training people because it's literally like, like right before our call, I was doing one of our cohort calls and I said, if you're doing trauma work, you must understand we do not train you on this and you should not do trauma unless you're certified. By an organization that teaches you how to do trauma work. Do you understand this, right? Literally on my calls, on our certification, everywhere, we make sure people understand that they do not get to touch the past of people because they're not— we don't train them on it. We simply say 95% of the world or 90% of the world do not have such deep trauma that they need to drop the entire bag. They can work with the new, newer models of therapy. Or coaching models which simply says there is no trauma, there is no past. This is a very crude and simple way of saying it, but basically saying that past does not matter because present is the only time and we can work from here and then become strategic. It's about reorganizing your mind. It becomes about habits and, and behaviors to change, which are nothing— which you don't need that kind of deep training for because there are simple reframes, simple mindset shifts, simple ways, different ways of looking at things. Anybody can do it till the time they've had some understanding of language and some understanding of how human beings work. So what we do is we do an immersive work towards that spectrum and we make it a point that we don't, don't get them to go into the past and traumatic events of people. Now, like you said, there are people who do that and that is the challenge of that whole segment of the industry. But that is also a thing and the truth of anything that is new and different. There will be, and it's not that people are trying to be bad, but they will end up in a spectrum where it's risky and dangerous. They feel comfortable. And so they go into it. That is how also as humanity we discover things, but it's also the way we destroy things. So that's where we have to be mindful. And you're very right in that. And at the same point of time, I do feel this phase of coaching, this growth of coaching, this interest of even being open to the word like coach that is beyond sports is actually a net-net positive for humanity by not a small margin but a great margin.

Yeah, I agree with you, right? It's the convers— I had a one of my clients this morning, you know, going through some difficult things. I wouldn't necessarily call it clinical. It's a lot of the story, it's a lot of the self-beliefs. It's about where do you want to go, right? What, what were you buying into that got you stuck that you didn't realize got you stuck, that thought you thought was going to get you a better outcome? And the questions that I always look forward to asking, the way I was trained, very similar to what you're saying, right, is that— is the perspective of how— how did I phrase it? Once you knew what you needed to do differently, how difficult was it actually for you? How much effort did you actually have to put into it to change this momentum? And my client responded like, It was actually surprisingly really easy. I'm like, easier than the resistance to do it, right? In other words, doing it was easier than the resistance to not doing it. And part of that came around all of that. Where do you want to be? Why did you want to get there in the first place? And I love— and I don't know if I heard this from one of the videos of one of your community. I don't know if this is something from, right, from, from one of your colleagues. But when we ask people what they want, it's also And I want you to talk a little bit more about this, is that when people are focusing on goals, people are coming into, hey, I'm struggling with my career, or I'm struggling with my coaching business. It's not just asking them what their goal is, but, you know, the idea of why would that be better for them? What would be the things that they didn't even realize might come up as new challenges with that? But it's not just the I want this to happen, but it's making sense of the meaning behind all of that. So I was wondering if you can elaborate a little bit more on that from your perspective, because I think that's something that I've enhanced from my job as a therapist, from the coaching world to ask my clients an even better question?

Yeah. So it's very, very, very good question. And it is a very common challenge in, in society at large. What tends to happen, at least in my experience of working with clients, is most goals are informed by society around us, right? So if you talk to a person that hangs out with millionaires or looks at millionaires on social media and so forth, their goal would be, I wanna make a million dollars. If you hang out with a person that is making billions, suddenly you want to be a billionaire, or you see a lot more social billionaires. Now you want to be a billionaire, which is also where you see societal language changes, right? Suddenly everybody wants to start an AI company because we are talking a lot about AI companies, right? Everybody wanted to do Bitcoin when it was all about cryptocurrency, right?

And which would also make sense about people wanting to coach more because they're seeing it again on, it's, it's in the zeitgeist. It's in the zeitgeist of our culture.

Yeah, it's much needed than Bitcoin, but I'm still not getting rid of my Bitcoin. It's not a small money goal or a money goal direction. It's a lot more important in the zeitgeist because of how the society is evolving and we need more trained individuals. But anyways, but yes, it is important. And that's why the language and the circle that you hang out in matters because your goals usually will align to those people. Right. Right. Or the information that you're getting. Because it's harder for us to go inside than to take things from outside. It's much easier for me to gather what, uh, what, uh, what Jason's doing and go, oh, Jason's a therapist who also uses coaching methodology, or he has trained in all modalities, and so I should do that, right? It's much easier for me to relate to Jason's experience than to go, what do I want? Right? And the less we ask the question of what do I want, the more chaotic our life is gonna be, right? Because the environment around you will keep changing. It always changes, right? It'll change with the political party that comes in power, the, the new war that might start. It will change by people that you're surrounding yourself, a change in work colleague, change in your work environment. Your, your situation, your surroundings are gonna change all the time. And if they don't, your life will become mundane, right? So you are in a dance always to say, oh, do I change always and be in chaos, or do I stay mundane and get bored out of my mind in my life, right? And there is a third path that we don't explore as much of. And the third part is to ask ourselves, what do I really want? Because then you start influencing the society around you. So instead of being influenced, you actually become an influencer of the world around you. And that allows you to be able to create a, your truth, whatever that truth is, and also inform people around you to ask that deeper question of asking, hey, what's your truth? Like, ask yourself that question that I asked myself, right? So because of that, if we could ask ourselves as a society, if you could move towards that dialogue and move towards the idea that if I create long-term clarity in my life, I will have less of short-term chaos. Then I can change my life. I can change society. I can live a more informed-driven life. And you will find that short-term chaos will go away. Short-term inflection based on what's happening around you goes away because you know where you're going. You have a long-term clarity towards the direction of travel that you're having. And then yes, goals will vary. Things will happen, things will not happen, but you'll learn how to deal with it because your vision, your purpose, your direction is still very informed by a 10 or 20 or 30-year goal that you're walking towards.

I'm reflecting on a conversation I had with a client the other day who's been working with a strategic financial planner, and they're getting close to that retirement period. And the conversations, from my understanding, seem to be led about what the financial planner has decided or at least maybe unconsciously coerced them into believing what they'll be okay at on the path and what they need to do in order to get this number that will allow them to move into a retirement phase and pick up and move and have a lifestyle that's accommodating to what they're dreaming. And I'm hearing this, and I've been reflecting this back with them as well, and I'm hearing even more so from what you're saying of— I want to go back to them now and ask them, where did that particular number or numbers come from? Because I know that we've had conversations around what's the life going to look like for them? And how can you have the life you want without the anxiety around even if you do have all of that money that seems to be the number that even your financial planner says will allow you? It's not well, why is there so much anxiety? Well, there's an old story and there's some trauma, right? Whatever it is that you want to write, family of origin stuff and, and stuff that way I can work out with my integrative mind-body modalities that's more somatic. But who picked, who picked those numbers and what, what's the meaning and belief behind those numbers? And I think that just really does reinforce exactly what you're sharing.

Yeah. And you know, there's a, there's an interesting, just because you talked about retirement and this is a study I read, is people's health starts to deteriorate after they retire. They, they seem to shorten their lifespan. This is not conclusive, but seems like trending towards it. And which is why often it's advised to do something even once you're retired. And a lot of people don't do that. A lot of people just retire and they retire for good. And within the first 3 or 5 years, I think one of those numbers, they would see a huge decline in their well-being because they don't know what to do with their life anymore, right? So a curious thought also while you're on this discovery, and definitely that financial planner is not a coach, clearly. Right. They would've asked a better question than saying why—

It might be a great financial planner. Matter, right? But the psychology of the money is not there, right?

See, I, I tell you, like, everybody needs to learn coaching. Like, it's absolutely a global requirement.

Before you jump to the next thing, what I, what I want to share to you in the retirement thing is one of them, one of the partners in that relationship, I'm like, you should absolutely become a coach.

Yeah.

Which is really, right? So, so because I'm like, here's all the wisdom that you have, and now you can create something with this. No one is doing what— and we came up with this, you know, what could you do type of thing, and, and we navigated that, and it was like, oh my God, that sounds amazing. Okay, well, I don't want to coming from me. I want you to marinate on that and say, Jason, that sounds really cool. I love the idea you gave me, but it's not authentic for me. Right. And, and bringing that more out of, out of their awareness. But one of the things, like, and they've been looking into and researching becoming a coach because I'm like, this would be an amazing transition from all the things you've acquired and learned. And now you can still make, right, one, it'll get rid of the fear of, of any money that you're spending. Two, you can continue helping people. And three, you know so much that you'd be ripping off the world if you don't share it.

Yeah, so true, so true. And thank God they have you. And a transitionary comment also for individuals is that hypothetically, when somebody plans a retirement age or a retirement plan, is they assume a date or a year that they will die, right? That's any financial planner will go, okay, how long do you expect to live? Because they have to plan, especially if they're planning for retirement, right? And usually that number ends up being 75. Or I think the average for America is 82. I could be wrong again, but that's the latest study. Last I read was 82 or 85, one of those two numbers somewhere in the '80s. Used to be 76 before. And that might be the number that the person's operating from. But if you look at the latest science and if they do follow science and they do take care of themselves, if they do, you know, move their bodies and not just stay sedentary, all of the stuff that they do—

functional medicine and mindfulness.

Yeah. Yeah, if they do biohacking, like basically take care of themselves really and not just go, all right, I've retired, I'm not gonna do nothing, which will lead to deterioration of health and they will definitely pass by the average age or something around that. But if they do take care of their health, it's more likely that they would live for another 10, 15 years.

Wow.

Right? So instead of 85, they're likely to touch 100, right? And 100 does not feel that much harder anymore for society where we are at. Especially that is somebody who's in their 50s or 60s, right? They are likely to touch 100. People in the 20s are likely to live 120 if science keeps progressing the way it is, because we just have figured out how to have people live longer and what are the things that we need and so on and so forth while staying vital, not like being a vegetable, but being vital and moving and all of that fun stuff. Yeah. With that, and with that understanding, it reframes the setting of the person to ask really themselves the question of, If I was to live 15 years more, and let's say these people are retiring at 70, hypothetically, I don't know their retirement age. Let's say 65, 70. That gives them 30 more years to live. 30 more years is about almost 50% of their life of what they've lived, right? Because if they're 70, 35 years is 55, 50% of the life. 30 years is almost 50% or roughly 45% or 43%, something like that. That's 40% more life left. Now you don't ask for retirement because 40% of more life, what are you going to do with your retirement? You, in a week, you realize you don't need retirement most of the time, or in a month you're like, I cannot, I cannot just sit at home and garden after a point, right? I need stimulation. I need something. And that's one thing that we sometimes forget about humanity or being human is we are creators by default. We cannot sit idle beyond a point. We think we would love it. We think we would. And some people might, there might be some odds and ends, some odd people that go, yeah, I can really sit on the beach for 100 days, right? They must be traumatized in some ways why they would be doing that. But most people cannot do that. Most people after 7 to 10 days are sick and tired of their holiday. Yeah. Right. They need to go to a different place. They need to do something. It doesn't mean that they won't holiday still. They'll just do, all right, let's move the country. Let's move the city. Let's, let's do something else. Let's, let's not sit here.

Oh, I did a week-long cruise and like day 5, I'm like, I'm done. Like, this is like—

this is what happens. Yeah, it's just being human. You cannot not create. You, you get sick and tired of it. And because of that, even clients like yours, the clients that we're talking about, must ask the question, what, what is the expected age that they will die? And do they really think they will die at that age? Because most people have a very wrong number in their head because it's informed by either how long their parents lived or the oldest person they know, right? So yeah, that person that was in my family, they lived till 85. I'll probably live till 85. Probably not, because the person that lived till 85 was following an old regimen. They didn't have the doctors, they didn't have the medicine, they didn't have the vitality, they didn't move like this. They, they didn't know how to live longer while staying vital, right? So they had all these different characteristics that you are not considering that are still applicable to you, which effectively means you'll probably live longer. So why not live healthier? Why not live in the creative space? Why not— why retire?

Yeah. And I'm thinking about all the studies in epigenetics and, right, Dr. Bruce Lipton and all the— all those, those worlds and how that's a whole conversation I had also this morning was, right, the old way of doing things, including therapy. And that's what I loved about my training. I remember in about 2000, I went to a therapist. I grew up going to that old psychological, the Freudian play therapy, playing games, right? And that's what I thought therapy was. And then I went to someone who started— who asked me questions that no one has ever asked me before in a way that no one's asked them. And I remember when I thought about— and I was doing informal education and programming and working on college campuses and camps and summer programs and stuff like that. And I remember when I'm like, most of my job every day, even though I'm supposed to be in charge of programming, is really building, creating relationships and being there for the students in a way as if I'm a therapist. When they have stuff going on in their life, they're coming to me to talk to, right? I'm that youth mentor slash, you know, advisor. And that was when I first like, maybe I should be going to graduate school to become a therapist. And I remember as I was looking You know, I knew like social work and I knew psychology and I knew mental health counseling. And I'm like, okay, so what was that person trained in? And it was— they were a marriage and family therapist, which I delved more into and then saw the difference between like— we started talking about this conversation of old school, how does it make you feel? Let's look for a pathology and diagnosis and let's clean all that up versus the, the story where we— where do you want to go? What would you like? Let's find all the tools that you didn't even realize are there that you know are there that you're not leveraging, as well as then going further into delving into the epigenetics, going into biology, biochemistry, stuff that I didn't even learn in that. This is where I see the benefit that the different worlds of coaching is kicking therapists to do better.

Yeah.

And I'm very appreciative of that. In that regards, because then I can go back when, when you're talking about before, why do you want to do this, right? Is it because of something else out there or not? Realizing how much of, as a therapist, how much I'm not doing within my traditional therapy community versus what I'm doing and learning and who I'm hanging out with outside of that world because I wasn't getting what I needed to become a best therapist. Within the therapy world. Yeah, right. The world of all the mind-body stuff, neuro-emotional technique, which I am certified in.

All—

forget even hypnosis. Hypnosis was graduate school stuff, right? That was great, it was amazing. And then I'm like, ah, there's more, there's more. There's the mind-body, there's a functional medicine, functional nutrition, there's this stuff that you're doing.

Yeah.

And, and I, and I know that's so true.

It is so true, and it is, uh, so important what you are doing because it's also pushing your colleagues to think a little bit more broader than the lane they might have been set into. And I know that that lane is still most of the industry, unfortunately. And that's why it's important for what you are doing is because the other day I was watching this comedian. I don't know if you know about it. It's just, you could probably Google it later. It's just funny the way he says it. He's cracking a joke about his therapist. His name is Hasan Minhaj.

Oh yeah, of course.

He's an American comedian.

Yeah.

And he was, I think, on one of those, one of the Jimmy's show. And he talks about, and one line that I was like, I was laughing my ass off, uh, was that he says, you do realize, therapist, that the point of therapy is to get out of it. Which is just funny way to say that how a lot of therapists still do operate in majority part of the world is they just keep the client forever. Forever. Uh, and that's not the point. That's That's, that's absolutely counter to the point. The point is a person doing work with you may stay with you, but for very different reasons.

Correct.

You're not still saying, oh, I'm dealing with the same issue I had 20 years ago. No, we're talking about a different thing. We're a different problem we're solving.

Yeah.

And that, that makes sense because human beings will always evolve. And so we always need support of a coach and a therapist, 100%. The therapist needs to take an approach like you're taking. And I love that you're also including functional medicine, which Which what in— what it tells me is that you're bringing in the body, which is so important to take care of a person is to clean up their nutrition, their diet, their— what they're doing with their body, because that's the vessel that holds the brain. And if you don't do something with this, this is harder. It becomes easier because you go to the gym and lift some weights and you do a little bit of cardio or eat a little bit better. Your mind is so much more in partnership with you because you've taken care of the vessel that holds it. Yeah, yeah.

I'm just reflecting on my own journey of my grandmother's brother. Both of their— both of her brothers were old-school psychiatrists, MD psychiatrists, and exactly like that, where they, where they had their clients forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And I remember when I started advertising, one of the things that I put on there is my job is to get you to fire me as soon as possible.

Ah, wonderful.

And how many clients over the years have said, when I was looking through profiles, what— besides the other things in your training and specialization, but that really stood out to me. And I'm like, well, number one, like, it doesn't mean fire me and like get me out of your life. It means like, let's solve this problem that you already probably know how to solve, but let's just get you out of the way of that. Two, we'll handle that, and then when you need something in the future, you'll come back when you need it. But doesn't mean you need to see me every week for the rest of your life, right? That whole dependence on old school mindset was something thankfully that I never was born in. But it's so funny to see like where, you know, my family came from on that side and where I am on the other side, because I like joking that my— one of them wrote the first anti-medical marijuana article in 1971 in the Journal of American Medical Association. And here I am now taking certifications and being— supporting people who are doing psychedelic and plant medicine for healing and for personal growth. So just to see within you know, two generations of that and what's going on. And maybe that's, and maybe that's the conversation that therapists and coaches need to have more together and share with the world together is what happens when we bring the best of both worlds together instead of like, you know, the thing that we always talk about is coaches talk about, well, coaches only, you know, coaches focus on the present and the future, and therapists only focus on the past. And you have people like me, like, that's not true. That's not our, that's not our training whatsoever. Right? And then you have therapists like, nope, coaches are doing trauma, and they're doing all these things that are right. And And these are the conversations and one of the many reasons why I was so excited to have you on here as a leader in your community, as a representative and a leader of your community who's training other people of what are the conversations. And maybe, maybe this is what do you think are some of the conversations that the best of my field and the best of your field need to sit down and have a platform together to have to move the entire personal development healing industry forward exponentially faster than waiting for the, you know, you guys are doing this a little bit better, we're doing that a little bit better. You for sure doing marketing way better than therapists are. But we have things where we can't do, you know, we can't have people write us reviews, and we can't have people disclosing, right? Because of all those ethical things. Right? I think that there's some— what do you think some of the things that the two, like, if you and I, so to speak, were to brainstorm, like, what should— what do you think from your perspective as a coach and a coach trainer, and we should be talking about together, our two industries?

I think it's, it, it's, so the, the reason why I'm lost for words is because I, I feel the challenge would not be the people in the industry. The problem will be the regulation around industries. So, and the reason's pretty straightforward. I think a lot of therapists use what we say as coaching methodologies. Again, I'm not saying that we developed it because we also are informed by studies and so forth. It's not like we, like there was one coach who sat down and said, this is the methodology for the matter. You get no results if you use the traditional coaching methodology. It's kind of like a traditional therapy methodology. It doesn't work. It won't get you anywhere. It'll get you a contract with a company who, again, the HR team does, just doesn't know better is why you are hired. It's not because you actually can drive any results for the company whatsoever. But so, so it's, it's a, I think the people in both the industries are already trying to merge what they can. For example, a lot of our friends who are not traditional therapists because they also kind of did the therapy route, got really successful, wrote books, became authors. So now they don't do therapy in the sense of sitting down and really do therapy, but they built models on top of it that help people. Usually hypnotherapy models because they're easier to train on and they, they build those like Paul McKenna is one of them. He's very respected therapist, hypnotherapist, probably the most respected in the UK. And he said, hey, listen, I'm gonna take this model and build hypnotherapy that a coach can learn. And then they look at the local law and see if they can do it or not, but they can at least use some of the language techniques that they learn in their day-to-day coaching because it's not intrusive.

The thinking of it versus the practice of it.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's more like, but it's still in that scenario. What happens is we have to go, okay, but you have to check the local law because in some countries hypnotherapy is illegal. In some countries they don't care.

Right.

They're like hypnotherapy is just a meditative exercise. They don't actually think it is that impactful to a person.

Right.

So it's completely legal for you to practice.

Or in Florida, the language is hypno— you can't call yourself legally a hypnotherapist unless you're a licensed medical practitioner. You can say, I do hypnosis.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. And there are, there is someone out there and it's funny because there's someone out in the state.

Yeah.

But you can't use the word therapy. Therapy is a protected title, right? So you could say I do hypnosis or hypnosis, right?

Yeah.

It's just terminology for a lot of things.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's kind of how it, it kind of works in the world. And I think that's where therapy is already, like you said, and like I'm reading the newer books by hypnotherapists, not hypnotherapists, sorry, therapists. Because I read everything that I feel is interesting and I would consume it at a great pace and a great rate. And I feel there are so many reflections of what we advocate for, even if nobody really owns it per se, I think. But we advocate for, hey, it's okay to have a past. You can move into the future. That's the advocacy of coaching. And I think more and more therapists are leaning into it. At least the new books are all leaning into it, which I was, I'm really happy to see. Like, that's great. I mean, it, it makes a lot of our work actually easier because we don't, we don't have to do it and therapists can do it and we are fine with that. We don't, we don't care for what's your title. That's not the reason why we started what we started. We always fundamentally believe that if we were able to change a billion people, we can change the world.

Hmm.

But to change a billion people, to try and do it as a company, is incredibly difficult because you have to sell the idea of personal growth. You have to, you know, you have to be in a frame. It's not an e-commerce, it's more a mindset. It's harder to sell all of that stuff. But if I can train a million coaches, 10 million coaches over the course of my lifetime, I have the ability to impact a billion lives. And if I impact a billion lives, I do, and, and I do think that we'll need some sense of that capacity, not only because if, See, the world is getting easier to live in, but more complicated at the same time, right? We have a lot more resources. We know how to harness a lot more resources. We are able to build great technologies and great cities and great worlds around the globe, but we still fall down to the level of war. We still will be at a loss of job when AI takes over some of those jobs, right? All of that requires for us to be having that mental fortitude. Otherwise, the poor will get poorer and rich will get richer. And that's not a great society to be in because there is such a disparity that this class that say poor getting poorer will find it really difficult to get to a place where they can be abundant too. And without abundance and without money going around, it is very hard to live a good life, even if you have all the resources in the world. Right? So how do we play our part in that society as therapists, as coaches? Is to help people build that mental fortitude, to be able to help themselves, to be able to pass on the education, the training, the tools, the techniques. So we as individuals can do better in situations that otherwise feel impossible because that's what happens, right? When we are in the shitstorm, we feel this is an impossible state. I need to survive. I cannot thrive. That's the mindset that we operate in, or individuals that operate in. Find it hard to thrive. Guess how we can change that mindset? By actually actively coaching them, working with them, keeping their presence to today, helping them understand the concept of time and the concept of building things. All of those things that are important that only as of now is available to a small community of people that can either afford a therapist, afford a coach, or afford personal growth programs and seminars, which is maybe 10-20% of the world, right? Right? And that also, it's not even that for that matter. Probably that even is not maybe a higher number that I'm talking about because it is not cheap to go to a therapist. It is not cheap to work with a coach. Personal growth programs have become more affordable. Thank goodness for that.

Right?

But what we are really trying to do from our point is to make this understanding, this education, this training, these tools available at the lowest cost possible, right? Because we as, as Mindvalley have the benefit that we got into this place early enough that we have volume now, right? So that's the thing. That's really the whole idea here that we, yeah, that if you're able to scale, elevate all of us, we can change humanity for good.

And I think that's a beautiful thing. And wrapping it up with this is that one of the things that I have really appreciated over the last couple years of knowing a little bit, consuming a lot, but knowing a little bit about the community as a whole, but just consuming a ton of you know, what you're putting out there, it's all like so much of it's right, the YouTube channel alone or the right following you on your social media. I mean, that's, I think, where the leverage of why I'm doing this, like I only, like I said at the introduction, I can only see 30 to 40 people, you know, slash couples, families, whatever. But I can only have the bandwidth for about 30-something sessions a week. And this platform helps me, one, get in front of people who are doing really powerful, beautiful things, trickle down that information, which I'm taking a lot of from these conversations back to my clients, but also people are not yet my clients or could be working with one of the guests, because I can't accomplish it all. I can't do it all. I just want to be a platform where people can have easy access. Yes, it's a marketing push, sure, right? You get to see what it's like to work with me without working with me, which I think is wonderful about all the, the videos that are put out.

Yeah, but it's value first.

So I think it's value first.

Like, it's like, hey, you got some benefit if you're right person, the right price, the right situation. Sure, let's work together. Yeah, everybody is winning. I think this whole mindset of because we are information provider, I'm not saying you have it. I think some people have it is that the mindset is, oh, I'm providing information, you know, is it a money grab? It's not. You're providing value. Somebody gets something and most of the time their life gets better. Not just better, way better. Like it's not a marginal increase. A person can 10x, 20x themselves if they work with the right person over the course of a year. And I can say that because I've seen it again and again and again, 10 and 20x in their health, in their wellbeing, things that they've struggled and suffered for their entire life. If somebody that's listening to this podcast is going, you know, it's available to them and not to me, I invite you to go talk to Jason Wasser or talk to someone that you trust and are willing to play with, but play for a year. Let go deep, go hard, find yourself, and you'll see anything that you believe that is not available to you is actually available. To you.

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. Could not agree with you more. And that's, that's why I love— and you know, the language of inviting that is one of the things, right? It's one— it's also very hypnosis language, hypnosis logic, or like using the words and the phrasing of hypnosis. But that's one of the things that I love about members of your community that I've watched and witnessed, witnessed using and empowering their clients Yeah, come play with me. Let's play a game. Yeah, humor me, right? Which is a lot of what I was trained in. But it's awesome to see where this relationship is shared together versus I'm going to tell you what to do, which is what we're all trying to get rid of. So I want to finish up with, well, you know, with one, first thanking you, and two, all the different ways that people can get in touch with you, learn more about the different programming that you're offering and the things that you're partnered with and the books. Where, where should they go? Where, where should someone start? Because there's a billion and one ways to find you, but where should someone start?

So, so great way to start is go to Instagram, look for Real Coach Ajit. That's where I post my latest videos every day, and it's only like 30, 60 seconds, and it'll give you an insight. It's a good place to start. If you're looking to read a book, go ahead, and I will, I'll send you over a link via our free download of my latest book called Live Big. I don't remember the link on the top of my mind, but we'll send it over to you, Jason, if my team has already not sent it over to you and we can link it up. If you want to take a deep dive, I do my certifications in partnership with Mindvalley. So go to mindvalley.com/certs, C-E-R-T-S, and you will find all the different certifications we provide. I do for life and business in partnership with other authors that I bring on as guest faculty. So those are some things to do.

Beautiful. And I do wanna push your podcast that you have as well. So let's share that name as well.

Yes. So our, we might rename them by the time this podcast comes out, but for now it's called Master Coaching with Ajit. Uh, we are thinking about renaming it and relaunching it in about 6 weeks from now. So, so it might be different by the time this comes out.

But if you go on and you subscribe now, whatever it transfers over to, whoever's out there, just go, go find it today while you're listening to it. Don't, if you're driving, don't do it right now, but go subscribe to it so So if it changes, you'll know that it's there and you don't have to research anymore. And again, I really want to thank you. I'm appreciative of, one, the time that you had to spend with us and to share just a little bit of everything you've— we didn't even get into really the heavy story of everything. But it's the beginning of 2024. This episode probably won't come out for a little bit, but right now, like you said, there's a lot of turmoil in the world. It is getting easier on some levels, but there's a lot more chaos. And I'm a big fan of people who are helping bring simplicity simplicity on the far side of complexity into the world. And I really do want to thank you for contributing and enhancing the world through your mission.

Thank you. Thank you, Jason Wasser. Thank you for having me. It's great.

My pleasure.