You Winning Life Podcast Ep. 191- Overcoming Trauma & Building Abundance with Preston Smiles

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

Welcome back to another episode of the Winning Life podcast. We are getting closer and closer to episode 200, and today's guest is Preston Smiles, a transformational leader, speaker, and author dedicated to empowering individuals to amplify their lives through love and personal development. He's authored books such as Love Louder 33 Ways to Amplify Your Life, and Now or Never: Your Epic Life in 5 Steps. Preston co-founded The Bridge Method, offering workshops designed to help participants overcome personal barriers and achieve freedoms. And he's also the host of the Preston Smiles Show podcast, where he shares insights on personal growth and interviews other thought leaders, just like we do on here. His mission is to inspire multigenerational movement of radical love through creative, conscious content and intentional acts of love. Preston, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.

Yes, sir. This is a beautiful break in my amazing day. My kids were just screaming nonstop, fighting over a toy. And so I get to step out of that madness and into this different kind of madness and enjoy this.

Yeah, it's something I always, you know, we pre-gamed, so it's such a great topic to start off with about the messiness and the hecticness of life. And, you know, you've accomplished so much just even before you created family, before you created this business, the challenges, the tribulations, the struggles to create the path and the journey of who you are. Let's start there, because, right, you had to step away from something. You had to step away from busyness and fullness and loudness and things that you co-created.

Yep.

Into another part of your identity that you've co-created. So what's that like, right? You know, I'm here, I'm in the middle of my day. I have my therapy clients, you have of your world going on, and we're both taking time out to connect with each other from the opposite sides of the country, right? You're in, you're in the West Coast, if I'm not mistaken, right? And I'm in South Florida. And we've both decided that this is important to us. Hmm. So, you know, just going through some of the struggles, the challenges, the insights that you have of just knowing you have a role that you're playing at home. Like you just said. What's, what's some of those things that didn't start off maybe so easy for you to do that when your life is so full, when you have a lot going on in your personal life?

Yeah, man. Well, I want to just have one clarification. I live in Buda, Texas, which is just outside of Austin, Texas. So, um, we're, we're on the same time zone. Um, and, uh, man, there's so much to address in that But I will say that off camera we were talking about the sort of influencer idealized life versus what most people's actual reality is, and how much that influencer thing is, is empty. It's unfulfilling, it's empty. And for me, it's important that especially people in the 25 all the way up to the 50-something-year-old range, uh, know that there's a different way to live and be in abundance. And it doesn't mean that you have to be polyamorous and on everybody's podcast and like traveling the world, right? Like, to me, the, the most abundant people I know are the ones who find paradise everywhere they go. And I teach my students this all the time. In any given moment, you can choose prison or you can choose paradise. And for me, my journey, you know, was a tricky one and it still is a tricky one. Tricky and beautiful, right?

It could be both.

Yes, it's the beautiful mess where I was born, in a family that had a lot of demons and, um, things. We were one of those families that just didn't address the problem. We all pretended like it wasn't there, and as long as we didn't talk about it, it wasn't a thing. And, uh, very early on, I contorted myself to be an out of the way kid, uh, one of those kids that have no needs. And as children, we do that. We're egocentric. So everything that happens, we blame ourselves. And over time, because we desire love from our, um, parents or caregivers, we contort ourselves. And so oftentimes when I'm working with people, they'll say, oh, that's just who I am. Now say, no, that's not who you are. That's who you became. And rightfully so. That, that was a safety strategy. Shy is a safety strategy you took on at 7 years old to make sure that you weren't abused, right? Aggressive and angry, that's just who I am. Nope, that's a safety strategy you took on at 9 years old to make sure that you weren't abused, hurt, or neglected, right? Oh, I'm, I'm just a cheerer-upper. I'm just funny. I'm— no, funny is what you use to get attention and love so that your parents saw you. And so my version of that was, I will be perfect. I will have no issues. I won't break a bone. I won't need braces. I won't need anything from you all because you're so stressed out that there's no space for me. Well, that is a losing game. And so by the time I was 11 years old, I started smoking weed and I joined a gang. Because the outlet needed to occur, right? We are in and out beings. Water goes in, water comes out. Food goes in, food comes out. Life happens. Most of us have been taught to bottle it up. You know, if you grew up in a Western world like I did, a Western culture that's hyper-masculinized, I heard, "Don't be a pussy. Don't be a little faggot." Like, "Man up. Figure it the fuck out." Like, all of that was the energy that I got as a child. From everyone, like all angles said, figure it out. So my 11-year-old consciousness had a moment with my dad when he caught me smoking weed. This is one of the most beautiful things that he did, uh, rest his beautiful soul. Um, instead of putting me on punishment, instead of whooping me like he had before, he said, I want to give you 24 hours to think about everybody you know who smokes weed. And if you still want to do it, then that means you want their life. If you do what they do, you're going to have what they have. You told me you want to be like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson. They don't do that. And so he let me sit in it. And then obviously, this is a beautiful psychological trick because my 11-year-old consciousness said, "No, I don't choose it." And then he said to me, and this is still, it still rings true. He said, "You're a leader and you're such a leader that if everybody else is going left, but something in you says go right, you'll do it anyway. Now I know you're going to be a boy. I know you're going to do stupid stuff, but you're such a leader." that if something does not feel right, you will not go into it. Well, that was 11 when he said that to me. At 15, my best friend Scott called me to hang out and do what we always did, and something in me said, don't go. And my buddy was like, oh, you're gonna be a little peep? And I'm like, yeah, man, I'm, I'm chilling tonight. He's like, "All right, I got shotgun then." Well, we hung up the phone, and within one single hour of me hanging up that phone, everybody in that van, blue 1997 Astro van, everybody in there was shot. And Scott was shot in the head and died. And so after I moved through the survivor's guilt and all the other stuff that was there for me, I started to realize that that voice, that intuitive hit, was always there. And so in the midst of this sort of concrete jungle, throwaway— I was a throwaway kid, right? I was a statistic. The LA school systems didn't give one crap about me and my friends, and we quickly figured that out. But I also figured out that there was a voice a still small voice that's always speaking. And there's a distinction between the inner critic/inner roommate and my intuitive God voice. I was 15 and it clicked for me. And I've been using that voice ever since to march towards what is handwritten on my soul. Because my belief is the fruit doesn't belong to the tree. The fruit belongs to the ecosystem., right? This is, this is not ours to keep. It's ours to give, right? If I take one of these veins or, um, in my body and I fold it up, I can't, I, I kink it. I stopped the flow and a body of water without an inlet or an outlet causes disease. So as I open up the channels and say, yes, Spirit, God, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus, use me. As I open the channels up, It's like, um, a self-cleaning oven. It just takes care of itself, right?

It's so wild and it's so simple and it's so right.

I—

what you're saying also is like in Five Elements of Chinese medicine theory, right? The blockages of the, of the pathways, right? And how much of it's external, how much of it's internal, which is environmental, nutritional, toxins. But you know, I want to go back to just two things that you said is I also grew up with a very difficult family. I also grew up, uh, in an where it was chaotic and I was the oldest of siblings. And each of those narratives about what someone can choose and how they make their definition of who they are around that makes so much sense. And I love looking at that from the Enneagram personalities of what are the wounding and the fixing and what we're predisposed to and what triggers us and what we need to grow in order to grow. And this idea just stuck out to me that Dad could have been imperfect, wildly imperfect. And yet there was this one message that stood out amongst all the chaos, amongst all the imperfectness. And somehow you organically knew, that's what I have to pay attention to.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, the other things could have been difficult. My father, same thing. Don't have a relationship. But is there one thing that we can all take from something, even if it's not the best package?

That, that, man, um, my work over these years has been to see the face of God everywhere I go. And one of the most challenging places to see that was in my family, right? Because it's so easy to just blame them and walk away. Yeah. And go find my chosen family of other nerds who are into self-development and psychology and all that stuff. But to go back home where I have a history, where they know me as something where I am cast in a role and to rewrite the role and go against it, but still keep my heart open to love, to lean in, to offer a bridge by way of what they can hold. Dude, that's masterful. Like again, I wrote this—

And miraculous.

Dude, so miraculous. I wrote this book, right? Spiritual Millionaire. It's out now. It's awesome. And one of the things I talk about in this book is how I find myself to be the richest person in the room, not because of what's in my bank account, but because of what I just said to you all. Because most people, they die with the second umbilical cord still attached. The first one gives us life. The second one holds us back from life. And a lot of people spend their entire lifetime trying to prove their mom and dad wrong or right, trying to be a good little Christian boy or whatever the case may be to make sure we fit into the box that mommy and daddy think we should or to go against it. I was 40, 4-0, when I discovered that I had been competing with my dad since 13.

Hmm.

Competing. Because what I told myself at 13 was, is, okay, this guy's on drugs. This guy's messing up our family. I'll never be wild like that. I'll never be expressive like that. I'll never be overly generous like that. I'll figure out how to take care of my family because he didn't. And so I used the pain and the wounds to build this life, this million-dollar, multimillion-dollar business and all the things. But I was still trapped, trapped by the competition. And so what I do with my clients often is we identify their invisible opponent because everybody has one.

Oh yeah.

Right? It's the bullies at 13. It's your sister who was prettier. It's your brother who was the golden child. It's your brother who was the fuck-up and had all the space to be X, Y, and Z, and your mom still loved on them and you doing everything perfect and they Why do they get the love? Right? This is— this work is some of the most fulfilling, powerful, and you know, because you do it. You do it every day. Right? I've been in this space since 2005. And before there was influencers, before there was money attached to it, before it was ever a thing, I was nerding out on this stuff because it was filling my own cup.

Mm-hmm.

And people started coming to me. I didn't even know what a life coach was. People were coming to me and they're like, bro, what are you doing? Why are you— why do you look younger? Why do you have more energy? Everything about you is different. Like, I was like the walking dead. And when I got— I had a heart condition, had fungus on my heart. And the doctor said, you know, it's two things: your diet and your stress levels. And I went, cool, I'm vegan now. I just instantly done, right? And then I started looking at the stress levels. And as I addressed all the shame and guilt and generational trauma and webs that were all over me, as I cut each one of those things, it was like I got taller. I got brighter. Right? And I say this to my clients often, if you make room for your gifts, your gifts will make room for you. Right? That is some of our biggest work is just to go, what's handwritten on my soul? What's mine to bring forward? And then say yes to that thing and watch the path just unfold for you. A lot of times we think we need to make it happen. It's not your job to make it happen. It is your job to make it welcome, to make it welcome, to open the space, to say, Spirit, use me. I hear you. Why do I care about this so much? Because whatever it is, if you smelt it, you dealt it, that's yours, bro. That's yours.

Well, that's what I love about this side of— I don't want to even call it psychology, which maybe I'll just generically call it insight, self-awareness, and personal growth, because you have the cliché stuff which we can get into. And like you said, the influencers, and if you do this and, you know, all of a sudden everything will work out. But and then people are saying, well, I'm doing the work. And then you see and you're like, yeah, you're really not.

Like, you're right.

Right. It's, you know, You're, you're hitting this, and, and this is something that I love about my training differently as a marriage and family therapy in the field of marriage and family therapy. We didn't come from psychology. We didn't come out of the psychology, old school Freudian, Adlerian stuff. We came from relational dynamics, systems theory, cybernetics, patterns, beliefs, assumptions, things that keep things stuck. Yes, in that feedback loop. And a lot of times those are beliefs, assumptions, expectations, intergenerational stuff, family stories. Right. Genogram. I'm sure you've heard of a genogram. And for anybody who hasn't, a genogram is like a family map, but you're not just saying who's related to who. What were their patterns? What were their positive traits? What were their negative traits? Was there addictions? Was there cutoffs? Were people— grudges? Was there divorces? Was there all of those things? And looking at that as much as you're looking at, well, so-and-so got married to so-and-so and they had 4 kids. What's the stuff that is and, and I'm, I'm completely in alignment with what you're saying because that's where the work is.

Facts. You know what's interesting about all of this is that I lead a workshop with my wife. I have been for the last 10 years, uh, called The Bridge Experience, and it is a nervous system somatic embodiment workshop. It is like ayahuasca meets escape room meets church meets, you know, like heart surgery. Right? It's very intense.

It's—

there's no note-taking. You are the workshop, right? And early on, we would have these super nerds come in and they'd be like, well, that's this and that's this, and they'd point out all of the things we were doing. But we were intuitively getting to these things without the books. Now, we've since went and got certified and all the things and all that stuff, but initially it was just, okay, I'm going to use myself as my own science here, right? There's a family secret, right? There's a, there's a this, there's like— I started actually understanding nervous system work way before I understood that it was nervous system work. I, I didn't know. I couldn't tell you about hyper and hypo arousal, right? I couldn't tell you about our threshold of tolerance, but I understood that life was a capacity game and that as I cleared the trauma that had been living in my body, that my capacity expanded. And like, to me, this is so beautiful what you're pointing to because I've come to a lot of this stuff just by way of freeing myself, um, and then holding space for other people and asking the right questions. And also, right, humans are interesting and complicated but also very simple, right? We're social beings, right? We, we need each other. It's why you have a job. It's why I have a job. We could— they could type in ChatGPT, what is this? What's going on? You need a heart. Yeah. You need those loving, those loving eyes going, yes, feel that.

Yeah.

It's okay to feel that, right?

It's—

there's something deeper about us humans that is so primal that we just need to sit in the same room and grieve. We just need to like have a conversation about the sexual abuse that occurred, that got swept under the rug, that you intellectualized when you were 24, but you didn't feel yet. You have not given your body the safety signal and the cue that you are now safe. So that— so then you walk around in hypervigilance or you gain a bunch of weight to try to make sure you're never a target again. But based on the laws of the universe. And this is where all these things start to overlap, because when we start looking at quantum science and things of that nature, to me, the universe is like electricity. Electricity literally never says no. It says, do you have the infrastructure for what you're plugging up? Right. And it's a giant yes button. And it's listening, not by way of like, it doesn't speak English. It speaks vibration and frequency. And so the frequency of avoiding being hurt again actually calls that towards me.

Correct.

So tricky, man.

Yeah, that's our dominant thoughts. And, and, you know, our autonomic nervous system plays on that. And as a mind-body therapist, when— so the modality I do is called neuro-emotional technique. It is incredible. We're using muscle testing, Chinese medicine meridians. We're not asking, it's not a silent process. We're checking in with the We're bypassing the rational brain, which is stuck in that story that we've been talking about, and going into that limbic system.

Yep.

The story underneath the story, right? We're checking underneath the hood. And you can't talk your way out of the paper bag with that. And it's so fascinating. I was working with a client earlier this morning with this modality, and you so hit it spot on. I set up a part of our session with something that they've been stuck in. And I said to them verbatim, I'm going to check you on a concept to see how your nervous system responds that I wish when I'm doing this with my practitioner, this is a question I hope that I'm going to bring to them about me. So I'm putting myself into that mindset, right? Beyond just like, what, what, what would I need if I was in this scenario? Not what do they need in addition to that, right? And, and it. Went down such a rabbit hole. And I've been working with this person for a couple of years, that this original memory at 15, 16 years old, that had nothing to do with the issue that we're working on today, has driven the stuckness around that. Because it's like we going back into that law of attraction, like connects to like, even if it's not intellectually, rationally the same category or the same theme, it's the emotion of what you felt at that time? Fear, disappointment, insult, all those things. Plus, what's the worst part about when you felt that? Well, I felt completely rejected, and now I got to keep myself perfect so I don't get humiliated again. Ah, so now let's find where all that theme is showing up in your life. And that motivation, even though you have a good heart and you want to do good things, let's find all the things that you're doing that you want to be beyond reproach.

That That is so—

and work and then clearing it up from there. That's the Jenga piece that we're looking for.

Oh, so good. So good, man. There's so much. This is why I say often you get what you pay for, right? Because a lot of people try to cut corners or they're hiring, you know, the 27-year-old life coach who just started 4 days ago and has never done anything other than, you know, hang out in Bali. Yeah, like, exactly right. Like, don't just say like it is.

There's some great people. There's some great people. But yes, again, like, you have to know the qualifications. That anybody can wake up—

yes—

spin their chair around in 360 degrees, and now I'm a coach.

That, that, that's one of my biggest, uh, things to solve in this, this industry is the checks and balances. But I, I think like all things, the best rises up and sticks around, right? Like I've seen so many people come and go. Like I've seen thousands of people come and go because they just wanted to be popular. They don't live this stuff, right? They want to make money. It was a drive-by. Oh, maybe I'll try this. Maybe I'll try this.

Drive-by coaching.

Yeah, right. It's like, ah, yeah, no, I'll keep going.

Right.

And For people like you and I, like, it's like a sport to me. Like, I love humans, right? Sometimes I hate them, but most of the time I love them, right? And I only hate them when I go past my boundaries, um, and don't fill my cup. So I have to be really meticulous about my own hygiene and spaciousness Like, I do something called soul sabbaticals, which I also have my clients do, where I'll go out here on this property. We have 3 houses and 4 acres on it. And so I'll just go out in the woods and, you know, set a timer and go out. Don't— no phone checking, no writing, no nothing, just me and sitting and letting my soul receive. And it is a— it's challenging at first, and then it becomes something really beautiful to count on. And it's a, like, a divine reset button for the, uh, for the heart, for the soul.

Yeah, I like that, because Rich Litfin, who we were, you know, talking about before, has this whole thing of using the Ferrari as a metaphor. You don't just go in, hit the gas, and think you're going to be able to control the thing. So he has this slow go down to go fast metaphor.

Yes, go slow to go fast, that part.

And the tech fast, the, the, the, the, you know, the Sabbath sabbatical, right? The, the— that's where that all comes from, the seventh day, right? The day of rest. People don't realize, especially now, right, we— all the chaos in the world that seems to be amplified. But I think you and I would agree that Esther Hicks would probably say it's only amplified the more we pay attention to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's— oh man, this, this is such a juicy subject that we could probably go on another 30 minutes for, but I'm gonna go there. So I had someone recently, uh, message me, uh, a client saying like, hey, why do you point out some of the things that Mr. Trump has been doing? Um, you're the one who taught me what you focus on expands. You know, what you appreciate appreciates. And I shared with this person that, um, I used to— I was being groomed to be a pastor through the Church of Religious Science, and I was in that process. I quit twice. Um, and one of the things we used to do was called bless the mess. Where we would acknowledge what is, but bless it and hold it in a, in a particular light. And it's important that— and not everybody's here, so I'm not suggesting or subscribing that everybody do this— but when you build your capacity in such a way that you could hold both and all, the game is different, right? I can look at the atrocities of the world and also the beauty of the world and hold them in very similar light and say God doing God things. Right? There is— I've had certain people be like, ah, let's just pretend like racism doesn't exist. It doesn't. And I'm like, no, it definitely still does. Yeah. And we're still here.

Right.

Life is, life is still beautiful and we can hold both. And that to me goes back to capacity., right? Do you have the capacity? And if you don't, it's all good. You work on it. You build towards it. A part of building capacity for me is doing as much forgiveness work as I possibly can, scheduling in play every day, just playing, doing something that fills my cup every day.

I ask that of my clients all the time. Like, what would you rather be doing with your bandwidth? Than that, right? If you willingly have the choice to pay attention, right? If you're like, well, the news and all this chaos, I'm like, well, but you're choosing to put it on.

Facts.

What are you doing to counterbalance that? At the bare minimum, if you're going here, what are you doing to go there? But why are you choosing in the first place? I remember someone said this to me, and they're like, well, I need to know. Like, well, that's just a belief that you carry, that you think you— what will that allow you to do differently? And what impact will that have on the thing in which you think to know more?

About.

Correct. So a friend of mine, one of my favorite, favorite people in the world, a colleague of mine and a good friend, it's like, "Oh, my kid's going to one of the protests today in D.C." And I'm like, I'm a fan of protests, I'm a fan of peace and conversation and talking, but people screaming and yelling is going to have zero impact on that. And are they going to get themselves more— where's the positive? I think it was probably— go back, it was an Esther Hicks story where someone said, um, to Mother Teresa, like, they invited her to an anti-war protest, and she said, no, I can't go. And she goes, why not? Aren't you against wars? Well, I am. Well, why won't you go? Well, if you invite me to a pro-peace, uh, protest, I'll be there.

Yep, facts. Yep, that, that, you know, and again, it's— you can hold both. You can't hold both.

But that's practice. I think that's— in Judaism, there's a prayer for the country, there's a prayer for the president. The prayer doesn't change regardless of who the president is, but it talks about benevolence, it talks about for all people, it talks about, right, which is, you know, it's the idea of like how we can use— just, just an example, we can pivot off this because I don't want it to get into a political thing— just the idea of like, can we respect the office, even if the people— the person holding it isn't necessarily respecting the office, right? Can we still play at that level, which is where we want to lean into no matter what?

Correct, dude. It's so interesting, right? Because I said— I made a video about this a few weeks ago— and they all— somebody's always gonna have a president they don't like, right? The market—

50% of the countries, right? They don't like—

yeah, there's always gonna be a point where the markets are amazing. There's gonna be a point where the markets suck. There's gonna part, a point where the weather is amazing and a point where the weather sucks.

Yeah. But do you know who's winning in the market? That whatever the market is, that doesn't determine when they buy. They're always— right, those who are real estate investors are always buying.

Yes.

If the market's up, I'm buying. If the market's down, I'm buying. Because they're not playing by that binary perspective.

Correct. That's exactly where I was going to go with it, right? To find neutrality and then acceptance and then celebration in the whole thing. Because ultimately life is stupid and meaningless. And so we just do stuff to keep us going. We're like, ah, right? I did, um, um, I did 8 days in the wilderness, 4 alone, uh, 2 gallons of water, no tent, just in the darkness. And it was wild. And one of the many beautiful lessons that came from it was watching the different ant mounds that lived where I was living in the woods and how self-important they felt inside of those mounds. And that at any given point, a branch could fall down and hit that mound. And no matter how many Gucci purses and, you know, protests they did, everybody's Air Force Ones that they're wearing. Yeah, all of it's gone, gone, right? So it seems so important inside your little ant mound, but the truth is like, it doesn't matter. So let's just make it fun and interesting.

It's a whole different— they don't have the Lamar Drake beef, you know. No, it's not none of that, none of that, right? And I think that's what— it's funny, when I made a decision this past election to sit one out, mm-hmm, voted local, voted on some things locally in my state, and so on, because writing was on the wall. No matter what, writing was on there. And the people who are self-righteous and self-important and were like, no way, 'Will this ever happen?' Yeah, chose to remain oblivious. And I realized that one, it gave me a sense of neutrality where I'm now able to hear people differently on both sides of the aisle. No, it doesn't mean, 'Oh, you don't care about democracy. A non-vote was a vote for so-and-so,' whatever it is. Yeah, but that's not— those are all self-imposed rules because Didn't matter.

Yeah.

And it doesn't mean that I don't have different ideals and different values. I took— I made an experiment for myself, and I'm finding I'm able to have shocking conversations with people by having less hills I'm willing to die on versus more people I can choose to connect with.

That protecting your peace, man. Like that, that is beautiful. You know, we pick our battles, um, and sometimes it's just not worth it. It's literally not actually worth the stress on the body, the stress in the body of our affairs. Like, if you— to me, um, it was one of my favorite quotes, I think it's T.S. Eliot that said, It's not the load that breaks us down, but the way we carry it. And if we look at the US and the— in the world as the load, if I just carry my part and you carry yours, and all these people care— all 8 billion just carry what's important to them, their pillars. Yeah, right. Then we're good to go. The problem becomes, going to some Byron Katie stuff, is when I start to get into your business. When I start to say, no, no, you shouldn't carry like that, carry like this, carry like that.

Yeah. Um, I think it's The New Codependency, Melody Beattie. I think it's that specific book. But in one of the— it's either in the first chapter or in the introduction, it talks about the idea of codependency is not knowing unhealthily where I end and someone else begins.

Yes, church.

Because on one side, right, we're taking away empowerment, we're taking away— but right, we're, we're inserting our self-importance, our self-righteousness into this. We're deciding for somebody else, we're disempowering somebody else. But that's the dance of codependency. And, and I'm wondering, right, what, what is our biggest pandemic? And I used to joke for years, even before we had this word, you know, the COVID pandemic, but I used to say like that codependent mindset of one of my favorite stories. I had a client who just had a lot of chaos, great heart, wonderful human. And I remember saying to them, and I thought, I'm going to lose my license after this. I'm like, oh, can you take your finger and just kind of hold it under your nose and just take a whiff? And they did that. I'm like, does it smell like crap?

Like what?

I'm like, well, you're sticking your fingers in everybody's bum in your life, and you're the one who has your life that's smelling the most like shit. Yeah, but if you stop sticking your finger in all their butts, aka all their lives, and you just said, God, that sounds awful, what do you think you're gonna do about it? Versus, God, that sounds awful, how can I fix that for you? Imagine what that would be like.

So good. Yes, I love that.

And I got that resounding yes. The person literally started cracking up, fell off my couch laughing.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh my God, oh my God, I'm sticking my finger in everybody else's asshole. My life's my right. And, and sometimes we have to play those extremely playful hysterical smack in the faces.

That, you know, this— the piece that I do with, with that, which is awesome, um, is I'll have my clients, anytime they discover something, we then go put it into action by way of celebrating themselves catching that moment where they're sticking their finger in someone else's ass, right? Like, the moment your finger's in their ass, just pull it out and be like, yes! It's okay, I stopped it.

It's that one little thing. Different when they catch it, right? And that pullback, right, that's the victory that we don't celebrate. I'm so doubling down on what you just said, right? People, right, if you're listening to this and you're like, ah, I know I should have done that thing better, but did you catch yourself sooner, less duration, less intensity, and was allowed to pivot like that famous Friends episode up the stairs with the couch? That the pivot is the success. When you do that over and over again, when you do it with— right, that's compounding interest. That, that will change. That's how life changes. Exactly what you're saying.

Beautiful. Yeah, I feel complete. This is awesome. We nailed it. We nailed it. Let's end on—

let's talk about that.

Buttholes.

Yeah, fine, fine. But I want you to— but I want you to just share the names of your books, even though I already did in the introduction. But I want you to just give me— just give me the name. Give me the things that, like, if, if you're gonna, you know, the general theme of each of the— right, you have the one that just came out, Spiritual Millionaire, but I know there's some others, right? Let's just give a quick plug to each of those. I'm a big fan of— if you saw my bookshelves, it's, it's just overflowing. I'm now giving away books to people. I'm now like— so, so I'm a big fan of, of people should have books in their house. That alone brings good energy to you. And even if you don't finish it, if you don't read it, but it just still says a lot about a person.

Yes. So read.

So let's, let's happily give a good plug to those.

Thank you. I think the most important book that I've written is the last one, which is Spiritual Millionaire: Unlock the 7 Inner Laws of Abundance and Money. I think this one's super important because I'm addressing nervous system and spirituality and this subject, um, money, sex, and parents. Are the most polarizing, traumatizing things. And one of them you don't get away from ever. And that's money, right? Like we're constantly addressing money. Parents we can run from. Sex is off and on. But this money thing, every day you are interacting with it and it's either causing trauma and closing you or opening you. And I was one of those people who was extraordinarily closed around money. Money and, uh, and abundance. And I have shifted so much. And I went from making $36K a year to $150K, $150K to $300K, $300K to $600K, $600K to $1.2M.

And I just literally said exponential.

Yeah, it just— it went bananas. And the principles that I used to keep growing it are in this book. So I just suggest anybody get it, PrestonSmiles.com. Book. And if you want to do a workshop that will rock you to your core, thebridgemethod.org. Love it.

Love it. Yes. Listen, there's, there's, there's not one thing in this conversation today that is not going to be useful to someone. And I'm a big fan of even if someone's listening to it and they're like, they're not yet there, then, then this is something that I would say 6 months from now, a year from now, come back to this episode. I haven't said this once too in any other episodes and I'm getting close to 200, but I will tell you why I'm saying this. When my buddy first introduced me to the laws of attraction stuff, and I tried to listen to Esther. And it's a whole language and a whole lens. And, you know, I'm a licensed therapist, and, you know, you have to be like, all right, is this like, you know, qualified? And is it research? And like, versus like, is this just a useful lens?

Yeah.

But I tried to listen to a bunch of episodes on YouTube, and there's a million hours of hers on there. Yes. And, and, and I'm like, all right, this is cool, but it didn't pass whatever barriers I had. And then a year or two later, something popped up again. I'm like, ah, maybe it came up on a playlist, or there was something like, you know what, I'm— for whatever reason, let me just go type it back into YouTube. And it started marinating. And then I probably went through within that week or 2 weeks or whatever, maybe in that first month, like 100 hours of audio. And then over the next—

you're right.

And it's— and I started seeing things shift and change because not You have the— but this idea of dropping the resistance is one of the biggest steps to it, which is letting go the rules that we've self-created and saying, well, what can come in if I do decide to not play by that rule anymore? And I realized that once I dropped the resistance, then all of a sudden I started receiving. And then once I started receiving, I started to be able to ask, and I started to drop the resistance around what would it be like if. And then it started giving, right? And I think that this is very important for people to hear, whether it's this episode, whether it's other episodes, whether it's getting the book. Get, get the book. Treat yourself to this book, to Preston's book. It may not be the right time, but better to have it sitting on your shelf for it to fall off the shelf randomly.

Yes.

Or tip over because of something— someone shut the door and it vibrated the bookshelf and you— and it fell over and it recalled your attention. As crazy as that sounds, I can't say anything beyond that. That's— it will show up for you when it needs to show up for you. So if it's not the right— if something's not resonating with you in this episode, I challenge you to come back in 6 months and listen to this episode again, and then send Preston and I a message that you did.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

So much more to talk about. I, you know, one day I'd love to talk more about retreats and why that's beneficial to people, right? Again, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, you know, the thing as a sabbatical. It's the same thing with all that stuff. But I really do want to thank you for one, where you— the success you're having couldn't happen to a better person. So I really want to acknowledge that. I really do appreciate it. You know, as we connect more, you and I will— I'll share with you some of my stuff that led me to where I am and our similar shared stuff, ADHD and learning disorders also, and, and family conflict and divorce and being the scholarship kid and fighting for it all too.

Yes.

And then dropping resistance around the fight, right? So, so, all right, y'all, thanks for listening to another episode. We're getting closer and closer, as you know, to episode 200. Do me a favor, follow Preston on Instagram, and with the same Preston Smiles on Instagram. Yep, that's it, right? Check out his website, and we'll see you in the next episode.