6 Powerful Ways to Break Emotional Patterns and Strengthen Your Brain Feat. Gabor Mate

So my question is. And then I'm going to come to add, because I definitely. We cannot have this interview without talking about that because there's so many people here that identify with distractibility. So how does one change the atmospheric conditions of their life in a positive way? Because we, you know, there's a lot of people running the world right now that are creating the worst shit storms on the planet. And so I just wanted to get your perspective on that.

Yeah, so the first thing is to recognize that that is a problem now. A lot of people don't recognize it. They keep trying to run away from it. And one way to run away from recognizing that there's a problem is that you become addicted. So, for example, we did this the first time you spoke. But let me do it with this audience. Okay. I'll give you a definition of addiction that I don't think is controversial. So, an addiction is manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary relief or pleasure, and therefore craves, but then suffers negative consequences and they have difficulty giving it up despite the harm. So it's pleasure, relief, therefore, craving, short term, long term, harm, inability to give up. That's what addiction is. I said innate behavior. I didn't say drugs. It could include drugs. Of course it does. Cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, nicotine, caffeine, alcohol. But it could also be gambling, the Internet, pornography, sex, relationship, work. And in this culture, workaholism is rewarded like my workholism was rewarded. Shopping, any range of human behaviors. The issue is not the activity, it's the internal relationship, Pleasure, craving, relief, harm, inability to give it up. So I'm going to ask you guys a question here. If, according to that definition, you recognize that sometime or another you had some kind of an addictive pattern in your life, just raise your hand. Okay. Again, it's virtually everybody here. Now, the next question I ask is not what's wrong with the addiction, which we know, but what's right about it. What does it give you in the short term? In the short term, what does it give you that you like? Okay, I wonder if a couple people just raised their hand and then shout out their answer. Okay, what does it give you in the short term? Or what did it give you? I'm not going to ask you what you're addicted to or how long or when, just when you were in it temporarily. What does it give you? Anybody?

Serenity.

Serenity. Okay. Thank you.

Feels good.

So a good feeling. Pleasure. Yeah.

Dopamine.

Hit, of course.

Which means excitement. Yeah.

Stimulant, escape.

Escape. Thank you. No. Escape from what? Escape from distress? Escape from emotional pain? Serenity, A sense of aliveness? Escape from pain. Are these good things or are they bad things in themselves? The good things, they're the things we all want. They're the things we all deserve. Actually, there are all the things we should have had as children. Which means that the addiction wasn't your primary problem. Your addiction was an attempt to solve the problem. Therefore, to talk about addiction either as an inherited disease or some kind of a choice that people make. And by the way, there are millions of people in jail in this country. Because of this social belief that addiction is some kind of a choice for which people should be punished. No, it ain't. It's an attempt to deal with life problems such as emotional pain. And so if you want to understand addiction, you have to look at the atmosphere again, as Don woods says, that people grew up under and what they're trying to escape from. So first, we have to recognize that there's a problem and not run away from it. Secondly, we have to accept compassionately all parts of ourselves, all aspects of ourselves, whether we like them or not. Because all aspects of ourselves are. Whether we like them or not. They came along for a reason. And if we ask the question compassionately. You might do something that you're not proud of. If you ask yourself the question compassionately, why did I do that? What need was it serving? What was my organism trying to deal with? You'll find the answer if you ask the question. So you can ask the question two ways. Why did I do that? Or why did you do that? Do you think there's going to be an answer? No, because that's not a question. That's an accusation against somebody else or against the self. And as one of my spiritual teachers says, only when compassion is present. Will people love themselves to see the truth. Now, if you ask somebody else, not why did you do that, But I know you're a good person trying to do your best. Any idea why you did that? Now, that's the question. And the same with yourself. If you put to yourself, no, why did I do this? But I wonder why I did this. That's what a compassionate inquiry is. And my belief is that the answers are within all of ourselves. They actually are. And if we are compassionate with each other, which is so much of what you talk about. And if we're compassionate with ourselves, then the answers will emerge. So that's the beginning, is to recognize there's a problem and to be compassionate about examining the Sources of that problem.

You've done a lot of work in drug and addiction research. And what is your perspective on addiction and recovery. And how can we best help families heal and recover? Since, you know, that's one of my main areas of focus, I think addiction's.

A really tough problem. First of all, I think it's universal. I think all of us are addicted in one way or another to one thing or another. The only reason we don't see that is that some addictions are socially acceptable. Workaholism, workaholism, addiction to shopping, Addiction to power, Addiction to thinking, which is very prominent in intellectual circles. I mean, there's all sorts of things. How to deal with addictions I think is really tough. I mean, one strategy is to shift addictive behavior to things that are less harmful rather than more harmful. You know, it's better to be addicted to running Than to cigarette smoking, for example. But it's still an addiction.

To try.

To get to the root of addictive behavior. I think that's really tough. I think that's, you know, I think the people that have it right are Buddhist psychologists who say that the root of addictive behavior is attachment. It's the illusion that satisfaction and completeness come from something external to you. And until you can practice realizing that you are complete as is, it's hard for you to be free. I think the most encouraging thing that I see about addiction is that. And this is true of everything I looked at, whether it's cigarettes or heroin. If people progress. I mean, if this go through life enough and don't get snuffed out in one way or another, One day their motivation to drop it reaches a point at which it's easy. You see people that have tried to quit smoking again and again. And they talk about what a struggle it is and how hard, and they go back to it. And one day a person wakes up and may be looking at stained fingers or looking at a dirty ashtray. And suddenly they don't want to do it anymore. And that time it's easy. The problem is you can't put motivation into another person. And that's the frustration of addiction treatment. All you can do is arrange circumstances and encourage people to try and keep trying. And one day the reservoir of motivation is full enough that it becomes easy.

Well, now, this will always sound kind of weird When I bring up addiction stuff. But you are very knowledgeable in the area of shifting consciousness. And so, you know, I believe that addiction is a solution. It's not a very good solution. It could Kill you. And I also believe that I'd like to see policy change because you can't punish the pain out of people. Right now we have, you know, the criminal justice system treating addiction, and we need a more compassionate approach. And there's ways to really shift consciousness. And so I want to ask you about plant medicines, psychedelics, because I see MDMA coming down the pike. Psilocybin you have lots of experience with. You wrote a book called the Natural Mind in 1970. My first book, A Revolutionary approach to the Drug problem. And you thought this would totally shift. But what happened is this war on drugs happened, and I'd love to have you. I know this is not an easy question, but what is consciousness and looking at altering it and shifting it in ways so you live in the world in a better, happier, more connected space. Because I think the opposite of addiction is connection. And so anything you can speak to that.

Well, that's a big subject.

Yeah, it is.

I know, I know.

I would say, you know, the argument that I get into with scientific materialists is over the nature of consciousness. They think that consciousness is a product of brain biochemistry or electrical activity in the brain. Brain. I think that consciousness is primary and that I think consciousness organizes matter into more and more complex forms. There's no way of proving one or the other. It's just a different worldview. But I find that my worldview makes things much more interesting. And, you know, my experiences also are that by changing consciousness, by changing what's in your head, you can change the external world. And I have seen that again and again. You know, just as a mundane example, I've for a long time lived with dogs. And I've always had Rhodesian Ridgebacks. And I had a male. I lived out in. I had a property that bordered on Saguaro national park, east of southeast of Tucson. And I had one big male who all he wanted to do was crawl in your lap and snuggle. And I came home one day and found he had backed a worker, someone who was working on the landscape against the wall. The guy was brandishing a rake, and the dog hackles were up, snarling. There was no way to convince this guy that it was his emotions that were producing this behavior in the dog. There was no way to convince him that this was not a vicious attack dog that I had there. And I see this kind of thing all the time in interactions with people, interactions with all sorts of things. I've also seen. I'll just tell you a few. I've told these stories before. But some of the potentials that I see in psychedelics I had. This goes way back in my early exploratory days. I must have been about 28, I suppose. I had a lifelong allergy to cats. If a cat licked me, if a cat came near me, my eyes would itch. If it licked me, I'd get hives. So I never let cats near me. And one day I took LSD with a group of friends outdoors. It was a beautiful day. It was just, everything was wonderful. In the midst of this, a cat jumped into my lap and my immediate reaction was sort of this. And then I thought, this is really silly. And I relaxed and I petted. The cat had no allergic reaction. I've never had one since. So instant disappearance of a lifelong allergy. Tell you around the same time even more. First of all, I'd love to open Dr. Weil's allergy clinic. You know, maybe 10 sessions, space the week apart. And the first one you get a full dose of whatever and then a kaleidoscope on your first visit and then the dose reduces and at some point you're taking a placebo and you don't know when that happens. Allergies are learned responses. You can unlearn them. So this one's a little trickier to explain. I also had grew up being told that I could never get tan. I had fair skin. And my experience was when I was out in the sun, I would burn. I spent. We used to go down to the Jersey shore and this is in the days before sunscreen. Probably the things we put on us magnified the effect of the sun. But anyway, sheets of skin peeling off.

Bright red, horrible pain.

And then I'd be as fair as ever. So I just took this, that, no, I couldn't get tan. So also around this time, also with lsd, on a beautiful day, I was living in rural Virginia. I was running around with no clothes on and I was lying in the grass and looking up at the sun. And I thought, this is also really silly. And I just sort of relaxed and exposed myself to the sun. And the next day I got tan. And I have ever since. Now that's a little trickier to explain. I mean that's not.

Because the question is, what the hell's going on?

Well, what's going on? Probably your pigmentation is controlled by cells called melanocytes, which close to neurons and they are involved with the immune system. So again, this has to be a mind mediated effect that changes the way that those cells behave. But I think that that Just hints at the kind of potential that's there. And same with the back pain stuff, that there are ways that you can change external reality and physical reality by changing things in your head.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. My belief, because of all the pain I used to have in having spent a lot of time in the addiction recovery world with my own recovery, is I see addicts have a tremendous amount of back pain, knee pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, migraine headaches, skin problems, digestive issues. And I think the same things that manifest themselves as addictions in destructive ways are the same mechanism that manifests in pain. And I don't hear very many people, if anyone, talking about it and linking the two together, but I think there's a huge thing, sleep problems, all kinds of stuff. Because I've been, you know, and have you.

Do you have any experience with ibogaine or know people that have.

Oh, I'm the first person in the world to have before and after brain scans in serotonin and dopamine testing of doing ibogaine, I scanned my brain before, went and did it, came back and scanned it again. And I have hours of interviews with one of the top psychiatrists who specializes in using psychedelics and plant medicines for addiction treatment and ptsd. So, yeah, I've.

So this is the African. This is the African psychedelic and little known here and has a reputation now for treating addictive behavior sometimes very fast. Yeah, it's not available here. There are clinics in Mexico.

That's where I went.

Right. But, you know, you asked at the beginning what's happening? It is remarkable to me to see this, you know, new interest in psychedelics in our culture and a lot of research. In the old days, you know, it was a lot of research looking for bad effects. And now there's a lot of researchers trying to document positive effects of psychedelics. Oregon has an initiative coming to legalize psilocybin. I think the potential for MDMA to treat ptsd, psilocybin for obsessive compulsive disorder and depression, I think will eventually have these drugs be available for therapeutic use.

Are you friends with Rick Doblin? And Rick. He is just the guy. I mean, you got to really give him credit for the sheer amount of doors slammed in his face and the amount of resistance, but just wanting to go out there and find ways to help reduce human suffering.

So it's changing now. I mean, when I see characters on mainstream TV series microdosing, something is changing.

Exactly. It is really interesting how many people's businesses and what they end up doing for a career has absolutely nothing to do with what they ever thought they would land into. It's like these strategic byproducts and a lot of it comes out of total adversity. And for areas of life that not only don't work, that are totally broken, and you're forced to take a path that you would never typically want to go down. And there you are, and then your ability to parlay it into something. So like, when did you first record a video and put it up and get feedback either from your friends or it just dawned on you and now, you know, you've got literally millions of people that watch you on probably a daily basis, right?

My first serious video. Cause I was still. I was kind of a social YouTube guy at the time, back in 2006. And so Ustream back then. And so I would just stream regular stuff while I was playing football. I would go on there, but it was very rehab ish, as I would say. I was very inconsistent with my lifestyles. And the first, I feel like, rehab time video that I was committed to it, I remember I was still living in my mom's house. I was living in her guest room. And it was called. I'm trying to think of the name. It wasn't called Faith. I think it was called Faith It Out. I don't remember the title, but I think it was called Faith It Out.

Is it still up or did you take it down?

No, matter of fact, it's not called Faith It Out. It's called Free Yourself. That's what it was, Free Yourself. And I believe it's still up. If you dive back into the YouTube files, it's still there. And I was recording on my imac that I had in there. And back then I would like. I mean, I was just trying to be so perfect, like, you know, just trying to make sure everything was right. And so when I look back at those videos, I kind of cringe. But at the same time, like, man, that's where I started at, you know, so that was my first time doing that and then got to a point where I just started picking up my iPhone and just started speaking from my heart. And I didn't have, like, you know, some. Cause I used to think I have to have this production. I have to have this and that, and those things are awesome and incredible. But I realized I just needed to have my truth, my reality, and just. Just my soul to pick up a phone and inspire people. And so the videos that start to go viral were, you're perfect for the heart that's meant to love you and know your circle. And those videos, like, because at first I was getting, like, you know, maybe, I don't know, 100 views. And that was a lot for me and for people out there. If you're impacting 100 people with those views, that is a lot. But to see it now is just incredible. And those videos went viral. And those videos went viral. After I officially quit football, literally, like, two months, I was still trying to play arena football. I was still trying to hang on. I let go of that. And I kid you not, Joe, like, two, three months later, those videos took off.

Why do you think that is?

I just think that, you know, just with my faith, I just feel like it was just God speaking to me, saying, you know what? You're trying to hold onto this thing out of fear. And I was. I was. Fear of financial security. That's how I was getting paid. Fear of. Of my identity, like, who would I be without football? Even though I didn't love it no more. And I think a lot of people, we hold on to things that we. That we don't love anymore. We aren't in love with those things anymore out of the fear. And so when I let go, it was like, okay, you're taking a step. And now the rope bridge was cut off, too. So I had no. I couldn't go back. You know, I couldn't go back. The rope bridge was cut off. And literally, people thought I was crazy. I mean, my friends thought I was crazy. My mom and my dad kind of thought. They didn't say it, but I know they were like, are you sure? Because I had a family to provide for. And I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna do it. I don't know what's gonna happen. But I know this is the purpose for my life, because when I was on that stage, I'm not gonna go through that whole story. But when I was on the stage speaking to 3,000 kids, my very first big speaking engagement, I didn't want to do it. I was nervous. And on that stage is where I found myself, because I prepared the whole night before I prepared this long layout. I knew it, like I always say, like a rap verse. But soon as I stepped on stage, I went blank. And at that point, I was like, I can either sink or I can swim. And I said, God, use me. So a lot of people ask, like, where do you get your speaking from the heart style and just your passion? It was in that moment because I had nothing to lean on except my story and myself. And, you know, with kids, you can't fool kids. They'll let you know, like, quick, you know. And at that moment is when I realized, like, man, I still had confidence in the midst of fear and I still had power in the midst of my weakness at that moment. So I said, this has to be what I was created to do in my life. And at that moment is when I made those calls and called my coach, told them I'm not coming, called my friends, called my parents, and that's when rehab time really started. Wow. Wow.

So let me ask you about. Because you weave a lot of God into your videos, and I always tend to try to bring it up because I sit and think of who are the listeners here that are atheists that don't resonate at all with God. And, you know, my background, I was. My mother was a former nun. She actually left the convent because she had gotten ill and met my father in church and ended up getting married. And I was raised Catholic, and my experience with it was very negative. And I. Even to the point where this whole notion of God with all of the being molested as a kid, my mother dying, lots of abuse, lots of things that happened, you know, it wasn't until later in adult life where I realized I have a real issue with this whole God thing. And even though I spent thousands of hours of my life praying and going to church every day, when I went to Catholic school, you know, I just could not feel this connection with this source. And so to this day, you know, I always am a little suspect when someone is. Is so hardcore about what they think God is, because, you know, there's many different perceptions of that. The real question is to not go into trying to describe God because, you know, you're going to have a million different versions. It's more about faith. And so what does God mean to you and where does this faith come from? Because I think a lot of times people have a real, you know, your messages. I don't care what anyone, you know, if they're religious, spiritual atheists, there's so much good in what it is that you Share. And what I don't want to do is have someone either cut themselves off because they're like, oh, they hear this charged word, which is very positive for some people and extremely negative for others. So I'd love to get your perspective.

On that, for sure. And I always tell people, like you said, I mean, people follow me. I've had, you know, Muslims, atheists and everything. And I. I think they look at the message and take what they need and leave what they don't. And they respect my beliefs. You know, that's what I'm always a respecter of people's beliefs and only can speak about just in my life. Of course, I was raised around it. My dad's a pastor, my grandmother, all those things. But it wasn't until two situations happened in my life that really made me draw me closer to God. One was when I was six, seven years old. I had a real bad asthma condition. Of course, it's a lot better now with more knowledge I have. But living in New Orleans with that humidity, I mean, I'd take breathing treatments every night. It was bad. It got to a point where I was coughing so bad that my blood vessels turned white. I mean, my white around my eyes, my blood vessels popped, so all the white was red. And so I would go to school, and that's the first time I get bullied. Second grade, they're calling me, like, devil boy, all these things. And I was sick, and my mom, you know, my mother didn't know. The doctor gave us a suppressing cough medicine, which made it worse. And my mother said, you know, something. Told her God, you know, for her, told her, you know, through a friend, like, hey, take that baby to the hospital. Like, literally on the way to the hospital, I get there, I get in the er, and I still remember, like, it was yesterday. They put me down and my mom leaves the room, and this is one guy across the table, his son had just got shot. And I stopped breathing. You know, stopped breathing. Gone pretty much. And the only thing I remember is them bringing me back. But the guy was watching me, went and told my mom, and they brought me back, whatever. Like, that at that moment is when I felt, like, just my connection with God. Honestly, just in that moment, I felt him. It's kind of hard to explain. I couldn't put it into words, but I felt him in that moment. And another moment was, of course, just me hitting my rock bottom and just me giving me this purpose. Like, you know, it's so hard for me to explain, like, rehab time and how everything is going on and things like that, but only that I can say is I just know it's the call that God has for my life. When I speak, I feel like he's flowing through me and all of these things. I mean, I think I'm an intelligent person, but I don't think I'm as incredible as people may put it on me. I think it's just the incredible God that I serve, you know, so that's what God is for me, like just my experiences through life. And when I look back, my faith isn't built upon like what could happen in the future. My faith is built upon what has happened in my life. And so every time I look back and people can call it coincidence that they believe that or whatever it may be, but every time I look back in my life, everything added up to this moment. I had to go through the NFL, I learned so many things to put me in this moment. Friendships that it's just so hard to explain. Even how we met, you know, everything had to happen to get to this moment. Every time I look back, you know, my faith just gets stronger and stronger from that. And so that's what faith means to me, honestly. Yeah, well.

And I think to be void of faith in any particular area, not that you can't get through it, just it's a heck of a lot more painful. And what's interesting too is because of so much time that I have spent in recovery and with people that there are, I see some people that just not only don't believe in God, they hate the notion of it, and they hate people that even have that belief and so part of it. And there's so many people that are quote unquote religious that, that let's take Jesus, even though you can look at God as many different sources where they seem to be the antithesis of what his message appears to be, which is totally non accepting. And so I think part of it is just accepting others and accepting yourself without having to be like, oh, I'm going to invalidate that person because of that. Because it's real easy to point fingers at any part of a person or what they do that you don't like. And if you want the world to change, good luck with trying to change the world. You gotta change the way you look at the world, the way you experience the world.

And so I even think too, I mean, just to like, I mean, love. I mean, I think love is of course a universal language. And that's something I try to get people and it's funny you said that because. And it's true, you know, even when it comes to Christians, and I say this all the time, is that, you know, we could be some of the most judgmental people ever. Like, even with myself, like, you go to my page, it's like, Trent, you know, you have. I have one lady tell me I don't dress Christian enough. You know, I'm like, what is that? You know, I wear sandals, you know, so I see so much judgmental stuff, and I think it keeps people away. But I always say this to. Just. To, you know, believers that I talk to. I say, you know, don't let the imperfections of man keep you from the perfection of God. You know, And I think you have to understand that we blame. Even me, I blame God for my situation so much. I blame God for this. I blame God for that. But I was never taking the responsibility. I mean, we live in an evil world with people who do certain things, you know, and we have to take the responsibility also.

So I remember when we were doing yoga at my house a few months ago, and someone. Someone out of the blue just starts saying, yoga is like, some. And it's like, we're doing a yoga class, you know, with my friends.

I get that, too.

Yeah.

I'm just like, honestly, that's my best connection with God. Everything is what you make it. I feel like personally, you know, whether. Whatever opinion, whatever. Everybody has opinion. You know, people tell you that some water is bad for you. I'm just like, what? So, you know, everything is bad, you know, so you just got to take your experiences for yourself. And I think as long as you operate in love, man, I think it works out awesome.

What's the mission currently behind rehab time?

Just to renew every heart and body. You know, I want to give people worth. That's my thing. I mean, know your worth tour. But I want people to understand that they have worth. I mean, that's my message. Regardless of what's going on outside of you, I want you to know that you're an incredible person. Don't let what's going on outside of you define what's inside of you. So that's my mission, man. Just to get people to understand their worth.

Yeah, great. What are some of the most valuable life lessons that you've learned?

Oh, man, I think one is facing your reality. I can share this. The three Rs, you know, facing your reality is one. And I always say, you know, you'll never win your award by running from your battles. I talked about it at the tour. I think so many times we run away because of fear, whatever it may be. But when you step and face whatever it is, that battle or whatever, that fear, you overcome it. You realize you gain a strength that you never knew you had, you know? So I think a lot of people, a lot of times we need to face our reality, whatever that is. You don't have to become your reality in that sense, but you have to face it, you know, and you can grow from that. I think another lesson was release. You know, whether it's friendships, and I don't always promote that, but release the toxic things from your life. You know, people say don't burn bridges. I definitely agree, but I feel like there are certain bridges you need to burn, you know, that you can't afford to go back to. So releasing things from your life, it taught me that I had to change my environment. As I always say, you know, you don't blame a flower when it doesn't blossom or bloom. What do you do? You fix the environment. So sometimes it's not always you, you know, sometimes it is what's around you. And so I have to change that. And last, just repairing your life, whatever that means to you, whether it's seminars, whether it's mentorship, whether it's digging up the bad seeds that's been in your life since you were born, that was given unto you, and digging up those things and replacing those things with seeds of faith and seeds of power. So I go through that pretty much every single day. I think that's what my struggle has taught me, and that's what I try to teach other people.

Joe was saying I have specialized my career in add. Essentially, that means I have been specializing in bringing psychological insight and assistance to entrepreneurs. I think we should rename ADD the Entrepreneurial Trait. And Dan Sullivan and I got together around this and have been making friends around this notion. Dan has been working with entrepreneurs for 30 years. I've been working with ADD for 30 years, and we discovered we're working with the same people, you know, and I thoroughly abhor the term attention deficit disorder, so I just soon throw that in the dust bin and rename it the Entrepreneurial Trait. And because I'll bet you 90% of you have it, and it's really because of it that you're achieving in the remarkable and interesting ways that you are. But it also may be holding you back in certain ways. And what I thought I'd do is bring you into what I've learned about the mind of the Entrepreneur, point out the way things ought to go, and then point out some of the most common ways that entrepreneurs sabotage themselves. And I want to begin with a story from ancient Baghdad. One day, a master sends his servant into the marketplace to get some provisions. And while the servant is there, he sees Death across the marketplace, and he's captivated by Death. And then Death turns his way and makes a menacing gesture which completely freaks the servant out. And he goes running home as fast as he can run home. And he falls to his knees in front of his master and says, master, Master, please, you've got to let me take your horse. I've got to get out of this area. Let me take your horse. And I'm going to gallop as fast as I possibly can to Samarra, which is 75 miles away. I'm terrified that Death will find me otherwise. And the master says, well, by all means, you feel free to take my horse. You've been a good and loyal servant, of course. Take my horse and come back when Death has moved on. So the servant gallops off to Samara. But the master is curious, and so he goes to the marketplace to see what he can see. And he looks around, and sure enough, he sees Death. Well, he's brave. And he walks up to Death, says, I understand you saw my servant. And Death says, yes. And the master says, and I understand you made a menacing gesture toward my servant. Why did you do that? And Death said, oh, that was not a menacing gesture. It was simply a gesture of alarm and surprise. I didn't expect to see him here because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra. And it is amazing to me how many people I encounter in my life as well as my work, who are galloping as fast as they can in precisely the wrong direction, believing that they're heading toward their salvation, when in fact they're heading toward their destruction. One of the unique opportunities I get is to tell people that that's what they're doing. I often think I'm sort of like the fool in classical drama. You know, kings would hire fools to whisper in their ear the stuff they didn't want to hear. It was a dangerous job because sometimes they'd be put to death for their trouble or they'd be whipped. But I sort of think that's what a psychiatrist does. You know, we're paid to whisper. Whisper insights that maybe someone doesn't want to hear. And then it is up to that person to reverse direction or not.

The.

Way the arc, what I call the arc of the entrepreneur ought to go, if you're not galloping towards Samarra usually begins with some kind of success. Now, it may have happened yesterday or it may have happened when you were 10 years old on a paper route, or maybe, as in Dan's case, when you were able to wangle the extra cookie out of your aunt and you felt that thrill of succeeding at bargaining, at selling, at getting a profit that you never thought you could get. And you feel that rush, that excitement, which is so much more than just the cookie or just the feed. The rush of I can make something grow, I can make something happen. And I did it by my wits, I didn't follow some instruction manual. And you get hooked. And then most entrepreneurs, from that success comes a dream. And they imagine a conglomerate, they imagine asteroids, they imagine they dream big. It's in entrepreneur's DNA. They dream very big. And then the next step, which is what separates them from the cynics and the realists, they take it seriously. They say, I'm gonna populate an asteroid, I'm gonna develop a real estate agency for outer space, I'm gonna do these things. They take it seriously, which again, as I say, separates you all from the realists and the cynics. And then they begin what I call the avid and faithful pursuit. Avid and faithful pursuit. Faithful faith is, you know, the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen. You all have faith. You may not have religious faith, but I can promise you, you feel the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen that also separates you from other people. You begin this avid and faithful pursuit of what many people think are crazy goals. Think of who colonized this country. Would you have wanted your son or daughter in 1600 to get on a boat and come over here? It's as crazy as Peter Diamandis wanting to colonize outer space. I have a sign in my office that says, don't wonder if your ideas are crazy. Wonder if they're crazy enough. And you all specialize in taking seriously and faithfully and avidly pursuing these crazy ideas. This country was colonized by people like you, separating themselves from the gene pool in England, from the conservative non risk takers to the wild eyed visionary, pioneering, swashbuckling, cowboying folks that became our ancestors, your ancestors. And it's why I love entrepreneurs. You have the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen. And guess what? You make it happen. So the avid and faithful pursuit then leads almost always to disappointment. You don't get there right away. And once again, one of the key qualities, the entrepreneur kicks in, which is grit. You don't have give up in your vocabulary. You don't have it in your DNA. You don't do that. It's just unthinkable. It's just not an option. And it's not because you have some slogan, failure is not an option. It's because that's not who you are. You're just not built that way. You don't give up. So when you encounter disappointment, which you invariably do, nobody rides a bicycle without falling off first. When you encounter disappointment, you just say, well, no is the first step on the way to yes. And you keep at it and you try it again and you try something else. And almost always what happens is the next step, which I call intervention. Maybe it's divine intervention, or maybe it's something more practical, like you go to take Dan's strategic coach. Or maybe you come here and someone gives you the bright idea, like, we were swimming in bright ideas. We've been swimming in bright ideas all morning. Or maybe you partner up with the right person. Maybe you meet someone at the table today, there's some kind of intervention that gets you past that stuck place, and then you're on your way to realization of the dream. And that's what I call the arc of the entrepreneur. And it's wonderful. It's magnificent. It is what makes life not only exciting, but productive and what makes being alive today such a colossally exciting opportunity. The world has never teamed with so much opportunity for so many people.

Never.

Never. And the obstacle now is psychological. Psychological. So what are the traps that I want to point out to you to help you avoid? Now, there are many, many traps, and I'm going to highlight five of them. But I want to underline that my message is by no means negative. I'm just cautioning you. My message is 1000% positive that now is the time to be alive. If ever there were a time for an entrepreneur to say, praise God for having me be born, now this is it. This is the time for us folks who have this kind of brain. By the way, I have the entrepreneurial brain. I have add. I also have dyslexia, too, and I wouldn't trade either one of them for the world. It's a terrible mistake to call these conditions disabilities. They're traits. They're traits, and if you manage them right, they become enormous assets in your life. I tell people I don't treat disabilities. I help people unwrap their gifts. And these conditions Are markers of talent. People who have this kind of mind, they're markers of talent. My model is, you have a Ferrari engine for a brain with bicycle brakes. And I say, don't worry, I'm a brake specialist, you know, and when I strengthen your brakes, then you'll be able to win races. Now, if you don't strengthen your brakes, a Ferrari with no brakes is kind of dangerous. So, you know, and that's why you see the prison population full of people with undiagnosed, untreated add.

I am so grateful to be here because, of course, you know, brains run the world. They run the stock market, the local market, huge corporations, mom and pop shops down the street. Brains run governments, although. Not that well. Schools. It's actually our program in the Fraser Academy in Vancouver. We teach thousands of kids every year to care about their brains. Churches. We have a brain health program in churches around the world. Families, it's my family and you. Yet most people rarely think about their brains, which is a huge mistake, because success in anything you do always starts with a healthy brain. After looking at NOW's 115,000 scans and some of the most interesting people in the world, including Joe, it is very clear to me that when your brain works right, you work right. And when your brain is troubled for whatever reason, a head injury, an infection, mold exposure, you're going to have trouble in your life. With a healthy brain, people are happier, physically healthier because they make better decisions, wealthier because they make better decisions and they're more successful in everything they do. When your brain is not healthy, people are sadder, sicker, poorer, less successful. So your competitive advantage or your disadvantage is the actual physical functioning of your brain. But let's be clear, you're in a war for the health of your brain. Everywhere you go, someone is trying to shove bad food down your throat that will kill you early. The real weapons of mass destruction or processed pesticide sprayed, highly glycemic, low fiber food like substances. The clown and the king have killed more people than ISIS has ever dreamed. And these food companies use neuroscientists. They use tricks to hook your pleasure centers because you know, this woman would never look this way if she ate that. Tech companies create addictive gadgets that hook our attention and distract us from our loved ones. New study from Microsoft. The attention span in humans is now 8 seconds. A goldfish is 9. This is evolution going the wrong way. Study from the Harvard Business Review said that only 10% of us are high in both focus and energy. The two things that drive success. 90% of people are without one or the other. Which is why in your bag, I put our Focus and Energy supplement. This is the one I hate now that I'm 61, because it's very clear to me after doing a study with 8,000 people, your brain gets less and less active as you age. Typical 55 year old brain with lots of wrinkles. Worse at 82. But here's a friend of mine who actually lives in Phoenix at 82. She has a stunningly beautiful brain. Brain aging is much more about your habits than your age. So here's the program. This is the $250,000 idea. And for you in this room, it's way more than that. If you pay attention to me, it's, you're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I can prove it. Here's the plan we use at Amen Clinics. First, you gotta look at your brain. So baseline Brain Health Assessments. We do a study called SPECT that looks at blood flow and activity. Here's a healthy scan. Compared to someone with accelerated aging, someone who has Alzheimer's disease, which we can tell you decades before you have any symptoms, someone with a brain injury, someone whose brain's working too hard, such as people who have obsessive compulsive disorder and people who have underactive brains. This one drank way too much. I think of imaging like a map. You know, pictures worth a thousand words. But a map is worth a thousand pictures. A map tells you where you are you, and gives you direction on how to get to where you want to go. Without a map, you don't know and you're lost. And it can cost you your life. The second thing we do is we don't want you to have normal. Anything normal is sick. 51% of the US population at some point in their life will have a mental illness. And if you're fortunate enough to live until you're 85, 50% of you will be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. That's normal. And I don't want any part of it. And Genius Network people don't either. So I want to know your important numbers. And you got a copy of my new book, Change youe Brain, Change youe Life. This program is in there, in chapter 19, in detail. The third part is your brain. You know, people go, oh, take my supplement because it'll give you a great brain. And it has one thing in it, and that just doesn't work. Why? Because the brain does not get sick in one way. It gets Sick in many different ways. And that's exactly how we get it better. So we take a multiple mechanism approach from omega 3 fatty acids for inflammation, ginkgo for blood flow, and so on. And the last thing, and I'm really proud of this, in 2005, I wrote a book and I got all sorts of grief for it. It was called Preventing Alzheimer's. You can't do that. But since then, there have been programs at UCLA and Johns Hopkins. Preventing Alzheimer's. I love that. Here's the short course. You want to prevent Alzheimer's disease in yourself or your family, you have to prevent or treat all of the risk factors that are associated with it. And if you go after obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hormone levels that are not optimized, and all the rest of these, this is how you prevent it. So let me show you how this works. Joe's one of my favorite people. I love Joe having a problem. I called Joe having a great day. I'll call Joe. And Joe called me. He's like, my brain's not right. And this was about five years ago, and he got hurt. He had a head injury. Most people don't know that head injuries are a major cause of addictions and psychiatric problems. And nobody knows because psychiatrists are the only medical specialists that never look at the organ they treat. How crazy that he came. His brain was troubled. And he just. What I love about Joe is he just did everything I said. Imagine if you just did everything he said, where your business would be. And in seven months, his brain is better. Five years later, it's freaking normal. It's healthier than his age. Some of you who've come to my clinic, I'll tell you, your brain looks older than you are, and his looks younger than he is. I love that for him. We also did the world's largest study on active and retired NFL players at a time when the NFL was lying that they had a problem. And we demonstrated high levels of damage in 96% of the players that we study. It's horrible. And, oh, by the way, if you played football at any level, 80% of you have brain damage. But my job, my love, is never to tell you you have a bad brain. I'm like the eternal optimist. Well, can we make bad brains better? And in fact, on this program, 80% of our NFL players showed improvement in memory, attention, mood, and sleep. You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. Here's one of our players, Freddie Dreyer, who said, I replaced a part of My mind that had been lost. My energy and focus are much better. Duval Love played 20 years. He's an offensive guard. His brain just looked awful. Year later, it's much better. Oh, by the way, lost 110 pounds. I was pretty excited for him. Now he has a master's degree. He thinks he's really smart. It's really awesome. And so November 3rd, Change youe Brain, Change youe Life, which is in 26 countries. And I'm so proud of this book, but it's old, and so I had to revise it, and I expanded it, and I put all of my best work into this book. So I'm very excited. I called Joe up. I said, joe, how do we get this to the world? He said, well, I have a forum, the Genius crowdsource Blueprint. And I. I'm a good student. I just. I do what he tells me to do. So we have a name. I changed my brain and changed my life to win the prize, best video or essay on how you used my work to help your brain and your life. Our goal is a thousand stories, a million more books sold, and the prize is we will pay for you to come to Southern California, get a full evaluation that we pay for. I'll actually do it because I don't do many of them anymore. And we'll give you a year's worth of supplements. And the deadline is February 14, because that's love My Brain Day. And the first day, we got 60 entries, so we now have about two. It's been out for, like, four days. So one of them, Steve, writes my rental car confirmation number. And I'm thinking, why do I want to know this? The reason I know is that I'm supernaturally able to remember things that I would never have been able to. And they don't go away. My productivity and creativity is off the charts. I'm able to connect with my wife in ways I've never experienced. And the sexual intimacy is another area of peak performance. I love that. But my favorite one so far is Cheryl. My brain was broken because of your work. I went from being homeless and hopeless without the custody of my three children to being an RN on a busy surgical trauma unit in a stable relationship. But most importantly, I'm able to be a good mother to my children. You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I can prove it. I am so excited to be here because what I get to do is talk about my obsession, which has been the brain. But I want to start with this Slide. I saw this recently. If you knew a train was going to hit you, would you get out of the way? So that's going to become very important. It's 1991. I'm a psychiatrist, been a psychiatrist for about 10 years. And I order my first brain SPECT study. SPECT looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. It's different than a cat's head scan or an mri. Those are anatomy studies. So we're looking at function. So I'm the director of a dual diagnosis unit, a psychiatric hospital unit that takes care of drug addicts. So this is a healthy brain. This is an addicted brain. And right away, you realize why you shouldn't do drugs. It's because they damage your brain. I got so excited about this technology that I scanned everybody I knew, including myself. And when I scanned myself, this is my first scan. I was horrified. I'm like, why is it so bumpy? A healthy brain is fat and beautiful and smooth and even. And I was horrified because I don't drink. I've never used drugs. But I had meningitis when I was in the army when I was 18. And I had a lot of bad brain habits. And what I'm excited about, what our work is all about, 20 years later, my brain is younger, and it doesn't usually work that way. You literally can change your brain, and when you do, you change your life. Imaging changed everything for my children because, in fact, if you dated one of my daughters for more than four months, you had to come to the clinic and get a scan. It's actually meet the parents. But worse, imaging changed my love life. After being in a long marriage that I wasn't very happy with, I was determined the next woman I would give my heart to, I would first see her brain. And so I got very attached to Tana, and two weeks later, she's in the clinic, she's getting scanned. Her brain is beautiful. Now she gets to stay. Imaging literally changed absolutely everything I do with my own patients. So the current psychiatric model is you tell the doctor your symptoms, he gives you a diagnosis that actually is just a regurgitation of your symptoms, and then he gives you a medicine to attack the symptoms. So if you're depressed, you get a depression diagnosis, and you get an antidepressant. If you're anxious, you'll get an anxiety disorder diagnosis and medicine for that. My favorite to explain this is if you explode intermittently. If you have temper problems, they'll actually give you a diagnosis called intermittent explosive disorder. So Think about that ied and then they don't know what to do. And did, you know, outcomes in psychiatry happen to be no better than they were in the 1950s? So it's psychiatry's dirty little secret. So when I started looking at people's brains, I'm like, oh, my goodness. Scans taught me that depression wasn't one thing. In fact, it's a symptom, that there were many different causes. In fact, giving someone the diagnosis of depression was exactly like giving them the diagnosis of chest pain. And doctors don't give people the diagnosis of chest pain because it doesn't tell you what causes it or what to do for it. And so I've written a number of books. One, my latest one, Healing add, where I talk about seven different types of add. Don't put everybody on a stimulant, because you can make some people much better and a whole bunch of other people dramatically worse. Imaging helped me see the underlying biology behind the symptoms. So was your brain overactive? Was it underactive? Was it toxic, either from substance abuse or alcoholism or an environmental toxin like mold? Or did you have a traumatic brain injury? Traumatic brain injuries are one of the major causes of psychiatric illness. But of course, nobody knows that because nobody's looking at the brains of their patients on a regular basis. Imaging. And this was the beautiful part. This is the heart part of imaging. It decreased stigma.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

I loved that because people saw their problems as medical and not moral. It decreased shame, decreased guilt. And the other part I truly loved is the families then got on board because it increased forgiveness and compassion. We have nothing else in psychiatry that's that powerful or that immediate. Imaging actually completely changes the discussion around mental health. Nobody wants to see a psychiatrist. I mean, how weird is that? I decided I want to be a psychiatrist, and now nobody wants to talk to me. You're not going to shrink me. No one wants to be labeled as abnormal or defective, but all of us want better brains. So what if mental health was really all about brain health? Imaging changed everything about my health. Oh, my goodness. There are 200 studies now that say as your weight goes up, the actual physical size and function of your brain Goes down. Oh my God. That should scare the fat off anyone. This is the biggest brain drain in the history of the United States. Two thirds of us are overweight. Can you imagine the neurons and the IQ points we're losing? In fact, a couple of years ago, I coined this term called the dinosaur syndrome. Big body, little tiny brain, you're going to become extinct. Now I know that's rude, but it's true. And when I read the first study, I lost 30 pounds because I don't want to be a dinosaur. Imaging can change the Alzheimer's epidemic. Did you know Alzheimer's disease is expected to triple in the next 25 years? There's no cure for it on the horizon. If you're fortunate enough to live until you're 85, you have a 50% risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And the little scary nugget we've learned in the last 10 years, Alzheimer's disease starts in your brain 30 to 50 years before you have any symptoms. So if you knew a train was going to hit you, would you get out of the way? This 59 year old woman was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. It's a scan on the right, you can see the whole back half of her brain is deteriorating. Likely she had brain changes in her 20s. I think all of us should be scanned by 50 because treatment works when early or late?

Early.

And how would you ever know if you were vulnerable unless you looked? Imaging changed everything for the NFL. And my problem with the NFL is if you don't admit you have a problem, you can't do anything to solve it. And imaging really broke the NFL's denial. We did the first and largest study on active and retired NFL players and it just changed everything. So our first study on 100 players, the Blue equals damage across their whole brain. And you know, I think most 9 year olds would figure out it's a brain damaging sport. That's not hard. What was really exciting about our work with the NFL was we showed that 80% of our players could rehabilitate their brains on a smart program. Now how exciting is that? You're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. Now, I hate this graph because I just turned 60 a couple of weeks ago. But it's really clear based on a study we did with 8,000 people, your brain gets less and less active as you age. So sort of like as your skin falls off your face as you age, the same process is happening in the brain, but it doesn't have to that's really the exciting. So a typical 82 year old scan on the left, my friend Doris Rapp scan on the right. Fat, full, beautiful for 82. You know, if something happens to Tana, I'm asking her out. So the most exciting thing I'm going to tell you is you can literally change your brain and change your life. But how would you know unless you looked? So my favorite story to illustrate this is my oldest daughter, Brianne. Always easy, always sweet. But the sad truth is I never thought she was very smart. Had to get her tutors, had to work hard, had her tested. And in 10th grade, she fell apart. She got depressed. She came to me one night in tears and she said, dad, I just don't think I can be as smart as my friends. And it broke my heart. Next day, scanned her at the clinic and I'm like, oh my God. I cried when I saw this because what it indicates she had really low energy, low blood flow flow in her brain. I knew how to fix it. I mean, that's really what made me so sad because I had been fixing people's brains for years. The next day, on just a little tiny bit of targeted medication for her was much better. Three months later. This is a girl who never got one A in her life. The next three months later, straight A's. The next ten years, straight as. So the ultimate question is, which brain do you want? Which brain do you have of these? And how would you ever know unless you looked?

Thank you.

Awesome.

Okay. It is wonderful to be here at Genius Network and see all of your shining faces. So everyone in the room here is an optimizer. So let's take a moment and imagine your perfect way of being in the world. Maybe for you, your perfect way of being is calm and in control. You're planning, you're organizing, you're in control of your day in your mind. Or maybe your perfect way of being is compassionate. You're caring, you're empathetic, you're listening. When you have a conversation with somebody, you want them to feel like the only person in the room. Or maybe your perfect way of being is maximally productive. You are laser focused on what needs to be to get done. You do what's important and you do it in less time every day. So all these ways of being are amazing, but we're not all these ways every day. What if there was a technique that could help you get there each and every day? And there is. It's called meditation. So most people think that meditation is just kind of letting Your mind go blank? It's not. Meditation is a practice or a training that leads to healthy and positive mind states. Sounds pretty good, right? Practice that leads to a healthy mind. There are lots of different forms of meditation. The most basic one is a focused attention on the breath. In focused attention on the breath, you focus your attention on your breath, Your mind wanders, which all our minds do. You notice it and you bring it back to your breath. So you focus on your breath, your mind wanders again, you notice it wanders, and you return it to a neutral object. This very simple, simple thing has profound impact. So the first thing you notice when you start to do this exercise is that you can take your mind off of your thoughts, which are often negative, repetitive, and stressful, and put them on a neutral object. This is huge. You can actually have control over your mind. Most people just sort of feel like every day your mind has stuff going through it and it's kind of thinking you. But with meditation, you learn that you can have control over the contents of your mind. You can get off the thought train. And once that happens, something really amazing happens. If you recognize that you have control over your mind and the contents of it, you can also make decisions about what's in it. And you don't need to be defined by it. You realize that you are not your thoughts. And so all those stories that you may have about yourself and what you're capable of and what your limitations are in the world around you, this can go out the window. You can make the choice about what's inside your head. And then you realize the same thing can happen with your emotions. If you feel an emotion, it would in the past trigger an uncomfortable thought, which triggers more uncomfortable feelings. With a meditation practice, you realize that you can get off the emotional roller coaster, that rather than having a feeling and having it rule you, you can simply accept experience it as a sensation, let it rise and let it fall, and not give it the attention to control your life. So as an example, you are an employee and maybe you just made a big mistake at work. Your boss starts walking up to you and you feel your heart rate starting to raise and your breath is getting kind of shallow and you don't realize it. And you're realizing you have all sorts of sensations of fear and shame and guilt in this really sucks, these feelings. And so maybe you'll just blame your colleagues so you don't have to feel this stuff. Well, if you have a longer term meditation practice, you can begin to start to work with those feelings. And as they start to rise, not be ruled by them, not be triggered by them, and then make a more appropriate choice in that scenario. Another place where meditation has fantastic impact is in your productivity. So you may not realize it, but every time your mind wanders off task, you're actually micro procrastinating. Each and every one of those little mind wanders is actually something that's sucking up time from your precious day. So one of the things that I noticed when I started meditation practice is I got incredibly efficient. Early on I had a long format essay to do and I was the boss of a company. We sat in an open office, everything was distracting me because everybody's problem was my problem too. So I was writing this long format essay, which normally took me a few hours, and everything was distracting me. But once I started a meditation practice, those long format essays just became really efficient because each of those distractions I could say, nope, don't care. Back to the task at hand. You're a distraction. Don't care about you. Back to the task at hand. And I finished one of those things in 45 minutes. So all of these great benefits that we've discussed improve productivity, better emotional responsiveness. They actually have corollary changes in your brain. Meditation makes real change in your brain. So let's dive into our brains to find out how. So let's start at the top. One of the first ways that meditation can change your brain is it affects your prefrontal cortex. Fantastic news. We have this area at the front of your head called your prefrontal cortex. It's our attentional control center. It helps us plan, it helps us process and organize. It's amazing. Bad news, as you age, your prefrontal cortex thins. Good news. If you are able to maintain a long term meditation practice, you may maintain the thickness of your prefrontal cortex as you age. In one study, a 50 year old long term meditator had the prefrontal cortex thickness of a 23 year old. Meditation can also help you down regulate your amygdala. So if you remember in that example with the employee when his physiology was flying all over the place, well, that was his amygdala in hyperdrive. Meditation helps you actually calm and down regulate your amygdala so you can calm and manage your body's emotional responses. Meditation also can increase the volume of your hippocampus. The side of your brain right there, right in the middle, your hippocampus is the area responsible for learning and memory. And who couldn't use more learning and memory in their life. Meditation also impacts your temporal parietal junction. Why does that matter? Well, your TPJ is an area responsible for compassion, empathy, and perspective taking. And a meditation practice actually impacts that area of your brain. Meditation can also, and this is the coolest one to me, eight weeks of meditation can increase the density of your gray matter. Why is that meaningful? Well, Einstein had more gray matter than the average individual. Just saying. So if all of these things are so amazing, why don't more people meditate? We saw that only a portion of you do it. And the ones that do, fantastic. But the ones that don't, why not? Or why do you start meditating and then you stop? Well, it turns out that meditation is actually hard to do. There's no one sitting inside the black box of your mind to tell you what you should be doing in there or to guide you and coach you. And we wanted to change that. So we set about a few years ago to create a tool called Muse that would actually give you real time feedback on your mind during meditation so you could know what was going on in there when you were focused and when your mind was wandering. As you heard, it's been used over millions of sessions, hundreds of companies and institutions. And then we stood back and we said, we want to really ramp this up. We want to build something new. And today, for the very first time on stage, I am going to present to you. Muse 2. It's a beautiful, slim little device, slips on just like a pair of glasses. It has sensors that track your mind and your body during meditation to give you real time feedback to start, deepen, and enhance your practice. So those of you who know Muse one will know that Muse one had EEG sensors to track your brain during meditation. Muse two adds sensors that track your body, your breathing, and your heart to give you real time feedback on your brain and body to guide you into a deeper practice. So muse's body sensors track your body's movements to guide you into stillness and to help you find a pain free posture for meditating. For a lot of people, this is the first place to start. Muse2's breath sensing technology tracks each and every one of your breaths and guides you in breathing exercises to calm yourself or to energize yourself. Within this very same device, there's also a heart sensor that tracks the beating of your heart and gives you real time feedback on it. It's a beautiful experience. It's not simply a number on your wrist. You actually hear the sound of your heart translated every beat into the beat of a dream drum so that you can tap into your heart's rhythm and learn what helps you calm it. Our classic brain feedback, still in this device, actually lets you know what your brain is doing during meditation, gives you real time feedback so you hear when your mind is wandering and when you're focused. The metaphor we use is your mind is like the weather. So when you're thinking distracted, you hear it as stormy, and it guides your brain into calm. So not only is there real time feedback that actually guides you into an ability to harness and hone and calm your brain and your body, but there's also data, all this rich, beautiful data that's actually showing you what your brain and body is doing so that you can understand it, track it, and improve it. It's like having a little coach right inside this device. So meditation. Meditation is amazing, but you need to actually build a daily practice. So we have a motivational architecture in there that helps you build a practice and even lets you schedule your meditations, because meditation really is amazing. It's one of the best things you can do in your life. But so few people actually do it. And in order to get this benefit, you need to actually do it each and every single day. It's like going to the gym. You go to the gym for your body, you go to the gym for your mind. I asked Joe, why does he meditate every day? What are the benefits that he experiences? He said that meditation helps me respond versus react. So you owe it to your mind and your body to teach it how to shift its responses so that you can live more productively, more compassionately, more happily, and so that you can make the choice of how you want to show up in the world every day.

I had 100,000 talks in my head. And when she asked me, the guy with add at that moment, what do you want to talk about? I did the smartest thing in the world. I asked my wife, what should I talk about? And literally, she said, let me think about it for a second. And she comes back, she goes, here's what entrepreneurs deal with. I know you always talk about influence, you always talk about sales, you know, getting people to get their point across, stuff like that. Why not help people with the biggest thing that they deal with, the shit that shows up in our lives. And the majority of you, you're master marketers, you're really great at getting your point across. But how much time are you spending marketing to you to get yourself to be less bothered? Because isn't that what we do in business? Like Literally, you got a person with a problem, you hit them over the head a little harder, you sell them a Tylenol and then you get them on auto ship. How many of you know what I'm talking about? That's our job. That's what it is we're here to do. But the question is, when something shows up in our life, how much time and energy are you literally taking? I'm going to question you. Here's question number two that she gave you the ultimate question. I'm giving you question two and really ask yourself. This very simplistic question is how often are you spending time rewording and recalibrating things in your life that may be slowing you down and possibly bothering you? So I'm going to give you six steps here that are very simple. I use this for high level intervention work. Eunice has been to our event before and she's seen me do this where someone that's been raped or abused has a problem. 30 years of issues, and I get them to see it differently in 10 or 15 minutes to change their emotions. But there's little things that happen in our day that wind up being big challenges for ourselves. So I'm going to give you a little synopsis real quick. I want you to imagine you're four years old again, okay? You're four years old, three years old, two years old, and don't be that person. That four years old was a bad year for my life. Pick a year. It doesn't matter. You're a little kid and you're walking down the street and there's a little hole in the ground and you step in it and immediately your parent says to you or someone next to you goes, you tripped. Are you okay? Now, before that, nothing had occurred. Your foot went in a hole. Immediately you were told that you tripped. Your brain says tripped. When I trip, people get worried. Something must go wrong. Now, when Tucker was talking about earlier about jamming stuff down in our body that lives there for a while, you're starting to develop a little something called a pattern. Tripping is bad. And I get people's attention. Well, you're about 8 years old and you're with your buddies and you trip and you fall and they laugh at you. Now tripping is bad. You fell, people laugh at you. It's the wrong thing to do. Then you're 15 years old, you're playing ice hockey and the coach says, we need to, you know, you need to do a drill you're not comfortable with or you're doing Gymnastics something you're uncomfortable with, or you're in business at 35 years old and you're wondering why you're the person that won't do something that's outside of your comfort zone. And what the most stimulating thing for this, for me to think about is all of us have the ability to do this with others, but how much time are you spending working on yourself? So my challenge is I'll do my little seven minutes left of this talk. I'm going to challenge all of you, even over the next month, spend seven to 10 minutes thinking about the word choices that you use in your life. And Tony brought up something a little bit ago, and I started reframing immediately because my brain is always in reframe, meaning when you said your challenge, like, my person, my partner died, and I finally made as much money as I want to make in my life, and I'm more miserable than I've ever been in my life. I heard that and immediately started to reframe. So I'm going to use slides, and I'll see how this works. Here's a big sign we have in our office, and it very simply says, your future hinges on your ability to effectively communicate.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Now, after reading the book about why I thought about this for a second and why we do what we do is that I truly believe that communication is the most underdeveloped and underutilized asset we have as human beings. Most people are miserable at communicating with other people and themselves. And when you communicate with yourself in a weak way, you typically get a weak life. So when I explain this to you all real quickly, I'm gonna ask all of you to realize this. How many of you have had some shit happen to you in the last week? That's not what you expected? How many of you raise your hands? Okay, how many of you in the last year have had shit happen? Okay. How many of you recognize that immediately when that shit occurred? It happened, and your brain was searching for. What do I actually call this thing? Because you've never actually had that moment before. So, Doc, you're going to get this immediately. I'm taking, like, sick man. Fraud. Sigmund Freud, forgive me. And I'm taking all of the work. I get that backwards sometimes. And maybe all of you will learn that if you actually put things backwards in people's brains, they'll learn to start seeing things differently. And you'll realize very quickly that one of the smartest things you can do is screw up during your presentation. Say something backwards or use somebody's name backwards, and they start questioning everything else, and they start questioning themselves. So. So pay attention to this because it'll make sense. So the first thing that happens is an event occurs. Little boy trips in hole, or just little boy foot in hole. Go on, date. Somebody does something you didn't ask them to do. What happens is an event occurs immediately in our brain. Anytime we have an event occur in our lives that we've not experienced before, the brain almost immediately starts looking for answers. Oh, my God. What is this called? What does it look like? What does it do? And all that happened was an event. If you look the 21st of whatever the hell month this is got circled, there was an event that occurred. Tony made more money than he ever made in his life. His brain said, what do we label that? It's supposed to be a great day. See, my question for Tony is, what Tony did was he set a plan for himself. That set, he said, an event that one day I'm going to make more money than I've ever made in my life. And what that's going to be called is the happiest day of my life. It's going to be called the reckoning. It's going to be called the breakthrough. It's going to be called everything. I invested every dollar in every event ever in his life. And he told himself a story. Am I correct? We do this all the time. We put a label on something no different than I tripped. As soon as you get a label, the brain immediately gives it meaning. Now, what you said is, Tony said, I'm unhappy. What does that mean when I'm unhappy? Wow. Things in my life are not working out the way I want them to. Now, what's fascinating is, let me give you another example here, because I have six minutes. I'm going to walk a few people through this right now. Who here has had some challenge, something show up recently that's not like super complicated like a divorce with a narcissist, but has anybody had something happen recently that's a challenge that wants to jump in, go quick. What's that? You gotta go quick. Oh, geez. The narcissist again. Okay, very good.

Who told us that he wasn't gonna come for Christmas Eve dinner?

So let's go back again. So what happened is we had an event that happened. Somebody made a promise. Correct.

Correct.

Very good.

And immediately somebody made a promise. So immediately you labeled it and you labeled it and said somebody didn't follow through. Correct. And immediately after that is. What does that mean? That means that that person is a liar. That person lied to me. That person let me down. Correct. Now, anytime you label something and you give it a meaning, which we all do immediately. All human beings do this in a matter of seconds. You can slow this shit down. I've learned how to slow this down. I'm out with my wife one day and we ran into a jumping cholla. How many of you ever done that before? A jumping cholla? Let me explain real quick. If your wife's screaming and she goes, ow, there's something on my leg, don't always grab it because I grabbed the jumping choi off her leg. Now my hand was stuck to her leg, okay? And immediately I'm looking at this thing. I said, wow, maybe this is telling us that we need to be closer or spend more time together or communicate better. And she's like, no, no, it's just a jumping cholla. Our brains, okay? It is a poisoned latent cactus. They call it jumping because they go in the wind. It's like a basic. They're like, oh, look how cute that is. And I'll tell the story another time how I try to get it off my hand like this. And then we were out for a run, and I tied my key to my shorts. You know how boys do that? And I put it down my pants. So I have, like. So I had to, like, whole nother conversation, a whole nother day. But I created meaning out of it. So the whole thing with Tony, for an example. And explain. Explain this in a minute is what that means, is. So what Tony created for himself is I set a goal for myself, just like you. You thought things would be different this time with this guy, so you lied to yourself. And then you start questioning, how often do I lie to myself? I got two minutes and I gotta get to the point. So what happened with Tony is Tony goes like this. I'm going to. I'm just going to backtrack. And he had an event occur. I'm going to make exultant amount of money. He lies to himself, tells himself that this is going to occur. Then what happens is he labeled it, said it's going to be the best day of my life. He added meaning to it, said, things are going to work out great. But what then really happened is Tony basically said, but the meaning, what does it really mean? Is that what else in my life is not working out the way I want it to? Or what else am I lying to myself about? So my question for you is a little different because I want to switch this back and I want to help you out a second. Is basically, who told you that making more money would make you happier? You did.

Me.

You came up with that. So basically you were wrong. And you don't like being wrong because accountants don't like being wrong. So really you're not bothered that making more money, you're unhappy. You're really bothered that you're wrong. Let's step ahead. Another thing. And what happens when you actually become wrong? We're just playing with this. And none of this is true. You feel something, you're wrong, you feel insecure. So then Tony's like, wait a second. Is my whole life bullshit? I told myself if I finally get to this place in my life, I would be happy. How many of you are resonating with Tony's story for your own life? If you are, say, I am. Anybody catching this? So what happened with Tony? And I'll be done in like a minute. Okay, so what happened? Or 3. So what happens is. Give me a second, it'll be worth it.

I just told her not to be because I know you're just being. You're being Michael.

I'm being Michael. And if not, I'm gonna be a narcissist for a second.

Fuck off.

No, I'm just kidding. So what happens is Tony feels something and he says to himself, Tony says to himself, wow, this is uncomfortable. I don't like this. And then what happens is he reacts and he goes, I don't know what to do. I go in my shell. This is what I typically do. And after we react for a while, what happens is you get a result, you get an unhappy person. I've watched that. Most of us look to change people's lives. We like to get them to pretend that the event didn't occur. And oh, no, that didn't happen. It's one of the worst things you can say to somebody. And then we try to change the reaction of what they're doing. Like, stop doing that. I'm going to tell you all of the gem all therapy I have read every. I have a library you couldn't even imagine on everything from psychotherapy to hypnosis and you would name it Everything that Works Out Good. From Virginia Satir, one of my heroes. And all this great work basically comes down to a very simple thing. You can't change the event, and you really can't change the reaction of what's happening. But if you could change the label, the meaning and the emotion behind what happens, you have the ability to change almost anything in your life. See, when we were going over this list of what pisses you off, I use gradient language all the time. It's a term that I use. I don't really have things that piss me off. I have things that bother me. I have things that annoy me. I have things that frustrate the shit out of me. And I avoid the majority of those things. But why I'm bringing this up to all of you to really think about right now is most of you are looking to change your results this year and demand from yourself that you do things differently, or you're looking to pretend those things didn't occur. If you could change the label slightly on what occurred, even the label on being here. Ingenious. Even shifting the label, that I'm here to understand myself better instead of like, I have to get it. How many of you recognize you are torturing yourself in genius network with the attitude of, I came here because I spent 25,000 bucks and I have to get it. If you're here to. I'm here to improve myself and find a few things that can make my life better. The emotion in your body starts looking for things differently. Your biochemistry changes. Your emotions change in a major way. So why I'm bringing this up is if I were to recalibrate Tony here real quickly, in less than 30 seconds, I would say, tony, basically what happened is you told yourself something was going to happen that didn't happen the way you wanted it to. Correct. And because of that, it made you a little bit upset. So it wasn't that you made more money that was your problem. It was that you actually did something you didn't expect. You actually achieved something you've always wanted, and you thought you'd have a different result. Correct. So you were wrong temporarily. And being wrong temporarily is not wrong permanently. So all I'm going to challenge you to think about is from that context by changing that one word. It changes everything after associated with it. So I'm going to ask all of you to play with your brains for the next couple days to think about this in any major way. I deal with this all the time. I had A woman that was held hostage for five days. And literally she was on a bus. And basically she said, four hostages. I'm in Israel. There's four hostages on a bus, and all of you hold yourself hostage from time to time. And she was on a bus in Israel, and there's four hostages. Got her on the bus, kept her.

There for four or five days.

I said, okay, so four hostages on the bus. I said, four got on, five got off. She goes, what the hell are you talking about? I said, what do you mean? She goes, you're not listening, Michael. You're being an asshole. I said, no, no, you don't get it. I'm confused. Four hostages got on the bus and five got off. She goes, is your math bad? Are you stupid? What's wrong with you? I said, I think I'm hearing you clearly. Four hostages got on the bus, kept you captive for five days, and five hostages got off. She goes, no. There was four hostages. I said, no, four got on the bus, you were there, and you decided to join them for the rest of your life. You're holding yourself hostage. You became a terrorist and you joined them. You've been terrorizing yourself for years. When she realized that she wasn't held hostage, that she was terrorizing herself, her emotions changed immediately. She got back to me. I worked with her 10 years ago, changed her life, changed her relationship by one shift. In one word, it's like marketing. One shift. Joe could change one word in your context of your copy. Or Tucker, one word. Or yesterday, when he was talking about you and your. Changes, everything. So my question is, were you terrorized or are you terrorizing yourself?

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead.

You're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watching.