Gabor Mate: Why You Feel Unfulfilled: The Hidden Wound of Not Feeling Wanted!

Let's talk about, I guess, compulsive work. How does one address it?

Sure. Well, again, if you address everything from the point of view of what can it teach me and how can I be compassionate about looking at it? The answers will emerge. So, you know, like you, I was a workaholic doctor. Now, the more I was a workaholic doctor, the more the world rewarded me, the more money I made and the more respect I had. So, like you say, it's a respectable addiction. What was the downside? I was disconnected from myself. I wasn't available for my children as they were growing up emotionally, because the work was. I was identified with the work. And of course, my marriage suffered. And it was hard to recognize that because the work is so rewarding and it turns you on. You get this dopamine hit from working. What was it all about? Well, when your mother gives you to a Stranger when you're 11 months old, what conclusion are you going to come to that you're not wanted? You can't come to any other conclusion. That's the wound. Not that they give me to a stranger, but that I conclude that I'm not wanted. Now, if you're not wanted, if you don't think you're important just for existing, as I said many times before, you know what you do? You go to medical school now, they're going to want you all the time. When they're being born, when they're dying, and every minute in between when they're in trouble, they're going to call you. And every time they call you, it feels so great. You're so important. But it never fulfills or it never fills the inner emptiness, does it? It's a temporary hit, like with any other addiction, because something any of says, whether you're aware of it or not, would they still want me if I was giving all the time? So you have to keep proving to yourself so that hole never gets filled. You have to keep doing it. And so it's completely addictive. Now, the work that you guys do, there's probably two levels to it, if I can make a broad generalization. One is you're really turned on by some project, by some idea that you have that you want to realize in the world, that you want to give to the world through which you want to express some aspects of your genuine being. Like, for medicine, I really was interested in helping and healing people. That's perfectly good and legitimate. But then there's another underside to it, which is where I have to prove my importance. I have to validate my existence, I have to justify the very fact that I'm here on Earth. And I have to keep proving to myself just how good I can be, because I don't believe that I'm good. That's the part that creates the workaholism. Not the first part. You can do the work without identifying with it. Now, identification means this. It comes from the Latin word idem, which means the same and facera to make. So when you make yourself the same as your work, when your identity is bound up with your work, now you're lost in your work. On the other hand, if you know who you are or find out who you are, and then you choose to do the work because that's your calling and it's what turns you on, it's what allows you to express your creativity, then that's great. And now you're no longer a workaholic. You're just somebody who does great work. So the distinction, again, is the inner relationship to it and whether or not you identify with it. And if you identify with it, it's always some attempt to salve without healing some childhood trauma.

That's great. So my friend and genius network member Sam Qurachi, who did a great. He's awesome. He actually, I talked with him because he's gone pretty deep into your book, and I was just looking at things that would be the most valuable for this audience.

Yeah, we just did an Instagram together, Sam and I. It.

Yeah, yeah, he's great. And he'll watch this.

Of course.

He's in. Where's he at right now? In Saudi Arabia. So this is the question for a speaker on stage, a leader of a team, or a parent. When would vulnerability compromise credibility?

Never.

I often talk about my addiction and I wonder. I talk about sex addiction.

Does it? The answer is never, because vulnerability, again, that comes from a Latin word, vulnerary to wound. Here's the reality. People, as human beings, we're all profoundly vulnerable from conception until death. There's nothing you can do not to be vulnerable. There's things you can do to protect yourself from the awareness of vulnerability. And one of the impacts of trauma is we try to cover up our vulnerability. You know, hardened criminals, you know, how they become hardened because they suffered so much, they tried to protect themselves from their vulnerability. If you go into the prisons and if you deal with some of the most lifeish people who've done terrible things, you get to know them. If they open up. This may sound strange to a lot of people, but they're Some of the most sweetest, most sensitive people in the world, they had to harden up under conditions that were intolerable when they were growing up. So in terms of when is vulnerable vulnerability and negative. No, vulnerability is just owning that we're all people and that there's nothing unique about me in my woundedness or unique about you and your woundedness. We all share that and I'm pretty sure you get the same response as I get. Whenever we share something, our own struggle, something our own vulnerability, people so appreciate it because now they don't feel alone. Let me tell you guys a story and see what you think about it. I want you to imagine a four, this is a real story. A four year old girl who's being bullied by kids in a neighborhood and she runs into her family home and she runs to her mother for protection and the mother says, there's no room for cards in this house. There's no room for cards in this house. No, you gotta deal with it. Any of your parents here? Are you parents? Some of you here, how would you feel about saying that to a four year old girl? The message is not that there's no room for cowards because a four year old girl seeking protection from the mother is not a coward. She's a four year old girl going to the natural source of support. Imagine a mother bear or a mother gorilla ignoring the distress of their young one of their vulnerable young one and forcing it away from her presence. But this story was told on American television at the 2016 Democratic Convention when Hillary Clinton was nominated for the presidency. And this story was told as a wonderful example of resilience building, parenting. The message to the child wasn't, and I'm not talking politics here, I'm talking about how so many of our political leaders are wounded people. And the message was told as a wonderful example of, you know, toughing up a kid. 60 years later, if you recall, the candidate became ill with pneumonia and dehydrated. Do you remember what she did with it? Nothing. She didn't tell anybody. She collapsed in the street and her servicemen, her secret Servicemen, had to carry her into the van because the message she got was you got to suck it up, you're on your own. There's no room for vulnerability here. So this is a culture that actually celebrates trauma. And millions of people watch that. There was not a single commentary in the media that was being celebrated here is the traumatization of a vulnerable 4 year old. So I'm saying on the opposite side, let's not be tough let's be vulnerable.

Yeah.

Personally, my 15 years of doing emotional healing, client coaching, you know, I'll certainly raise my hand and say I didn't specialize in working with addicts. Yes, I think we're all addicted to something. And at the beginning of this I said, well, you know, I haven't had addiction in my life. And then you mentioned workaholism. It's like, oh yeah, I've been addicted to not seeing my addiction.

So yeah, workaholism is the respectable addiction, by the way.

Sure.

Maybe more functional than others, but nonetheless realizing to some degree all people are addicted to something if it's not a clinical problem. What I found with the folks I've worked with over the course of my 15 years of doing emotional healing work is what would heal the shame, what would heal the guilt, what would heal the anger and the fear is connection with thyself. And I don't mean to just placate this and like, oh yeah, heal it. Connect to yourself.

Yeah.

Great words that are very useless to say because it's very much a journey. But I personally really found value in encouraging people and working with myself in my life. Looking at the emotions, the traumas, the wounding and the pain that we still carry, whether we know it's there or. Or it's there, but we don't know it. But making connection with those emotions is a big connection because what we connect to when we're connecting to the emotions that are so painful and so intimidating is the part of us that holds that emotion.

Right.

I do a lot of inner child work. So it's like when, you know, when I went through a wounding experience when I was seven, very shaming, disconnect it from it for a couple decades. Because like when I was seven, I didn't know how to deal with intense shame. I didn't even know what it was. What I would realize is, wow, my whole 7 year old inner child is not a part of my life. I'm very disconnected from him because I don't want to feel what he feels. And the late John Bradshaw, you've probably gotten into some John Bradshaw.

Yeah, he was brilliant.

Yeah. So he has a quote that says this might oversimplify it, but maybe not all addiction is a symptom of not feeling what you're feeling. So I found when we can make connection to our feelings, especially those past pains and traumas, and feel the feelings, feeling is the evidence of healing. It is a huge, huge, huge step of recovery. It's connecting to ourself and, and it's recovering thyself. And in my opinion, one of the biggest forms of hell on earth is living beside yourself, you not being connected to you. To me it's a form of self betrayal. And not to make this too much about me, but I'm going to make it a little bit more about me. Last night at the book signing I was giving a talk and someone asked me a question about my comedy. And the moral of the story was about two and a half years ago, years ago when I started making comedy videos, it was a very important rite of passage of reconnecting with a part of me. When I was seven, when I was four, those young ages, I developed a sense of humor in order to disconnect from pain. And the more I would use humor, the funnier I got. I was getting more practice with it, but the more disconnected I was getting with myself. Let me cover up the pain with the dirt of humor, the flowers of humor. Cover up the dirt with the flowers of humor. Change the analogy. So I found when I reclaimed my inner comedian in a big way a couple years ago, it was really reconnecting with like the wounded 7 year old inner child that was covering himself up with a camouflage of comedy. And, and that's why when I, I'm not sure if y' all have heard me talk about like my breakthrough making videos, it was something I was comedy video, something I was so resistant to for so long. It was so scary to me, like ah, it'll discredit me professionally, but it was me connecting to me, another part of me in a big way. So maybe connection is a huge, huge, huge force of healing that we all need in our lives and PS like addicts too. So I just, I, I talk, you know, kind of haphazardly there because again, haven't worked directly with addicts. That hasn't been my specialty. But just curious your thoughts on any of that ramble, my friend.

Well, I think a lot of people probably watch your comedy videos and can connect with it because they can see all of these things that they have pursued and that many people pursue trying to find joy and enlightenment and connection. And you know that there's just a lot of crazy shit out there and it's in humor brings a lightness to it. And I believe humor is critical, especially when you're going through difficult, challenging times, like if you're stressed or you're having a shitty day. I mean the more you can inject laughter. You know, I made that comment earlier, we were shooting videos earlier where, you know, that that whole saying, you know, an apple a day will keep the doctor away unless you realize the sugar in the apple could perhaps make you have to go anyway, there's that. But, you know. Laughter Every day will probably keep the doctor away and it'll really allow you to just feel alive. So when like if there's a cutter, someone's cutting themselves, you know, in some ways that's they don't feel and they just need to feel. Even if the feeling is pain, that is something other than feeling neglected or did. And I'm not. There's many reasons why people cut. Okay? So I'm not trying to say that's the reason. It's just with connection, it's so critical. So let me go through some things that I've actually learned on this journey that I've been on for a couple of years now. We. When I say we, I have several partners that are, you know, Renee area, Akira Chain Chon is how he likes. And John Butcher, who's the chairman of Precious Moments and makes a figurine. These are partners in Artists for Addicts. And the things that I'm doing with Genius Recovery. And we've been traveling around doing interviews with members of communities and with doctors and with therapists and with addicts themselves and with family members that have had family members that have died. And interviewing positive and heartbreaking all these stories and doctors and all these different people that treat addicts. And then I have a lot of dear friends that are real true experts. Their business is helping people with addictions, people like Gabor Mate, people like Tommy Rosen with Recovery 2.0 and with all of these, I mean, hours and hours of conversations and people that we've interviewed. There's four areas that really you need to look at if you're going through recovery. The first is community. Hardly anyone recovers in isolation. So seeking out, be it a 12 step community or some sort of community is critical. You got to get out of just trying to fight this on your own so you'll be able to ask for help.

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's free book and you can get a copy there. Second is addiction is biochemical. So it's serotonin, it's dopamine, it's happy Chemicals in the brain, cortisol. I mean, there's hormones, there's all these things. And if you, if you don't address the nutritional aspects, the biochemical stuff, you know, you're gonna. You're gonna be in a craving state. And so nutrition supplementation, the foods that you eat, doing as much as you can to be a clean eater, to get your chemistry as stabilized as humanly possible. And people that are struggling, addicts really don't. And I'll come back to this in a minute and tell you something profound that I heard from a doctor here in Phoenix that I recently met. And so then it's the body. The issues are in the tissues. And so if you are traumatized, you. You can do talk therapy all day long, you can be with the smartest people, but the trauma is in the body. So doing things like yoga, Kundalini, yoga is really beneficial. Emdr, float pods, where you do the floating in a pot of salt water. Meditation, breathing. There's hundreds of thousands of people in America that die every year because of tobacco. And someone will be like, why are you smoking? What you got to realize is a smoker, sometimes that's the only time that they really breathe. It's meditative, it's ritual. It's like smoking a cigarette. There'll be a lot of yogis that will say, right here between your chest and this foot and a half space. Or depending if you're a really tiny person. Like an elf. Exactly. It's the breathing. So, you know, addicts don't breathe very deeply and they get that. And so smokers, a lot of times, that is their form of kind of feeling connected and feel, you know, it's. It's also littered with chemicals that are killing them. But it is a form of meditation. So getting into, again, the issues are in the tissues. And then the final thing is the environment. You know, if you're in a stressful environment, work, home, if you don't bring some joy to that sort of environment or get into a place where you just aren't stressed, it's very hard to recover. So a lot of times people like I have the solution to addiction. You just need to talk to this doctor or take this pill or take this supplement. But again, it's community, it's biochemistry. It's the body, it's the environment. And if you don't address those different areas, you're not going to have as high of chances of not only getting sober, but staying sober. And that's one of the things where there's not just some simple solution to, oh, you just need to go to this, you know, because you can go to 12 step meetings. And I. 12 step meetings have saved people's lives.

Which is good for the, the first one community.

Oh, absolutely. And for early stage recovery, it's almost critical. I, I don't, I've asked many therapists and doctors and addicts that. Have you ever met anyone that is fully recovered from addiction? And when I say fully recovered, I mean being in recovery versus recovered. I would look as the suffering and the craving stops. However, once the craving stops, you should keep doing the practices. And I tell people all day long, even if you don't resonate with being an addict, go to a 12 step meeting. Go to an open 12 step meeting on Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Codependency Anonymous, you know, Al Anon, which was created for family members, you know, I mean, and sit through these meetings. It's the mutual suffering. Like, there were a lot of things related to the Vietnam War where they would have, you know, traumatized veterans and soldiers that came back from war and they would have them go to therapists and a lot of them wouldn't get better. But when they would put them in a room with other soldiers that have gone through the trenches and they had a rapport with these individuals that they could never get with other people. And so there's a lot to be said about mutual suffering. Being able to put people together that have been through the shit together and they're able to talk with each other and realize, yeah, you've been, you're a survivor. I mean, you were molested, you have image issues, you look at yourself in the mirror and you hate yourself. You, if you're bulimic and you go and sit in a room of other people with bulimia and you talk with them, that in and of itself brings hope. Because what meetings really do is if you feel hopeless, you want to go and find people that believe in you more than you believe in yourself. And if you can do that, that simply makes you feel better. And if you feel like your life sucks, go volunteer somewhere, Go to an animal shelter, go to a nursing home, go to a burn unit, go to a children's hospital, go to a homeless shelter and look at people whose lives are more fucked up than yours. And as weird as that sounds, you will actually feel better. And what they Learned with like 12 steps is when you can help another addict who's totally struggling, it actually makes you Better. I believe that. Yeah. And that's why it works. And so a lot of people are like, well 12 steps don't work. I've gone to meetings and I can't stay sober. I have a family member that's gone to a meeting and I always say, well that's like saying gyms don't work. You know, if you go to a health club and you go to a gym and you sit on the bench, but you don't bench press, you don't lift the weights, you don't get on the equipment, you don't use the exercise, you don't pick up the dumbbells, then of course it's not going to work. So the thing with communities, 12 step groups as an example, it's not an attendance program program, it's a step program. And if you don't do the steps you're not going to get the results. But there will be people that will go to 12 steps and then they'll eat a lot of donuts, they'll smoke cigarettes, they'll guzzle coffee. So 12 steps are incredibly beneficial from community. But they don't address food, they don't address the body and breathing and exercise. So to give yourself the highest possibilities, you want to do a combination of things and you have to be willing to destroy anything in your life that's not excellent. I love that.

And you know, I the body one and I know there's so many different systems of the body but you mentioned neurotransmitter chemicals. There's a great book, the Diet Cure and the Mood Cure by Julia Ross. Have you ever read them?

Not only have I read them, but I actually met Julia Ross over a decade ago and she actually took me through a supplement regimen specifically for addiction because she's one of the top neuro nutrient therapists in the world.

This guy is a connector, he knows everybody. So that's not very surprising. But her work is so powerful and a few lessons I pulled away from it is. I mean that's where I learned of neurotransmitters and you know, some of the things I guess to, to set the stage. Our neurotransmitter chemicals in our brain are what make us feel comfortable inside of us. They're literally mood shaping chemicals inside of us. Dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, gamma aminobutyric acid. Probably didn't pronounce that right and I probably don't even care. So when we're eating sugar, alcohol, processed foods, flours, those actually displace our neurotransmitter chemicals. And those food substances can sit in the parts of the brain that should house the neurotransmitter chemicals. And because there's crappy things in there, it tells the brain, stop making neurotransmitters, because our neurotransmitter receptor sites are full, but they're not full of neurotransmitters, they're full of crap. So we can get into this place where being inside of ourself feeling feels like we're laying on a bed of broken glass. So now we start perpetuating potentially addictive patterns because we're trying to get away from ourself. So we might self medicate with more sugar because we feel like crap. Because we're eating sugar, Right? Because I just want to escape this sensation right now of feeling like I'm laying on a bed of broken glass. But then when you cut out a lot of the crap and start eating real food, like all of our neurotransmitter chemicals are made from proteins. We need like, real food, not the crappy food to help balance that out so we can have the biochemical potential to feel good inside of us.

Which.

We don't necessarily get. You know, if someone's going to a 12 step meeting, great, giving you community. But the donuts you're eating, the coffee you're drinking, too much of that can actually be making the body component worse while you're making the community component better.

Exactly.

And sugar is really the gateway drug. Sugar is the biggest culprit to the stepping stone for addictive behavior. And we are feeding so much shit to ourselves and to people into children. And they're setting the stage for these individuals to really be more sustained, susceptible to becoming addicts. Like for instance, earlier I was saying, there's a Dr. David Arneson, I never say his name right. Theriversource.org I believe is his website in Phoenix. And I went and met with him with my friend Paul Mittman, who is the president of the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, and then Tom Faris, who is the Arizona corporation commissioner. Because we're working on doing some stuff in Arizona to find a treatment system that we can have people, instead of them going to jail or prison, we can have them go through this and prove that has efficacy to try to help people that have not committed a violent crime, first offense, that instead of throwing them in jail or prison, we get them treatment. And so one of the things we're working on is finding the Best way that we can actually do this and then see if we can. I'm working with politicians, although my world is not that. I want to just be the catalyst and let the people that know how to make these things happen with laws take it from there, you know, hand over the baton. But I want to see if we can get something tested here in Arizona and then if it works, if we can take it from state to state to state. So when we met with him, he said he's been treating people for 16 years with IV treatments. He's very familiar with Julia Ross's work. He's an expert in neuronutrients and using amino acid therapies and IVs to treat addicts. And he said to me, and I'm not going to say it exactly because he's really brilliant at the way he explained it, he said that when you see like an addict on the street that's homeless or missing teeth, he said in a lot of cases what you're seeing is modern day scurvy. And they're just not even getting good vitamin C. And a lot of these addicts are eating donuts, they're drinking sodas, they're eating candy bars, they're eating fast food, they're getting very terrible nutrition and they have a ton of gut problems. And he said if he talked about, you know, serotonin is produced in the gut, dopamine is produced in the brain, and if you basically do not fix the gut, then they're always going to be in a craving state. And he said something about was fascinating me. He said if you do not repair the gut and get them producing happy chemicals, what happens is if you send them to jail or prison or you send them to rehab and they can sit down with the best talk therapist, the cravings are still going to be there and they're still going to be an addict. And I said, if that's actually true, millions of people are being thrown in jail and going into treatment with without having their body producing. And they can be sitting down with even smart people that are trying to guide and direct them. But the cravings never go away. And what happens, these people then have to get drugs in prison. So we have just as bad of a drug problem and drug addiction happening and people doing drugs in prison. And we're trying to lock these people up and keep them away from it. I mean, if you can get drugs in prison, prison drugs are everywhere. And see, here's the challenge. The challenge aren't even the drugs. The drugs are just A symptom of a far deeper problem. The addiction is a symptom of the deeper problem, which is disconnection, which is biochemical, which is all of these things. Because if you have biochemistry, the body isn't connected. So I don't say connection, just in terms of community connection. I mean, you got to make shit work wiring in your body. And, and so what he does is he has a lot of success with IV treatments. And I said, well, can you treat these addicts orally? He goes, well, if their gut is so damaged, no, you actually have to bypass it. But with IVs. And we're talking a few hundred dollars of doing IV treatments where over a period of a few weeks and he can really fix a lot of the gut issues with people and then getting them eating foods that are not damaging to them. And, and I said, if this is actually true, this would literally save millions of lives if we could figure out how to do that and then make it available. So one of the many things we're working on is trying to bring these brilliant people and seeing how do we scale that. And so what I'm trying to do is just be the curator and share this information with people and I'm going to interview these people, we're going to videotape them, we're going to put documentaries out, we're going to really find tips. Does this really, you know, work with numerous people? So one of the things that we're working on is seeing how do we set it up and take literally the worst addicts, you know, street addicts, people that are homeless, and see if we can actually, you know, help them get out of that craving state. But that's just one of many things. But you know, it's, it's fascinating because if you look at what they feed prisoners, if you, if you look at what most addicts eat, I mean, their diets are so unhealthy and so therefore their body is not creating the things it needs to cope.

Yeah, I would dare say the foods a lot of them are eating, a lot of the average non addicts are eating as well, are foods that might make the belly full, but they're foods that actually take more nutrition from the body than what the foods delivered. And that is absolutely a recipe for. It's literal self destruction. And Joe, I know you are very, very interested in like treatments that are proven to work. You to me seem very uninterested in just airy fairy, abstract theoretical stuff like oh yeah, put, you know, put that on your vision board and that should work. So with the current state of research, do you have an opinion on what seems to be a little bit of a growing movement on treating addiction with psilocybin ayahuasca ibogaine?

Well, here's my thoughts on that. And I will give this with a caveat, that there's a lot of people that are making claims about how magical and wonderful some of these things are that are dangerous humans. And they're, you know, they're not.

So you're saying the humans, some of.

The human, some of the people that are offering.

Well, there's a lot of dangerous humans. But what. So like the, the psilocybins, the, the plant medicines, ayahuasca ibogaine that you mentioned, you know, EMDR or I'm sorry, emd, mdma. Yeah. Mixing up a method of neurofeedback and biofeedback with plant medicines, that could be a freak show. Right. But let's take ibogaine as an example, which comes from the iboga root. And that has been found to be one of the most effective ways to treat opiate addiction. Very high success rates for being an addiction interrupter. It's not a cure, it's an interrupter. How it works, very complex. I'm not going to fully speak to that. You can find a lot of good information. There's a book called Ibogaine Explained that people can buy. It's a short book that is a very good book on ibogaine. But I'm the first person in the world to have a before and after brain scan of doing ibogaine.

Oh, you've used ibogaine?

Yeah.

I went to Mexico and I took a film crew and we videotaped all of this. And then I had.

Dr.

It was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life, but also one of the most intense. And I've never been an opiate addict. My addiction to drugs was at my worst state. I weighed 105 pounds from freebasing cocaine for three months straight when I was 18 years old. So if you can imagine a 5 foot 10 male that weighed 105 pounds, that's very skinny. And of course that was many years ago because I'm 49 years old now at the time we're doing this because if we did this a year from now I'd be 50. Right. Kind of do the math.

I don't know that that adds up. It'll be your opinion.

Right, right.

But I wanted to be my own human lab rat. And so I took A film crew with me, and that'll be part of the documentary that we put out. And a lot of the stuff. And I had serotonin and dopamine tests before doing it. And then I had Daniel Amen, who is the top brain scan psychiatrist in the world, who scanned my brain six different times. And so we did brain scans before, we did brain scans after. And what I will say is that if in that period of time after doing ibogaine, if you have an opiate addiction, if you literally change the environment and you have aftercare, See, there's a lot of rehab centers that suck. I mean, they just exploit people for money. There's, you know, there's a ton of relapse, very low success rate, and there's others that are much better. So my thing is not to bash rehab centers, although many of them deserve bashing. It's, it's really, it's a bubble. And so there are things where they can do a really good job while the person is there. But the real key is what do you do after the treatment? What do you do? What are the rituals? What is the aftercare that you have? Do you have recovery coaching? Are you consistently going to meetings? And most people left to their own devices are going to go create trouble. So to have accountability and to have loved ones, if you have loved ones, if you have no family members or any that are functional, then you actually have to create your own community. You have to seek that out. And so there's the drugs that kill people are legal. The drugs that can actually help people are illegal. Not all of them, but that's the damaging thing. And there's, you know, if you really want to know the history of the war on drugs, go read Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari, which is the first and last days of the war on drugs. Read in the Realm of Hungry Ghost by Gabor Mate, if you read American Pain, there's so many things related to how these things became illegal, why they're illegal. But there's so much research that is coming out. Psilocybin, lsd. But most people are saying, oh, let me go have a conscious journey. Let me have an experience. Some of my friends or will go to Bernie man, and they're like, yeah, we're going to have a journey. It's like, no, you're just going to get high in a trailer.

You're going to end up for sure.

Yeah, so. But again, I mean, you know, everyone has their opinions and what I just said will piss off some people or whatever, but the Thing is like, what's your intention behind it? And if you can actually go to people that really have experience guiding people through trauma, I mean, I've seen it change people's lives. I've met people that have met. One guy after did the ibogaine, it had been through five different treatment centers. His family had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to help him stay sober and get off opiates. And he kept relapsing and he did ibogaine. And he's like, for the first time in my life, I don't have any cravings. And people can go through ibogaine for far less than most treatment centers and without withdrawals. They can literally go through it without the pain, pain of withdrawals. But it's very intense. And I mean, if I would have prepared for. People always ask me, what was it like, describe it. I could talk for the next 10 years trying to describe it. No one would get it. The best description I have was someone told me it was like going through hell on God's shoulders. I mean it was scary, it was terrifying. But man, I mean I saw millions of images and faces and the what we're is a 12 hour long trip in the first five hours of it was the most scary, horrifying experiences ever. But then it became beautiful and it was really powerful and it, I mean, it's the closest thing I've ever experienced to like, you know, if whatever facing death is like felt so mentally like. But man, do I think people would be well served to look into it with caution. Definitely. But worth exploring. And if you've tried a million things and it's not helped you, you know, I mean, in a properly guided plant medicine journey. And by the way, this is things you're gonna have to do outside of the country if you're in the U.S. you know, and I'm a guy that does even like taking an aspirin. I mean I have not had sugar in over six months. I've not had a drop of caffeine in over six months. I'm a very clean eater. I rarely, you know, eat dairy and grains. I try to eat, you know, very healthy, very organic food. I don't like putting medicine into my system because I nearly killed myself with drugs. But it was, you know, there's a lot. I'm being my own human lab rat. The looking at all of these things that, you know, have success and we're looking at the efficacy of these because, you know, in my journey you can talk about, oh, I want to make an impact. But who the hell cares about an impact unless the impact produces a result? You know, I want to do research. Well, unless the research, you know, produces a result, or I want to have awareness. Well, you know, what's the point of awareness if it doesn't lead to a result? So we're really trying to find things that give a result. And it's. Yeah, I wish I could, you know, say to everyone out there that here's exactly what you do, but it's complicated. So you made the comment, money doesn't buy happiness. And there's. I want to dig into that a little bit and see, because I actually. Someone made a documentary on my life, which at the time that we're doing this, is not yet released. It's called Connected to Joe Pollard Story.

I've seen the trailer, and it's awesome.

Yeah, thank you.

And I had a client who anonymously did it. Then I found out who it was. Of course, I knew a movie was being made because they were interviewing me for it, but I didn't know who was behind it. And it was a guy named Devain Patel. And it was an amazing, wonderful, sweet thing. I'm so appreciative to him. And it's weird watching a movie about your own life. And one of the things they put on the trailers, the statement, money can't buy happiness. And I said, it's kind of a stupid statement because I buy happiness all the time. What I have to tell people, though, because I get into this question a lot, because people see that trailer is like, there are many things that money cannot buy. In the same way that Jim Rohn said, you cannot pay someone to do your pushups for you. I mean, there's certain things you just gotta do. A statement that I've said a lot, and it didn't originate with me. I just heard it somewhere. I don't know. I can't remember where. If you think money can't by happiness, you haven't given enough of it away. Meaning you could be a miserable person. With money, you can facilitate other people's happiness, be it medical care, be it feeding them, things like that. And at the same time, there are many areas where money can buy happiness. So it's not like it's a definitive statement.

Right.

And a lot of this is context. So I want to. What I think is a big misconception about entrepreneurs is it's all about money. I mean, people look at you, you got a $450 million. Currently, you're approximately company. You have brought in Hundreds of millions of dollars in your career, you help other people make money. They're buying a business, many to build a life, build a business, build a career, make money for themselves. And at the same time, I don't think you're doing all of this because you're trying to just make more money. So I want to dig into what is the drive of the entrepreneur. How can someone that understand this in a way, because a lot of people think it's just about money.

Yeah. For me, I'm a creator. I love, you know, so the things I love to do for fun. As a kid I used to draw like crazy. I love cooking and creating dishes. I'm not one to follow a recipe book as much as I am just to throw a bunch of ingredients in an experiment, see what happens with the best.

It's funny from a guy who sells recipes to other people.

Right, right, true. But I wouldn't be the franchise partner. I wouldn't follow the recipe. I'd get fired. I mean, I got fired from every single job I ever had, including working for my grandmother, because I couldn't be told exactly what to do. So as an entrepreneur, I think for me it's a. I like seeing people's lives positively impacted. You get somebody who starts working in the call center and then they grow up into senior management, one of our brands or you get someone that was working out in sales who's now running 1-800-GOT junk or people that start franchises from, you know, from nothing. I love watching that growth. If cars and toys and things are important to others, hey, great. Whatever it takes to help you achieve, achieve whatever your dreams are, that's what drives me. But it's never been the money. I don't know what I would spend the money on short of philanthropic endeavors. I don't want to sell the company, take it public because I wouldn't know what to do with the money. I don't want more of it. It's a measurement for me of our significance. At a 444 million dollar business, which is where we're at now with all brands, getting to a billion means about two and a half times that in terms of significance. We don't need more profits to do things. It's just more opportunity. And that's what makes me tick. I mean, you know, you talked about having a big house and scaled down. I mean, you wouldn't be the first entrepreneur to do that. And I hear that story a lot.

Oh yeah. And believe me, I make more money today than I did when I first bought that house. It's not about that either. It's just having money solves a lot of problems that lack of money creates. So what is, in your experience and your opinion, the best ways to utilize money? What does money facilitate and in what ways can money be a vice? It could be damaging. It could be, you know, something that people with their priorities not in the right place can use it in harmful ways. Because working with a lot of addicts, I've seen some people that you give them access to money, they can buy whatever their crazy brains, devices can come up with. So like they.

Yeah, I think, you know, just finding the most positive way to use your money. I think helping others is a wonderful thing. And I don't just mean charity, but, you know, somebody's close to achieving their goals or dreams or someone in the company wants some development, investing in that. I love the engine that our, the engine of learning that our businesses create. And you know, we're always taking people. We've got 101 life goals program. And what that is is someone sits down as a new employee and takes 20 minutes and writes down up to 101 things they want to do in their life. And we try and go through the list with them, if they'll share it with us to say, what can the business help you accomplish? Could be a language learning goal, it could be a trip they want to take with their family. It doesn't matter what it is. We will try and tap into using our business, our wealth, our success, our connections to help them achieve their dreams. So I think money towards others is a wonderful thing. I mean, you know, the best trip we've ever taken as a family, my three kids and I, we went to Kenya with the WE organization, where we helped to build some schools and went to rural Kenya, and then we went to India and did some similar stuff. I mean, they'll tell you that was the best trip ahead of a Paris or an Amsterdam all day long.

Yeah.

And it was one. Just because you get to connect with human beings. And so putting money into other communities and helping to be a part of that, that's special. And I think, you know, we've all got a responsibility to leave this planet better than we found it. And I think that the world's changing from a bit of selfishness of the 80s to like, I want all these big things to now going, what's, what's my meaning? I believe make meaning not money. You need money to do some of that.

Make meaning not money.

Yeah, but make meaning not Money.

You know, it's interesting, too, going on the Kenya trip. I think there's something to be said that's counterintuitive. I wrote something years ago. It was called how to have a Great Day, according to Joe. And I wrote it in the library when I was. And this is before the Internet. I mean, literally, it was that long ago, and I was having a shitty day. And I was like, okay, what could I do to have a great day? So if I have a great day, what are some of the elements that must exist? And so I went and wrote a bunch of things down, like work out in the morning, get good sleep, write a gratitude letter, journal, call a friend, drink a protein shake. I mean, I just listed a bunch of stuff and people can probably find on the Internet if they do a search because I publish it in newsletters and stuff. And then I wrote up like 20 something things and then sign my name and then I put PS if none of these things work for you, then go volunteer at a homeless shelter, an animal shelter, a burn unit, go to a recovery clinic. Because when you go and help others, it's amazing. If you are in a really shitty state of mind or just having a bad day, if you can go and find other people who are enduring suffering and challenges far greater than you and you help them, it's amazing how good that makes you feel. I mean, it's a wonderful way to snap yourself out of depressions or out of certain states. And I think it's similar to that which is not earned, is seldom valued. So, like kids that were given big inheritances, born on third base and think he hit a triple, that sort of thing, right? And so there's something about contribution that I think people that maybe aren't doing it or doing it enough don't realize how damn valuable that is. And I think in your business, you know, especially even the way you describe it in the book, I mean, you're running an educational institution here. I mean, you are empowering a lot of people, and you have built a business around contribution and teaching people how to contribute and in many cases, doing manual labor and hard physical work, which a lot of people don't consider very glamorous, you know.

Well, it's funny because, you know, I was just sort of reflecting on what you were saying. I mean, for a guy who me, who's gone 14 schools from kindergarten right through to college, never the only diploma I have is kindergarten because I never finished high school and I never finished college, I'm not a great person in school. Yet we've built an incredibly large business school. Yeah, I mean, people are learning how to run a business and how to grow their own empires in any one of our brands. And that's unique, you know? And so I think the world is a better place when we learn together and we grow together. And that's one of the things that makes O2E brand so special.

I gotta say, of both of you guys. Why. One of the reasons why I admire you both is for this, for the same thing, is that you're both tremendously original thinkers. You know, you're not following, you know, any kind of cookie cutter logic. You know, I was saying that I sort of found. Felt like sometimes when I'm writing a book, I'm going into a dark cave, right. And trying to see what's there. And I think you guys do that too. Like, the stuff that you come up with, Dan, you know, I. I've never heard it from anybody else. And I know you're just sort of. You're looking at the world, you're sort of asking questions. Why does this work? What are the rules of this? What are the principles that are involved here? And you, oh, this is a principle. And nobody's come up with that, you know, and it's a great gift, you know, and you do the same thing, Joe. You're going off on all these wild and crazy adventures and putting yourself, like you say, at sort of the cutting edge of the unknown. You're sort of. You're not really happy in the known. I don't think, Joe, you know, neither of you guys, you like to kind of push into that little shadow space, that dark space, and go, you know, well, what's out here? Let me open this door and see what's in here. And then you kind of come back to the rest of us and say, oh, here, I found this thing over there, and that's. It's really a great thing. So my hat's off to both of you guys. It's great. You know, you guys have both really enriched my life.

Well, no, thank you. I mean, likewise. I mean, this is awesome to be talking to both of you at the same time. Because there's been so much of my thinking and thought process that has been influenced by the work that you guys put out into the world. And I will refer to it as work. I mean, even one of your books is called do the Work. And if you often think about what is work like, and I'd like to have that conversation with both of you, like, what is work? What is this thing that people get up and do and that, you know, Jordan Peterson had a really interesting riff on work where he said, you know, they call it work, and you incentivize people to do it, because much of it people just would not do if there was not someone paying them to do it. So it's not supposed to be always this pleasant thing that, you know, it's work. That's why they call it work. But the whole concept of how I work, what type of work I do, and how I'm influenced by it, and there's. I need to say this because I haven't mentioned this because, you know, when you talk about attention, most of my attention is the way I think about it when I'm thinking from my higher place is how to be useful in the world, how to produce more than I consume. And to look at human suffering and try to eliminate or reduce what I can is. And know the distinction between some suffering, like getting into a cold plunge, sucks. But by doing it, you build up cold tolerance. You build up your ability to handle and endure difficult things. And it makes life easier by doing the difficult sort of things. So there are certain things. But my goal, Steven, like in the current iteration of it, is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment, and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share that with the world for free. Just put out education for free. Because a lot of people that struggle with addictions don't have resources. And if I can utilize my entrepreneurial endeavors to fund my ability to do that, I actually feel really good about it. For some reason, I get enormous fulfillment by knowing that I can share or do anything that will reduce the pain and the suffering of addiction because I struggled so much my life with addiction. And secondly, I think it's a good thing to do in the world. So that's kind of. That's. So I'm willing to do work as a result, to have that be the byproduct of it. So that's my riff on that. I'd love to hear how you guys think of work. What is work? And most people that are watching or listening to us right now are probably trying to do better in their work.

Dan, over to you.

Well, it's. It's really interesting, you know, and it relates a lot to the topic of creativity and what I'm discovering, that there really are two kinds of people on the planet. The people who don't know where things came from, and the people who are very, very clear that everything gets made up.

Elaborate on that one.

Yeah, well, you know, I'll give you a story. And I have sort of, you know, historical role models that, you know, I really get a lot. I get a lot of insight. And George and Ira Gershwin are one of my role models. And arguably, you know, George was perhaps the greatest composer that America ever had. And, you know, he did Broadway musicals, he did Hollywood musicals. And then he was really, you know, before he died. He died very, very young. He was 37, 38 when he died. But he was getting into a entirely new kind of classical music. And it was really, you know, Rhapsody in Blue.

Yeah, fantastic.

It's really, really. Clearly, it's a classical piece and it's brand new. It's a brand new genre. But anyway, they used to go to Los Angeles and New York. They used to go between the two because they were always working on a Hollywood film and they were always working on a new play. And so it was super luxury trains, New York Central in those days. And they. They made a trip from Los Angeles. And so George had his music notebooks out, and he's writing. He's just writing. You know, it's two or three day trip, and they sleep. You know, they sleep at night on the train. And then about six hours out of New York, he gives the notebook to Ira. And Ira was the lyricist, you know, and they had been working together since they were like 6 years old. So Ira was the older, George was the younger. And so Ira is looking at. He said, oh, this is great. And he can hear the music, and he's putting words to music as he's doing. He says, fantastic. They get to Grand Central Station, enters a hustle because they have an evening event, and they have to get everything together. And the porters come in, they get their bags, and they. They. They had a suite at the Waldorf Astoria. And they're in the suite, and George. George or Ira is just, you know, he's. He's searching around madly. And he said, I can't find the notebook. I can't find your. I can't find the thing that you just did. And George said, well, call the hotel concierge and tell them to call the station and talk to the train. They know us. He says, we're, you know, we're taking trips every couple of weeks so they know who we are. They'll look around. It's probably, you know, we left it in the suite. And then they have to go out for an event, and they come home and Ira. Ira's just crestfallen. And he says, I lost the notebook. And George says, ah, don't worry about it. There's more where that came from.

Ah, that's a great story. Is that a true story?

Yeah, well, it should be. Ah, if it's not, it should be.

You know, I've heard a similar version about Cole Porter that, you know, when he worked for Hollywood, he would bang out songs, right? And he had written some wonderful song and it had been rejected. And a friend of his came up to him, said, man, how do you deal with this, Cole? You just wrote something great. And they just dumped all over. He said, there's another one coming down the track every 20 minutes. I got a million of them.

That was like George Harris, was it. You told me the story, Joe, because you made it into an exercise. The Beatles are getting together and they have to create a new record. And they said, okay, let's write ourselves a swimming pool.

Yeah.

Yep. About. Yeah, I believe this is John. John Lennon and, and Paul McCartney. And he's saying someone that said the Beatles are not materialistic. And he's like, that's not true. I remember sitting down saying, let's write ourselves a swimming pool. And so. But thinking of that, let me ask you both this.

What I mean is that the, the power of creativity is a byproduct of people knowing how to work.

Totally.

Yeah. And you both.

And for other people and on Deadline.

Yes.

Well, you know, in the war of art, Steven, you have the one thing about you, Inc. Where you put on the cap and you have, you know, you treat yourself as a pro. And here's the one thing I don't want to. I want to make sure we cover this because I imagine there will be lots of young people that listen to this or watch this, this conversation and might be thinking, you know, I'm not that good. I'm just starting out. And these guys are talking about being, you know, world class writers and having great businesses and that sort of stuff. And every single one of us has had. I mean, if you look at the history of what Stephen went through in Dan's life and, you know, you had two bankruptcies, Dan, when you were 34 years old on the same day.

No.

No, that's a waste of bankruptcy. No, I had a bankruptcy and I had a divorce on the same day.

And that's what I was trying to say.

And I arranged it so the divorce was in the morning so I could keep my credit card and celebrate at lunch for the divorce that was happening. In the afternoon.

Yeah. Well, what. What did that teach you about failure? If you even want to call it that.

It's just extreme market research.

Yeah, it is, right? It was your practice marriage, and no.

One else wants to know about it. Yeah. Dan, hey, we're having a party, and can you come over for the night and kind of talk about your divorce and bankruptcy? People are very, very considerate. They just leave you totally alone.

No, you were making a point about work or. Yeah, just a few seconds ago.

Yeah, like, you know, with work, you have all these young people that are. Man, it's the world from where we grew up and how it is today is quite different. And there's many things that are the same. And the fact is that you have resources inside of you and that are available outside of you, that if you learn how to tap into them and utilize them and weave them, like, in, like, a piece of clay, you can develop a great life. And you also will, like it or not. Like, I gave a speech once, and one of the lines I said was, if I would have known how much work becoming successful was, I would have stuck with being a loser. And the fact is, there's a lot of shit. I mean, there's just a lot of shit. What I've learned about success. And again, this is only my perspective, in my opinion. Take it for what it's worth. I don't think the treadmill of crap ever stops. I think what happens is my ability to navigate it, how to frame it, how to think about it, how to address it, how to avoid it, has everything to do with what I do in my life and what I don't. And a lot of that really has come from being in strategic coach since 1997. You know, Dan is really good at reframing adversity and challenges, as are you, Stephen. I mean, like, the. In so many of your books are about reframing, how to think about something. And I think Dan is a really good framer. And so the concept of work for young people. I'd like to ask you, what advice would you give based on all of your life experience? You've been asked questions like this a bunch. I think it's important, though, and I don't think a young person can ever hear it enough. And I also believe that even if you said the same exact piece of wisdom, it's like the book what to Expect when youn're Expecting. Every day there's a new woman that gets pregnant and has now become a prospect for buying that book. And every day There's a young person that's heard stuff from their parents, heard stuff, but it just clicks when they hear it. And I would like. And I call those the first domino. I call that the domino moment, where something. You hear it or you read a book or you've done something and it changes the trajectory of your life. I know the war of art has been a first domino for so many people. I know so much of Dan's work has been a first domino for so many people. So I'd like to ask you guys, as it relates to work, what sort of advice or insight or any. Whatever you want to call it, could you offer to young people as it relates to making the most of themselves in their work that could operate as a domino for them?

Well, I'd say for myself, that work, the idea of hard work really saved my life, you know, it was like a breakthrough. Like what you mean I could actually work? You know, I could actually dig myself out of this fucking hole that I'm in, you know?

Yeah.

And. And the idea that nobody can stop you from working, you know, they. Whatever crappy job you got, you know, you're busing tables, you know, pretty soon you can. You can be a waiter. Next thing you know, you're managing the place, you know, but beyond that, I think that if you can find, going back to Dan, your unique ability, and it might take you 30 years or 40 years like it took me, and it's almost always in the last place you want to look, right? You never, you know, if you can find that whatever your gift is, which is like, what you've been searching for, Joe and I know Dan makes you a strategic coach. You got to write page after page after page, right, to try to get to what it is that you really bring to the party. But if you can find that, whatever that is, and then apply just plain old ass kicking work, day after day after day, the slog, you know, the ditch, digging hard, hard work and not give in to all the temptations and distractions, then I don't know if success is the answer because I don't think that money, who cares about. As long as you have enough to pay the rent to live, you'll find what makes you happy, you know, but. Every kid is looking for a shortcut, right?

Yes.

Hack. Work for 60 years and, you know, maybe you'll be okay at the end of that. But work, if you look at it in the right sense, that it's. That it's a privilege, that it's fun, that it's what you. It's just life. It's just what you have to do, then nothing. Nothing can stop you, you know?

Yeah, that's good. Well, Dan has a. Has a coach at strategic coach named Lee Brower. And Lee was telling the story of, like, how many of you, you know, hate to take the. Take the trash out. And so a bunch of people raised their hand, and he's like, do you know how many people are in the world that would love if someone would show up at their house and just haul their trash away? Like, you know, how many billions of people on planet Earth that would be a dream come true if they could just drop trash off and people would literally come and haul it away. He goes, so you don't have to take the trash out. You get to take the trash out. And I like that analogy as it relates to the whole concept of work. So, Dan, hopefully you're not choking on water over here.

I'll tell you. I went through a big shift about when I turned 70, and I realized that a lot of my emphasis up until 70 were my skills. And I was working on my skills, and I deemed at 70 that my skills were good enough. And I said, now, the real trick is how can I connect my skills with other people's skills? Because at 70, I don't think I'm going to get too much. I'm a good enough writer. I'm an artist. I have a good layout sense. I'm a good coach. So what I said is, from this point forward, all progress is measured in successful teamwork. Expanding successful teamwork, which means that I should only do what I'm good at and encourage people to. Other people do. Only do what they're good at. And if we do that together, it's exponential, you know? And I think the book, you know, that's when I decided a book a quarter. We just have tremendous teamwork. It takes me 35 hours to write a book, you know, and. And every quarter, I try to start it earlier, get it started, and the team loves it. You know, I've got one person who's the interviewer. I've got one person who is the cartoonist. I've got one person who's the layout artist. I got the one person who's the artist. I got one person who's the sound editor. I've got one person who's the video person. And they all have their parts. And every quarter, you're working on a structure you already love, but it's a teamwork structure. So more and more I said you know, as long as I. It's not about me and my skill. It's only my skill as part of teamwork. I find time slows down and I find the work is actually absolutely enjoyable, you know, and. And, you know, but I'm. But what it means is that you always show up on time with your part so that the other person can do their part. And that's kind of my passion right now is never, never keep somebody else's talent waiting.

So.

I find as I get older, then it's not about me, it's just about my part of ever expanding teamwork.

There's so many. We could do a whole week on just all the business lessons of building and growing up a company and stuff. And that's why, you know, we always have I love marketing episodes. Talking about marketing. Right, because there's a lot to it. What. What advice would you give? What have you learned that would be really valuable for people that have a product or service that is. They're not in the transaction business. They're in the transformation business, because that's the business you're in. You're not in the transaction business, you're in the transformation business. So you have something that has transformed your life, and then you started teaching it to other people. And there's a lot of people here that are in the transformation business. How do you build it? What advice would you give? What are some fundamentals?

Yeah, there's a few things. And to be clear to everybody, I self published the book, right. And like you said, Joe, there was no platform, so this was pretty slow going for me. You know, it was me doing. In the first year that the book came out, I did 150 some podcast interviews. I did 50 of my own. I launched a podcast to nurture my audience that I was going to build. It was just like, hey, I should have something to send out to people every week. And so that was the podcast. I was on 13 morning television shows, including, like, national NBC daytime that year. And I, oh, I give 36 speeches. And I engaged in the Miracle Morning community every day, which started out with, like, five people. It started out with me and my parents and my sister and, like, a few of my friends. Like that. That was how the group started, Right. I never knew what it was all going to become, but I was committed. And here's a few things. The biggest thing is I focused on one thing. What has it been eight years since the Miracle Morning published? I still do interviews every single week to talk about the Miracle Morning. I have A movie coming out called the Miracle Morning. I chose one thing, and I'll tell you. My goal my first year was to sell a million books. Just because you pick an arbitrary one year timeframe, I'm like, well, I'm gonna change one million lives one morning at a time. That was the goal. And I did everything I just said, right? 13 TV interviews, 150 podcasts, 50 of my own episodes, 36 speeches. I sold 13,000 copies that year. So I want you to think about that for a second. I was 987,000 copies short of my goal. 98.7% failure rate in terms of the metrics, right? But I dusted myself off and I went, I'm committed for as long as it takes to impact over a million people with this book. And so I tried again in year two, and I sold like 25,000 copies in year two, give or take, right? I'm still 97% away or whatever it was. But, Joe, here's the point. It's one thing. It's like the Gary Keller book. The one thing. I've shown this graph of my book sales during speeches at your event, actually beyond the best seller. I gave my beyond the best seller talk at. At Genius Network, and I showed this graph and people see how long it took for my book to take off. And that's all I did was focus on that one thing, because I believed in it so much. And I have all these authors come up and they go, man, I only promoted my book hard during the launch. And then I got the entrepreneurial ADHD and I shifted gears and chased the next squirrel. I wonder what would have happened if I would have stayed as relentlessly focused on that one thing for as long as it took. And I think it's true for most of us, right? Like, Joe, you're a great example. Genius Network, that's been your one thing. And it's a multimillion dollar a year business, right? Because you picked that one thing. And so I think that's one really important component is that you've got to. If you know that what you're offering impacts people and it changes lives. Like I knew because I had taught it to all my coaching clients. That's what got me to write the book. Is every coaching client I taught it to, they went from being I'm not a morning person to wow, how this changed my life. And I went, if it worked for me and it worked for them, it could work for anybody. Then when I wrote the book and the book came out and I Started getting emails and reviews from people saying this, you know, this cured my depression, this saved my marriage. I mean, these really profound results. I went, I have a responsibility to get this in the hands of. And I was thinking small. I thought a million people. That felt really big, you know. And then once I reached a million people, we shifted the mission and I took the number off. And the mission is to elevate the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time. So that's the overall, I think mindset and commitment is to that one thing. This, while this is specific to the book, I think it can apply, you know, you can apply it to anything that you're doing. Most books simply shift people's thinking and it's a very temporary shift because you, we've all been there, right? You read a book, the book you're reading, your mind is blown. You're telling anyone that you talk to, dude, have you read this book? Have you read. It's amazing. But if that book doesn't change your behavior in a consistent, meaningful, long standing way, then you forget about it as soon as you're done reading it. Because now you're on to the next book. And now that one's blowing your mind, and now you're talking about that one until you're onto the next book and the next book and the next book. So here's the nuance. Whatever product or service you offer, it's got to shift people's behavior in a meaningful way. Shift their behavior, change their behavior, transform their behavior in a meaningful way so that they don't need you anymore. Coaching is a great example. A lot of coaches, right? They just, you get on. It's like a therapist, you know, you get on. Even a therapist is a good example, right? You get on and you're like, wow, when I talk to my coach or my therapist, I get these amazing insights and I feel better. But then you go back to your regular life and you, for, you know, you forget. But if you're. If everything we do is focused around changing people's behavior so that every day they're doing things that enhance their mental, physical, emotional and spiritual life, well, now they're gonna talk about it indefinitely. And that's the thing with the miracle morning. The entire thing is a ritual. And the entire book culminates into a 30 day challenge that I hold their hand through to make this a lasting habit. And, you know, we have people posted the miracle morning Facebook group all the time. Today was day 100. Today was day 1000. I've been doing this for six years. Right. And so. And in terms of the word of mouth phenomenon, which is really important, the miracle morning became a word of mouth phenomenon when I was in the hospital fighting cancer. I didn't do a single interview, I didn't run a single ad. I just focused on fighting cancer. And we sold more books that year than any year before. And it was all via word of mouth. And again, that goes to if people's behavior is changed in a meaningful way. People are doing the miracle morning every day. So when they have to leave a dinner party at 8:30 because. And they're like, why are you leaving early? And they go, well, I got to wake up from a miracle morning. What's the miracle morning? Oh, you haven't read the Miracle Morning. Right. So it's all about behavior change. And again, most people focus on, you know, we get information that changes our thinking or shifts it for a small amount of time and then we forget and life goes back to the way that it always was.

Such good advice.

Yeah.

The ability to be a effective consultant coach advisor is your ability to take what you know, transfer it to someone in a way where they can use it and apply it to their life and get results. Because it really is about producing results. I mean, that's what all of this boils down to. And something that me and Dean talk about constantly. You know, what would happen in your business if you could only get paid if you produced a result. And it makes you really think about how you say it, how you deliver it, what you're delivering it, what you're offering. So that's really good. So I want to give an opportunity for people that are joining us to ask some questions directly to us. Hal, Anna, is there anything you'd like to ask or want to say or something that I did not bring up that you're like, Joe, you're a dummy. You should be asking this or talking about this.

Well, I think that pretty regularly.

But in terms of this, what I.

Expected you to talk about is how what Hal said had to do with.

Recovery and how the 12 steps are.

All based around you don't do it once. It's like an everyday thing because we all have a built in forgetter where what worked yesterday, we're like, that worked really well. Let me completely forget it and not do it today.

So that's all I wanted to add. Well, you know, can I speak to that too? Because you know, there's@geniusrecovery.org, which is the foundation I set up where we have Links to all kinds of different meetings, 12 steps and non 12 step meetings. Interviews, links to podcasts. Ann has been instrumental in helping with genius recovery. And one of the things I apply, even if someone is not an addict and doesn't identify with addiction, there's so much to be learned from it, and there's so much that is applicable here to the miracle Morning. For instance, like all the latest research that has come out on 12 steps, 12 steps, for years, people were bashing them, saying, you know, there's not a high. You know, there's a high relapse rate and they don't work. And like, all the most Recent data is 12 steps is incredibly effective. And I constantly have people like, well, 12 steps doesn't work. And it's like, well, that's like saying gyms don't work. If you join a gym and you don't go to the gym, or you sit on the bench and you don't lift the weights, you can't say gyms don't work. I mean, if you lift the weights, they work. You can't say a book or a system doesn't work unless you actually use it. So with 12 steps, 12 steps are not about. It's not an attendance group, it's a step group. It's about doing the steps. If you just attend, well, the miracle Morning, there is a process. They're the saviors. And if you don't utilize them, it's not just an idea, it's actually using them and doing it consistently. What's interesting how with the recent stuff we did in Genius Network with our friend and now Genius Network member BJ Fogg, who's the brilliant Stanford researcher, he has a behavior design lab. He wrote a book called Tiny Habits. One of the interesting thing is people don't do stuff if it's just big. It's like, take massive action, which is a lot of people preach that massive action does not work. For most people, it's too much, it's too hard. What's interesting with going through Tiny Habits is the way that you've actually spelled out the miracle Morning, even from the very beginning, very much is in line with Tiny Habits. I mean, you make it easy for people to understand and use it. And now you got BJ Fogg, who literally is probably the. I mean, his book was right now voted Tiny Habits the number one book of the year for a business book for Amazon, and he never even wrote it as a business book. He's got all the research to support this now. So even the things that you've been teaching, you could tie it into like, yeah, this actually works when you do it in this way and you build up upon it. I mean, the savers, they're very small parts of each individual thing all combined together. Can you speak to that? Because I don't really think you articulated that about the savers is like you looked at all of these principles and you built them into the morning.

Yeah, for me, in 2008, when the economy had crashed and I had lost my income and all of that, it was a conversation with a good friend of ours, John Berghoff, and he gave me the advice. He said, hal, I want you to go for a run, start running in the morning. I said, I hate running. He said, well, what do you hate worse, running or your circumstances? And I go, all right, I'll go for a run, asshole. And he said, while you're on that run, listen to some self help or some. A business audiobook so that while you're in that peak physical state, right. You then can receive that information and go home and implement it. And on the very first day, he had me listen to this Jim Rohn audio. And Jim Rohn said, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And so that was where the epiphany. I went, wait a minute, I need to take my personal development up a notch or quite a few notches. And so I went home and I was just googling, what are the best personal development practices? And specific, like to millionaires and billionaires, to entrepreneurs, to CEOs, to world champion athletes, like, what's the best practices to improve yourself and put yourself in a peak state? And I was looking for like one, maybe two. And I had a list of these six practices. And that's where I went, well, I'm overwhelmed. I can't do all six of these. And then the epiphany when I couldn't figure out which one was more effective, I thought, wait, what if I did all six? Like, what if I woke up an hour earlier tomorrow and I did 10 minutes of meditation and 10 minutes of affirmations and 10 minutes of visualization and exercise and reading and journaling, and I woke up the next morning and I sucked at all of them. Like, I didn't know how to meditate? I had never really done it before. Affirmations, the way I was learning them felt super goofy. But even sucking at those six practices, like I said earlier, I felt, wow, I feel the best I felt in six months. And then I, of course, started to kind of learn and play with different durations and different orders. And so those practices, when I was writing the book, by the way, for anybody trying to put together the acronym Savers, I went to my wife and I said, sweetheart, how do I organize these in a way where people are going to remember them and make it useful for people? And she goes, why don't you get a thesaurus and see if you can swap any of the words to form an acronym? And so meditation became silence, journaling became scribing.

Right?

So the S's and then affirmations, visualization exercise, reading, and, you know, so that became the Sabers. And I'm going to say it this way. Robert Kiyosaki is a huge advocate for the Miracle morning. He has read the book. When he interviewed me, it was. He'd read it three times. He does it with his wife almost every single day. And he said it the best. At the end of our interview, he summed it up like this. I'll paraphrase what he said, but essentially it was Hal. Before the miracle morning. Before I read the miracle morning, he said, every successful person on the planet swears by at least one of the Savers and attributes their success, or at least part of it, to at least one of the Sabers. He said, now, some people maybe do two or three. But he said, I had never heard of or met anyone that did all six of these ancient best practices. And he said, if you do one of them, it will change your life when you do all six. He goes, I really believe you named the book correctly because it creates miracles in your life. It creates results that are so far beyond what you thought were possible for you that it feels like a fricking miracle when you experience those results. And so, yeah, those are the Savers. You can do them in any order. You could do them in different durations. Right. You could meditate for 10 minutes and journal for five. And, you know, it's a very customizable ritual for you.

What do you guys do for fun, relaxation, hobbies, when you're not hard at work?

I fish, I snowboard. I do usually a lot of things.

Out in nature, you know, shoot clays.

And things like that.

Gotcha.

Cool.

I'm probably lobster. I get really great intellectual stimulation out of just having really rich discussion with people. I have a whole spectrum of what I call masterful thinking, partners in the most eclectic spectrum of areas. And when I'm available, we talk. We just talk about anything. I want to know what's going on. I want to know what they're doing, what's impressive. Passive to them. So I just like it. I mean, I'm not very athletic, so I like intellectual stimulation. My wife is very athletic. We have a few problems. We'll go to a basketball game. We have season tickets to Clippers, and she'll go and watch the game. And I'm watching, thinking, how in the hell do they change that from basketball to Adele to, you know, he's always on.

He's always on.

Yeah, I wish I wasn't.

You're possessed.

Yeah, he's always.

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it. I wouldn't do this at home.

Yeah. We went to, like, we did hang out casually.

Oh.

And we always hang out casually, but.

We hang out casually.

Like, we thought we were going to dinner and I was eating, and he just kept me asking me so many questions. He was just being himself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Curious.

Well, yeah.

You know, here's the thing, too. And I will say this.

Like, Jay is really. I really.

You're a cool guy. You're quirky as hell, and you really.

You're a great guy.

You have this great house on the beach where I've actually. You gave that to me and a girlfriend to hang out with. And I mean, you know, just stay there. Which was awesome. And you've never said, hey, let's try to pitch something to your list.

Hey, let.

So when you're talking about.

You really get intellectual stimulation. Yeah. It's not like, you know, we.

We've.

We talked all the time, and it's never been, like, an agenda.

It's never been like. And you're. You're incredibly gracious. And, I mean, even coming out here, which I appreciate both of you.

Thank you.

You know, doing that.

But I want to. But I want to say one thing, and I want to say one thing in the reason why I did. Enough. So first of all, I'd like to thank Jay and I want to thank Joe for helping me. But I. I promise you, and I'm not lying, I am not getting paid for being here today. And I would give up the world to be here today because of the value that I've learned. And one of my guys here had called me and said, should I come here? And why should I come here? There you go, right there. And you do all the stuff with Barbara, right? Barbara Corcoran and all the commercials and stuff. And I told you. What was my answer? It was the top two or three things events like this in the world to do, period. And the reason why I'm here and we, I know most of the people have books here. I haven't made any money off the book, so don't think it was to sell the book. When you teach entrepreneurship and most of us here have curriculums and or something that it teaches entrepreneurship, it changes the world. And that's the reason why I wrote the book and that's the reason why I'm here. Because I believe that every single person here kind of like the Kickstarter idea where you see these successes because someone who's made it, they pay it forward. I believe that the people that I meet here, I learn from, greatly learn from, but then they go out and they educate people and I always joke with there's no difference than me or you. It's just that I have a camera on me. So thank you everybody who has helped share the network. Every time that I've asked Joe or Jay Abraham for anything, the clock has not been on. They have been very, very gracious to me and I've been on many of your podcasts out there and any way that we can pay it forward with you and vice versa, you know, just let us know.

He's wonderful. And that book, I've just enraptured with it and think it should be a perennial because it's got such enduring value, goodness, inspiration and clarity and actionability. So I've spent my life looking at every kind of business imaginable and I can promise all of you that within the realm of what you're doing, where you're doing, how you're doing it, who you're doing it with, what your message is, what your product line is, you have enormously under optimized capacity without spending any more time, money, effort. And I urge you to not look outside till you first maximize inside. When we work with a client, it's not a crass thing for me working with you guys. I'm just telling you what we do. First thing we do is look at everything they're doing, how it's doing, why they're doing it and what can be done to make it do better. Even I think it's crazier than crap because it's driving the business and you make something that's pulling X, do 4X and you figure out seven elements in there. Now you've got free up $40,000 that can be used to now test and add either enhancements, replacements, additions, and there's a very simple, very safe, very non threatening process that you all should consider. And I am a great benefactor to entrepreneurs, whether I profit from them or not? Because I agree with, with Damon. I'm on the World Bank's President's Council for Entrepreneurship, and they made a point one day, same thing Damon's saying. First of all, entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of any vibrant country, culture, economy. But more important, it grows the big businesses. But more important, in the third world country countries, if you help somebody who's making $50 a month, make 150, and you do that for enough people, it transforms the entire security, the entire stability, the entire.

And you're.

And you're investing in the futures of their children. Their. You're right. There's, you know, there's a lot of wonderful things that come from contributions.

Daymond John and Jay Abraham.

Thank you, guys.

You know, even before we started, we're talking about, I mean, you've had incredible financial success. You're a billionaire. And even, you know, hearing that, I'd be curious to hear it. You know, when people are like, chip Wilson, billionaire, like, how do you think about that? Because you struggled so much financially growing up. So you've been on both spectrums of having financial wealth and whatnot. In terms of. I asked you earlier, before we were recording, you know, different business things that you're looking on, and you said, you know, I'm really just. I've got kids. I'm really happy. I love spending my family. And I'll tell you, that's actually really rare. For most people I know that have had extreme financial success, many of them are still mired in business. Not that you're not running companies and doing things, but this is such. Your wife, your children. From everything I've seen about you, heard about you, just, you know, and just feeling it, I mean, this is so, so important. So I'd love to get some family relationship and parenting, call it advice or suggestions or things that you've learned. And why is it so important to you? I mean, out of all the things that could get your attention, how does Chip Wilson determine. This is really what makes me happy. This is really what's important to me, and this is what's going to get my attention. Because I think as an entrepreneur, one of the most important things to protect is your attention and what you give it to. I think there's never enough because there's that era of the Great Depression thing, or entrepreneurs growing up in a poor family, and you never think you have enough. Something is going to happen. Some disaster is going to happen. It could be the 2008 crisis. It could be the 2001.com thing it could be, you know, cancer happens in the family, and there's all of that fear that I don't have enough. And I think people are driven that way. And I think, again, it's a matter of choice. Like people looking at how long they think they're going to live their life. And on the deathbed, what's really important, you can read billions and billions and billions of things and everyone will say, it didn't matter. I made another business meeting or I didn't go to another dollar, made another dollar, was, did I have a relationship with my family? It seems all kind of. So if that part is the most, is what gives the whole life meaning at the end of the day, then that's where we should be putting our intention. And certainly what I did, does it mean that I had a perfect relationship with my kids? No. You know, like they're their own people. And you can pick your friends and you can pick your business associates, but you can't pick your family. And so, you know, a parent's dream or thoughts or whatever they're going to be is they're their own individuals and you kind of have to work with that. And I think it's unconditional love. And, you know, I think everybody comes around at the end of the day. So does your whole family have kind of like, for lack of a better word, a personal development program in the same way that you done in your companies? Or how does your wife Shannon and your kids, I mean, how do they engage with reading and development and learning.

In the way that you have?

Yeah, I mean, they're, they're phenomenal. And I think we had so much success in Lululemon and we probably put like, you know, 25, 30, maybe even 100,000 people through that, you know, or two, three week course that we had that. I think the children grew up within that and then they just automatically kind of fell into it, like that was normal. So it wasn't something that had to be talked into. So again, through that we've developed the linguistic abstraction so we understand the definition of responsibility. Rackets, complaints by when, dates. You know, I've got like a series of about 30 of them. So we have a basis for communication which makes it very easy for us to get through stressful issues. Yeah.

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. They're over here. Do it now. Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.