STRESS - A Masterclass For Living In Freedom (An Interview with Sam Qurashi and Richard Moat)

Large proportions of the world. We've made out stress to be, you know, the baddie. And it's not because stress can actually help us grow if we take that invitation, or it can actually help us diminish if we're not ready or prepared, willing or up for that growth. So the stress in itself I consider is an invitation to that we can take one way or the other. The caveat with that is, though, that most of us have grown up in a time and over decades and in a society and in a world that actually makes it okay and gives us permission to feel stressed, full or to feel stressed and to use that as a bit of an excuse as to why we're not giving our best.

Let me first introduce Genius network member for several years and just an amazing human, one of my dear friends, Dr. Sam Qurachi. He's a writer, entrepreneur, Instagrammer and YouTuber. He worked at a psychiatric. He worked as a psychiatric resident in an addiction hospital. Throughout that time, he'd had the opportunity to help over 10,000 patients. After seven years, he walked away from his medical career believing that there must be a more effective way to help people. He started interviewing experts that live beyond the frame of traditional psychology, but are masters of the mind in a unique way. That list includes the Iceman, Wim Hof, the Horse Whisperer, a Samurai, a Cold Reader, a Ninja, a Tea Master, and a pickpocket. And the list goes on. He then started an Instagram page that now has over 660,000 followers. On his page, he shares thoughts and concepts that can interrupt the psychological patterns that are keeping people trapped in mental loops of their own design. He also has a really cool new YouTube station that he puts a lot of thought into his stuff. So that is Sam. And then Sam introduced me to Richard Moat. And so I had an opportunity just recently to really get to know Richard. Very, very smart man. I mean, I'm so excited about this. So let me just read about him. There are a few people that. There are a few people more qualified, experienced or knowledgeable on how stress affects our health, performance, happiness and success than Richard. Having had a a personal coach from the age of 14, it is undoubtedly a significant factor in his rise to becoming an in demand coach to coaches, advisor to advisors and therapists to therapists. This is in addition to establishing a reputation among some of the most highly respected and qualified health professionals as the person to consult with when they're struggling for a breakthrough with their own patients. During his to date 38 year career, Richard has advised a list celebrities, public figures, business champions and royalty, as well as Olympic gold medal athletes and national and international sports teams. Having himself enjoyed an international hockey career spanning three decades, which includes captaining England in 1997, he was recognized by HRH as the Queen as one of the decade's most significant contributors to British sports. So that is Richard and Sam. So welcome.

Guys. Why don't you first tell us what.

Where you're at, since we're doing this virtually so people kind of have a.

Gist of what part of the world you're in.

I'm here in the uk, thank you for asking.

Okay, perfect. What about you?

I'm currently in Saudi Arabia waiting for the opportunity for the international flight ban to be lifted. I think it's the only country in the world that has a flight ban until January. Yeah. Early January 2021.

Wow.

I've been away from the UK for over. Wow, like nine. It's gonna be nine, 10 months until I, you know, the total would be nine, 10 months away from the UK. So a lot has been put on hold because of this, and I had to restructure to do things from here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, thanks for being with us. All right, so first off, for people that don't know, you know, who you are may not be aware of what you do, how do you. How do you both describe what you do and how you. How you actually help people? And let's start with maybe Sam, and then we'll go to Richard.

Okay. The way I help people is through social media. I mean, I don't do private. I haven't done private coaching specifically, but I'm starting that soon, actually, because the demand is super high. So. But the way I help people is indirectly through the content. So the quotes that I write, the videos that I make, I take my time and try to structure it to make it as simple as possible, but thought provoking. And the key to interrupting any pattern is to be thought provoking in a way where you hear something that you've known for a very long time, but you've never heard it that way. Or you. You hear something for the first time. And all the quotes are. Yeah, original. I don't copy anyone else. It's just based on my personal experience from every. Everyone that I've learned from and my personal experience with patients. My personal experience with the coaching that I did. I don't even consider it coaching. I'm just having conversations with people and helping them, really. I wasn't charging because it was not really part of what I wanted. I wanted to reach the masses, and social media was the way to do that. And people responded massively through that.

Yeah.

And you're very thoughtful.

I mean, whenever I need to really.

Go into deep precision and thoughtfulness, you.

Are the guy that I talk to.

Because that's just the way. Yeah, he is really, really thoughtful. So.

And Richard has been.

How would you describe Richard? Before I asked Richard to answer the same question?

How would I describe Richard? I would say, yeah, I would call him an emotional guru. He is a. He's an interesting jigsaw puzzle piece. In the jigsaw puzzle of the mind, I've been. I've interviewed, learned from so many different individuals that have a different kind of perspective, and everybody that is an expert in anything related to healing or anything, really, they're focusing on one perspective. So I look at it from different perspectives to kind of have.

Yeah.

So with. With Richard, he is an interesting jigsaw puzzle piece. I'd call him an emotional guru personally. He's one of my mentors as well.

Awesome.

Wonderful. All right, Richard, what are your thoughts on how do you help people? What do you actually do?

Well, first of all, thank you, Sam, for that. I'm not sure I've ever been called that, but I'll take it. Thank you very much. Effectively, what I'll swear I can sum up, my area of expertise is in helping people understand how stress has manifested itself physically in the body. And that stress is actually far more complicated than we give it credit for. And, you know, very, very interesting that this morning, Jo should have Susie, on talking about ocean wounds is the fact of the matter is that every single one of us, without exception, has at some time been emotionally wounded, emotionally scarred, emotionally bruised as a result of life. And we haven't been taught and we haven't had the role models at the time to help us navigate and negotiate things effectively. We might have survived them, we might have got through them, but we come out the other side. We think we've moved on. We think that's behind us. We think we've dealt with it. But all of us are carrying wounds, bruises, and scars that are typically buried in the unconscious. Lady, what tends to happen is that as time passes, these wounds, bruises, and scars start revealing themselves, and that's what creates the behaviors that led us down. That's what underpins the beliefs that don't support us. So I help people unpick the stitching on the beliefs, the behaviors, the emotional wounds, bruises, and scars in the specific context of physical illness, ailments, and Disease. So I guess that's the best way I could sum up where I'm at right now.

Thank you.

And, you know, one of the things you said, the wounds start revealing themselves. I just pictured, like, an infection that isn't treated, and that infection just is insidious, and it takes over all different parts of your physical being. And there was a tool that I haven't used in several years, and it's because we create a lot of tools here at Genius Network to help people do their thinking, and little boxes and squares to put goals and work things out. And one of the tools. It wasn't. It was. I probably don't have it where you can pop it up on the screen. Do we have the anatomy of a successful business? We probably don't. If you have one printed out, Eunice, grab me one, and I'll just. If we do have one. But I haven't used this for years, and it's anatomy of a successful business, and it shows an anatomy figure, and there's lines going off to the side, you know, like. And I would ask Genius Network members to what do you think the brain is? What do you think the muscles are? What do you think the heart is? What's the skeletal structure? And some people would call the heart, like, culture, or they would have, like, stomach would be finance. I mean, all kinds of different parts of an anatomy chart. And the thing is, what you don't see, though, is what's going on internally. Right? I mean, you can't. Like. I remember Daniel, Amen, saying to me when I had my first of six brain scans that I've had where he said, you know, the brain is. The. Psychiatry is the only profession that doesn't look at the organ that it treats. Right. And so you've got these. You know, you said the wounds, these emotional wounds, they start revealing themselves. And so how would you define stress? Because that's what I want to talk with you guys about today.

Stress.

What is it? When's it good? When's it bad? How do you view it?

What?

You know, it's. Because I would venture to say most people I talk to, when I hear pain, it's there. They use the word stress a lot. Yeah, you guys are too darn polite. I think you should just talk over each other.

I was sort of waiting for some direction, because this is very new to. To be doing this, so. Okay, I'll jump in, Sam, if you're okay with that. So, look, stress is very misunderstood, I believe, because it's generalized. There are many different Types of stress, whether it's physical stress, nutritional stress, chemical stress, environmental stress, and all of the stresses that are put upon us place demands on our resources. So if I was to define what stress is in general, I would say when they're. When the demands put upon us exceed the resources that we have to deal with those demands, then a stressful situation is created. Now, that doesn't mean that it's bad. I mean, large proportions of the world, we've made out stress to be, you know, the baddie. And it's not because stress can actually help us grow if we take that invitation, or it can actually help us diminish if we're not ready or prepared, willing or up for that growth. So the stress in itself, I consider, is an invitation that we can take one way or the other. The caveat with that is, though, that most of us have grown up in a time and over decades and in a society and in a world that actually makes it okay and gives us permission to feel stressed, full or to feel stressed. And to use that as a bit of an excuse as to why we're not giving our best. So we shouldn't make it out to be the bad boy or girl in the. In the classroom. Should look at it in each individual case and understand what it actually is. Then the final thing I would say on it, which can be quite controversial, is I don't believe that stress or is the things that make us feel stressed are outside of us. Because everything that's outside of us is inanimate. It exists. It's vibrating at an energetic frequency. Absolutely. But in of itself, it is not stressful. It is not stress inducing. So what makes it stressful? What makes it stress inducing? When we come along, interpret and perceive what that thing is, we give that thing meaning, have this feeling inside that we think, oh, my goodness, I'm not feeling good about that thing. Therefore, it's that thing that is making me feel stressed. So then we fail to see that we are responsible. As hard as this may be, we are responsible for our reaction to this stuff. And we've got to turn it around. We've got to do a 180 and we've got to say, okay, so it's my response to what's going on that is causing me to feel this way. And here's the kicker. We talked about the emotional wounds, bruises and scars from the past. We're carrying those around with us, and we're looking into the next situation in life. Ready? Wounded, scarred, bruised. Which means there's the Potential then for the wounds to actually be touched, reopened. And all of a sudden we find ourselves back in coping mode, handling mode, managing mode, which in itself is hard work and stressful. So I'll stop there. Hand over to you, Sam.

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. First of all, I love that because I completely agree with the idea that the stress is actually something that is internal and we project it. And I just want to touch upon responsibility for a second. A lot of people look at responsibility as a lack of or as a burden, when in fact, responsibility is control, responsibility is freedom, because the moment you are responsible, now you have the power to change everything. And people always try to avoid responsibility by blaming others, by. And that's. That's one of the issues that we have in communication. That's one of the issues that we have in the way we operate. We try to blame. We look for something else to blame instead of just taking responsibility for what's happening, because that gives us back control in order for us to liberate ourselves from these wounds that we have. So that's one thing. The other thing is, my definition of stress personally, is it is the perceived absence of safety. And it's important to look at it as a perceived absence of safety. Because here's the thing, feeling is more important than being to me, because when I look at it, you can be in a fortress surrounded by guards, so you are safe. But if you feel threatened, then that situation is worthless. The point is for you to feel safe. And as long as you feel threatened, the ground around you are constantly shaking and you're unstable, and it's hard for you to function, it's hard for you to communicate, it's hard for you to enjoy anything. So the perceived absence of safety, which means to tie that into what was mentioned about stress, good stress, bad stress. I would say, for example, eustress is good stress. And the difference really is how you are framing it in the way you commute and the way you interact with it. The real key to changing the way you interact with any emotion or any situation is changing your relationship to that situation, to that emotion, to that event. And once you change the relationship, that's when therapy works. For example, it's the relationship you had to that image, to that past event, to that experience and in this case to stress. For example, when it's happening, the way you are engaging with stress determines whether it's good or bad. Eustress is basically you getting excited about what's happening sometimes. What give you an example? Adele Bridges, dear friend of mine, she's on Instagram, great channel yoga instructor. She taught me how to do a handstand. And I realized that there was a hidden fear that I had to doing handstands. And I didn't really understand why, because I feared falling. Because I had an incident years ago that stopped me from learning how to do it. And it was triggered in that moment. But we went through it, we passed through it. But what she was saying was I teach falling as a skill to get excited about falling. So in other words, she, she's reframing the idea of instead of fearing something, get excited about that outcome. Learn it as a skill, get excited for it to happen. Pursue it in a way which is very interesting to flip the whole thing changing your mindset. In pickup artistry, when I learned from some of the top pickpock pickup artists in the uk, that's a topic for another day. Because there's. Yeah, because there is a good intention to it in relationships actually so useful. But obviously there are men that can manipul women in a way that is. Yeah, but in general, the idea of somebody, a man learning how to walk up to a woman that he wants to start a relationship with, he wants to go out with. The men that succeed usually are the most are the men that pursue rejection. They're the men that want her to reject him. And what happens is by pursuing the thing, pursuing the outcome you fear in a way lowers the chances of you ever achieving that outcome and you get to have what you want. So it's really about shifting the way you look at things. I'm just going to mention one more thing related to something I learned from Richard about problems. The problems are a mental construct. Nothing is a problem until you decide it is. We've been taught for certain about certain things being a problem. The moment you call it anything else but a problem, you're changing the relationship to it. And automatically you engage with it differently. So if there is no problem, there's no conflict. If there's no conflict, there's no stress. And it's really about, just to sum this up, about changing your relationship to the situation to regain control over the situation.

Wow, that's really Good.

So thank you, guys.

One thing that came to mind when.

Richard was talking about these problems, stress being not external.

What came through my mind is, okay, well, if Jim do is throwing things at me or he's hurling insults at me to what. And I'm not saying this as a joke, I'm being dead said. I'm just picking Jim because he's probably the most likely person to do that. So then all of a sudden I would perceive that as like, all right, this is stressful. There's some person yelling at me or this person throwing stuff. So that's one thing that came to mind. But then I'm, you know, listening to what it is you're saying and saying, okay, well, ultimately, depending on how you've call it mastery, call it surrender, calling taking life as it comes, call it acceptance, whatever, where, you know, the ability to be bothered. I mean, the reason I think so many people with all the political correctness are running around offended is we're now training people to figure out how to be offended by fucking everything. And so therefore they're offended, right? And you're only offended to the degree that you decide you want to be offended. And so as I, it made me think of this story and I want to hear you guys thoughts on this because I want to better clarify what I hope for everyone watching and listening is to whatever degree that life causes them angst, that they don't need that angst anymore, and they let go of that. However, you guys can recommend, because I'll ask you about strategies and rituals and all that for dealing with stress, I would like people to leave this conversation a little freer or maybe a lot freer and have more connection and more joy and happiness. And so I was in a recovery meeting years ago and a guy that was talking, was talking about when he was in active addiction, he would shoot heroin, he would drink alcohol, and he did it in this like lazy boy chair in his house. And it wasn't a nice house. And he still kept that chair because he removed everything that was triggering for him related to his life and addiction. But he kept that chair because he realized as he had gotten sober, the chair never changed. The chair was just the chair. It was the person sitting in the chair. And he said that he spent years of his life in this chair. And it was a beat up, dirty chair. And he kept it and he said it because it was representative of the fact that it was never the chair, it was the person sitting in it. And as he transformed the person sitting in it, his Whole life changed. And it somehow for him, it worked as a reminder of the growth that he had. And I always thought that was a very interesting thing because I'll sometimes look at people in situations that really, at some point in my life, bothered me. I mean, it was all reaction, you know, you're talking about responsibility, Sam. I think of responsibility is responding with ability, the ability to respond. And there are so many things in my life that were triggers and I would react to, and there still are. I mean, that's why, I mean, I'm here as a student just as much as anyone else, trying to learn something, just listening to you guys. There are just things that don't bother me anymore, and some that I used to hate. I hated it. And now I actually find that, wow, it was just there to help me learn a lesson that I just needed to cross that bridge. And there's many more bridges ahead of me to cross that I haven't figured it out yet. So that's just the way that I. So anyway, based on, I'd love to hear more about, because I could see a lot of people saying, oh, no, you know, you have no idea what my family's like. You have no idea what my circumstances are like. My business is crumbling around me. It's a, you know. So what would you say to that, Richard?

Well, those would be the facts of the matter in that case, you know, family's difficult, business is crumbling. So that's the reality. Those are the facts. So we're not debating those. Whilst most people will try and fix those, which we do, which is very difficult when other people are involved to try and change things, first thing we have to do is accept that that's the reality of the situation. And then given that situation, it's on us then as to how we respond to it. Now we build up triggers as you, as you call it, build them up over time throughout our life. Things that we have aversions to, things that we wince at, things that we smile at as well. So we get used to a certain type of response to a certain type of scenario, and we get so used to it, it becomes unconscious. And the more opportunities we have to roll out that unconscious response to something, the more well rehearsed it becomes, the more second nature it is. And before you know it, we've created a stress response to things based upon, well, my quick assessment of that is that's not good, I'm not happy type of thing. So, you know, the programming that we grow up with is largely responsible for the responses we have today to whatever's going on out there. We've got to actually take some time out. We've got to realize that there's a lot of programming that's gone into YAH today and there's a lot of hypnosis that we've been under from external sources, whether it's family, friends, media, community, take your pick. And we've got to sort of de. Hypnotize ourselves and wake up to unconscious way that we're reacting to these things and start, as Sam says, to look at them in a different light. Which isn't easy by the way, because if we're already programmed and triggered to feel angry, sad, afraid, ashamed, guilty, hurt or disgusted as a natural response to anything, then we've got to get ourselves out of that hole before we can really address what's in front of us in a meaningful way.

Yeah.

So Sam, you want to say anything else? I'd love to have you guys just share some strategies and you know, that.

Are most effective with dealing with, you know, stress and overwhelm.

Can I, can I add to what Richard said first?

Absolutely, of course, yeah. Okay.

Because I took a couple of points, I made a couple of notes for, from what Richard was saying and what you were saying, the idea of triggers, this is really important to clarify.

You are.

Okay, so whenever someone says something or does something that bothers you, you want that to stop. So you can either cut them out of your life or you would threaten them that if they ever say or do that again, you will do a blank, whatever. Or you would just talk to them, have a conversation and ask them to stop. But a lot of people resist that because they don't want to look weak maybe. So they don't do that. There are different. Or they, or what a lot of people do, they just keep it in and they just go like, oh, he's. It's just a one time thing. They're not going to do it again. And then they do it again. Or like, ah, just okay, just. He just does it once a week, once a month. And you keep on carrying weights you were never meant to hold inside. Now all these different strategies are for one thing, you just don't want to, you want to stop feeling what you felt from what they said. That's it. Now what's amazing about this is if you get them to stop, that doesn't guarantee that you, that that will be over. Because what you ask them to do is to stop triggering you. You ask them to stop pressing the button. That doesn't change the fact that there are other people that could still press that button. That doesn't change the fact that if you cut them out of your life, someone else will come along to press that button. So the solution is not to ask people to stop triggering you. The solution is to eliminate the thing inside of you that is connected to the trigger. And the trigger will disappear when you do that. We have an open wound that is causing the trigger to take place. You eliminate the wound, you heal the wound. The trigger is null, is worthless. So anyone can try to trigger you in any way or form related to that wound. And it's never going to work. And I thought that was really important to mention. Just to clarify that the other thing is, you're right. In terms of acceptance, it's important for us to start accepting the existence of the situation, of the current situation, because that's the first step to make a change. The idea is not to accept things as they are forever, because the key here is to accept the existence of the reality you want to change, not the persistence of it. And the moment you accept the existence now you can change it. Because a lot of people are in denial. And if you're in denial, then you're never going to get. If you're in Spain and you want to go to Italy, but you're denying that you're in Spain to yourself, you're saying, I'm not in Spain, I'm actually in Paris. Well, how the hell are you going to get into. How the hell are you ever going to get to Italy? You need to tell the truth. And that's at the heart of starting to heal emotional wounds. To tell the truth, not necessarily to other people. So in terms of stress, the problem is resistance, really one of the main problems, and is the resistance, the moment you resist is the moment you create tension. The moment you create tension is the moment you create paralysis. Automatically you're paralyzed, you're stuck. And as long as you're in momentum, you can easily bounce back. Like a basketball versus a bowling ball. When something happens and you stick to the ground versus something that happens, you bounce back immediately. Okay, so what's next? So what can we do about this? How can we handle this? Instead of asking why? And this could be a strategy. Never ask why when you feel pain, because why doesn't matter how, why you feel doesn't matter. How you feel is everything. And when it comes to problems, why the problem happened. I know as an analytical and I love asking why, but why can help you in improving the how but the truth of the matter is, the faster you get to how, the less stressed you are, the less in pain you are. Because now you're in motion, now you're gaining momentum, and now things begin to change. So resistance really is the issue. And we resist because we're afraid. The idea of the monkey, I don't remember which country, but they do this exercise where they do this trap where they carve out an opening for a coconut for the. For the hand to go in, for the monkey's hand to go in to get the bait and then make a fist. It's big enough for the hand to go in. It's not big enough for the fist to get out, to leave the. So the monkeys trapped because the coconut is buried with that opening. It's buried in the ground. And so the moment there's that sense of being trapped, the monkey is tense, resists what's happening. And the resistance is what keeps us paralyzed. And that's an example of this. And all the monkey needs to do is just accept the reality, relax, and it will move on from it. It is the resistance that slows us down, the resistance that weighs us down, the resistance that keeps us trapped. Acceptance is what sets us free. So a question I would ask whenever I feel tension is, what am I resisting right now? And that creates a shift, because now you realize there's a resistance going on. But a lot of people don't realize this. The other thing I would say would be my definition of personally frustration. And the link between frustration and stress is frustration is about trying to control something you can't, trying to control something you can't. And one of the causes of stress stems from trying to control something we can't. And I think two important questions to ask is, what am I trying to control right now? Because if I'm trying to control time, I will fail. If I'm trying to control people, I will fail. If I'm trying to control technology because it's frustrating, it's not working, I will fail. And if I'm trying to control natural disasters, I will fail. What am I trying to control? And then you start realizing that I'm trying to control something I can't. And if that's the case, then I'm setting myself up to fail, to remaining out of control, to remaining trapped and a slave to the stress. And that's the problem. So that's the first question to identify that I'm focusing on something I can't control. The second is, what can I control right now? Because we can't control time, but we can control the way we conduct ourselves within time. We can't control people, but we can control the way we conduct ourselves with people. So what we really can control is our inner. Our environment, our homes, our rooms, the inanimate objects around us that belong to us. We can control that. That's why making the bed is actually really important in the moment. It's in the morning. It allows you to connect to something you can control from the very beginning to realize that you are in control of your reality. We are in control of our decisions. We are in control of our actions. We are in control of the pictures in our minds that we allow to happen without us changing it. We are in control. And the most important form of control is muscle. The only way we can communicate to other people, the only way we can communicate in general is through muscle. Muscle is the way we express how we feel. Muscle is the way we express in any way or form. When you talk, that's muscle. Nonverbal communication, that's muscle. Verbal, non, verbal, physical. Everything is about expression. We exercise, we feel better because that tension leaves us through exercise. Muscle. We laugh. Muscle. Crying Muscle. It's important for us to realize we are in control of the very thing that we use to express ourselves, which is muscle. And the most important muscle to control is the diaphragm. Which brings me to one of the strategies in terms of breathing and movement. I'll stop there because I think we could talk more about it if Richard wants to. If you want me to continue, I can continue, But I realize that I'm spending too much time talking. So if Richard wants to add something to what I've said so far, if you want to ask me another question or I can continue with the strategy or a suggestion.

So do you care if I make a comment, Sam, or even Joe?

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

One thing that I've learned a lot lately about, let's just say releasing trauma or just changing patterns is making communications that I was. That I've. That the former version of me was afraid to make. You know, like, one thing that I noticed about the past version of me is that I was too afraid to express myself, and I was acting out of fear. And so I'd put myself in bad situations because I didn't have the confidence or I was trying to be accepted or something like that. And so one of the things I've recently done, like just as one example, I paid for a service from someone and they gave me complete junk. You know, I wasted a Lot of money. And the former version of me was too afraid to just say, hey, you did a really bad job. Can I have my money back? Or how do we fix this? I was just too afraid to actually do that two years ago. And so instead, I just let it go, you know, and it's that whole idea. You get what you're willing to tolerate. And so one of the things that I recently have done, and I've done this a lot in a lot of my relationships recently, is just genuinely expressed myself and not in an angry or judgmental way. In fact, I texted this person a couple days ago who did this because they're a pretty good friend, and I just said, hey, I just want to tell you something that I was afraid to tell you a couple years ago. A couple. And it was a text message, and I just said, a couple years ago, you know, I signed up for your service, and to be honest with you, it was so bad that I was expecting you to give me a refund, and I was shocked that you didn't, and I was just too afraid to tell you, and I don't want a refund now. It was two years ago, but I just wanted to let you know that that was something that happened, and I'm. You know, and just by doing that, it opened up a really great conversation. But by having those courageous conversations, I'm now not accepting that kind of stuff into my reality anymore. And so I think having those types of conversations with people and saying no to things that you used to say yes to is, you know, it takes a lot of courage. And so I just wanted to say that. I just wanted to show that that's how I've been dealing with it lately. And it's led me to realizing that I've grown a lot since COVID.

That's awesome. Ben. First of all, it's great to see you, man. I miss you.

I always love you. Always love you, man.

I love you, too.

All right.

A couple of dudes just expressing deep care for each other. It's getting a little weird here.

Hey, we had a great experience, Joe.

Remember, we did.

After the annual event, me and Sam had a great experience with you.

I remember.

Totally.

I mean, yeah, we actually had Sam.

Do his very first recorded podcast, and it was. Yeah, it was cool stuff.

No, but here. I guess, here's how do I deal.

With this sort of level of.

Call it, let's say, envy or jealousy over Ben. Okay, so Ben is in a much.

Better position at his age in life than I was, and I Just think it's really unfair and cruel of the world in spite of the fact that I live this wonderful, amazing life.

Now, I'm saying this jokingly, and I'm.

Also saying it sort of seriously from the standpoint.

There are a lot of people that.

Have very blessed lives, right?

And they look at others and they're.

Pissed, and they're competitive.

And it really.

They define themselves and others in certain ways that I just think so much grief is created. And I never considered myself a jealous person. The way that I experienced, you know, screwing up my life was in all kinds of other ways. That. The reason I want to bring this up, though, is that.

One of the.

Ways to be miserable is to compare yourself with others, Right? But it's also a way to put things in perspective, because if you compare what's great about your life versus the things that aren't, that's a whole nother thing.

So I want to read a couple.

Of comments Michael Fishman wrote. There's a lot of really great comments here. For some reason, Michael's I just thought was just eloquent. This is beyond a masterclass for living in freedom. The whole. Those three words, living in freedom, right?

I mean, that's. I think entrepreneurs really want freedom.

They want time, freedom, relationship freedom, choice.

Freedom, you know, freedom from oppression. And many of them have not.

They do not have freedom. Right?

And then Barbara Annis wrote a couple.

Of things about good stress versus bad stress. Let's not forget that there is good stress. And that reminds me of a conversation. So I interviewed Hugh Downs, who recently passed away. He was just a great guy.

And many of you, if you're old.

Enough, remember Hugh Downs. He was on. He interviewed every freaking ex president.

I mean, the guy had the world.

Record for time on broadcast television for many years until Regis Philbin, I think, ended up surpassing that record of time on TV.

And when he was 87 years old.

We were talking about stress. And this interview is online. You can watch it on YouTube. And he said, stress can actually help you grow. It builds muscles. It causes you to challenge yourself. So stress could cause you to go.

Distress is the way he defined it, will tear you down. It will break you down. What is the difference between good and bad stress? I mean, you've already kind of described it, but to Barbara's point, how do we use challenges as fuel? How do we use shit for fertilizer? How do we use these things in life that are seemingly things that we regret, wish didn't exist, and just transform it into amazing growth solutions? And things like that, because we're sitting in a room of people that I think their success is that that's what they have actually done in some areas, but the others are really kind of screwing them up or making them hurt. So hopefully I explain that in a clear enough ways for you guys to respond to that.

Well, what I would suggest, I'd go back to something that came up twice yesterday. And that's the whole idea of seeking out and living by the truth. Let's start there. As Joel talked about looking for the truth, Kamal talked about the importance of being honest, of revealing our honest self to the world. And it's a big, big ask. And Ben's just given a brilliant example of how when we can find within us the courage, the dexterity, the maturity and the eloquence to express our truth, the fact that it's two years later, I would suggest is less of an issue. The fact that we're able to do that, Ben, means that the opportunity to learn was, hey, do you know what? I wasn't entirely happy with myself back then. And if I'd been honest back then, well, maybe I'd have got a different result. So I would point everybody in the direction of, okay, what's the most honest thing that you could say in a situation like this? And, you know, sometimes the most honest thing we can say is, I really don't feel like talking about that because it upsets me. Or another honest thing that we could say is, well, I'm really, really afraid. It doesn't matter what the truth is. I believe that we need to develop the habit of being more truthful, more honest, more authentic, if you like, more of the time with more people, which means we can do it incrementally. You can do it anywhere as long as the decision and the commitment is to live by your own truth. Because every time we don't live by our own truth, then we are denying ourselves. We are denying the world as well. But that in itself creates stress because our truth in here is not the truth out there. So I would say it's pursue the truth. Yes, there will be fear that comes up for us when we have the opportunity to speak our truth. Why is that? Well, we're afraid of the consequences. We're all afraid of being rejected, being disapproved, of being abandoned, being judged unfavorably, being hurt. And if we've learned, especially back then at a young age, if we've learned that it's safer not to tell the truth or it's safer not to express our feelings. Guess what? We grow up choosing. When we tell the truth, we grow up. Most of us have done this, actually suppressing the truth about how we're feeling. When feelings get buried alive, they never die because the body keeps the score. And at some point, what's going to happen is the body is going to present its bill for us doing this to all of the feelings that we have inside. So one of the best things we can do is honestly express ourselves, whether it's to somebody else, by ourselves, to a support group, in writing. Find an outlet for your truth and get used to living from your truth. And you'll be amazed as to how much that can reduce stress over time.

Great. So here's, Here's. I want to ask you, just because of. For time, I want to. Because we have about 10 more minutes that we can go and I wanted to get. Maybe if there's a short version of this. And also Richard and Sam, I want you guys at the end, I want you to give people information on how to follow you, how, if they want to work directly with either one of you, however, they do that. So let's do that. So what's your perspective on physical disease and illness and the link between emotions? Because one of the things we had spent a good chunk of time talking about, Richard, when Sam first introduced us, was about physical pain and about how. And about disease and about how so much disease and conditions manifests as a result of repressed emotions and trauma and stress. Right, so could you describe what the link is?

Yeah, absolutely. It goes back to what I said a little bit earlier. And as much as anything that we suppress any, let's call them typically negative feelings that we don't find an outlet for when we bury them alive, then we create the propensity internally, things to get blocked energetically. So some of you may well very well know that word emotion comes from the phrase energy in motion. You know, we're designed to emote, we're creative. Part of the blueprint is to feel all of the emotions that we ever feel. We're supposed to feel them. So when we deny ourselves the opportunity to feel them effectively, what we're doing is we're stopping the flow of energy. And we can only do that for so long. It's a bit like a traffic pile up on the motorway. You know, as soon as a car crashes, that's it. Everything stacks up behind it until the crash is cleared. So what then happens to the internal systems of the body is they're compromised, they are overburdened as a result of us trying to do all of this with the stuff that we're refusing to feel. And I've done the. I've done a lot of research, or as I call it, me search and people who do research for a lot of. A lot of the time it's to serve their own agenda and serve their own purpose, which isn't to criticize the research, it's just to put it in some sort of context. Because I've done a lot of my own research in this field, in private practice and with peers and colleagues, and there's absolutely no doubt whatsoever you could Google it and find out. There's over 200 million articles on the subject of how emotions affect our physical health. And so I've spent the last 25 years researching exactly and validating what's out there. And whether you like the idea of it being 60% of the cause of illness or 99% of the cause of illness, it's somewhere in that band. Even 60% of the cause is astronomical, which explains why when you can take care of your nutrition or lifestyle, your environment, but still you haven't resolved the physical symptoms that you're experiencing. But what's left then is an explanation. Okay, there might be some genetics. The genetics is less than 2%, depending on which research you are happy to accept. So that still leaves a big chunk of an unanswered question. Well, how has this come about? And my answer would be it's actually a build up of, and I agree with this term, emotional distress, which I'd like to separate out because there's stress and for me, there's emotional distress. So whether that's trauma, drama, conflict, negativity, we can't avoid it. Over time it has built up. We've become emotionally constipated, if you like, because we haven't been taught, we haven't been encouraged to actually find an outlet for all of these emotions. So they've become buried alive. And that's what the body is doing when it manifests and creates physical symptoms. In my opinion, it is saying, look, this is not sustainable. I cannot carry on keeping this under wraps as well as do everything else. So something's going to have to break down, something's going to have to fall over, something's going to have to be compromised. So there's absolutely no doubt in my mind about the connection. And this is the way that medicine is going. I predict that now, without a shadow of a doubt or into how emotions affect our health and therefore it's emotional healing that can contribute as a minimum to. To the improvement in symptoms.

Absolutely.

You said the Body Keeps the Score. Great book by Bessel Van de Kolk, who I've met before, and my friend Gabor Mate. Very similar in terms of how much conditions. And then Dr. John Sarno with physical pain. Because as we talked, me and you, Richard, have spoken about that. And I've spent hours talking with Sam about the link between physical pain and, you know, repressed emotions and how people, you know, manifest stress. Like, I, for the first time, I spent an hour and 20 minutes after the meeting yesterday on the phone with James Nestor, the guy that wrote this book, Breath. Totally hit it off. He said, happy to do a talk for Genius network interview. He's like a great journalist. And he wrote this book, Breath. And he said that we were talking about last night about physical ailments and how so many things like sleep apnea and all these things simply that can be cured by instead of mouth breathing, nose breathing. And one of the things that he said with. Because he's a journalist, and so he said that right now, from the top doctors that he's met, he said, in the world, there's like a handful that are really amazing and many that just have no clue what the hell they're talking about. And he said about 60% of what we're treating right now medically on, if you take everything, is what we'll find in the near future, it's the completely wrong way to treat it. I want to actually introduce him to you guys because I think it'd be for a pretty delightful conversation, but everyone will meet James. But what you just said reminded me.

Of that conversation with him last night. My friend Giselle over here, who's been.

My yoga instructor, we've had many conversations about the issues are in the tissues. When Sam was talking about muscle, it made me really think a lot about just how much of the work that talk therapy never did for me until I brought in a physical element into a somatic way, which is so much about what, you know, the body keeps the score really means. So what are some strategies? Could you guys just rattle off some strategies? We can go deeper into it at a future conversation. But what are some of the ways to deal with this? What are some of the rituals? What are some of the fundamentals that if you guys had a choice to just say, here's things that we know that work now, people will have to utilize them and master them. And we, you know, luckily have BJ Fogg the, you know, Amazing Stanford professor who's a genius network member now and wrote tiny habits that can take some of these and, you know, show people how to incorporate it.

But what are, what are the strategies?

What are the ways that you guys recommend to people?

Yeah, yeah, please, go ahead.

Okay, so let me give, very quick, very easy. Something to remember is called the swab process. S, W, A B swab. The S stands for speak, the W stands for whisper. A stands for announce, and the B stands for breathe. And the swab process I would recommend is used if you feel overcome by any emotion. You create a truth statement along the lines of, I can feel angry, I can feel ashamed. And then what you do is you take that truth statement and you put it through swab. So you speak it in your normal voice. I can feel angry. Then you whisper it. I can feel angry. Then you announce it to the world or to the room. I can feel angry. And then you breathe and keep doing that, and keep doing that. And what you will find is that the emotional charge reduces, reduces, reduces. That's what I call a quick and dirty. If you find yourself overcome by an emotion, unwanted, difficult to know what to do. Of course, you've got to be mindful where you are if you're going to do the announce thing. But the principle is you're speaking your truth about how you're feeling. The expressing of the emotion is what we need to master.

Love it. And by the way, I got to read what BJ Fogg is writing in the chat right now. He wrote. Yes. Once we know the precise behavior, we can then create a habit out of it, like this, which is his formula. After I blank, I will blank specific behavior. Then he wrote, after I feel angry, I will say in quotes, I can feel angry in a variety of tones. So think about this and apply it. This is what genius networking actually is. It's the integration of ideas put into behavior where you actually hear something and then you put it into, you know, you take what you like and you leave the rest. I mean, I'd say treat everything like a 12 step group. Okay, Sam, what would you say to.

Okay, rapid fire? I would say learn to respond rather than react. And the main difference is a response is a controlled reaction. And the way you learn to respond instead of react is slow down. And that ties it into the muscle. Slow down the muscle movement. Because when you slow down the muscle movement, two things happen. When you slow down the way you move as you're doing something, or slow down the way you breathe, which is the most powerful Thing what ends up happening is you're triggering, you're sending a message to your unconscious mind to let it know that you are safe. Because if there's a tiger in front of you, you're not going to slow down. The second thing is slowing down amplifies precision. And when you're more precise in what you do, you automatically amplify the sense of feeling and control, which makes you feel safe. So slowing down your movement, bullet time, really slowing down the movement, slowing down the breathing and having that, I've seen that in Japan. We can talk about that in depth. The way people move in Japan is just unbelievable, especially in different, you know, professions. So that's one thing. The second is the swab that was mentioned by Richard is one of the most powerful and simplistic things you can ever do to release an emotion like that. It is unbelievable. It doesn't take more than three to four minutes. You can do as many rounds as you want. I can do like seven rounds. Obviously the breathing is three. Three exaggerated deep breaths, really important. That kind of powerful breath and suddenly within seven, seven times. Actually, one of the things that I learned from Richard about the swab is when I had that experience, it reminded me of the WIM HOF method and it was interesting. So what I normally do if I want to swab, I end up following that with a WIM HOF method. 2, 3 rounds of WIM HOF breathing. WIM HOF is one of the most powerful ways to reduce stress. The WIM HOF breathing in and of itself, obviously we had conversations about this. I basically swab, then whim, in other words. So I do this followed by whimming, if that makes sense. And it's a powerful combination. The other thing I would recommend is the M wave. M wave 2.0 is a device created by the Heartmath Institute. I've been using it since 2013. It is the most effective, one of the most effective ways to combat stress and reduce, kind of like reduce the hyperactivity of the amygdala. It really is powerful. It's not as fast as the WIM hof. It's not as fast as the swab, but it's really powerful. I remember seven to eight years ago when I first got it, there was something that happened to me in my life and it's the kind of thing that makes you lie on the couch for about eight days, not wanting to eat, not wanting to do anything. I did a 45 minute session with that device and I was able to operate like Nothing happened. I recommend it to people that have panic attacks and since they started, they no longer have panic attacks. It's a powerful tool. I highly recommend using it either twice a day for 15 minutes or three times a day for 10 minutes. But you can use it as many times as you want, as long as you want. Obviously, the last thing is what I mentioned about control and resistance. It's important for us to interrupt our patterns. Now, breathing in itself is something that is a much bigger topic. But it's important to interrupt our patterns and asking the right question redirects us. And like I said yesterday when I was commenting on Kamal's interview, the language of possibility gives us permission to do anything. And in this case, when I ask myself, what can I control right now, I'm giving myself permission to control something. I just need to find the thing that I'm in control of that I forgot to control it to feel better. The last thing I would say to tie that in, because we create an impossible problem every single time through the way we look at things, is There's a short 15 second video that I posted at some point last year on Instagram that ties the idea of the impossible problem. When we are trapped in a room and fear the walls that define it, how can we ever leave? When we live in a dangerous place and the way out becomes the enemy, how can we ever taste freedom? But the way we look at things always is to create an impossible problem. I received a message from someone saying, how can I control something I'm already in control of? He didn't say it that way, but he was asking something and that came to my mind and that creates an open loop that the mind can never close. How can I control something I am already in control of? How can I lower the arm that I just raised? It's like the chicken and egg, and it's a monkey wrench that the mind can never break. So redirecting yourself through asking the right questions interrupts patterns. Redirect your focus to what you can control and you move out of where you are in that room.

Right.

So let me say this. So there's some really great comments I.

Recommend people saving the chat.

Do you guys have to run or.

Are you going to be around for the remainder of the day?

I'm staying.

You're staying? Are you staying, Richard?

Yeah, absolutely.

When we take a lunch break, many people take a lunch break. If you're like the last meeting we did, I think Dave Asprey kind of dominated the lunch where people are just talking Would you be open for doing some Q and A during lunch if anyone wanted to ask you guys some questions?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, great. Well, then here's I'm going to ask everyone to do. First off, Richard and Sam, tell people where do they get more of you.

How do they follow you if they.

Want to work directly with you, where do they go? Just so we can give out your contact info and people would know how to reach you and what your criteria is. I don't want you to just get like a whole bunch of random calls. I just want to. If you could describe how, how you can best help people that resonate with what you're talking about here.

I'll let Sam go first.

Okay, so there's something that was on hold I was setting up. This has nothing to do with it. Actually, I'm not going to even mention that. But in terms of the coaching, early November, I'm setting up a coaching business. If anybody wants to work with me, that would be something for me to look forward to because it would be exciting. The second thing is for anybody that wants the content that I'm sharing on Instagram, Sam Qurashi, S A M Q U R A S H I. And on YouTube, Sam Qurashi, I guess one word or you can separate them, but you already have my name and that's on YouTube. I'm active on both Instagram and YouTube and you can reach me through Sam qurashiotmail or gmail.com.

Right.

Please put that in there. If you could put it in the chat. Sam, do that, please.

Thank you.

Richard, what about you?

Look, I'm really open to receiving any type of inquiry or question for anybody who feels as though they need help with either physical ailments, emotional issues, mental issues, and you have my website there. Joe, you have an email and a cell phone number. I sent those through to Eunice at the beginning of the week. I'm a big fan of messages and phone calls more than emails. I much prefer to connect people that way. So feel free if anybody wants to message me via text or WhatsApp, please. Eunice, if you can post my cell number, richardichardmote.com and the website richardmote.com you can get me directly from there. Perfect.

Thank you guys so much. 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.

Watch them.