How To Deal With Your Negative Thoughts | Lewis Howes

What you feel is what you feel. There's such power in the acceptance. I don't mean passive resignation. I just mean acceptance. The world is always changing and we as human beings are changing. If we didn't, there would be something wrong with us.

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So what the research shows in this expressive journaling is that when people journal, and you can even journal 20 minutes a day for three days and you start finding these kind of effects, which is it starts moving you from just being focused on the past into a presence with yourself, into a seeing with yourself, And in starting to, you know, what you start to recognize when you start to analyze people's writing when they've gone through this expressive writing is, and you start to say, well, like, what is it that predicts people who do better versus not? It's what predicts people who do better is that they aren't being a Pollyanna. They aren't just being, oh, everything's great, everything's fine. I should just be grateful because at least I got to spend 15 years with my father.

Right.

They're not doing that. what they're doing is they are holding their beautiful positive experiences alongside their tough, difficult experiences, the pain, the regret, and they're starting to generate a sense of insight and meaning. So for me, as an example, and I want to come back to this teacher because it was such a remarkable thing that she said to me, the example was I kind of found not to force it or not to contrive it, but when I was doing this writing, that over a period of time, I started to connect with like a sense of resilience in myself. So it was like I would write about these difficult experiences and then I would, and then I would like over time start recognizing that I just had this like inner sense of resilience and connection. And so circling back to your word calm, I came out of the writing with a sense of having seen the self, a sense of calm. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting because when my father passed earlier this year, and thanks for reaching out and sending me a text, it was really thoughtful. When he passed, I remember everyone was asking me, like, how are you doing? I was like, to be honest, I'm sad and grateful. I kept saying, like, I'm really sad that it happened this way and that he was in an accident for 17 years and I didn't get to have the relationship that I had with him. And I'm trying to find sense of that and make find the meaning in that process. But I'm also really grateful because there were some beautiful times we had together. So I'm sad and I'm grateful. And I was just, I kept saying that I'm like, I'm sad and I'm grateful. Yeah.

And it's that there's bothness, isn't it? And I think that's the beauty. It's like this, this circling back to what we were saying earlier about this narrative that they're good and bad emotions. What this does is it sets these emotions up against each other.

But.

We are, you know, that beautiful we contain multitudes. Like we experience more than a single emotion. We can simultaneously hold these things. And so the way that we move into a space of holding them is not by making one of them good and one of them bad, but rather recognizing that what you feel is what you feel. There's such power in the acceptance. I don't mean passive resignation. I just mean acceptance. Like, this is what I feel, and there's such power. I just wanted to quickly circle back to something that this teacher said. Years later. So this is this teacher. I'm 15. Years, years, years later, I go to a conference and there's someone at this conference who gives a talk and she and says, you know, they're going to be people in your life who've really shaped who you are, shaped your experience. And if that person doesn't know that they've shaped your life and shaped your experience, reach out and let them know.

Yeah.

So I track down this teacher.

Wow.

And I find her and I send her, you know, a bunch of flowers and I like, in this card say, like, you saw me. You know, you saw me. And in seeing me, you allowed me to see myself. And I said to her, but one thing I always wanted to ask you is, Liz, I would write this journal and I would write it in pen. I would, like, scroll and poetry and, you know, all this kind of, like, teenage 15 year old, and I would scroll it. Every day we had this like secret silent correspondence because every day I would hand this journal in and the teacher would then send it back with notes like saying you sound really sad or you know she would have these notes but she always had her notes in this like almost imperceptible pencil. It was like you could barely make out what she was writing with this really light pencil. So I said to her, I said to I just like when we reconnected, I was like, why did you write in pencil? And she said to me, which I thought was so beautiful, she said to me, Susan, it was your story. It was your story. And I was simply being witness to your story, but you were crafting your story. And it reminded me a little bit.

Of.

Because I know you want to dig into emotional agility and often people say to me, you know, what is emotional agility? And I say, well, you know, I can, I can give the nerd definition, but ultimately what my work is about is my work is about seeing. It's about seeing and unseeing.

Seeing is... What do you mean by that? Yeah.

Well, it's about seeing yourself in ways that are healthy and whole. and seeing all of you and loving all of you and in seeing ourselves, we are then more able to see others too. And it reminds me a little bit of Primo Levi, who was a survivor of the Nazi death camps. Just in case you thought you were going to have a light conversation. So Levi describes Levi was in a death camp and when the camps were liberated, he, you know, literally on the verge of death was released. And so he and his fellow death camp survivors boarded trains back to their hometowns. Levi described how as the train pulled up into his hometown in Italy, there were a whole lot of people waiting on the platforms for them to arrive. And the people on the platforms were so horrified by how emaciated and skinny and haggard and deathly. The people on the trains were the people who had been released were that they were so horrified by it that they turned away. They turned away and they turned away.

Because.

They were unable to metabolize. They were unable to process. They were unable to see. and Nevi described how in many ways that experience that he had was in many ways even more, wow, more devastating than going through. Breaking than the experience itself.

No way.

Wow.

And, and I think that, like, for me, when I talk about seeing versus unseeing, it is really about this.

This.

The thread, which is, what does it take for us to see ourselves? What does it take to see others? Because here's the thing. We live in a world that really gives primacy to goals and objectives and success and all of these things. But the way we deal with our inner worlds, the way we see ourselves, the way we deal with our difficult thoughts, like a thought might be, I'm not good enough. An emotion might be, I'm sad, I'm depressed. I'm grieving. A story might be a story of, do I even deserve love? Am I worthy? The way we deal with our inner worlds drives everything. It drives how we love, it drives how we live, how we parent, how we lead, our health behaviors, our ability to achieve those goals. It drives everything. And that is the centrality of my work, which is about healthy seeing. And just to kind of so healthy seeing is about firstly holding both the joy and the discomfort together and recognizing that we don't need to be owned by any of it because we are more than those things as well and we are able to move forward towards our values.

I'm curious. , I think a lot of people would probably admit, maybe not publicly, but they probably admit to like someone close to them, if they were truly honest with themselves, that for a period of them, their life, they didn't believe they were worthy of love.

Yeah.

There's probably a good amount of people in the world that don't, that aren't as adults good at receiving love. They don't believe they deserve it. And maybe there's a whole nother spectrum of people, you know, that's all they do is they love themselves too much. You know, it's like very narcissistic or something like that. But, I think there's a lot of people that doubt themselves. They doubt themselves by certain stories they've told themselves, certain things that have happened in their lives that confirm they're not deserving of love. They picked on, bullied, parents, whatever it might be, broken up with boyfriend, girlfriend, all that stuff. How do we believe we are worthy of love? How do we learn to believe that we as an individual are deserving of love?

Yeah, that's such a powerful question. And I just want to kind of circle back, you gave narcissism narcissism as an example of self-love.

They actually hate themselves the most.

Actually, narcissism is a manifestation of very often low self-esteem. I think one of the most important aspects of this fight for worthiness, the really important part of, you know, when I talk about agility versus rigidity. You know, my work is on emotional agility in contrast to emotional rigidity. And so I think what becomes really important in that is if we think about the kinds of thoughts that people have, I've given some examples of like, I'm not good enough or there's no point in trying. Okay. Emotions, emotions like grief and anger or stories, stories about whether I'm worthy of love, whether I'm worthy of love. So a really important part of actually being able to move forward in the world with integrity is recognizing that these are normal. Okay, and this is really, really important.

This thought or this feeling that I'm not okay.

Any of it, any of it and all of it is actually normal. There is nothing Good or bad, right or wrong about saying to yourself or the automatic thought that says like, Gee, I'm gonna stuff this up. Okay, there is, that is literally your body and your psychology doing the job that it was meant to do, which is to help you to make sense of the world, to adapt and respond. If you were never concerned about how you sounded, You would have no friends.

You wouldn't get anywhere in life.

You wouldn't get anywhere. If you were never concerned about whether you should be fearful about something or not.

You'd be dead.

You'd be dead. Okay, so this whole narrative, which is that there's some thoughts that are good and some thoughts that are bad and some emotions, is actually like a, it's a completely false narrative.

Interesting.

And so one of the core ways we start to dismantle the narrative is by recognizing that these thoughts, emotions, and stories are normal.

Yes.

They are normal sense-making machines. You know, you are absolutely, your brain is doing its job when it's helping you to kind of judge, be curious, assess, understand, but what happened, like that's your brain doing its job. So when do we become hooked? When do we become rigid? When are we now being unhealthy?

Yeah, when it's holding us back.

When it's holding us back and when we start being imprisoned by them.

Yes.

Okay, so in psychological terms, the language for this is fusion. Or in my book on emotional agility, I call this hooked.

Hooked meaning like trapped in your feelings, thoughts, you can't progress in life.

So let's... You're suffering in it. The thought of I'm not good enough, or Am I going to succeed at this? Or maybe I'll think, these are normal. Okay. Normal. Fusion or being hooked is when you say, I'm not good enough, therefore there's no point in me trying. Okay?

You believe it 100%.

So yeah, so what you're starting to do is you're starting to take this normal thought emotional story and you are starting to let it define you, hence the word fusion. You know, you are now fused.

It becomes your identity.

It becomes, it's literally like the emotion owns you rather than you owning it. And this is really important. We own our emotions, they don't own us. So when you talk about how do we move into a space of generating a sense of of connection with self and self-worth firstly, recognizing that the way you've often responded doesn't need judgment. It just needs compassion because it's hard to human. Do you know what I mean? It's hard to human.

It is.

So.

So there's firstly that the second thing that becomes important is, is. and this again connects with this idea of rigidity, which is recognizing that when you were that five-year-old child and you were learning how to survive.

That those.

Strategies that you used at that age were actually functional.

Right.

In other words, those strategies probably protected you. You know, if you were bullied and therefore you stopped being vulnerable as an example, that strategy actually was protective. So it was actually a functional strategy. What happens is we start moving into a point where the strategy is no longer helpful to us. So now imagine you've developed these strategies of defensiveness, of always wanting to be right, of all of these things that we develop. Competing, like whatever it is for us. So we start developing these strategies and then we move into a different part of our lives. Now we've got someone who really loves us and who wants to be with us and where our once functional strategy of shutting down and of being protective is now not functional. In other words, we've outgrown just like we outgrow our shoes. Just like we outgrow our clothes, when we move into different phases of our lives, we outgrow strategies. And so it becomes really important, this is where these emotional agility skills come in, to recognize that when we are hooked, we are often not sensitive to the context. We often aren't seeing the person in front of us. We're seeing the five-year-old who is fighting. for survival. And so what does that mean? That means we really owe ourselves huge amounts of compassion, compassion for that child. And we also, there's this beautiful quote by Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, who he describes this idea. He says, As a human being, you can never step into the same river twice. And what is that saying? It's saying the world is always changing. Technology, the economy, politics, the world is always changing. And we as human beings are changing. If we didn't, there would be something wrong with us. And so with change, comes confusion, comes difficult emotions, comes the...

It's uncomfortable to change, you know?

It's uncomfortable and it's because it's uncomfortable that it's so important to be gentle with it. Because it's like you being gentle with you holding hands with yourself in your walk through life.

Mm-. Interesting.

And as opposed to staying stuck where you once were. And so when you're walking through life and you're walking to a new place, whether that new place is a new job or a new career or a new idea or a new relationship, there's such beauty in holding hands with yourself.

Going back to what you were just talking about, it sounds like the memories of our past that are connected to a painful emotion. hold us back or could potentially hold us back in the future to not feel those painful emotions again, right?

Yes.

It's these stories that we have attached a memory with an emotion, I guess, from these events, whether it's on some people's point of view extremely traumatic or something smaller, but it could still be very traumatic.

Yeah.

Those memories seem to hold us back. It's almost like if we could erase all the memories of our past and enter into the world as this human being without those memories, would we be able to be more unapologetic in taking action on things we want to take action on? Will we have more confidence?

Will we have... Yeah, I think that's such a powerful question. I think that the memories hold us back and certainly, but they also move us forward. There's the memory of They protect us too.

They protect us.

They're all of these things. But I also, but we can be hooked by a past, but we can also be hooked by today. You know, we know that when people are experiencing a lot of stress, when the world is changing quickly, when your job's changing and there's like yet another, you know, yet another transformation, yet another whatever it is, when human beings experience huge amounts of stress, or even normal amounts of stress, normal amounts of confusion, there actually tends to be a cognitive narrowing.

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And so what I mean by this is we tend to, as we experience more ambiguity and more stress or more technology, it's almost like the technology has outpaced our human capacity to deal with it. Because human beings, when human beings, if we think about the evolutionary survival mechanism, when we are experiencing stress and threat, there is a perceptual narrowing, literally a cognitive narrowing. So there's a focus. And that focus might be, I'm hooked on being right in my Twitter feed. I'm stuck in my emotion today because there's a narrowing. So we can be in agile and rigid because of past experiences, but we can also be in agile and rigid because there's just a lot of stuff coming at us. And like the World Economic Forum talks about these emotional agility skills as being the skills of the future for exactly this reason.

I couldn't get my mind to do what I wanted to do. And then after six weeks, I just went through the whole thing. I felt like I hit a golf ball right in the sweet spot. Something collect and from that point forward, what took me two and a half or three hours to do, I was able to do in 45 minutes. I was firing and wiring, you know, these new circuits and I was practicing paying attention. And then all of a sudden I started noticing dramatic changes in my health like this. And the moment I started noticing changes in my body, what was going on outside of me, I started correlating it to what I was doing inside of me. Now I was just hooked and I just started doing it with more passion and more sincerity. Anyway, back on my feet in 10 and a half weeks, back training at 12 weeks, back in my clinic, and I just made a deal with myself that if I was ever able to walk again, I'd spend the rest of my life studying the mind-body connection and mind over matter. And then that led me to just stop everything in my life. I just wasn't the same guy. I'd just been initiated into something and sold my practice, sold my home.

You sold it all.

Sold it all, moved to the Northwest, and just started asking bigger questions. like who am I, why am I here, what are we doing, what happens when we die, and how did all this happen for me? What was the process? I started studying the science behind it and I couldn't find it in any conventional textbooks because this was unconventional, right? And miraculous is kind of unconventional. So I started studying quantum physics and neuroscience and epigenetics and it started making sense. I started building this model of understanding. Then I asked the fundamental question, has anybody else done it? So then I traveled to 17 different countries and interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people with serious health conditions that were treating either conventionally or unconventionally. They were staying the same or getting worse. And all of a sudden, I got better. So what was the cause that produced the effect? And the stories and what I learned was so amazing. I went back to school and studied neuroscience because mind was such a strong element. It wasn't diet. It wasn't celibacy, it wasn't any of those things. It was just really this element. And so then I was able to figure out that there were four common things. And then I wrote a book about it. And then I thought, God, if this works really on people that were sick and are better, and they come from all walks of life, all colors, all races, all genders, sexual preferences, but all of a sudden, I wanted to see if I was able to reproduce it. So then I started seeing, okay, let's see if we can teach this, be able to reproduce the outcome, because that's science, right? So we went through about... What were.

The four common things?

The first one was that they all believed and accepted that there was an intelligence that lived within them that was giving them life. These people you interviewed who had had.

Injuries that overcame... No, no, these were.

People with cancer, MS, lupus, Parkinson's disease... Who got better. spontaneously, and it's called a spontaneous reconnection. So, I was-- They believed there was an intelligence. There was some invisible life force that they were connected to, that they felt like they had lost their connection to, they became separate and disconnected from, and that when they got the diagnosis, they woke up and said, Man, I got to connect again, and I got to connect to my essence. And so they developed a relationship with it, just like you develop a relationship with anybody. It takes time, you got to be present, you got to connect, you got to experience, you got to be present. All of these things are important elements. So that was the first thing. The second thing was that they realized that it was the mismanagement of their emotions and the hormones of stress that really began to create their condition. Now stress is when your brain and body are knocked out of balance. Stress is when your body's knocked out of homeostasis. We have an innate mechanism in our body that returns us back to order. So then if someone cuts you off on the LA freeway, you have a emotional reaction, but 15 minutes later you're back to driving and you're over it, right? That's all organisms in nature can tolerate short-term stress. When it's all day long, all week, all year. Yeah, so if you're reacting to, like if Tyrannosaurus Rex is chasing you, you have to make a decision, am I going to use 20% of my energy, I'm gonna use 100%. So, turns out when you're reacting to traffic.

200%.

Right.

Or if you're reacting to your coworker sitting in the cubicle next to you, you're turning on that response and what was once very adaptive becomes very maladaptive because when you turn on the stress response and you can't turn it off, now you're headed for disease because nobody can live in emergency mode for that extended period of time. Well, human beings, we can turn on the stress response just by thought alone. you can think about your problems and you're producing the same biological effects. So those chemicals give the brain and body a rush of energy and people become addicted to that rush of energy. So now they use the problems and conditions in their life to reaffirm their addiction to that emotion. They need the bad job. They need the poor relationship. So that means they become addicted to the life that they don't even like.

Why do we need the bad job or bad relationship and stay stuck in that.

Because it's a conditioned response. So listen, if you get angry at a co-worker and all of a sudden you get an arousal in your brain and body, right? You get a rush of energy. When you start noticing that your body starts dropping, your brain starts noticing your energy starts dropping, you're automatically going to have the image of the co-worker in order to what? Give your body the next jolt. The jolt, right? All of a sudden, people become addicted to their own thoughts. These people realize that, oh my God, I've been mismanaging my attention and energy and I've got to get beyond my past. I've got to get beyond these emotions. I've got to make some big changes. I've got to break the habit of being myself. I've got to stop being this person. Now, that sounds really good theoretically and philosophically, but change is such a hard thing, right? Because the moment you come back to your senses and you step back into your life and you see that person or you go to that place or you're with that experience, so many people are unconsciously reacting in their thoughts and feelings to everything in their environment. So now their environment is controlling how they think and feel. So they realize that in order to.

Change, you gotta change the environment.

They gotta be greater than their environment, greater than the conditions in the world, greater than the circumstances.

Be mindful of that every time you stop to be like, okay, I'm gonna think differently.

I'm not gonna react the same way. Yeah, right. I'm not gonna go back. I'm not gonna go back. Because the moment you start reacting emotionally, emotions are a record of the past. And if those emotions are driving your thoughts, you're thinking in the past. And if you can't think greater than how you feel and you believe your thoughts have something to do with your destiny, you're creating more of your past.

Right?

So it turns out that the repetition of thinking and feeling and feeling and thinking, these loops that people get caught in, condition their body to subconsciously become the mind of that emotion, which means now their body is their unconscious mind is believing they're living in the same past experience 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. What's the relevance behind that? Well, the latest research on genes says genes don't create create disease. It's the environment that signals the gene that creates disease. The emotional environment or the physical environment? Your environment, any environmental reaction. But if you're reacting emotionally to your environment the same way, you're signaling the same gene in the same way and now you're headed for a genetic destiny. So the hormones of stress push the genetic buttons that create disease. If you can turn on the stress response just by thought alone, your thoughts could make you sick. and if your thoughts can make you sick, is it possible that your thoughts can make you well? So they began to realize that, oh my God, the repetition of thinking and feeling and thinking caused me to feel guilt and I don't even know it's guilt, it just feels like me. It's just, I'm used to the same chemical continuity. Now, the moment they decided to change, anytime you decide to change and change anything about yourself, get ready because it's going to feel uncomfortable. You're going to leave the known. You're gonna leave the familiar and you're.

Gonna step into the unknown. Even if the familiar is uncomfortable and painful. -Right.

-It'S still gonna be painful leaving the pain. -Right. Because some people are super happy being unhappy. -Right. -So, then they would rather cling to their suffering than take a chance in possibility. So, these people said, I really have nothing to lose, right? So, then they said, I'm willing to be uncomfortable and be in the unknown. And it turns out that's the perfect place to create from. So when the body is conditioned to become the mind, then to change is to be greater than the body.

Right?

How do we become greater than the body?

Well, that's a whole other conversation. But let me finish this.

Okay?

So the third thing they said was, okay, so now that I know that I got to break the habit of being myself and I can't mismanage my thoughts and feelings, I got to change how I act, I got to watch how I speak, I got to become conscious. of how unconscious I am because 95% of who we are by the time we're 35 years old is a set of memorized behaviors like a computer program, emotional reactions, unconscious beliefs and perceptions. So the first step to change is to become conscious of how you think, to notice how you act, to pay attention to how you feel. And the act of observing those states of mind and body separates you from that program. Now you're you're the consciousness observing that program. It turns out the more conscious you become of how unconscious you are, you know, letting a match in a dark place, that first step creates enormous amounts of chaos in the brain and body. And it's disturbing so people just go back to the same addiction, the same emotion, the same problem. This feels better. No, that feels familiar. So they said, okay, now I gotta change. I gotta reinvent myself. Now this is really important because they started sitting down and thinking, okay, who in history do I admire? Who are great people, role models that I could follow? What are the qualities and characteristics that they have? How am I going to change? You know, these are what we call frontal lobe questions. The creative center of the brain switches on and the emotional center settles down. So then they started thinking, how would I have to be in a new life if I was really going to heal? What would I have to change about myself?

Myself.

Now there's this interesting phenomenon that if you close your eyes and you begin to think about doing something, you're an athlete, you understand this. If you're a background in football and you are running a pattern or you are doing something, you would rehearse it in your mind. It turns out that the act of mentally rehearsing something when you're truly present, your brain does not know the difference between what's going on out there and what's going on here. In fact, your brain will begin to look like you've been doing it for the last five days and you've never run the course. So now your brain is no longer a record of the past because typically it is. Now it's a map to the future. So now you're priming your brain. So that became a very platform. You know, experiments with piano players. You know, you take a group of people that never played the piano before. You divide them into two different categories. You take one group of people. You teach them one-handed scales and chords. You do a brain scan on them. They come and practice for two hours a day for five days. At the end of five days, if you rescan the brain, they've grown new circuits on the opposite side of the brain. Nothing magical there. You learn something new. Learning's making new connections. Get some instruction. You get instruction to get your body involved. Get your body involved. You're going to have an experience. Experience enriches the brain. Pay attention to what you're doing. You've got to pay attention and repeat it. Firing and wiring, you're going to assemble new circuits. You can take the other group of people, have them come for two hours a day for five days, do a brain scan before, the brain scan after, have them close their eyes and mentally rehearse playing those scales and chords at the end of five days. They'll grow the same amount of circuits in their brain as the people who actually physically demonstrated the action. What does that mean? It means not only do they change their brain by thinking differently, but their brain looks like they've been playing the piano for five days. Now set them in front of a piano. never played the piano before, they'll play those scales and chords because their brain is wired to play it. So now the act of rehearsing who they're going to be, what are the qualities and beginning to get in this creative state, began to lay down the circuits of a new personality and a new personality is connected to a new personal reality. So the next question is, does that change the body? Take a group of men, have them do one-handed curls in their mind and bring an emotional component like stronger, harder, more intense. One hour a day for two weeks. At the end of two weeks, 13.5 increase in muscle strength never lifted a weight. Now their body is changing by thought alone. So these people began to reprogram their brain and body and all of a sudden they began to act differently.

Why?

Because they installed the circuits. They began to think differently. Of course. They began to feel differently. They were no longer feeling pain. They're actually liking themselves, right? So then if they're living by a different emotion and they're feeling an elevated emotion before they're healing, before they were healed, they're not waiting for their healing to feel joy and gratitude. They're feeling gratitude and joy. Now their body's believing that it's healed because the body's feeling the emotion ahead of the experience. And if the environment signals the gene and the end product of an experience and the environment is emotion, you're signaling the gene ahead of the environment. And what do genes do? Genes make proteins. So what are proteins responsible? The structure and function of the body. Now you're literally becoming somebody else. And now you're turning down the genes for disease and you're turning up these other genes. So I started to realize that this reinvention process is exactly what we've always done. It's just that we get complacent in certain areas of our life and we stop. Now the last thing they had in common, the fourth thing, is that when they were doing that rehearsal process, they had long moments where they lost track of time and space. In other words, they were so involved in their inner world of imaging that when they turned the light on in the room or they lift their blindfold up or whatever they were doing, they thought it was 20 minutes later and it was an hour and 20 minutes. minutes later. And when you're truly focused and you're truly paying attention and you're in the present moment, all of a sudden, you will leave this three dimensional reality. And when you leave this three dimensional reality, there's only one other place you go, and that is the realm of thought. And that's called the quantum field. And that quantum field is where all possibilities exist, right? So they were connecting to a field of information that had everything to do with the first principle. which is that invisible intelligence that's both within us and all around us, personal and universal. It is the unifying field that governs everything material in this world. And if you're going to change something material, that means you've got to get beyond your body to heal your body. Because if you're your body trying to heal your body, there's one thing that we can guarantee it's going to take time. It's going to just take a long time because you're playing by the rules of Newtonian physics. If you play by the rules of quantum physics, physics. Energy dictates matter. So when you're truly in the field and you're making changes there, then the downward cascade, neurologically, biologically, chemically, hormonally, genetically, is the side effect of what's doing, what's happening in the field. It accelerates. It accelerates it, exactly. So you do it in less time.

Because you're more connected to a realm that doesn't play by time. The question that you're asking is a very important one. It's actually the question, which is, To what extent does our subjective narrative, the story we tell ourselves, actually mean something for the body? And to what extent does the body actually mean something for the subjective narrative? So this gets into some areas of work that we're doing now, and so I do want to highlight that it's ongoing work. But I think, you know, the old narrative, meaning a few, 10 years ago, was that if you're feeling depressed, just smile. Well, if that worked, we would have a lot less depression than we see out there. Now, that does not mean-- Most people.

Actually who are depressed just aren't smiling as well. That's right. Like when you change your physiology, doesn't it also start to change the way you think about yourself a little bit?

The reason I call it a brain-body contract early on is that the brain and the body are constantly in dialogue. So, you know, the idea that When we're depressed, we tend to be in more defensive type postures. When we're feeling good, we tend to be in more relaxed and extended postures. All true. But it does not mean that just by occupying the extended posture that I'm going to completely shift the mind. That's a first step. Think about like two interlocking gears. It's one gear that turns the other.

But then they need to kind of.

Dance together before you can get the whole system going. So how do you get it to dance together? Exactly. So subjective, there is one way in which subjective thought and deliberate thought is very powerful over states of mind and body. To answer your question, can you think your way out of the ice bath being cold? So a couple things that are important. First of all, just to go a little deeper on what thoughts are. Thoughts happen spontaneously all the time. They're popping up like a poorly filtered internet connection. But thoughts can also be deliberately introduced. For instance, right now I can say, have a thought that just decide to write your name and you can do that. I'm going to decide to write my name and you can do it. That's a deliberate thought which says that you can introduce thoughts. I think it's very hard to control negative thoughts directly by trying to suppress them. Generally, they tend to just want to continue to geyser up all the time. But we can introduce a positive thought.

Before the interview continues, if you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of. I've written a new book called the Greatness Mindset and I think you're gonna love this. Through powerful stories, science-backed strategies and step-by-step guidance, the Greatness Mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link below in the to get your copy today. Okay, let's get back to this video. Can you think of two thoughts at the same time?

Probably not.

So you can only have one thought at a time.

Right, but they come very fast.

But it comes and goes. You have to constantly be intentional and deliberate about what you think otherwise and a spontaneous thought will pop back in. That's right. Based on your experience, based on sensory, based on how you're feeling or perceiving something, your environment, it's just going to keep popping in.

Right.

So how do we deliberately have a positive thought more often? Right.

So I'm a big fan of wellness and I think it's a great community, but it tends to run in absolutes and there aren't a lot of operational definitions, as we say, in science. And what I love about your questions, you're asking for really getting to the meat of things, asking for the operational definitions. One of the most dangerous ideas in wellness and in popular psychology is that your body hears every thought you have. What a terrible thing to put on people. You know, what a challenging thing. I don't think people should try and suppress their negative thoughts. I think there is great value, however, to introducing positive thought schemes. Now, the reason is not because I think it's just because I think so, but because there's actually a neurochemical basis for controlling stress and actually making stress more tolerable and extending one's ability to be in bouts of effort. and that relates to the dopamine pathway. So the molecule dopamine is a reward. It's released in the brain when you win a game, you close a deal, you meet the love of your life, someone likes your photo, the great love of your life, you complete something. But most of our dopamine release is not from achieving goals. It's actually released when we are en route to our goals, when we're in pursuit of our goals, and we think we're on the right path.

This is why a lot of people get depressed after they achieve a big goal because they feel like I'm supposed to feel something greater. I felt this thing for two minutes and now that's it? That's right.

High achievers know to attach dopamine to the effort process. To the pursuit, the day-to-day tasks, the.

Growth, the lessons, the losses, like everything, right?

Well, and it can be to some wins along the way. But growth mindset, which is the academic discovery and laboratory discovery of my colleague Carol Dweck at Stanford, is the hallmark of growth mindset. is really two things. One is I'm not where I want to be now but I'm capable of getting there eventually. The other is to attach a sense of reward to the effort process itself.

In fact, -Don't reward the result, reward the effort.

-That'S right. And if you look at true high performers, people that are consistently good at what they do, they don't peak and go through the postpartum depression and crash and come back and their life is a cycle of ups and downs but really people who are on that upward trajectory consistently, those people attach dopamine to the effort process. And actually, Carol's one of her original studies on the discovery of growth mindset was these kids that loved doing math problems that they knew they couldn't get right. So it's like the people love puzzles, but in this case, they knew they couldn't get it right, but they loved doing it. And it incidentally or not so incidentally, these kids are fantastic at math when there is a right answer because they feel some sense of reward from the effort process. Now, the cool thing about dopamine is that it's very subjectively controlled. We can all learn to secrete dopamine in our brain in response to things that are in a purely subjective way.

Our interpretation.

Our interpretation. But it has to be attached to reality. one should never confuse what is real. Right, so if you're thinking about the effort you're expending, so let's say somebody right now is financially back on their heels and they're setting up a new business for instance and it's hard. If they can take a few moments or minutes each day to reflect on the fact that the effort process is allowing them to climb out of their hole potentially, that it's giving them an opportunity, that it's somehow they are on the right path or if they're not in movement along that path or at least oriented on the right path, they're not lying in bed all day.

They're taking a step.

They're taking a step. If they can reward that process internally, two things happen. First of all, the brain circuits that are associated with building subjective rewards and dopamine get stronger, so you get better at that process. And second, and most importantly, Dopamine has an amazing ability to buffer adrenaline and buffer epinephrine. And what I mean by that is there was a study that was published in the journal Cell, excellent journal, Cell Press journal, a couple of years ago showing that with repeated bouts of effort, we use and we release more and more epinephrine.

It's kind of adrenaline, but in the brain.

With more effort, we're going to get more epinephrine. Every time you put in effort. So every time you make, for this, let's keep it, if I were to keep it in the business context, every time you make, write that email every time you, let's say it's a person who's a craftsman or a crafts woman, every time you're working in the shop and doing that, every bit of effort, you're taking a little bit of money out of this epinephrine account. You're spending epinephrine. At some point, those levels of epinephrine get high enough that you feel like quitting. It feels exhausted. This was done in a beautiful study actually where they control the visual environments and they have the subjects exert effort and they can control the visual environment. So sometimes the effort of taking steps and moving forward, this is actually kind of pushing forward and kind of swimming motion, would give them the sensation that they were actually making progress. And other times it was an exercise in futility where they would just keep the visual world stationary and they would expend effort and they didn't think they were going anywhere. Epinephrine's climbing, climbing, climbing and eventually they quit. Now, dopamine is able to push back on that epinephrine and give you anyone the feeling that you could continue and maybe even the feeling that you want to continue. And you've seen this actually, football is a good example. Two teams play, say the Super Bowl. Both teams are max effort the entire time. Max effort. The team that wins suddenly in a moment has the energy to jump all over the place, party for days. They can talk, I mean, they have- They were exhausted right before that. Well, that wasn't glycogen or stored energy of any kind, except it was neural energy. And what happened was effort is this adrenaline, adrenaline, adrenaline, adrenaline, eventually people quit.

They just quit.

The dopamine is able to suppress that. And so then you're expending effort, but you're doing it from a place of.

Feeling like you have energy for it. So we need dopamine to keep the effort going.

Is that what I'm hearing you say? That's right. Dopamine is not just about reward. It's one of the biggest misconceptions. Dopamine is about motivation and drive. It's like a jet that propels you along a path. How do we get more dopamine? You practice subjectively releasing dopamine in your mind. Like how? Okay, so that's a great question. First of all, there are ways you can get more dopamine release through thoughts or through drugs or through supplements. I want to be really clear. There is a drug, there are two drugs actually that will cause massive release of dopamine. They're called cocaine and methamphetamine.

The problem is-- that's what gets us addicted because it feels so good.

The problem is, exactly. The problem is cocaine and methamphetamine stimulate so much dopamine release that the drug becomes the only source. It becomes the goal and the path.

Absolutely.

It becomes the path and the destination. And you look at people's lives when they do a lot of cocaine and methamphetamine, and that baseline on their life goes down the drain.

Because there's no reason to work hard at anything else because you feel good.

That'S right.

And that's the greatest feeling you'll have. So why do anything else when you can have that feeling?

That'S right. And if you think about, remember these neurochemical systems, adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine, epinephrine, they weren't designed to keep us safe from tigers and to hunt and gather or to build Fortune 500 companies. They were designed to do anything. They were designed to be generic so that depending on our circumstances, we could adapt. So in an animal context, an animal that Let's say it is hunting or it needs food for its young. It's going to feel agitation. That's stress. That's cortisol. It's like hunger. My babies might not eat. I might not eat. Maybe it's looking for a mate. It's going to feel agitation and start looking and roaming and searching. Foraging is called in the animal behavior world. It's foraging. At some point, it might catch a smell of something, a potential mate or berries or a stream if it's thirsty. At that moment, dopamine is released and now it has energy to continue along that path. Whereas there's a specific pathway in the brain that's involved in depression and disappointment that if it goes to that place and it turns out it was the wrong path, there's a signal that actually suppresses dopamine so that you don't repeat that mistake again. So you don't give up.

That's right. You just don't repeat it again.

That's right. And those events that remind you like.

That'S not the path to go down.

That's right. And we're sort of veering towards neuroplasticity here, which is the brain's ability to change itself in response to experience. Dopamine is one of the strongest triggers of neuroplasticity because it says those actions led to success previously. You're going to repeat those. Those actions led to failure previously and don't repeat those.

So dopamine triggers us to stay on the right path.

That's right. So you asked how do you do this? So to really make it concrete.

Is there such thing as too much dopamine? If you're not on drugs?

Cocaine and amphetamine are bad because they lower the baseline on life. They make people very focused on things outside of themselves. That's the other thing that dopamine does. It can be positive or negative. But when we have dopamine in our system, we tend to be outward facing and in pursuit of things in our environment. You can look at somebody on cocaine and realize that that's the extreme version of that. But, you know, I love social media for the reason that you see the molecules in the memes. So it's like get after it, what do sharks do on Monday or I can't remember the specific things. Or then they're the, like sometimes it's just time to chill. Well, that's a different molecule. That's serotonin, right? And then dopamine is the get after it molecule. And epinephrine is effort. So if we were gonna break this down really concrete, we'd say adrenaline and epinephrine are about effort. Just effort, with no subjective label on them, good or bad, effort. Whether or not it's stress or you're pursuing something you want to do, it's just exerting effort. Dopamine is about reward, but more so about motivation and pursuit of rewards.

Welcome everyone to this special episode. We have an inspiring guest, Hesu Joe in the house from BetterHelp. And I wanted to break down this episode to talk about different topics around mental health, emotional well-being, and really getting clear on how to optimize your whole body, connecting your thoughts, your emotions, and your body, and integrating your life with authentic alignment. When we are out of alignment with our thoughts and our emotions, and we store memories from the past that hold trauma inside of us, it holds us back. It makes us feel more fearful. It makes us doubt ourselves. It makes us feel overwhelmed or stressed or anxious in times where maybe we don't need to feel those things. There's different times when, you know, stress and overwhelm is a good signal to get you to relax and calm down, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there is a threat in your life. And sometimes we live with this fear inside of us, this ongoing anxiety inside of us that makes it feel like fight or flight constantly happening in our lives. and that doesn't allow us to get into a relaxed state of being, a beautiful state of being that allows for creativity, abundance, flow, prosperity, and the ability to feel and receive love. And I think a lot of us, including myself, have struggled with some of these things over our lifetime because we've never been taught the tools, we've never been given the training, and we haven't understood the science or the research behind how we can optimize things to flourish better in our inner world and also in our outer world. And our life is really made up of moments of memories and people. And when we have moments that stress us out or we have memories that cause us to feel anxious, then typically our relationships don't go as well as we'd like them to go. And so our intention and our goal and my intention for you is to really reevaluate the memories that might have caused you pain or trauma or overwhelm or stress and anxiety and allow you to reinterpret those, create new meaning behind these memories that have caused your nervous system to be stressful in the present so that you can have more beautiful moments right now. Right now is all we have is these moments and start interpreting and creating more joy and freedom and love within these moments. so that the relationships we interact with, whether it be in your career, your family, your work, and your intimate relationships, they can thrive. That's what we want for everyone, everyone listening, everyone watching. I want you to feel joyful. I want you to feel healthy. I want you to have a healed life. And I want you to feel free. But we must learn the skills on how to do that. And I'm so excited that you are here, Hesu, to support us with this. In my book, the Greatness Mindset, I really talked about going deep in the moments along my own personal journey because I was extremely, on the outside, successful in creating results and accomplishing and working hard, but on the inside, I was struggling in life. I was struggling in relationships and I was creating breakdown after breakdown. even though on the outside things seemed to be good. And it wasn't until the last couple of years when I really dove into intentional conscious therapy and coaching that allowed me to go back into the memories, create new meaning and rewrite the story of my life so that I have more peace in the present moment to give me more clarity about my future as well. And it hasn't been easy, Hasu, it's been really challenging actually. It's really scary to go back and face the parts of myself that I'm ashamed of, that I'm insecure about, that I feel like I don't want anyone to know about. It's probably the hardest work I've ever done in my life. And I was a professional athlete and training physically, but the emotional and mental work that we do, I believe, is some of the hardest if we have certain pains and things that we don't love and accept about ourselves from our past. And so, In my book, the Greatness Mindset, I talked about this journey. And I wanted to break this down with you as a licensed therapist with BetterHelp, someone who's been there for six years at the company and with the brand, and really seeing the evolution of society's dealings with mental health struggles. And as a licensed therapist again with BetterHelp, how important is it taking ownership of your mental health in order to live happy, fulfilling and balanced lives. What would you say, Hasu?

How important on a scale of 0 to 10? 10 being the most important?

Yes.

11.

11.

I don't think anyone should ever be blamed or seen as the person at fault for being the victim of trauma, being a survivor of abuse. However, I think we all have a personal responsibility to ourselves to take ownership. of mental health, to live a happy, fulfilling, balanced life. That also looks like the acceptance that we're not going to be happy all the time. But, you know, I think we've all kind of seen and experienced this in our lives. If I don't take care of myself, sure, other people can provide me with support. People can do things that are helpful to me, create a system of support around me. But ultimately, I have to be the one to take charge, to get myself out of a hole, to get unstuck from a rut. Because if it's not me, then it's not as meaningful, it's not as impactful, it's not as powerful.

So no one's coming to save us? No one's gonna just do it for us, is what you're saying?

I mean, you know, if a bunch of people were coming to save us, but we don't even want to be saved, Everyone's gonna have a hard time there.

Ooh.

Yeah.

And I also think that we've gotta own these things. We can't, you know, there's so many people that I've tried to help, people close to my life, friends, family that I see struggling. And I want to go in there and give them some feedback, give them some coaching, give them some tools, give them some exercises, you know, a seven day program to just get started. and if people aren't willing to dive in and do the work and be consistent with it, it doesn't matter how many people are trying to help them also. What we can do is really be the example, be an inspiration, be encouraging and supportive, but each one of us has to take ownership of these things. And that's why I think it's so important to have some type of therapy. And obviously BetterHelp does an amazing job of doing that. I'm curious, one of my favorite chapters in my book, the Greatest Mindset, is about developing and cultivating a meaningful mission. It's about getting clear on the path and direction that you want to take your personal life. It can be for personal life, for your career, for health and things like that. But what am I about? What am I up to? What am I creating in this world? And it can be for the next six months or the next six years. It doesn't have to be, what am I going to do the rest of my life? But what season am I in? And how can I get very clear on the direction I want to go in? I'm a believer that when we aren't clear on the direction we have less purpose and meaning and we're more stressed out and just kind of anxious and not sure. I'm not saying having a clear path forward is going to answer all your problems, but not having a meaningful mission is going to cause more stress and anxiety. I'm curious how can BetterHelp online therapy help listeners and viewers really clarify the purpose for their season of their life they're in right now and really figure out how to get to the next season and the next season. What can online therapy with BetterHelp do to guide people to getting that clarity?

Big question. And before I try to answer that, I do want to let folks know that BetterHelp online therapy is an option. But there's so many different ways to find therapy. There's so many different venues. so I want folks to know that even if better help is not the right fit for you, that doesn't mean that there's no other option. And so I really encourage folks to explore, to find what works best for them. But, you know, once you've decided that you want to seek some clarity, you want to try to define some kind of purpose in your life, I think the ways that therapy can help with this is to help you start uncovering, unpacking, processing, exploring a lot of stuff that many of us have pushed away. We've done these things like repress memories or create things that some folks will call defense mechanisms to protect our feelings, to protect ourselves from very painful things of the past. We become avoidant of things that might be triggering to us, in a therapy Journey. You kind of already alluded to a lot of this. It's about finding alignment. It's about finding authenticity. So that the outward presentation of who you are, how you walk through this world and connect with other people, it matches your insides. That's where a lot of dissonance comes for us, is that our insides are not matching what we're doing outside in everyday life. So in therapy, we're aiming to integrate these things so we feel good about what we're putting out there into the universe.

If we're so focused on negative thoughts, how do we even get to the place of stopping those thoughts and starting to heal from years or decades of thinking negatively?

And I guess that's a great question because most people don't even get there. You have to understand thoughts are things. When you think a thought, you have an immediate reaction. That's why if you think about eating, your stomach rumbles. You think about sex, you get aroused. People say, I don't believe that. So what do you think an erection is? You think a thought, you get a physical reaction. That's not a one-off. If you think a thought, a thought has a physical reaction in your body immediately and an emotional response. If I think I'm embarrassed, I might blush. If you say something moving, my eyes might fill up with tears because my body is reacting to thoughts. And if it could all be taught that early on, you react to thoughts. That's a fact. Here's another great fact. You can change your thoughts anytime you like. And if you change your thinking, it changes your entire life. So for instance, we're all saying, I'm stuck at home. I go, no, I'm safe at home. Stuck safe. You change one little word, it changes everything. So we say, I'm trapped. I'm in a lockdown. You know, we're not actually they're not sealing up the doors like they did in the plague. In the plague, they sealed your doors and you couldn't physically get out. But we are asked to stay indoors. We still go out for walks, we go out to the store, we go to the pharmacy. We're not stuck, we're not locked in, we're not trapped, we're not in prison. It's not an apocalypse, it's not Armageddon. But if you start to use those words, it begins to to feel exactly as if it is that case. So it's really important that you change your words. And I learned that when I was helping a hospital who had people who couldn't go in the scanning machine. And they'd all say things like, well, I feel like I'm in a coffin. You know, when I get in that scanner and I can't move, I'm so trapped. I'm like, look, come on. You lie in bed for eight hours every night and don't move. Why don't you just say, my bed, I'm super chilled and I feel so relaxed. What will happen is your mind will react to your thinking. And so I had many people do that and I was teaching nurses how to get people to do that, especially little kids of six going into the scan and they said, you know, when we sit them in their bed, they actually fall asleep in there. And we say, we're gonna play a game now, statues. How long can you keep still for? So I actually a few years ago was in a scanner which I didn't ever plan to be and I thought, let me play a game. So I lay in there and I went, I'm in my bed, I'm so chilled, this is so great, I've got half an hour to just lie here. And then I decided to go in my coffin now and they start to talk to me, Marissa, you're moving all the time, I had no idea because I was saying, I'm stuck, I'm trapped, I'm claustrophobic. my body was like, get out. And it starts to do things to make you want to leave. And so if you just understand.

How.

You are, everything changes. So our ancestral brain is like, flee, fight, freeze. I can fight, I can flee, I can freeze. So I'm in a scanner and it's like, well, I need to flee this. I need to fight it. And I'm like, no, if you can't fight and you can't flee, don't freeze flow. I can't fight, I can't flee, but I can flow. I mean, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in solitary confinement. We can't even do three weeks. We're going, oh, it's hell. It's a nightmare. I'm cooped up. My kids are driving me mad. I want to get a divorce. I can't stand it, but he did 27 years. You know how he did it? Because he said, Everyone in my country is in prison. I'm just in a different prison to them. If they can do it, I can do it. And I'm going to come out here, the leader of my country. And he did. So, you know, we have this belief that events affect us. They don't. The meaning you attach to an event affects you. The interpretation you choose revenge is what affects you. So I'm looking, I love it, it's great, you know, so much time, I'm having the best time, I'm having the best time, I hate it, I can't stand it, I'm climbing the walls, I'm going cray, I'm ripping my hair out, none of which we're not actually ripping out our hair or climbing the walls or going insane. We shouldn't use that. But clearly it must be the interpretation because we're all reacting differently. So an this won't affect you, but what you make of it will. And it's your job to change the interpretation. And if you can change the interpretation, it will change your entire life.

How do we change an interpretation to go from freeze to flow?

Well, you first of all think, what does this mean? What does this mean? You know, I've had a couple of clients who went to jail and they reacted. One of them was very a rich woman who went to jail for tax evasion. And she said actually she ended up really liking it. Being in jail. Well she's a typical rich one, she had a beautiful house, lots of staff, she didn't really go anywhere, everyone did everything for her, she didn't really have any friends, she had the ladies who lunch. And when she was there she trained to be an aerobic teacher, she trained to be a yoga teacher, nothing else to do. She really bonded with the other women and when she got out she went back every week to visit them because she said, you know, it was different in there. It was like girls' boarding school. I didn't realize I was isolated at home and more connected in jail, which is an interesting way to think about it. And people who, often people who've been in jail or been trapped in their house, been in lockdown. So Isaac Newton, I believe, in 1665, he developed the theory of while London was locked down because of the plague, sealed in their house, and so he used that time. So I guess you have to think, well, you know, I can't change this, but I can change what it means. One day I look back and go, well, actually, there was a lot of good stuff. What can I do about it? I mean, we all go, I just haven't got enough time. Oh, I'd love more time. If I only had time to myself, well, here it is. what could you do or learn or achieve? And I'm not saying it's easy because I'm also safe at home and I really miss going out and meeting people, but I'm also doing things I've wanted to do for years that I couldn't do because of time. So silly things like cook with your kids and make that a math lesson. How much does that weigh? How much vitamin C is in the skin of a potato? Do the laundry, you know, why do you think detergents are called biological? You can make it interesting, you just have to really decide, okay, what does this mean to me? And can I change the meaning? When I can change the meaning, it will change my life, because the meaning is yours to change, and the interpretation is yours to change. But the fastest way is to look at words. Am I saying apocalypse? Armageddon trapped, stuck. Someone said to me, they've taken away my freedom. Who? The government. Government forces have taken away my freedom. Maybe. But how about they want me to live, they want me to be safe. The government has put this in place to keep me safe. So I'm safe at home or they've taken away my freedom.

Why looking at your words first, Why is that so important?

Because the way you feel about everything is down to two things. The pictures you make in your head and the words. The way you feel about everything, every minute of every day is only down to two things. The pictures you make in your head and the words you say. But you could make that even simpler and say, forget about the pictures because the words make the picture. You know, I'm not visual and I can't see stuff, but if I said to you, Louis, think of anything, but you may not think of an orange snowman, especially one whose snow is the same color as the carrot in his nose. You've got to think of an orange snowman. And so when you hear words, they make pictures. When you say, don't think about blushing, don't think about falling, you know, I paddleboard every day and I I notice if you go, oh, I'm wobbling here and I'm going to fall, I've never, ever, ever fallen off. Because I don't think about falling. I think about balance and how much I like it. But when you say a word, you make a picture. And even the words you use in front of words, make a picture, you can say, this is driving me crazy. I'm going insane. There's a picture. Or you can say, It's a challenge. It's interesting. It's an opportunity because they don't make a picture. So when you say, I've got this cracking headache. Oh my God, it's killing me. I'm in agony. My head is killing me.

Swelling, it's throbbing, yeah.

Or you say, I've got a little niggle here. A little niggle, not great, but so what? When you say, I'm starving, this is what people do. I'm in the house, I'm starving. I could eat a horse. I'm dying of hunger. See what you're doing, which most people don't know, is that 500 years ago the thing that killed us more than anything else was not disease and it wasn't war, it was hunger. And we're wired to be scared of hunger. So when you say to your body, I'm starving, I'm dying of hunger, I could eat a horse, your mind goes, oh, that's that dangerous thing kill you. You have an app set here that regulates what you eat. But if you say you're starving, I'll put that on hold. So you can eat. You can stand in front of the fridge and eat so much stuff. And then when you've eaten, you still feel hungry because you just told me you were starving.

So you're saying that using the words I'm starving or I'm okay, I don't need food. Whatever you say is going to manifest in the body.

And you just have to think, how can how could I change? Am I really starving? I don't think I've ever been starving. I've been hungry, but I have never been starving. Could I really eat a horse? No, not even a horse's leg. Of course you couldn't. Am I really dying of hunger? That takes at least 12 days, probably even longer. So then you think, why would I lie to myself and delude myself? How about saying the truth? I need to eat. I'm ready to eat. and so what happens is maybe you're driving home or maybe you're on the train station and you say, I'm starving. Now your mind goes, there's a KitKat machine right there. You should eat three of those and maybe some jelly beans and taco chips as well because you're starving and I'm your mind and my job is to keep you alive and you just said you're starving because your mind's job is to listen to your words and your job and it's a great job is to tell it better stuff. So then instead you go, you know, I am hungry, I need to eat, but I've got some chicken in my house, I've got some vegetables, I've got a casserole, I cooked it yesterday, I can wait an hour and eat better food. And we all have to say that, I am hungry, but I'm choosing to wait 30 minutes for better food. You know, it's the same thing in a restaurant. When I go to a restaurant, I'm not hungry the minute I sit down, they bring that bread, bread basket. I think, oh, oh, I need that. And I could have eaten all of those at one time until I learned to say, I'm choosing to wait half an hour to eat this really nice food I've ordered. Yeah, but you have to talk to yourself. You know, we're all taught, if you can talk to your customers, you have a great business. If you can talk to your kids, you'd be a great parent. But no one says, but you need to talk to yourself. That is the most important conversation you'll ever have, the one you have with yourself. This relationship is killing me. This kid is killing me. I'm dying under my workload. This free weight makes me want to die. It's not true. Why don't you say the truth? That this community is a challenge. It's a challenge. I've got all these audiobooks, isn't it? I've got some snacks in my car. I'm prepared for the challenge. rather than it's killing me.

So what happens when we say this is killing me over and over again? What happens? How do we manifest that?

If you say that your mind, your mind's job is to keep you alive on the planet. It doesn't actually care if you're happy. You know, people think my mind's job is to make me happy. No, it's not. It's to make you live long enough to reproduce yourself. And actually, that takes the first 30. So we've got another 70 left. So our mind's job is a little confusing to our minds. You know, we are ancestral people in very modern bodies. And when you say, my job is killing me, it goes, don't go to that place called job. And if you keep going to that place called job and keep saying it's killing you, I'll just give you a nice ulcer. I'll keep you at home now.

I'll make you sick.

I'll make you sick. I'll give you a disease. And we see that people say, oh, a week in bed and then they get flu. Now they've got their week in bed. I need to get out of that meeting and now they get chronic diarrhea. So it happens all the time anyway and because your mind is designed to keep you alive and so if you say you hate something, people say, you know, this guy, oh he ripped out my heart, stamped all over it and threw it in the trash. Really? I think he got bored with you darling and you know what, if he stuck around you probably would have got bored with him. He was just your starter relationship. He taught you a lot and you learned a lot and everything he loved in you but he didn't take it when he packed his wash bag and left. He didn't put in it all the things that made him like you. They're still in you. He couldn't take them home and everything he liked in you is still there and you can find a way better person that loves you more But when you say to your mind, he ripped out my heart, stamped all over it, he killed me, the mind goes, you know what? Don't have another relationship.

What's the best way to train the emotional part of the brain? So that we are in, we have a personal power over it. That's a good role. That we have.

Or more.

It depends on the situation.

We can turn it up or turn it down, and we are, depending on.

The, depending on what's going on.

Yeah, maybe we need to be more emotional in a moment and not be chill and relax when there's an attack.

Maybe the moment is so big, man, it's of course you're just emotionally over the top. And we know that's what's been going on the last couple of years and even today. But that leaves you a flexibility and it also leaves you without feeling bad, like, oh, I was emotional then. Now I'm not a person that has emotional regulation. You don't have this brain the same forever. It's a constant trimming of the sales, modulating tone. To me, it's a little bit of work if you're in a good spot, like, hey, this ain't guaranteed. But it's also so much power and opportunity that if you're not in a good spot, like, tomorrow can be better. And if not tomorrow, then the month or the year after, right? So, emotional regulation, the shortcut, So now we're getting to like, is there a tip? You know, 'cause I hope people feel like, wait a second, everything is possible, but it's gonna take a lot of work. Okay? That's really what I was trying to get at for the first part. But are there shortcuts? 'Cause I love shortcuts. LA freeways or whatever.

Right, ways is good, yeah.

But there is one that has stood the test of time, and that I can now explain to you based on things that we do as surgeons. And that's, I refer to as meditative breathing in my first book, but really it's pacing your breath. And so what does that mean?

It's something you study with actual scans.

Or... No, no, no. It's even wilder than that. I was studying that. If you have aberrant brain electricity and we check a scan and there's some funky marble type tufted to brain tissue that doesn't look right, we know like that's the epicenter. That's where the electricity is sprouting from. But some people that have it, some kids that have it, some adults that have it, there isn't anything wrong with the scan, right? The scan looks pretty, brain looks perfect, but the electricity is off, right? That's what epilepsy is. All right, that's yet another proof. Seizures, one seizure, two seizures is epilepsy, then you get the diagnosis. But yes, seizures, is aberrant electrical activity of the brain, the same things we've been talking about. So when we don't know where it's sprouting, because if it's from a small space, we can dissect it out and take away the epicenter, right?

You can take it out. You mean you can cut it out?

We can cut it out and the patients are seizure free.

Really?

Yeah.

Now, but what if there isn't a spot that we find and their seizures are horrible? and it's well before thinking about removing half the brain. So what they would do is we make a reverse question mark incision. It's just scalp. It's not very tender. That's what they tell me. Ribs are more tender, is what they say. Patients. Then we make our little ice fishing hole. Are they numb when they're taking this out?

For this one, they're asleep.

There's others that are awake.

Do you numb the skull, the skin? You just cut through the skin.

No numbing.

They're fully asleep.

Oh, but when they're awake?

At the very end, I inject the cut. So the numbing lasts the longest.

With numbing, gotcha.

Yeah.

You're not just sitting there awake, they're.

Just cutting it off. That is an operation we do, but that's a different story. So you take the skull off, the brain has a covering, you don't see the brain right away.

There's like a sheath. Like a skin?

No, it's like almost a nylon material. You can pick it up and stitch it. that's what keeps the water inside the skull. It's not the bone sack. Yeah, brain sack.

There you go.

It's a brain sack, right?

It's like it's nylon. It's pretty. And we cut it and then the clear water pours out.

You can see the surface of the brain.

And water's coming out.

Yeah.

Because the brain is floating in an aquarium, right? It's crazy. Yeah, it's buoyant.

Your brain doesn't sit on bone. It's. It's floating again. Jellyfish in water.

So when you're hitting. When you're having a lot of.

Fast actions you're hitting something is it.

Hitting yeah, your skull stops and then inside it sloshes into the inside that can't be good for you.

Is it?

Well, that's where all the CTE and football stuff is the issue and it's a sudden stops repeated sudden stops with the brain sloshing and hitting the inside surface of your skull that can't be good can't it? Well, people are pretty people get by but we're seeing that if you do it too much that's with kids and NFL people but So you got to open, then there's a little, it's the size of a deck of a card. It's got a little 96 or different electrodes on it. You put the deck of the card on the naked brain. You take those wires, you pop them out with little needles through the back, almost like, yeah. And then you put the bone back on and you stitch up the scalp, and then you put some numbing medicine and you put on a head wrap and they hang out in the hospital for weeks. Because you're waiting for the seizure to happen.

So you've got a pad on the brain.

A grid, so when the seizure sparks, we can see it was like in Connect Four or Battleship. Battleship, was that board game? Battleship?

Yeah, it's in two.

You know where it's at? Yeah, you know where it's at. 2-6.

Because that way you know where you're gonna... So there's a mesh pad, electromagnetic pad or something that can track with wires that are coming out of the back of this...

Connected to the monitor. That are connected to the monitor at all times. And they're there for a couple weeks.

It's insanity. Because they're trying to function. They're happy, they're fine. They're like us.

Hanging out, asking me some ice cream, play some video games, watch some TV. So what happened was a bunch of wires coming out of their necks. Yeah, but the scalp, yeah, but we have things, people, you know, you'd be surprised with what we can wrap it up. What kind of devices we put in and dangle from people.

You know, from broken legs that come up with those little metal grids and they move around. So then after a few weeks, you wait till a seizure happens.

And then we know under that grid where it sparked, we found the epicenter.

And then from that, you track the data, you have the recording of the data, and then you can go in and then tweak it or you remove that little part. And then they're done, they don't have seizures anymore.

Sometimes or they're reduced. Now here's something that's more interesting for you and your audience. Well, that's a boring couple of weeks. So a bunch of cognitive science students brain students and all, they come in and they started hanging out with them. And they said, Hey, can we go through these lessons of paced breathing and meditative breathing?

Can we do this without removing it? Yeah. Well, completely unrelated to the clinical work.

Well, we're hanging. I've got a direct feed of the true electricity from the surface of your naked body. -While they're breathing. Yeah, let's, while they're sitting there. So they do something new with them. they teach them meditative breathing.

Come on. What are you seeing on the brain activity recordings?

The same thing that we see when we give Valium, which is an anxiolytic, their anxiety level goes down, their electricity goes from fast to medium. Remember we started this and we're talking about athletes not wanting to be in fast, we want to be in the flow state. Meditative breathing led to direct changes in the electricity of their brain as measured not with a sticker on the forehead, but with a grid on the surface of the naked brain. It's true measurable changes in the electricity there for the mind. So meditative breathing that for thousands of years people have said can help you chill out, is an anxiolytic and break anxiety. Well, we have proof of that now. and I think that's important for people to know that it's not just some, you know, it's just not a concept that's being thrown around too casually that through awake, direct electrophysiological recording of seizure planning surgery at elite centers while looking for the seizures, there's a lot of data coming out about let's play video games, let's do meditative breathing, let's read, and then what changes? And so that's what I love in book one that I shared was that's raw data. That's real data. And there's an explanation behind how that happens. And so what I would say to people is that's something you have that's free. Cause I'm not selling anything.

Breathing.

And the pace of breathing and what's.

The pace that works best? I mean, there's lots of different techniques of meditative breathing.

They found, you know, it doesn't matter. People say through your nose or mouth and that's kind of the confusing stuff that's out there. Well, the nose and the mouth connect before they get to the trachea and it goes to your lungs. So it doesn't matter how, but it's about slowing the cadence and making the cadence more methodical. A deep breath in and a deep breath out. It's no different than what we do in surgery when you feel the case getting a little out of your control.

What do you do?

Well, the first thing is I just slow my breathing down. And that doesn't mean the solution will arise, but I know that puts me in my most calm and focused state to find the solution for the problem in front of me. And likely that's what athletes at Thrive do as well.

You don't want your brain surgeon being like, well, exactly.

But that's what stress does. It makes you hyperventilate, right? Absolutely. But if you do, that's a great point. If you just hyperventilate just because you're just doing it as just whatever, for whatever reason, you'll get physically jittery. You will give yourself anxiety by just doing that.

Yeah, I felt that just for a second.

I'm showing you the proof on the other side. Do the opposite of hyperventilation and you'll make yourself less frenetic.

Whenever I have any problem, in that moment, I actually think it's life or death, whether it's someone saying something about me or, oh, this gig might not happen or whatever. And so every time I have that, a question Michael Beckwith taught me to ask is, what is trying to emerge out of me that I've never been before, but I actually am? Are you recording this? 'Cause this is cool if you want this. Like a caterpillar, if it's a caterpillar's walking on a stick, if there's a wall here, right? The victim caterpillar goes, oh, there's a wall here. I'm not gonna do this, right? The achiever caterpillar, the make it happen motivation caterpillar, I'm going to get over the wall, right? What's trying to emerge out of me, caterpillar, goes, I think I'll just sit here for a week and do nothing. And then it's cocoon forms and eventually it has wings and this thing's a non-issue. It's nonexistent. So I've had it before where someone talks crap about me, right? Now the victim caterpillar goes, I'm going to leave this. The achievement caterpillar goes, I'm going to prove them wrong.

Right?

I'm gonna have another number one comedy special, central special, and show them that I'm... But the what's trying to emerge out of me caterpillar goes, okay, this thing is here. What illusion, what story am I in for this thing to even be an existing thing? And for me, that shift happened when I was... Comics were giving me crap because it was this positive guy. And all of a sudden I was like, I cared what they thought about me, but something was trying to emerge out of me. so I had to sit and I sat in a hotel for a long time and I felt all this pain in me that was like trying to the most I knew at that point was how do I show them they're wrong? How do I? And then eventually I noticed my mind was coming up with all these solutions, but I was just sitting on a bed safe, but my mind was literally fighting for its life for days, but I'm totally safe. And we always are sitting here in a place of thinking I got to fix this problem. and we're actually in fight or flight life or death mode when we're totally safe, almost the entire life. So at one point I saw my mind was doing this and I realized I'm not my thoughts because my thoughts are coming up with this and I was separate from the thoughts and I realized I'm the one looking at this. And all of a sudden my entire life story collapsed and I was just this moment and I stared at a wall for like five hours and I felt totally free. And I realized I felt a freedom that was even better than who I am is having a number one Comedy Central special or whatever it is. I'm actually this moment only. And I felt freer than I'd ever had been. And I flew back home after that and I tried to get my DVD player to play a movie and it wouldn't play it. And then tried a second one. I tried six movies and it wouldn't play it. Finally the movie Adaptation played. And there's a scene in the movie where Nicolas Cage says to his brother, he goes, In high school, there's a girl you really loved. and she was saying crap about you and you didn't care. And he said, why is that? And the brother said, Because whatever she says about me, she can't take away from me how much I love her. And then he said, you, are what you love, not what loves you. And I realized the only reason I had been stressing was I was under the illusion that who I am is what they think about me. And how could I be what someone thinks about me? What one person thinks about, one person could hate me, one person could love me. their issues with me have to do with their crap and their childhood and their past. So if I think one person loves me, I become that and then think this person, no, I'm not what they think of me. I'm, do I accept what they all think of me? I'm, do I love them in their hatred of me? And when you go back to your childhood, that's who you actually are in your natural childhood state. You're just always, you don't care what, you don't even know about what people think about you and you know what you want to be. You know you're going to be a singer, a dancer, a you're not thinking about, well, yeah, but I got to consider this or will I sell enough or you just be that. And then society turns us into a consumer. So what our natural, so when I was under the fear of what these people thought about me, I was under the illusion that who I was was what they thought about me. And that was my caterpillar moment. And so every time I have any issue at all, I ask myself what Michael Beckwith said is what's trying to emerge out of me. So, I'm excited with every time I have a conflict because I always know that only a story is scared, only an old identification is scared, only, like if someone's talking crap about me, that only affects me because I think who I am is my reputation. But if I get to, I'm just this moment, then I can handle the lightness or the darkness of everything that everyone else thinks, and then I can do bigger things.

Mm-.

Because I'm more in alignment with the entire world versus I'm this zone. I don't know if that makes sense. Of course.

Yeah.

But so, yeah.

Wow, man. Wow. Well, we'll start off there.

I didn't realize we'd start in mid-.

We will start it off there.

You're here with Kyle Cease. Exactly. Most attractive.

Exactly. Powerful. Well, welcome everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got Kyle Cease in the house. Thank you so much for being here, man. I'm excited for this and for that intro, which we'll keep in.

I'm honored to be with you.

Yeah, I'm very excited about this and I think before we just had about like an hour and a half conversation about many things, things you're going through, other things that we're excited about in life, similarities, mutual friends, things like that. But I found out about you on Facebook, a Facebook video that you were promoting a while ago or one of your videos that went viral. And you've got a book out right now that my friend Michelle is publishing from Simon and Schuster and it's called I Hope I Screw this Up: How Falling in Love with youh Fears Can Change The world and I'm telling you guys go get this book right now. It's it's gonna be life-changing for you.

Thank you youu were you were a.

Comedian for 20 years. Is that right? Or comedy circuit?

Yeah, I started when I was 12 actually 12. I was oblivious to the idea that I couldn't do it, you know, and we're kids. We just start I started doing it before nerves existed in me.

That's good.

I hadn't learned yet life isn't that easy. And so I started doing comedy and I remember one thing that was so funny when I was like 15 years old. I remember thinking I was working clubs and I remember- 15. 15, yeah. 15, 16 around there.

In LA or where?

In Seattle. I grew up in Seattle. I actually started doing it in second grade. My teacher told me during class that if I'd be quiet, she'd give me five minutes at the end of the week to do whatever I wanted. And at the time, my uncle was the prop man for the famous 80s comedian Gallagher, who was the guy that smashed the watermelons. He was like a carrot top of the 80s. So I would do his act, which I didn't get. So with a southern accent, I'd talk about sex and taxes with a southern accent to kids in elementary school.

Second graders, yeah.

Yeah, and but I always, people always said, One day you're gonna be a comedian. And even that felt too distant for me. It was like I got mad, I'd be like, I'm famous now. Like in junior high, people would be like, One day we're going to see you on TV. And I would go, I'm in the yearbook and I'm featured in the local paper.

Right.

And whenever you think I'm going to be, you're implying you're not there. You're now at day one of it versus day, you know, year 10 of it.

Right. Right?

So I was enjoying... You were saying.

I am this now, I'm not going to be this.

Yeah, this, I'm going to... Achievers always look at victims and say, your limited belief is I can't. Achievers limited belief is I'm going to. Because you're either on the treadmill or you're not. You're either meditating or you're not. And there's so many times people go to seminars and they get all pumped about their next year plan and it feels so good in their mind that they don't do anything anymore.

Right.

Right? It's like that almost was the addiction.

They got the good feeling so they just keep going to more events every week.

Right.

It'd be like going to the gym and having them explain to you what a treadmill and all the benefits you'll get from a treadmill, and you're like, Awesome, and then you leave, but you didn't get on it. And we have this one addiction that we never, I think everything's an addiction almost. We think it's alcohol or drugs, but it's also worrying, it's controlling other people, it's... Happiness is an addiction. Yeah, excitement. Anything's an addiction. I mean, I'm so excited that's coming.

So I'm not in the now about right now.

I think this thing's bigger than right now. Well, I'm excited about this trip that I'm always gonna be going on.

Right.

If you think, like, if I was doing this talk with you, and then later today I was gonna be on, like, whatever, Obama's, you know, or something. If I thought who I was gonna be on.

Wait, Obama's got a show now? Let me know. Yeah, if you get me on after.

We have a great comedian. It's not a good, I'm not. But if I thought that was who I am, a huge illusion we are is when we're in this illusion, I think a huge illusion we live in is this. When something happens, I'll be happy. Every one of us can think right now, we live in this world of when I finally get that number one show, when I finally get out of this relationship, when I finally get that body, that job, that career...

Launch that book.

Launch that book, right. Exactly.

If you- wrote about that in your first couple pages. When I finally write this book, then they'll take me seriously. Right. You said something like that or... yeah.

Because that's the illusion. Right away you're like, I got to do this right.

Right?

What does that mean? I got to do this the right way. When people say, how do I do this? What they're actually saying is, what does how mean? How do you even know if it's the right or wrong way? If I got something for it, right? How do I write a book? You got to do it the right way, meaning I'm not complete unless I get something. You're writing from fear because you're saying, I'm in lack unless this sells a ton or people like it. So when I go on stage, if I'm like, how do I do a good job? I'm immediately under the illusion that who I am is what the audience thinks about me. And I'm not just love as is, that I'm in lack of love. So I'm actually creating from a place of lack every time I want something.

Right?

I'm creating from a place of I'm not enoughness. So if I'm under the place of when something happens, I'll be happy, I'm actually saying I'm not enough until I have that thing. The shift that I had after getting to have a lot of things, I was in the movie, like not another teen movie. I don't know if you've ever seen that, but Between 10 things I hate about you, Yeah, I was in that too. But I remember getting the audition for Not Other Teen Movie and thinking, if I just went to Producers, you know, and then I got to Producers and.

I was more enslaved.

If you just got to Producers. Meaning like if I could just get to the Producers, like the second audition. Right, right, get a call back and get a call back. Yeah, so then I get that and I'm like, if I just book this, I'll be happy. Now I'm more intense, more not happy. And then I booked it and then I'm like, okay, if my part just stays in, so they're editing it for nine months and I'm just totally like, Please give me that one line. Then it's in there. You're like, okay, now I get the bigger movie. I'm like, now I gotta get another movie and this one better be a hit. So if you think when something happens, I'll be happier. If I get that person, I'll be happy. You're actually saying I'm in lack without that thing. And immediately you put yourself in a place of making that thing bigger than you and your connection is to that thing. So if it leaves, you're not happy. It's your oxygen. So you strangle it and that's why everything we think we want we lose because you're not ready for it if you want it. You got to get to a place where you love you enough where the thing just naturally comes to you or better. Because if you think I want that thing, right? If you're saying when I get that, I'll be happy, you're not going to be able to create it nearly as much as when I'm happy things will happen. When I don't need something to make me happy, then you can create, and I totally believe in motivation, all that. It's so important. but I can't believe how much stuff wants to come to me that's so much bigger than the thing that I think that I'm going to get. Everything you think you want from here, the biggest vision board in the world, still includes some of our past story. And our past story includes our lack and our doubts.

Yeah.

So the best vision board I could make for this year is nothing compared to what could actually happen if I instead just fall in love with not knowing and show up and stay in the room. if I just don't know what I'm gonna say. So like when I do my events, we do these Evolving Out Loud two-day events, I don't know what I'm going to say at all. I speak the whole time. There's nothing scheduled. If I had scheduled something, I'd be immediately enslaved to it has to go this way. The expectation of a certain look. Yeah, so then you're not going with the moment, you're going with the it has to be this way. So I'm not moving from my heart, I'm moving from my memory and my head from what I scripted because I wanted to do it the right way so I could get something from the audience. But if instead I start with I don't know what I'm going to say and I love that. What if we start this podcast with I don't know what's going to happen and I love that. I love not knowing. How much more freedom do you have because we are under the illusion that when we think I don't know that we have to learn how to know. But what if you instead let it unfold how it wants to and then you can play, then you're in your heart, Immediately, you're not stuck in it has to be a certain way. Sure. And then everything that happens is perfect.

Yeah. I'm aligned to that, but I also think it's good for us to have a vision of what we want, too.

Totally.

Right. As opposed to like, oh, we'll just see how this book unfolds and I'll just start writing and whatever happens, happens. Totally.

I think you have to have a vision of like, well, my intention is to impact and inspire people with words. Now, what if by doing that, the vision shows up versus aiming it? In other words, it's just a thought. Because what my vision is is still here, but it's about my connection to myself. And then everything that I create outside of it is a byproduct of that.

True.

Right? So the vision's still there. The vision is I want to connect to myself. But if my vision is I want a million of these to sell, okay? What if inside I could have created something that could have made a billion of these sell? But I'm sitting here going, It's got to be a million. And so I'm already on a track of this way versus me just going, what could I just create now? And you just create stuff like you're planting gardens all over the place.

So do you think we shouldn't have goals at all?

I think intention is cooler than goals. I definitely think goals are important. But a goal is I want to make this thing happen, right? An intention is different. An intention is I'm going to align with playing and still have a direction. Like I'm not like accidentally working at a fast food place.

Right, right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. You're doing something you love.

Right. And the real way I do this is actually I just ask myself, this might sound crazy, but it's really cool. I ask myself, what in my life feels light and expands my body? And what feels heavy? Okay? Everything in my life that feels heavy, unless it's something I have to have, like if I have a kid or something, right? If it feels heavy, that's a different thing. For instance, we have two voices in our body, I really believe. The first voice says something that's just a feeling and it'll just tell you the next step. So the voice shows up and it goes something like, what if I just leave this company?

Right?

You're working for a company, you're not fulfilled at. The voice shows up, what if we just leave this? It can't tell you why because you've never done it, but it feels kind of expansive. It feels good that and that feeling is a preview. It's saying when you leave this, you'll always feel this way. So you can feel that and we have this voice all day. It's the voice that says, I'm going to go to Italy or I want to just write a book or what if I start a band or what if I ask that person out or leave this company? So there's this first voice that goes, what if we do that? And you can feel it in your body. It feels crazy. And then a second voice shows up that we've learned to listen to that's a small voice in here but it's louder. And it goes, yeah, and it comes up with the stupidest reason why we shouldn't. So it goes, what if we leave this company? Yeah, but if we do, we can't go to the Cheesecake Factory party next Thursday. Or I'll get that bonus or...

Right.

And the first voice goes, Dude, if you'd learn to listen to me, I can't tell you this because I want you to move based on faith. But if you learn to listen to me, you'll own all the Cheesecake Factories in a month and you can make them all vegan if you want. Right, right. And the second voice is like, yeah, but they got those Thai lettuce wraps. Anyone who's ever stayed in a relationship too long because they know eventually both of you are going camping know what I'm talking about. You go, I want to break up with this person, but Thanksgiving's coming, so I guess I'll hate them until Thanksgiving and stay in hell until Christmas.

And then, what's the next one? Valentine's Day. And I can't break up before then.

Right.

And then I'm in routine because summer's coming and yeah.

Right. So what I've discovered is that the goal or the idea unfolds itself the more I align with my body. So when I do something that excites me, just taking the next step, like a GPS doesn't tell you all the directions, right? It just says, here's the next thing to do. So the way I like to work that has seemed to work really well is to go with trusting the moment and trusting that that feeling that says, I'm going to put you in your body. If you move into your body, that means you just let go of some of your old stories. Because you can feel when you're in your head, it's right here, right? But if you move into something that feels like an opportunity and you say yes to it immediately, can I give you an example? I'm totally talking so much right now. I'm just excited to be with you. You're the guest, man. That's right, right?

You're the show.

I'm like, Hey, do you mind if I tell you a story on the thing that I'm talking about?

How do I hear myself talk?

That's why I brought you on. Well, here, let's make it look that I'm letting you talk even less. Thanks. Do you have any questions?

Yeah, go ahead. What are you thinking about right now, Louis?

Louis, thanks for asking. Here's a great example. One day I was doing an event at the time we had 200 people in the audience. There were 200 people.

This week, man.

I know.

Step your game up.

Well, that's what happened is we had.

A goal of how many people you'd want to reach. Maybe you'd reach more.

Well, check this out. It's so weird you say that. There's not even a camera here.

If you had 1400, Thank you. Person theater that you said, I want.

To fill this theater.

Right. Well, this is what happened.

Why are you limiting yourself? Well, that's what, well, check this out. So that's weird because what you're saying and what I'm saying actually complement each other. They're perfect. You do need goals, you need this, but there's also this element of playing with what you're feeling and learning stuff that might even be beyond the goal. Because sometimes people have a goal like, I just want to make this relationship good. and I'm going to come up with this thing, but they might actually still be with someone that doesn't align with them. True. Or I'm going to be number one at this job. Meanwhile, you're ignoring this thing that's like.

I could be in a band or.

Creating this thing that I love. Doing art, music.

Yeah.

So what level is your goal at? Is it your goal that you think when I finally get there, I'll be happy from a limited space? Or what happens if we surrender more and hear a goal that's even higher and crazier? and weirdly, we'll move there faster if we stop trying so much and allow. So, Dan, my teammate, said to me, he goes, We just did a 200 seat event. And it was actually hard to fill at the time. And Dan said, so what do you want to really do? And I said, I want to do a 2000 seater. And right when I said that, my body got excited and my brain showed up and went, Dude, you barely showed 200, yeah. Right? And I actually felt two bodies. Like I want to do 2,000 seats, but this is, here's why I can't. Right? And we have this with everything. I want to leave this company. Yeah, that'd feel good. Yeah, but I wouldn't make any money. You can't see how much money you're losing by staying in a job you hate.

Yes.

Right?

So immediately it's too, so I said to Dan, okay, I feel this opportunity here, but there's this fear. If you step into the opportunity, The fear goes away because the fear isn't of the thing you're about to do. It's of choosing to do the thing you are about to do. When people go skydiving, they always say the scariest moment is when I'm looking over the side of the plane. You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah.

But that, you're safe in that moment. They always say when I leap off the plane, I'll be fine. You're going 10,000 miles an hour. I'll be fine once I jump and I'm completely not safe.

Yeah.

You weren't scared of skydiving. You were scared of choosing to let go of your old story.

Right?

Yeah. So he said, what do you want to do? I said, I want to do 2,000 seats. Okay, let's call the Saban Theater. We call the Saban Theater. So that's my skydive, right? Say yes, make a decision, go, right? Let's lock in the date, let's figure out the rates. Right, let's get stuck in, we have to sell 2,000 seats, right? So we call the Saban Theater and find out it would cost $60,000 to rent it for a weekend. So immediately both bodies showed up again. Do you want to pay 60,000? Yeah, but I can't. So we just find where I said yes, tell them yes. Okay. So I said yes and immediately my mind went to another channel where it had different ideas that was not the limited guy that was going to make this choice. Now I'm a guy who does 2,000 Cedars. Wow. So my mind was actually asking very different questions because I had said yes to this. So right when I said that, my mind came up with this. It goes, What if you, there's a radio show called KPFK, a public funded station. What if you just donated a thousand tickets to them and let them, for their fun drive, raise money and give them out. And my body then went, that would be very easy and effortless, but I have to make money to fill the theater.

Right. Right.

So I texted KPFK, a friend of mine there, and I said, I'm going to give you a thousand tickets. And they said, well then we're giving you your own radio show. I didn't realize this feeling was including a bunch of stuff that I didn't know about. Whenever you're scared to let go of something, the only reason is because your mind can measure what you will lose. It can't see what you will gain. So when you're scared of breaking up with someone, your mind is scared because it's focused on the loss of one person versus the gain of 7.2 billion people if you're bisexual and willing to date everybody.

Absolutely.

So immediately I said to KPfK, I'll do that. They said, yeah, you got it. Then I found out Saban Theater is taking too long to get back to us, so we're gonna find another theater. So we called the Alex Theater in Glendale. They were like $15,000 for the theater. And KPFK immediately-- 1400 seats. It was 1400, which was like, that's a great step up. KPFK immediately fills the theater with 1000 seats, and we're so excited that the other 400 was so easy. And I realized it was easier to fill 1400 seats than 200 seats because we're more excited about it. And the higher excitement you are, the more you don't see how it won't work. When you're in a good mood, you can make anything work. You know, when you fall in love with someone and you make anything work, you could be like, oh, you hate cherries. I love cherries. Great. I'll just eat them and you don't. Or we both like cherries. It like everything fits. Yeah.

Right?

So when you're in a good mood, you don't see how it won't work. And when you do something that excites you, you immediately put yourself into a good mood. It's almost like going to channel 100. Channel 2 is still available in the room, but you only see what you're tuned to. So when he said, what do you want to do? There's a speaker named Bashar that says that who I like a lot. He's cool. But Dan said to me, what do you want to do? And my body came up with all these reasons why I can't. The old story couldn't, not me. And whenever you're scared to let go of something, you're not scared of letting go of that thing. You're scared of letting go of your old story that got love for being in that limitation. And you'll realize that who you are is just this moment. And this moment doesn't have problems. There are stories that show up. You might go, I'm scared. I'm whatever. But you'll realize it's your past story that got love for being scared. Yeah, it's scared, not you. So you might go, so what I have people do at our events is I have them go, They say whatever their fear is and follow it with, and I love that. Because it's not your fear that's bothering you, it's your resistance to the fear.

Give me an example. So... What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of the most right now in your life?

Anything in particular?

Yes.

As we do this more and more... What's this?

Put yourself out there more.

As we put yourself out there more...

Reach a bigger audience and speak more.

Yeah, I think one thing is what people think of you, how people perceive themselves in you. There's all kinds of different stuff like that. If there's anything in particular that you're scared of, like, I'm scared that I won't be enough. I'm scared someone will... You'll realize that the fear is inside you. It's not outside you. And the reason it's there is because we're in resistance to the fear. If you say, I'm totally nervous and I love that, immediately you free yourself because you become the space that's looking at the nerves. versus the nerves itself.

So, you mean you're separating yourself from it? Right. You're looking at the nervousness as opposed to it being you?

Yeah. So, what's something you're scared of?

I'm.

Staring at a blank wall right now. I'm trying to think.

Should we ask them? I don't know.

What's my big fears?

I mean, or their fear? Oh, that'll be alone.

Is that my big fear? I don't know if that's my big fear anymore.

Let's say it works.

Okay. Yeah.

Say, so say I'm going to be.

Alone and I love that. I'm going to be alone and I'll.

And I love that.

Yeah.

Immediately.

What's that feel like when you say that? Um, I don't know.

It doesn't feel scary.

Right.

Because it's not being a lot. People go, well, yeah, but what if I don't get the job? They're deciding, it's their judgment that they think they should get the job, that's the problem. Versus, yeah, if you don't get the job, that's gonna be space for a.

Better job or whatever.

Right, right, right, right. So it's not that you're scared you'll be alone, it's that you're scared, it's that you're in resistance to that you're scared that you'll be alone. Yes. But if you love that you'll be alone, what happens is there's a little you that shows up that hasn't been seen by our parents in a certain way, and it's trying to do things the right way to get love the way it did in its childhood. Yeah. And we need to be the space of love for that kid now. And by the way, with all the things that you want in your life, way better things will show up when you clear out this crap through loving it.

Right? So, loving your fears.

Loving your fears. So if I said, you know, accepting.

It, loving it, acknowledging it, and saying.

Okay, fall in love with your fears because the only problem is you're addicted to an old story where that fear, you got love for it. that all this fades, right? Everything fades and eventually your memories will too, but I'm a big... That's the only thing I truly like to collect. I have no problem canceling something or spending some money on something or whatever, if we're gonna get a great memory out of it.