Consciousness Is Your Most Valuable Product

Hello. Hello. This is the Big Leap. My name is Mike Koenigs, and this is yous Consciousness Is yous Most Valuable Product. And Gay, what are we gonna be talking about in this episode?

Well, this is really exciting stuff because we're talking about your consciousness and how your consciousness is actually your most important product and how to work with that and refine that consciousness so that it makes it more likely that your chosen goals and dreams will come true faster.

All right, and one of the things that Gay does is he opens up with a really interesting, very compelling story. You might not know this about him, but there was a time when he needed big, thick glasses. He was very, very overweight. And it's how a slip on his head actually changed his life. And I actually talk about my fear of getting out in front of audiences and in the public and how I broke through that. All of that and more, including how to create and craft a very compelling future for yourself in this episode of the Big Leap.

All right, Gay, we're talking about your consciousness is your most valuable product. And when we were brainstorming, I know you have a story you want to open up with that describes why your consciousness is your most valuable product.

Yes, I do. And the context for that is most good businesses are in the business of constant product refinement. And I mean, think of the thousands of people that sit in rooms at Apple or Google and work on a tiny little refinement of a very big thing. Well, in our world, I want you to think of your consciousness as your biggest product, your most important product, because it's the thing that everything else depends upon. And so I think we need to be in the process of constantly refining our consciousness in a number of different areas. And I have a personal story on that that takes me into kind of a tender, vulnerable place in myself. But bear with me. When I was 24 years old, I weighed 320 pounds. Today I weigh 180 pounds and have for many, many years. I weighed 320 pounds. I wore a pair of big thick glasses. I smoked two or three packs of Marlboros a day. And I was in a relationship that wasn't going well, and my job wasn't working very well, and I didn't even like my car very much. So I had about, of my eight cylinders, of my being about six, seven of them were firing improperly. And so, as you might expect, I hadn't created anything of value or made any big contribution or anything like that by age 24. And I was beginning to feel a lot of pressure, especially with the overweight. Because my father had been incredibly overweight. And I guess I'd inherited some sort of gene from him, but he'd been incredibly overweight. And he'd actually died before I was born. So I never really knew him. But somehow I was living out his life because he died when he was 35, very obese, smoking heavily in a not so good relationship. And so I realized I was about to recreate my life, but not in a very good way. And so I had this moment when I was 24. Of shocking myself into a different state of consciousness. And the way my unconscious chose to do that was to arrange to have me slip on the ice and slam down real hard on my back on an icy road in New England. And I was out for a walk to clear my head after I'd had a big argument. And I was out walking. And I stepped on a place where the snow was covering the ice. And my feet shot right out from under me, and I went wham. And I didn't knock myself out, but I knocked myself out. I say I had an out of Hendrix experience because it kind of knocked me out of my normal way of seeing the world. And for about two minutes, I lay there on the ice, this kind of shivering, but out of my usual state of consciousness. And in that moment, something happened that has affected the rest of my life. The first thing that happened is I realized I could have almost killed myself. Because where I landed was about 6 inches from a jagged rock that was sitting near the road. That was a shocker. As I was realizing that, I realized, wow, if I could have died this moment, what would my life have been? And I realized it would have not been a very interesting movie to watch. And so in that moment, I had this experience of being able to feel and see myself all the way down, sort of to the center of my psyche. I felt my emotions, I felt my body. And I could feel how I ate to deal with my emotions. I overate to deal when I was lonely or scared or in any kind of emotional upset. And that was where a lot of my 140 extra pounds came from. So in this moment, though, I felt beneath that to where I could feel this, what I call a state of pure consciousness, which was consciousness without any stuff on it. And I realized that's our birthright. That's what we get. That's what we get as human beings is that clear space of pure consciousness. That then all of our programming gets laid on top of that and gradually obscures that and takes us away so we don't even think we have it anymore. You might call that part of yourself your spirit or your soul. I'm talking about that part of yourself which just is. It doesn't have any programming on it. If you lived next door and had completely different programming, you would still have that pure consciousness in you. It's a human birthright of ours. And so that moment had this tremendous impact because as I was laying there, I made a commitment. And the commitment was to feel that state of pure consciousness in every day of my life.

As I came out of that experience. It only was like two minutes or so. As I came out of that experience, I felt myself. Oh, no, here I am in my old body again. I still weigh 300 and some pounds. I want a cigarette. Still wearing glasses. And it was kind of like a feeling, really sad for a moment about coming back into my regular body. But I had that commitment at the forefront, that commitment of always feeling that state of pure consciousness. So I began to think of my whole existence as refining that consciousness so that there wasn't anything in the way of that showing up out into the world. So there was no difference between that consciousness and what my body looked like or that consciousness and how my eyes worked. And over the next year, by keeping a focus on that, I lost more than 100 pounds and quit wearing glasses. My eyes changed so that I no longer had to wear glasses to pass my driving test and still don't hear 50 years later. And so that moment changed everything for me. Because in that moment, I began for the first time to think of myself as an instrument of consciousness. And that just like a professional musician, I had to work on polishing my consciousness every day of my life. So to do that, I learned things like how to meditate, for example, which I still do every day of my life. I learned a lot about my emotions, and I learned a lot about body and nutrition. And for a year I ate only foods that I'd never eaten before. So I really went into a radical period of redesigning my life, but always with this idea of refining my consciousness. And so the main thing I want everybody to get out of this is how to think of themselves now as a whole person consciousness. Because usually what happens is we think of ourselves as a mental consciousness. We think of consciousness as a mental thing, but actually it's a whole person thing involving mind, body, emotion, spirit, all aspects of ourselves. And so I want to riff a little bit with you, Mike, and see if that fits with your experience and how that lands for you.

Well, while you were going through that, I typed up some notes. So first of all, I do resonate with that, and I think through some significant events in my own life where I felt there was a radical reinvention that occurred in a matter of moments through great pain or a super positive experience. And, you know, when you think about what matters most. I mean, I'll give you one. For example, it was. I think this is. It's been known and called a lot of different things, but it's that moment in a teenage boy's life where there's an opportunity to transition from boyhood to manhood. And at one point, someone I was. There was a book I read and I thought they called it like the Saturn phase or the prince to night phase. It's something like that. It's something that occurs. And there's an astrological component to this. But one of mine was. I grew up in a musical family. My dad's a very good performer, but because he was the spotlight, he sang, he danced, he played guitar. And he's very talented and great rhythm and just a great showman. Told lots of jokes. And I didn't really realize this at the time, but part of it came from small guy syndrome. He was always very short, and so he had to make up for that by being funny and charming and. And everything else. And I, of course, took on some of the best and worst qualities that went along with that. And when I grew up, I was like, I want to play guitar too. And he goes, nope, you're going to play bass guitar. And I'm like, I don't want to play bass guitar. That sucks. I want to actually play drums. It's like he basically wanted to have a playing buddy. But I didn't understand at the time how unbelievably endearing and charming this would be. And because he was a soloist, I wanted to be the soloist, but I didn't have the skills and the capabilities to do it. And later on in time, it was our teenage years. I'm sure I was 14 or 15 years old. It was before I could drive. I got to borrow from our band, and I played brass, so I played tuba and trumpet and bass guitar. I taught myself how to play drums. But the band teacher let me take home a set of drums for the summertime. And I sat downstairs and I practiced every day until I got the.

Down. And.

Then pretty soon we were playing with records. And I had a couple buddies who came over. A couple played guitar Another guy sang and we started playing garage band stuff. And I can remember the moment, the moment was we're playing in a garage, there's neighborhood girls who I've known since I've been five or six years old, and they're watching me play drums. They're like, holy cow. Because I was good at it, you know, I really. It was like my moment. And we're playing some AC DC music and I got up and one of my buddies sat down at the drums and I started to sing and I. I forgot the words and it would have been my moment. I became hyper conscious and self aware, super humiliated. And I went back in shame, back to go play the drums. And I didn't recover from that moment of shame for years. And not knowing that I had actually had another moment of shame. When I was five or six years old, my dad used to come to my kindergarten, play guitar and I'd sing with him and. And for some reason someone laughed at me or something like that. Again, shame and humiliation. And I never overcame. And I didn't sing. I just didn't sing ever again. And so I spent the next probably 15 years of my life always behind the camera. I got great at technology, I knew how to perform, I understood good performance, but I didn't do it and I didn't evolve. And, and I know. So my point is you had an awakening where dropping on your head opened you up and you made transformational shifts. Mine went inward and I turned scared and I didn't break through until years later when I started evolving and developing other capabilities. And to this day now, you know, I spent a lot of time I have on stage in front of camera, but it took years to overcome the shame, the humiliation, the fear. And, and, and I know a little bit about the why. So I'll let you comment a bit and then I've got some observations from your initial conversation here. I'll share.

Yes, well, first of all, I didn't know about the drumming part. Do you know that I used to play drums? I taught myself to play drums too. As a matter of fact, I was thinking the last song I played on stage with my band was in the Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett back when it was popular. So figure out what year that was. 69 or like that. So maybe 67, but. And I also. I don't know if you can see it in the background, but I have a valve trombone back there. So I also play brass instruments.

So, yeah, we talked about that because last time we got together and did a Brainstorm, you pulled out your valve trombone. And I have a huge love because I used to play. I did marching band, Dixieland band and concert. Even after high school I played in a couple local bands and that's a. That is probably my. If, if I had to mark down any.

It's.

I'll call it a regret because that's the easiest way to package it. But I have great instruments. But I've been so focused and busy.

Building, growing other aspects of my life that that is a area of great joy that I don't express. And just yesterday I was down at our beach place and I opened up one of my prized possessions. So I have two of them. One of them is a Gibson 1959American.

SG, which is a flawless star, you know, Starburst. It's like the rock and roller guitar and it's, it's perfect, you know, and they cost a fortune. But I won it in a contest and I've been saying for 10 years, I'm gonna just, you know, break down and really do it, which I will.

The second is.

My dad, who can't play any longer. He's in hospice now, but I have his Martin guitar. It's the only thing I wanted.

You know, from, you know, like when we went through the cycle of shutting down, winding down my parents lives and they're.

In.

You know, they're, they're in the last parts of their lives. My dad isn't conscious anymore and he lost his ability to play, perform, sing. But that was the one thing. So it's standing there and that is the part of my world that I've really realized in this evolution that I hadn't given myself permission to perform and be larger than my own father. That was a big breakthrough I made. I don't even know how long ago I've been mildly aware of it, but acutely aware of it as I've aged.

That's what I call in the big leap, the fear of outshining that you have some person early in your life that's the star, the golden boy or whatever, and the designated star. And then later on in life you kind of have a fear of outshining that person. Well, I'm glad you broke through it and I hope you get back to music. Just looking around my office here.

Instead of having a career in music, which I thought about doing as a teenager, I was very drawn to being a musician. And then my band teacher kept telling me these jokes that I think had a certain point to them. And one of them was, hey, Gay. Do you know the difference between an extra large pizza and a.

And a drummer in a rock and roll band? And I would say, no, Mr. Dotson. And he would say, an extra large pizza can feed a family of four. And so I think he was trying to push me out of a career in music. And I'm glad I kind of went the other direction because I think if you have to make a choice about whether you want to be a musician professionally, you probably shouldn't do it. But if you, you know, like my best friend for 30 years, Kenny Loggins, he never had a choice about it. He started writing songs when he was in junior high school. When he was 17, he wrote a hit song. And, you know, the only job he's ever had was he spent a few months as a bag boy at Vaughn's grocery store when he was a kid. Other than that, it's been pure music, but for him it was not a choice. So anyway, I think it's a. I just looking around my office, I have my shakuhachi flute, I have a mountain dulcimer, I have a bass guitar, I have a regular guitar. I have an electric guitar and my trombone, of course. And so I sort of flit from one to the other. I take my musical career now in two minute installations now.

I love that. Well, I have some very good friends who grew up on my street who I knew since I was 5 years old, and a couple of them did grow up to be professional musicians who, you know, one of the things that very frequently goes along with being a performer, especially who's on the road, is alcoholism, addiction, broken families and messed up kids. So I too did the same thing because that was a possibility to be kind of like, I was always a gearhead and an engineer, but I get that. And I think maybe one of our objectives, our mutual objectives, should be to have a little jam together when we are together next.

And strum a little bit. So I'm committed. I'm making the commitment right now. And I think maybe in our next episode we're going to talk about everything you need to have a big leap year. We'll talk about actually what it takes to make these kinds of commitments. And.

I'm going to commit right now to picking up the guitar and practicing on a regular basis and doing everything I can to make it not just a passion, but an ability obsession.

That's a great idea. And if I can steer you a little bit there, the one music I love to play when I was a teenager and I never Got to play enough of it was Dixieland music. And so happy work up a few Dixieland songs with you.

That sounds like a blast. Yeah. Who knows? Maybe one of these days. And I've looked for him before, but I'm always like, oh, it's such a pain in the ass and a bunch of space. I've almost bought a sousaphone a couple times. So, you know. But I don't know if I'm that committed. But I'll definitely pick up the guitar and learn some Dixieland, some strumming music. And I've always said, I've joked with you many times how much you look like Steve Martin, but I always said, you ought to learn how to play the banjo.

I've been stopped in the airport and asked for autographs by people who thought I was Steve Martin. A woman who thought I was Sting.

A guy who thought I was Malcolm McDowell. And who is the fourth one? Harrison Ford. So I sort of have a generic look, I think that makes people project something onto me like that.

There you go. Hollywood looks. Yeah, it's great. Well, it's the first time I remember distinctly, I was like, damn, you look a lot like Steve Martin. But I can definitely see the resemblance on all those guys. And, you know, a little bit of lighting, makeup and you could pull it off so well. Here I've got two questions for you that popped up. One of them is you opened up and you said something pretty interesting, which is.

Most good businesses are in the business of constant product refinement.

And that also holds true with humans. So I'm going to ask you this question. And the question is, why is your consciousness, your most valuable product, really getting back to that? But I'm going to give you a little construct that I was thinking about as you were telling your awakening story. Okay.

Yeah.

So. And I think about this a lot. And I always think about what's the distinction, connection, relationship between personal and business. You know, a lot of what I do these days is I talk about building personal brands, building business brands, and crafting stories that make people want you. And also I think about evolution of consciousness and life. So I was thinking about there's three phases, at least for the sake of this conversation, of constant evolution, both personal and business. So the first phase is the fight for life. And a business goes through that. It finds itself just like an individual does, and in doing so, develops an ego. And that ego is necessary. It's like the construct, the framework. It's selfishness in order to get and absorb and grow and live but at some point in that individual's evolution, if they are going to continue to evolve.

So from the fight for life into the fight for meaning. And in my experience and observation, that's when you have to learn how to become a non judgmental observer of your ego and avoid it. To be a great leader requires a certain level of ego control and release of that and also to become more aware and also empathic and compassionate. And then the third phase or third part of this is in order to stay.

In a place where you feel as though you can continue to contribute and provide ongoing meaning. It's to craft and create a consistent purpose or a compelling future. And I know one of the things that Tony Robbins used to say is the sign that someone's depressed is a lack of a compelling future. And that's usually where people get suicidal. They do not have a compelling future anymore. And I certain observe that in young people, for example, who seem sad and depressed, it's like where is a place for me inside of this? And I think that gets back to this constant need to evolve on an ongoing basis. So I'm going to stop there and just ask you, what's your observation or reflection on those thoughts?

Well, as I've worked with people over the years, at this stage I was calculating up a while back we were figuring out for another book I was working on that we'd worked with about 4,500 couples here. And I've also worked with about 1,000 business executives and about 20,000 individual people coaching over the years and various things. And from all of that experience, I would say that one major thing I've learned out of all that is, is that every breath you take is a breath of creativity or a breath of stagnation. And it speaks to what you're talking about there about the lack of a compelling future because. Well, just to give you an example, I started out working with juvenile delinquents. That was my first job. I was working in a school for juvenile delinquents for a couple of years before I went back to get my master's and then went to stanford for my PhD. And in those two years I really had a lot of learning compressed into a very short period of time.

At the time I knew nothing about psychology basically. And one thing I would observe about the kids though is that they would go through a stage sometimes of they would start getting depressed and then they would get depressed and more depressed and they would stop being able to visualize any kind of future for themselves. And this was at A time in the 1960s before there were good pharmacological treatments for depression. And so we had to kind of do whatever we could to help lift them out of that. Because inevitably, what would happen if they kept getting into that depressed cycle is they would do things like they would start tattooing themselves with jailhouse tattoos. And then they would have some kind of outbreak or acting out of some sort. They'd run away or get in a fight or take.

Drugs or something. That would really blow things up in their lives. And then they'd have to kind of start back at ground zero again. And so I saw that. What it really left an impression on me, though, is that lack of an ability to cast yourself into a positive future. Because I can remember conversations with these kids. They were all boys.

And all of them were ranging in age from about 14 to 17 years old. Like in there.

One conversation after the other, they would tell me that, you know.

What could possibly be a good life for me? How could I possibly have a good life? And I could see their pathway to it, but they couldn't see their pathway through it. And so I think there's a lot of validity in what you're talking about because. And it speaks back to this issue of taking on ourselves as an experiment in refining our own consciousness. Because every moment we're processing life, we're processing it from a place of, am I going to a positive future or am I trying to duck from a negative past? And I've been in both places. And that moment when I was 24 years old was the first time for me of really coming out of my old way of being and recasting myself as a person who had a positive future.

Yeah. And as I listened to you. I know.

I think I've told you this before, and I don't remember if we've discussed it on any of these episodes specifically, but a couple of years ago, I had a phase of my life where I felt very, very trapped on the hamster wheel of stuckness. And I know we've talked about it, but I'll reframe it a little bit and then relate it to how do you create and craft a compelling future for yourself? Especially given the fact that I think just like as we grow, we're like rings in a tree, and we start feeling this pressure. It's like the universe screaming at us. If you stay stagnant, you're going to blow up inside or outside, but you can't stay here. You cannot remain static. Life.

Requires evolution. And I think human life and human consciousness does too. And that really returns back to your consciousness. Being your most valuable product is awareness and realization that what got you here won't get you to the next level. And so in my particular case, I remember distinctly feeling as though I had developed a business where I became a bitch to my business. In other words.

All my efforts. It felt. Anyway, this wasn't completely true, but it felt that way was I was working my butt off to pay for a team and keep a business alive. That didn't serve me any longer. I did not feel like excited about it didn't get me up raring in the morning. And I had also outgrown and out evolved many of the people that I had been attracting. So the audience I was serving, and they were beautiful people, just, I wasn't fun any longer. There was no joy in it. And the business model itself, I could see it was going to break, which was event driven. Selling digital products.

Very heavily dependent upon Facebook ads, social media, and just stuff that no longer. It wasn't fun exciting. It was infested with the Kardashians and low frequency beings. And so I, I literally just didn't want to get out of bed. And I experienced what I believe was the first time I felt chemical depression kick in and anxiety, which was if I stay in this loop. And the other thing is because the machine depended on the machine to stay alive, the commitment and risk to keep this thing alive, to shut it down would cost a million and a half dollars to like wind it down and wrap it up. And I was like, I felt so dead. It's like all of this time I've been fighting to build something and now I've got an anchor and a noose around my neck. It just sucked. And so I didn't, I didn't feel like there was a way out. And that is definitely back to the compelling future.

And it took an enormous amount of self reflection and acknowledging that the way out and the way to maintain clear consciousness and joy was to detach from the illusion that I was in fact controlled and stuck and that there wasn't a way out because I was looking at it linearly using tools I had used for decades. And I had to find some way, some person, some process that would break the mold in the behavior and open up, you know, to, to basically cause the equivalent of what started this conversation in the first place. When you fell on your, on your. And smacked your head and had that moment, either it's got to happen to you or you got to happen to it in order to have that breakthrough. And I think that the question to ask right now is, how close are you to your evolutionary.

Band? It's sort of like a tree that's ready to explode and say, I am willing to have my universe rocked to d. To be destroy or separate from this ego, adopt a new one. Allow reinvention and the unknown to come in and learn to enjoy that pain and know that it is a sign of transformation about to occur, not an implosion or an explosion.

Yeah. It's like the pain. I don't know if you remember as a teenager, I used to feel pain in my joints because I was growing so fast. My ankles hurt for about a year. Year. One year. And my knees hurt for about a year. I think those kind of pains are the same pains we feel inside intrapsychically. It's like that quotation I use in my seminars from the Gospel of Thomas that says, if you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. But if you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you. The idea that if we keep our talents, our genius squashed down inside and hidden from ourselves, it causes trouble for us at all sorts of different levels, including physically.

Yeah. It's like the old biblical story about the talents, burying your talents. And you know, the Father God says, you bury your talents, you get nothing. I'll take them away from you.

I love. Dan Sullivan often says that when you quit providing value, the universe has a funny way of asking for all of its parts.

That's really true, though.

Really. It's time to be recycled. Bye. Bye.

I think I was ready to be recycled when I was 24 years old. I'd hit that place of total implosion and finally, whoosh. Fortunately, I was reborn out of it into a new life. Thanks to the power of commitment and a whole bunch of other good luck factors.

Yeah. Which I think what we can do is this is a perfect setting and a transition for our next episode that we have planned, which is everything you need to have a big leap year. And we will deconstruct the components and elements and take, you know, where we are right now, which is acknowledging and recognizing that your consciousness is your most valuable product. How are you going to evolve that? And are you willing? Are you able to release who and what you are, See the world through a completely different lens and do this? You know, we'll go down the path of both business and personal because I think that integration of purpose and providing value is all part of this conversation, Especially now when the. The blend between business and personal life. You know, we lived in this world now where we've so many of us have virtualized and digitized and dematerialized. We don't require.

The physical world to accomplish so many things because we can exist in the imagination, in the world of wonder, in the world of manifestation, where we can create so much value without having to move matter around. Now, I'm so excited about that.

It's a whole new era. And so maybe to conclude this session and to make space for the next one, I'd like to leave everybody with a wonder question which goes kind of like.

How can I best use my consciousness to make all of my goals and dreams come true?

How can I use my consciousness to make my most sacred goals and dreams come true? So wonder about that until we connect again.

I love it. I love wondering with you. And it turns on the imagination station. So to wrap this up, we've added a new feature now, and that is an opportunity to get a transcript for this episode and previous episodes. And you can do that. You pull out your mobile phone right now, fire up your text message, and text the letters BL, which stands for Big Leap to 8584-3453-1685-8434-5316. Of course, you can always go to. And if you're listening to us right now, you can watch us. We're doing these all in video@bigleappodcast.com it's also on the YouTube channel. And of course, we're everywhere. And the other thing that you can do that would make a huge difference in our lives and in yours is if you can think of one or two people right now who could benefit from this conversation, from this story, share this podcast with them, and also rate it and leave a comment on itunes because Gay and I pay close attention. We're very, very grateful for all your ratings and reviews. And the best way to grow a podcast is through referrals and connections and by building community. So, Gay, as usual, this is an absolute pleasure. I love creating with you. It's the highlight of my life. And anything else you want to say before we just let everyone go and prepare for our next one?

Well, back at you. As far as appreciation. I enjoy our conversation so much, and I've been stopped out on the street a few times by people saying, hey, that was cool, and referencing things that you and I said on this podcast. So I really appreciate, appreciate your input.

Fantastic. All right, well, this wraps it up for the big leap, and we will see you on the next one. This is Mike Koenigs and Gay Hendricks. Bye. Bye.