Transformative Psychedelic Therapy for Mental Health with Nick Hiter

If you're watching with us today and not listening only, you know, you're looking at this guy, you're like, man, that is a good-looking 30-year-old, right?

I'm actually 87.

Well, you're not far off, bro. Like, seriously, like, seriously, tell everybody how old you are.

I'm actually 44.

44. I'm 40. Let's see, what is this? I'm 43. I just turned 43, right?

So you look good too.

I appreciate it. There's definitely a lot of work that goes into this. Yeah, yeah. You talked about flow, and that's something else we've been talking about a ton because like, I'm literally like the CRM that we use that I designed, we call it Prospect Workflow. Yeah, your work has the flow, man. Your leads and, and everything has to flow through the funnel to get to the finish line, to get to happy customer and so on and so forth. And then your cut, and then your customer state has the flow to be a continued happy customer, right? So the flow is important. And it's funny, like, you know, if the water's coming out too fast, you can adjust how quickly it flows coming out of that nozzle with the knob, you know. But we don't always do that with the information we're taking in or really anything that we're bringing. I know I've been known to not manage the flow as I'm eating donuts from time to time.

You eat a few donuts, huh?

I do love donuts. I do love donuts. Now even eating those has a purpose, you know what I mean? But talk to me a little bit more about managing flow, because again, the information, it comes at you so fast and so hard, you have to be able to manage the flow of it to be able to, I don't know, decompress or just understand what it was that you heard or read or anything else. If anything, just validate the sources. You know, um, so talk to me about that.

So I'll tell a story. One of my VIP clients, uh, he's CEO of a film company, so one of the top film companies in, in North America, Southeast especially. And he was on the edge of burnout. And we, we sit down, we're about 2 hours into our VIP session, and I asked him— his name's David— I'm like, dude, you're, you're— he didn't say this, but I was like, you're looking for a way out of this business, aren't you? And they just had a record year. He got paid the most money he'd ever gotten paid, and his business had more success than it ever had. And I was like, and then let me guess, you're actually battling depression, aren't you?

Wow.

He's like, Mike, how'd you pick up on both of those? I didn't tell you anything about that. I was like, well, let me look at your life. And, and I, in my Zone of Genius process, I have people take 5 different personality tests because they all measure something different. And so I have an accumulation of the most clues they've ever had about their life, their gifts, their talents, where they suck at, where they're amazing at. I was like, David, based on, because we had looked in his workflow for his week, I'm like, looking at your workflow, you're playing radically out of position. You're trying to be an administrative CEO and you're a visionary CEO, but you're stuck in all these meetings and they're like death to you. Like if you put a life or death list, Your life is filled with mostly things that are bringing death and your body is literally almost revolting.

Yeah.

Like wanting to vomit up the toxicity. And he said, yeah, I just started antidepressants last month.

Wow.

And he's a healthy dude, married, you know.

Successful.

Yeah. And, but he unconsciously was acting in a way that he thought he was supposed to be as CEO. And in some way that was misaligned with his deepest gifts and what the company most needed from him. The company can grow incrementally, but he's a visionary CEO. He's supposed to take radical leaps. Yeah, like Steve Jobs takes radical leaps. Elon Musk, radical leaps. And not just, oh, it grow 10%. And, and so then in that session, the rest of the session, we started focus on rewiring his work schedule in alignment with his zone of genius, with his gifting, with his passion, with what lights him up. A month later, we do our next in-person session, and he had a glow on his face. He was happy. And he was like, Mike, I have more passion in my business than I had in 2 years. I'm more excited. And he cut out probably 60, 70% of the meetings that he was in, and he still had another 10 or 20% that he was reducing. Couldn't cut them all out, but he had reduced his administrative workload by 80% at that point. And he started— and the company started growing even faster. Yeah. Because he was inspired. Like, as a leader, yeah, what's our number one job? Whether you're leading your family or leading your sports team as a coach or whatever, I gotta make sure I'm inspired, I'm tapped in, right? Yeah.

It's, um, you know, again, when it comes to the mental health thing It's very important to me, in my opinion, and I'm no expert. However, I know when I've had— I'm always doing work on myself, development on myself, and, um, you know, you got to be careful. I've talked to Jim about this a ton, who also does a lot of personal development. You know, sometimes I'll say, hey man, Jim, it's almost like you're looking for more problems than— so that you got to remember you're looking for solutions, not more problems. What you focus on grows. What is the, uh What they say about, you know, skiers don't look at the trees, they focus on the path, because what you focus on is what you're going to hit.

Exactly.

Pilots don't look at the mountain, they look at their path, you know. So, you know, when you're working on yourself, it's so important to do that. Talk to me about more natural solutions out there, you know, with, you know, again, a few years ago, psychedelics were recreational only and bad, bad, bad. Yeah, but they're natural, they're here, you know what I mean? And, and, um, and anything that's natural, that's not poison, that's taken in moderation and with some, uh, expertise behind it can be helpful, right? So I'm big on nootropics. I love nootropics.

Me too.

Yeah, dude, let's talk about nootropics for a minute.

Yeah, so, you know, anything that enhances your brain's focus and gets you back into that peak zone— because you're like— I, I wrote my, my book when my wife was pregnant, first trimester. She was going to sleep at 9:30, so I was like, I'm just gonna get up at 4:30 and write my book for 3 hours. Jack myself up with this Genius brand nootropic and matcha tea and go to work.

We got to talk about that. I'm— I love— there's a company called Nootopia that I love their stuff, which is a lot about— I mean, I'd like to know more about yours as well, you know what I mean? But their Nootopia is fantastic, and I'm grateful for our relationship with there. But again, I'm just always looking to explore, you know, and expand, if anything, just so I can learn how great and Nootopia is.

Well, it sounds— if you love them and it's working, because also everybody's brain chemistry is slightly different, so one supplement could work for someone and not work for someone else. That's working for you then.

That's the thing, you know, I found nootropics through, um, uh, it was called, um, uh, through a company called Elevate at the time, Elevacity, and it was a happy coffee and they had a little happy pill, so it was a very mild dose of nootropics, but it did make a difference. And what I loved about the Nootopia products is they've got, they've got so many different lines of nootropics. So like you can stack them and literally you can make your own concoction, yeah, of nootropics. And that's when I really learned like the magic of like, all right, I mean, I can— it's a noticeable difference in how I feel, 100%, and tackling anything that we're doing or whatever it may be, all the way down from more energy to like sometimes I'm wittier and quicker. It's literally like the difference in when you get a great night's sleep versus a horrible night's sleep, dude. That's what nootropics can do if you do it right, right?

100%. And I think it's an underutilized resource in peak performance. So if I look at things that are underutilized in peak performance, uh, nootropics, um, would definitely be one. So it sounds like that's a great company. Secondly, NAD, because it's like basically your cellular fuel and cellular energy.

What's NAD?

Uh, chemical name stands for nicloanodidionuclide, if I remember correctly.

But we'll stay with NAD.

Yeah, yeah, right. I, I'm not even saying that fully correct. And, you know, but it's used in 500 cellular processes, so everything your body does. So think of it as the foundational cellular fuel.

Okay.

By the time you're 40, um, you're definitely deficient in America unless you're supplementing. So if you boost it back up, like, my levels are the equivalent of healthy 12-year-old now. Feel that way. My brain is like sharp. I can play 6, 7 games of basketball, full-court basketball on Monday nights, which I usually do now, without pain and inflammation and getting super tired. Um, so it's number one. Like, a lot of anti-aging guys are into it— Joe Rogan, Tony Robbins, um, uh, David Sinclair, Tom Brady. Bill Belichick required the Patriots to take it since 2018.

Wow, okay, that's awesome. Folks, if you're watching with us today and not listening only, you know, you're looking at this guy, you're like, man, that is a good-looking 30-year-old, right?

I'm actually 87.

Well, you're not far off, bro. Like, serious. Like, seriously, tell everybody how old you are.

I'm actually 44.

44. I'm 40. Let's see, what is this? I'm 43. I just turned 43, right?

So you look good too.

I appreciate it. There's definitely a lot of work that goes into this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You gotta take care of ourselves. But then, you know, with NAD, the product I use is GINFINITY, and that's the best one I've found. I've tried a bunch of others. And then the other thing that I think is clearing out the baggage. Like, it's a lot harder to focus and be in the zone if you have, I call it like carrying around some bags of bricks. And that's the power, for example, of psychedelics or breathwork or meditation or decisions to let go. Yeah, you know, and, um, in a— psychedelics are— you should be cautious with them and use them wisely and under proper guidance in most cases. But if you get rid of the weight— a lot of us carry emotional weight with us into the next year, into the next decade, from— and it's like, if we let it go, like, I feel so much lighter now than I did 2 years ago or a year ago.

Absolutely.

And I have more joy. I'm creating from a place of joy instead of grit.

Think about it this way, folks. So we're still in the beginning chapters of the new year, 2024. And think about the feeling when you take down all the Christmas decorations and they're finally put away and how you literally feel like lighter. You know what I mean? Like, seriously, something that wasn't literally a physical thing on you. It didn't even affect anything that you did except for maybe you had to move some furniture around for a tree or something like that. But I know we feel it every year when Christmas is up, like, and the last thing's put away. Yeah, it's like, again, you do, you feel lighter, you know what I mean? It's crazy how baggage weighs on you when it, when it's not physical weight.

Yeah, exactly. And, and with trauma, um, like, or just friction in relationships, or frustrations, or unresolved issues, the more we carry the heavier our load gets. Yeah, even look spiritually. Jesus said, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. How are we supposed to live with an easy burden, you know, a light burden in life? We're supposed to— and then we can radiate the presence of joy and attract from that. It's like we're attuning our antenna, our brain antenna, our spiritual antenna. Yeah, we're tuning it to a higher vibration, literally at the quantum level. So one of the other things— so I've kind of gone into quantum physics a little bit. So we— are you— have you heard a thing called phase entanglement?

I've heard of it. I don't know much about it, but I've heard of it.

At the very quantum level, when we— when we, uh, when two or more particles collide, they leave a piece of each other on each other. So their energy— so if I bring in energy of joy, a presence of expansion, of, uh, hope, then I'm leaving that on people and I'm literally pollinating almost like a bee, right? I'm pollinating. Or I can leave in negativity, weight, frustration, sadness, grief. And, and it can be generational. Um, like Duke University is doing, uh, intergenerational trauma studies where they found that the next two generations of Holocaust survivors have biometric data points that showed they suffered a severe trauma, even if they didn't in their lifetime. So like generational, you know, Bible talks about generational curses and all that. Well, now we're seeing evidence that some of that is real and then it's almost like epigenetically passed on.

Dude, I've been— I've learned about that. Pastor Roger Patton sent me a video talking about— because I had been talking to him a lot about generational wealth.

Yeah.

And he said, hey, man, check it out. There's this thing called generational sin. And the more I studied it, the realized— I realized, you know, the stuff that I'm passing down to my own son that are— there are things that I work on that I don't like about myself and that I'm working on fixing.

Yeah.

And I'm programming him with those same bugs.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah. But if we can do the deep work, like, so some of the tools we've done— Emotion Code is actually helpful for releasing. It's a process of releasing emotions. Tony Robbins actually wrote the foreword to the book. But it's releasing trapped emotions. So we've done that to release some generational trauma in my wife and I. And then for us, psychedelics have helped release. Like, I had a session on psilocybin where I felt my dad grew up in— was born in 1940 Germany, saw the bombers fly over, saw the Jews walk through the streets as a 5-year-old, seeing these skinny people coming out of concentration camp. And then, you know, he was malnutrition. He was was eligible for malnutrition camps and like had, um, uh, as a 5-year-old would see the troops come into his house, the Allied soldiers come in. So he's, he's got some generational trauma. And I had this weight of grief pass through that I frankly had been carrying all my life in December of 2022. And then at the end of it, I came to my wife, I was like, and I wept. I've only wept twice in my life, and I wept. And I was like, babe, uh, I think the season of suffering is over for us.

Wow.

We're stuck in almost a 5-year cycle of suffering. And sure enough, that was, you know, January 2023 was right around the corner, and like, it was different.

Wow.

Energy was different. My finances started coming back, my business started coming back, and we were on the edge of getting her free from the PTSD.

So The suffering is necessary. Yeah, right. Because that's where you find your gifts.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? That's where you learn. Yeah. You know, I mean, talk to me about that. And so that's a powerful statement you just said. Talk to me about, you know, one, when you're, when you're suffering, that means something good's coming behind it because it's, you know what I mean? Because you're on your way out.

Yeah.

Talk to me about that.

So the overcoming process is the becoming process. And if we accept that guess what? Then we resist the becoming a lot less.

That's right.

Embrace the overcoming. Obstacle is the way, as Ryan Holiday talks about in his book, or Marcus Aurelius talked about. So I no longer— and even if we did this interview a year ago or 2 years ago, I'm a different— in a different presence because it's still stuck in the suffering loop. And I don't— I wouldn't have owned myself and my presence and my connection, my truth in a way that I do now. And but you have to go through those fires. Yeah. And, and, and I don't look at them as something to be scared of. And even whether you come from faith or not, like in James 1:5, it says, consider it all joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds, because then you will produce character, and character you will produce perseverance, and perseverance hope.

That's right.

Right. So we go through those processes. But you got to use them as fuel. Almost like, um, uh, what was Steven Seagal? He was a keto, I think, where you would use the energy of your opponent to fight them. So let them supply. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In my book, in Genius Within, I talk about a metaphor of like, so all of us, we've flown on a Boeing 737. Well, how much does that sucker weigh? 485 tons. So how does this heaping metal bird get off into the night sky? Faces something invisible.

Hmm.

Invisible resistance called air. And this air, if it faces it hard enough at the right enough angle, that resistance would now cause it to lift off carrying hundreds of passengers. But it has to face it. It can't run from it. Right?

Yeah, dude, we love Talking about the difference between bison and cattle.

Yeah, yeah. You know, run into the eye of the storm.

Run into the storm and you'll spend less time in it.

Yeah.

Doing that. That's what the bison do. That's awesome. That's awesome. So folks, we're hanging with Mike Zeller. You can check him out online at MikeZeller.com and on all social @TheMikeZeller.