19. don Miguel Ruiz Jr: Author of The Mastery of Self

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 19 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers: Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview some of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview the author Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Miguel is a Toltec Master of Transformation, A direct descendant of the Toltecs of the Eagle Knight lineage and the son of Don Miguel Ruiz Jr., the mega bestselling author of The Four Agreements. By combining the wisdom of his family's traditions with the knowledge gained from his own personal journey, Miguel now helps others realize their unique path to freedom. Our conversation touches on his book, The Mastery of Self: A Toltec Guide to Personal Freedom. I really enjoyed this book and this conversation. So without further ado, Please enjoy Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Thank you so much for joining us today. Could you introduce yourself to everybody in the Book Thinkers audience?

Sure. Well, thank you so much, Nick. My name is Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. I am an author of the book The Mastery of Self, Five Levels of Attachment, and a few other books. I am the eldest son of Don Miguel Ruiz, who is the author of The Four Agreements and The Mastery of Love. So I write about my family's tradition, which is a Toltec tradition, which Toltec in English means artist. So we share our tradition and have— and grateful for the opportunity to see if we can help people heal from the wounds of conditional love left in their lives and to enjoy their life in an essence.

I love it. Well, I'm very excited for our conversation today because I just finished up The Mastery of Self. And I thought it was a brilliant book. And so you just mentioned the Toltec traditions and the Toltec people. Who are the Toltec people? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, sure. Well, as a civilization, the Toltec civilization existed over 500 years ago in Mesoamerica, in the central part of Mexico. You can say that according to oral tradition, they are the ones who created Teotihuacan, but they created many other civilizations across Mesoamerica in the Valley of Mexico. They ceased to exist over 500 years ago, either with expansion of the Aztec Empire or the expansion of the Spanish Empire. At that moment, it became an oral tradition. And since then, many groups of people across Mexico and the Southwest United States continue the tradition in their own unique way. There are people who teach it as it was over 500 years ago, and then there's people like my family. That teaches it and adapts it in its own unique way. If I can quote my grandmother Sarita, my grandmother said, if you practice the Tótec tradition the way I did it or your father does it, you're killing the tradition. You apply the tradition, you keep it alive by putting it in practice in life, and life becomes the teacher and you learn from the consequences of your own actions. But that happens when you apply the lessons in life. So for us, the word Toltec means artist. If I translate the phrase the Toltec Art of Transformation into 100% English, it means the artist's path of transformation. I'm an artist, and the canvas for my work of art is my life. And the instruments which I'm going to create that work of art is going to be my body, it's going to be my mind, my will, My intent, this living being, and with it I can create the most perfect nightmare or the most harmonious dream. It's all up to me and how I engage life. So in essence, that's the core of the philosophy of the Tzotzil tradition, which in my family, my great-great-grandfather Don Ezequiel Macías, who lived to be 116 years of age, was born sometime in the 18th 30s and passed away 116 years later according to family lore. Don Leonardo Macías, his son, my grandmother Madre Sarita, my father Don Miguel Ruiz, and now this generation, my brother and I, Don José Luis and I, share the tradition in our own unique way and we teach it according to how we've experienced our own life. So in essence, in our family, Toltec is The artist that creates the life he or she wants to live.

Well, your family has done such an amazing job spreading this philosophy to so many people and helping so many people. There's a metaphor right at the beginning of the book that I've been trying to articulate to a lot of people to help them understand what the mastery of self is all about. You talk about the drama of the party. And so I'd like to actually have you talk a little bit about the drama of the party and what that metaphor means to you. And why you chose to use that in the very beginning of the book.

Sure. Well, it's a lesson that my father shared with me during my apprenticeship. So it goes like this. Imagine that you're the only sober person in a party where everyone else is drunk. You're a sober person because you are the result of all the work you've done. It's an inner journey to help you let go of This thing that hurts you, this intoxicates you, and you reach a point where you're no longer in detox. You feel happy to be in your life, but now you're in the party that everyone you know is attending, from your family to your friends to your colleagues to classmates, every single person you know, including your barista. Now, at this party, everyone's in different stages of their intoxication. Imagine standing in front of 2 people. One person has been nursing their glass of wine for hours, and once in a while they'll take a sip, but they're barely influenced at all by the alcohol. But then, right next to the— right next to that person that you're talking to is a person who's opening their 3rd or 4th bottle of wine. They've already blacked out, but they're still functioning somehow. And everyone in the party is somewhere between these 2. Everyone goes up and down. You can say you're talking to someone and their character changes with every drink they have. As second, third, fourth, all of a sudden their characters just change, and then they stop and they slowly become a little sober, a little— they sober up just a little bit. There's people in the corner fighting, and then 30 minutes later they're hugging and hugging it out, and they're crying, I love you, bro. I love you too. There's people fighting over there, and then there's people who are happy, and then they sad. There's people who were the life of the party, they were holding court, then they're by themselves somewhere sulking. And everyone goes up and down this awareness, this level of attachments they have.

Mm-hmm.

Up and down. So it's— everyone's changing. But you, you are the only sober person in a party where everyone is drunk, and they're drunk with the drama of the party. At this moment, you have a choice. You can leave the party, but you kind of want to stay there because it's everyone you know, and you love them, and you want to engage with them. So the temptation will be, are you going to join the drama? Meaning, are you going to have a drink, or are you going to stay in your discipline? What are you going to do? It's your choice. And that part resonates because when you reach a certain level of work that you do, then you have a moment of clarity where you feel happy.

Mm-hmm.

Then comes what next? What am I gonna do now? Well, we don't live isolated in a monastery, we don't live isolated in a hill, we don't live isolated in an ashram. We live in our everyday life where we are engaging everyone in different stages. We're part of a community. How are we going to engage that community? Which means, how are we going to reconstruct my relationship with the people of the world? And the thing about it is that it's easy once you take a little sip of that little drama. Well, it's easy to take a second or third, you know, kind of like if you stop drinking coffee for some time, you have a glass, a cup of coffee, and then, well, a second one can't hurt, a third one can't hurt, a fourth one— I think I need another one, but I think I need to stop. And also, you don't know how it happened, but now you're several months into it and you're drinking a lot of coffee and you're back to having headaches the next day if you don't have a drink. It's a slippery slope. So you stay in your discipline and it's a choice. So I use that to remembering myself, that what is my intent? And it comes with a moment of mastering myself where I no longer pretend to be something I am not. And I accept myself for who I am, and today this is where I'm at. And to me, that's what unconditional love is— the willingness to see myself for who I am and choose. I once had a teacher who taught me this lesson: the key to enlightenment is effort. That's it. That's what she said. Since then, I've learned that effort is using the energy that animates this body, that animates this mind, to manifest something. That's what effort is— taking a step forward. Discipline is remembering to apply that effort every day. That's it. You don't have to go into the drill sergeant mentality. All you have to do every day is to make the choice to take a step forward, and success is simply following through. But in order to take that step forward, is this constant self-check and see myself as I am at this very moment, which is to get to know myself.

And so when you have that moment of clarity, right, everybody else is at the party and you've, through your own effort and through, you know, a product of the work that you've been putting in, you do get to experience this moment of clarity. I think sometimes for people in the personal development world, people who are reading these books and they're working on themselves, it's very difficult to articulate that clarity to everybody else that's at the party. And so do you think that we as individuals have a responsibility? I mean, you've written this amazing book, which is one way to help people understand how to get the clarity. But if you're at the party and you're in an experience where other people are intoxicated, do you feel a responsibility to talk about this? Do you feel a responsibility to highlight it?

No, uh, it's a lesson that I've learned, um, because I used to think it was a responsibility when I was much younger. Or even just a few years ago, I used to think that, and then I learned a very valuable lesson. I teach with people's permission. When someone comes to a lecture or workshop that I give, even someone who reads my books, they're giving me permission to share it. You know, when I first started, it was one of my things, like, I want to keep everyone in their seats, and sometimes people would get up and leave because, you know, you never know what they're leaving. Maybe they disagreed, maybe they have something to do, The babies, you never know. So I worked and focused myself to keep those people, and then all of a sudden it dawned on me. It is not them who I'm directing myself to because they haven't really given me permission to share my tradition. The people who have given me permission are the people who are still sitting in their seats and they're giving me their look, their eyes, their attention, and realize it's them. who I'm talking to and realize that every time I share my tradition or share these lessons, even if it's my daughter or my son or my wife, who has one of my favorite quotes, Miguel, you are my husband, not my teacher. I love that. I absolutely love that she says that. It shows why she's my wife. But it shows me that When I share something, it's because someone gave me the permission to share it. So my responsibility at that point is not to make them reach that point to give me that permission, is that my responsibility is that when life gives me that opportunity, when it's saying yes to me, that I'll be ready. And when I'm ready, I will be able to convey this message as succinct, with so much clarity and integrity, that that's what I share. I can't share what I don't know, so I don't talk about what I don't know. I only talk about what I do know, and that's my own life, and that's what I talk about, that's what I share. When people ask me questions, I see it as an opportunity to further along my awareness and sometimes come up with a solution that resonates within my life and the person who asked me. But if that same person who asked me, all of a sudden I see them in a restaurant and I sit down uninvited and I start talking and doing my lecture, well, it's not gonna go in because they haven't given me the permission.

Mm-hmm.

They're engaged in what they're doing, and you find that that's What happens throughout life. We teach, we share when someone gives us the permission, the opportunity to share. So at that point, it is my reputation or the integrity of what I say that will open the door of that— that is that opportunity. And with time, I found every time I engage, I learn something New, because the person who is truly learning from me is myself. I'm learning from myself every time I hear myself talk or answer a question or even ask a question. I get to see a different side of me that I didn't know before. So from that point of view, I'm able to expand my awareness, and that's this interplay, this engagement we have with the audience. So for me, that's the responsibility, the integrity and clarity of what I say.

I love that perspective that, that you only teach when you have permission. I've struggled with that for the last few years because I went— I had a very, very dramatic shift in my personal life where I went from you know, sort of operating without those Four Agreements that your father taught you and everybody else in the world. And I started to adopt all of this amazing philosophy into my life and I started to implement so many amazing things from books that every area of my life had sort of an inflection point and started to trend upward. And so I tried to push that on all my friends and family who were intoxicated at the party. And I definitely still find myself doing that today, but The way that you just talked about it helps to reframe the way that what is too much, you know, and I think it's the level of permission. It's as simple as that. So thank you for that answer.

You're welcome. It's, you can say it's a mutual respect for one another.

Yeah, I like that. A mutual respect for one another. And it was funny because when you were answering that question of mine, I started to think about, well, I wonder why I have that desire to push this amazing stuff on everybody else when I don't have their permission. And I think that actually happened to me throughout my whole childhood. And I think it happens within our education system, definitely. And so that's a form of domestication, which is a good sort of transition into one of the most eye-opening things that I experienced through the Toltec philosophy is this term domestication. So I'd love to have you explain what that means to everybody. And well, we'll start there because it's big.

Well, it's like you said, it's like we're used to it. We were taught, we were educated with domestication. If you get— give me the great works, give me straight A's, I'll treat you in a different and a special way in contrast to someone who gets F's and D's and C's. It's a— you get treated in a totally different way. Domestication is a system of reward and punishment by which we model the behavior of an individual. If they live up to the expectation, they're worthy of a reward, and if they don't live up to the expectation, they're worthy of the punishment. Since we are emotional beings who experience the full spectrum of our emotions, that reward feels like acceptance, which feels like love, and the punishment feels like rejection and the lack thereof of love. is the way we've learned conditional love. We were domesticated that I love you if you live up to my projection or idea of who I think you should be. We were domesticated by family, by friends, by community, in different ways, in different facets. So you can say, let's just use myself as an example. Hello, my name is Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. I don't take things personal, I don't make assumptions, I always do my best, I forgot the 4th agreement. Oh no, how can I be Don Miguel Ruiz's son if I don't know the 4 agreements? And there's the downward spiral of a diatribe of judgment, punishing myself for not living up to that image of perfection that is Don Miguel Ruiz Jr., who doesn't take things personal, doesn't make assumptions, is impeccable with his own word, and always does his best. If I live up to the expectation, I am worthy of that acceptance, I'm worthy of that love, but I forgot the 5th agreement. Oh no, be skeptical but learn to listen. There's the diatribe again, punishing myself for not living up to that image. It's like the equivalent of saying, in order to be worthy of love, I have to be perfect, to be 27 years old, weigh 170 pounds, and have hair like my brother Jose. And if you ever see my brother's hair, he has hair all the way down to his waistline. It's beautiful, full set of hair. I look at myself in the mirror and that's just not the truth. I'm 44 years old, I weigh 190 pounds, and this is the truth of my hair. I look at that image in my mirror and because I don't live up to that image of perfection, I'm gonna castigate myself with, you fat, you bald fat, you bald old fat, and there's the judgment over and over again. So Don Miguel Ruiz Jr., if I use that as an image of domestication, I'm always trying to be an image that is not me. And at that moment, like the example I just gave, I'm using the Four Agreements as an instrument of domestication, thus corrupting the Four Agreements. At that moment, I am using the Four Agreements and turning it into the four conditions of our personal freedom. The telltale sign that we're doing this is judging ourselves for taking things personal, judging ourselves for making assumptions, judging ourselves for the rest of it. Because we're only accepting ourselves if we live up to this image that we've deemed worthy of who we're supposed to be. And in my case, Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. That's what domestication is, a system of reward and punishment by which we model the behavior of an individual. And we do it because we're so used to it. If we get it wrong, we're gonna judge ourselves. If we— if I don't have this, if I'm not that image of beauty, of success, of man or woman, whatever, I'm gonna use that against me. And if that's what I have within me and I'm doing that to myself, I can't give what I do not have, which means I'm doing it to my wife. My wife was raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. Honey, You are Mrs. Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. now. Here's The Four Agreements. Read it. Honey, how embarrassing. You didn't read the book. You're taking things personal, honey. You're making assumptions. I only hang out with people who are impeccable with their own word. At that moment, I'm punishing her with my judgments. Whenever I judge someone, I'm punishing them for agreements they never made. But I'm forcing them to make the agreement through the judgment. And that's what domestication is. I'm domesticating myself as I'm domesticating her. And in this scenario, I say I'm practicing the Four Agreements, but I'm not. I'm practicing the Four Conditions. And it's the corruption of that spirituality. And I can corrupt Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Jesus, Buddha, Siddhartha, Muhammad, psychology, psychiatry. Alcoholics Anonymous. If I'm so attached to my domestication, I will corrupt all these beautiful traditions that allow me to let go of conditional love. But I'm so attached to it, I will corrupt them all because these instruments— I don't know how else to do it. So that's the moment of clarity, the moment we become aware that that's what we're doing. A moment of clarity without any action is just a thought that passes in the wind. But a moment of clarity followed by action becomes a pivotal moment in our life. It is the moment where we make a choice to go in a different direction. And it all comes when the moment we become aware that we're practicing the 4 Conditions and we thought we were practicing the 4 Agreements.

That's amazing. And when I read that, you know, that there's a lot of self-reflection that goes in, you know, that, that a person has to go through after they start to understand this. Once that moment of clarity happens, there's action. There's written reflection, there's verbal reflection, there's tons of different kinds of reflection, and then there's action. And so what are— once a human understands, you know, maybe somebody in the audience just heard, okay, this is the definition, reward and punishment. You know, I'm starting to realize that I was domesticated. here, there, in the other place. And so what are the steps now that somebody should take to sort of remove that attachment and remove that conditioning that they've been experienced with?

Well, yes, it's a great question. I believe the very first step is awareness. Awareness that we're doing it. That's what— that's in, in my instrument, I would say the first step is be skeptical, but learn to listen. To me, be skeptical to learn to listen is holding back your yes, holding back your no, and be able to once again give scrutiny to what we're saying yes to. To me, being skeptical is not to go la la la la la, I can't hear you. No, it means to hold back my yes and hold back my no, and thus breaking the cycle of the automatic yes and the automatic no in our lives. And when that happens, we once again give scrutiny to what we've said yes. And in that scrutiny, some things will survive, something will not. So we put into practice that awareness. I'm aware that it's there. It's the moment where I see myself. But now, okay, if I want to start breaking it, it's a matter of choice. So what triggers me to take things personal, for example? It starts with, I, Miguel Ruiz Jr., I do take things personal. When I was— before I even wrote a book, people used to ask me, which one of the Four Agreements was the hardest one for you to practice? And I always used to say, taking things personal or being impeccable with the word. It was always between the two. And then I realized, the reason why it's difficult to put those into practice is because I was pretending to be a man who was impeccable with his word and who didn't take things personal. That was not true. I was pretending to be something I wasn't. So I accepted the fact I take things personal. I became aware of what that is. And to me, just to simplify it, to not take things personal means that I do not assume responsibility for someone else's will or perception. I am only responsible to the tips of my finger. Like Eleanor Roosevelt said, no one can make me feel inferior without my consent, which means I am only in control to the tips of my fingers, and I will not assume responsibility for someone else's free will or perception. Just— that's how I see not taking things personal. All right, I've taken that step. I accept I take things personal. Part of unconditional love is to see yourself as you are, and you accept yourself. Okay, I want to break the habit. Okay, what triggers me to take things personal? Well, my father wearing his pajamas at a restaurant—that's very nice—or someone posting off a post on Facebook. It makes me go grrr. I found two triggers. I can't really make my dad put on pajamas just to make myself go through this, so I'll log on to Facebook. I scroll down, and there is the name of the person. I scroll a bit more and I see their post. Oh, it's a doozy. At that moment, I have a choice. If I want to take it personal, I'll take it personal because I've already accepted the truth. I am a man who takes things personal. But I've read the book, I understand the concept, and I know that I have a choice how not to take it personal, and I'm free to say yes to that. And that's what personal freedom is. I'm free to say yes to taking it personal, and I'm free to say yes to not taking it personal. And with that awareness, I make a choice not to take it personal because I'm aware of the hangover that comes with it. So I say yes to not taking it personal. So I said no to taking it personal, I said yes. And it all comes down to know myself. What are my triggers? So Awareness of that I do it, what makes me do it, which were my triggers, and knowing that it's a choice. At that point, at that point, just like my grandmother said, putting into practice is what allows us to make that agreement come alive. It's like a cookbook. If you buy a cookbook and only read those recipes but never apply the recipe, You'll never know what that meal will taste like. The only way to know is you follow each and every step. If you succeed the first time, great. If you don't succeed the first time, great. At least now you tried. And every time you try this, to put into this, this recipe into practice, you'll get better and better to the point where you start even adding ingredients, subtracting ingredients, changing the temperature, making the recipe fit your preference. And at that moment, you become a master of that recipe. But that only comes by applying it. So it's applying these agreements, and it starts with accepting. In my case, I do take things personal, but I have a choice how not to take it personal. And little by little, with that practice, I get better and better until I become a master.

That recipe book metaphor is Pretty special. I think that that can apply to every single book that sits behind me in this video right now. It really can. You know, these aren't trophies that you put on a shelf and you just stare at. You need to open them up. You need to read them. You need to dig in. You need to try and implement them over and over and over until you get it right. And then you need to notice what works and doesn't.

Yep. And that's exactly what turns knowledge into wisdom.

Application. Absolutely. Well, every once in a while, there's an interview that I do where time sort of disappears on me, and I only get to ask a couple of the questions that I had. But I was so enthralled with your answers today. There's one more thing that I'd like to touch on with you before I let you go, just because it was another one of those aha moments for me, this time going through the Mastery of Self. And so you talked about how emotional reactions are really an opportunity for discovery.

Mm-hmm.

And you had talked about triggers a couple times earlier in the book, but when you said that, it hit me. It's like every single time I feel any sort of emotional reaction, that's an opportunity to become a better person. And so I'd love to hear you talk about that, you know, so everybody can benefit just like I did.

Sure. Well, for me, my emotional body is real. My emotions are real. what may trigger them may not be real. For me, an example of that in my own life is the day my son was born. I held him in my arms and I was so, so happy. I really, really enjoyed holding my son and that community I was having. But my mind at that moment was fertile ground for fear, and a seed blossomed in the form of And I remember reading about SIDS, Southern Infant Death Syndrome, and all of a sudden the idea that my son can die instantaneous as he's sleeping in the crib gripped me. So nothing changed physically. I was still holding my son. I was happy, a big smile, holding him in my arms, looking at him beautifully. A thought came across my perception and it gripped me, and all of a sudden my whole felt fear like I've never experienced fear. You know, when you become a father, when you become a parent, you meet the one person you never want to say goodbye to. So it's a fear that I've never experienced anything like that. You know, growing up, the fear of losing my parents is one thing, or something more happens to me is one thing, but when you face that fear of, I might lose my son or my daughter, it's gripping. It's— then you understand The guy from Finding Nemo, the father, like why he was so afraid. It's impressive. Nothing happened. My body, my physical interaction, all stayed the same, but it was just one thought that made my whole body feel fear. Now, the fear is real. But what triggered it was not. Does it happen out there in the world? Yes, of course. That's the reason why my fear came in. I knew about it. But it wasn't happening right there. My son wasn't suffering through this right there. Which means it was all in my mind. So, for me, my emotional body is an instrument of awareness. Like a car alarm. If you turn on your car alarm and someone touches your car or tries to get in, it'll go beep, beep, beep, beep, and it lets you know something's happening. Well, my emotional body is exactly the same way. Whenever I have a burst of emotional charge or trigger in a sense of anger or jealousy or, or fear or anything like that, Then I know that my body has just been exposed or has exposed a belief that is either conscious or subconscious, sometimes completely buried, that I didn't know was there until it showed up, kind of like, for example, with my son. And that's why I say it's an instrument of transformation, because it brings awareness. It brings up to the forefront something that is buried. And it's an opportunity to process it, to say, is it true? Is it not? To come to grips. It took me a good several months to really get a handle on that fear, and I processed it, and I accepted the fact that at any given moment, life and death can come with my son, with my daughter, with myself, with everyone in my life. It's accepting mortality all over again. So at that moment, I began to process my own relationship with death in regards to my attachment to the people I love and letting go of that because I didn't want fear to control me in that way. It gave me something to work on. So when you have an emotional reaction, well, now's an opportunity to know, okay, what's triggering me? Now, part of controlling your emotions is not necessarily that you control your emotions, it's that you honor them. This is how I feel right now. Which is, I'm not pretending to be something I'm not. If I'm hurt, if I am angry, I'm gonna honor it. This is how I feel, but I have a choice of how to channel it, how to express it. If I'm gonna feel anger right now, will I let this person who angered me Feel the full blunt force of me expressing it? Or do I want to do it in a different way? It's a choice. And it's a discipline of being able to know that I always have a choice. And at that moment, my emotion doesn't control my reaction. I still control my choices. I still control my actions. But it also comes with honoring, this is how I feel. And if I find that this emotional reaction has exposed a conditional belief, a domesticated belief, an assumption, false news, you know, whatever they use it now, or a misunderstanding, Now is my time and opportunity to heal that.

Listening to you go through how you processed that emotion and that fear is really interesting. And so I know I'm going to go back and listen to that again. I've had a very, you know, a series of very similar experiences myself now that I've gotten into reading books like this and I can sort of identify the trigger and walk myself through it. How did it come? Where did it come from? How can I accept it? How can I move forward? How will I deal with this next time it pops up? And that skill, I think, has saved me a lot of time and energy, you know, dwelling on, on scary things. So I know that we've got to wrap up. Where is the best place for people to find more information about you?

Well, my home base is my family's website, which is miguelruiz.com, or my own personal one, which is miguelruizjr.com. That's MiguelRuizJR.com. We are on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram. I'm actually more active on Instagram and Facebook, the professional pages, and that's @MiguelRuiz. But going back to something you said about all those teachers and everyone, all the authors of the books that are sitting behind you, a lot of them, a lot of the authors, almost all of the authors are sharing what helped them in the same way that I just was able to share with you. Thank you for the opportunity once again. They also shared that it's, it's a process that they have engaged in their life because somewhere along the line, life gave an opportunity to put everything in practice. Someone once asked me, is being the master of self means that you're always happy? And I said, no, life goes up and down. When you're a master of self, meaning that you accept yourself for who you are, you put into practice everything you've learned to enjoy life. When life goes tough and things are not going so good and you're going through a little bit of difficulty, then that's the time when we begin to apply everything we've learned to move the story forward. And that's how it goes. When life is going good, we enjoy it. When life is tough, we apply everything we've learned, and that's how we go and move through life. And every single one of the authors that stands behind you have shared their journey, that how they— it helped them get out of that little funk that they were in.

And that's why I have this podcast, because all of these have the opportunity to change your life. And they really do. You know, they changed my life. That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Miguel. As with every valuable book I read, I organize my biggest takeaways with the Book Thinkers Smart Retention mobile app. Once my notes are organized in the system, I can revisit them whenever I want. And with my favorite books like The Mastery of Self, I turn on my systematic reminders so that the system, BookThinkers, can optimize my retention for me. It's not enough to just read your favorite books and then move on. You should extend your experience with each book using spaced repetition to make sure that you're flexing those neural pathways more often than you are today. And so to learn more about the app and how it can help you retain and implement more from the books you love, check out www.bookthinkers.com or go subscribe and download on either Android or iOS for $5 a month or $45 a year. And then as always, remember that real learning requires education and behavior change. So with that, I'm signing off and I can't wait for you to listen to another episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books.

Bye.