Episode 60 - Matt Johnson Took A Traumatic Brain Injury And To Discover The Right Path In Life

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. Well, you guys are going to be excited today. I have a really special guest. His name is Matt Johnson. We met. My gosh, it has been like 12 years, right?

Something like that. Yeah.

And I met his family when our kids were going to elementary school together. And it's amazing when you get to meet people through your kids because you would never have an opportunity to meet them other than your kids going to the same school. And then you realize you have all these common interests. And through that, we ended up. Our families ended up getting to do a lot of stuff together, including we went to Tony Robbins together, did a neuro linguistic program, Neuro linguistic programming training together, certification process. We had a mastermind for a little bit, and it's been really fun to see him on his journey. So here I have Matt. Hello. Welcome to the show. Hi, Matt.

Hello. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

I am so glad we just recently saw each other again and I got to hear what you're doing, and I'm so excited to get a chance to talk to you more about that as well as other stuff.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's weird when you kind of drop out of somebody's orbit for a while and come back and see all the progress they've made.

Why don't we start off, and I'd love to have you for the listeners, just share your background and your story and then we can kind of go from there.

Absolutely. My. My real story starts about six years ago. I was at a place called Point Loma Tide Pools down here in San Diego. And we were crawling around checking out the starfish and all that, and all of a sudden I slipped and landed on the back of my head. I hit with so much force, I. I hit it on solid rock. Hit with so much force, my brain actually rebounded. It hit the top of my skull and just brutal pa. It was so intense, I couldn't even open my eyes for about 20 minutes. And for the first couple years after that, I was completely sensitive to light and sound. I wasn't able to be in a normally lit room. Anytime my kids were would laugh or clap or, God forbid, slam a door, it felt like getting a baseball bat on the back of the head. And after a couple years of that and not healing, I went and got a special kind of brain scan, an MRI looks at the tissue and I got what's called a tract scan, which actually maps the blood flow and electrical activity in the brain. And long story short, I wound up. My brain is in good shape, but I had all these areas that were supposed to be dark that were lit up like a Christmas tree. And it was the first time I'd heard those letters ptsd. I absolutely, I'd had no idea. It was hit me way out of left field. But all of a sudden, so many things made sense. And so I realized to heal a brain injury, it's all about bringing your brain waves down, giving your brain a chance to rest. The PTS was doing the opposite. It was keeping me in fight or flight. So, you know, I, I, it was definitely aggravating the condition. And so what I had to do was beat the one in order to be able to beat the other. And I had no idea what that journey was going to look like. But I instantly, I knew the tool and I learned it from Tony nlp. We went to the I, I knew I had to turn pro. You and I went to the NLP certification class together. It was a great time. I peppered probably every coach there with, you know, how do you beat ptsd? They, they all tried to help me, but they didn't really have the answers that I was looking for. And so coming back from that great training, phenomenal, I learned a lot, but I didn't, still didn't have the answers I was looking for. So I came to the conclusion that I needed to find the best. And so I started studying under, you know, some of the icons, you know, Richard Bandler and Steve Andreas, guys like David Snyder and Marisa Peer in the hypnosis world, things like that. And at long last, I finally been able to beat it. And I learned so much about myself and the human brain in that process. And I also found my own passion that way. I started shortly after I got certified and all that. I started doing things for friends and helping them out and discovered I'm really good at this stuff. So I've turned it into a coaching business and I've absolutely, I can say Without a doubt, my TBI wound up being a blessing because it put me on the right path, if that makes any sense. Stacy?

Oh, it's 100% does. I think that's one of the things that's so remarkable is when something like this happens and then you turn into. Turns into a blessing. Right. Because you're able to now, through you having this experience now, think about the amount of people that you're helping, and whatever those ripples are going to be created Absolutely. From it. So it's interesting because we've known each other a long time, and I don't actually think I knew the PTSD portion of this story, so I'm really. I want to explore that more. So is the PTSD from the brain injury, or is that something from before?

No, I had it before. Yeah, I just. I never realized it. I had grown up with it. And just when you. It's called habituating in geek speak, but when you habituate to something, you get used to it. Then you just accept that as normal. And I'd never. The thought had never even crossed my mind, to be honest, until I had that brain scan. But it just. So many things in my life made so much sense after I got that diagnosis. Diagnosis. So I'm like, okay, this. I have to beat this now.

Okay. So that is really fascinating. So pretty much when you hurt your head or when the brain injury happened, it almost that the PTSD was already there as an underlying thing, and then it wasn't able to heal after that injury because you had that as, like, an underlying thing. So that's what kind of brought it out in a way.

Had to beat one to beat the other.

Wow. Okay. Okay. Are you open to talking more about the PTSD side of things and then we'll kind of talk more about the current.

Sure, yeah. Yeah.

What did you end up discovering about that as you've explored that more?

After a good two years of finding every guru in NLP and hypnosis that I could find, I came across a guy named Steve Andreas who. He actually produced a course on how to beat PTSD. There are actually 15 different reactions you can have to PTSD. Things like, you know, hyper vigilance to flashbacks and things like that. They're all different flavors of it. There's stuff that soldiers get from. Could be one traumatic event in a war, but there's also complex PTSD which people, maybe in an abusive childhood or something, they, you know, they get a constant dose of it. It's. It's very individual. It's Like a fingerprint. And that said, I learned some basic. Well, not basic, but I learned some really powerful tools to deal with it. And it's all about how do you, how do you play those memories? How do you regulate your nervous system in relation to them? And getting that fight or flight to kick down and just taking that, that emotional charge out of those memories. Yeah.

And so what I'm wondering too is what you did through this injury was the ultimate do the thing. When you have something so traumatic happen and it's so easy. I think I mentioned to you before we started recording, and I was like, I want to save it for this, because I knew I wanted to explore it more. But not having already talked to you about it, it's just so easy for someone to just not do anything right and use that as crutch. Almost like, oh, I had this brain injury, so I can't do whatever it is. Whereas, like, you just actively were trying to figure out a way to move forward from it.

I was lucky enough to have a really good role model. My. My dad was like that. He. He had a lot of stuff, a lot of health issues, a lot of injuries and things like that. And he just, no matter what, he. He saw what can I get done this day? And just did it. So that's where that comes from. Yeah.

That's good. It's funny, I was actually about to ask you more about like, how you were grown up. That's actually exactly where I was thinking, where you went. It's funny that you knew that because it had to have come from something before now. Right. For you to be able to take it in that way. So, yeah, I was wondering, could we just explore that more in terms of.

Absolutely.

How you grew up in that way.

I had the good fortune again. My dad had a couple bad discs in his back, in his neck. He had no cartilage in his left knee. It's diabetic heart disease, you name it. He's just. He was in rough shape. He was looking at the donor card on his driver's license and realized he had nothing worth it that he could give. They wouldn't take any of his organs, he was in such bad shape. But I saw him, him just every day, just grinding it out. And for years he got up at 4 o' clock in the morning and went to work. And he would get back after dark and have to clean out his truck. It was a crash course. And what work ethic looks like, definitely. So I learned that I, I also. If somebody didn't Grow up with that type of a role model, you can find them. I've seen the same thing from Tony Robbins, actually. He got mercury poisoning and did not cancel his event. He was almost on his deathbed and still made it to his event. Wheelchair. He still made it there. And he tells a story, but it's basically every day. There are some days that are definitely better than others. There are some days he doesn't feel like getting out of bed, but it's. He's trained his mind to that. When I say go, we go. And so it's all about when you're in a day like that, when you're having trouble just getting yourself out of bed, it's just one foot in front of the other. What's that tiny little shift that I can make to get myself in motion and get some momentum going? That's. I don't know if that answers your question, Stacy, but that's the method I use.

Yeah, I know. It totally does. And it's funny that you said the one front in front of the other. I've been talking about that a lot today.

Okay.

I don't. We haven't really talked about this. So the podcast is coming from a book. I'm writing a book called do the Thing. And pretty much something that's coming up as a pattern. I'm just. Gosh, sorry. I'm reveling in the moment of. This is literally something I've said, like six times.

Today is great minds.

It's like the synchronicity of this thing. Yeah. And it's. So I was talking to the. A book strategist today, and I was. This is the pattern that I most am excited about is this one foot in front of the other. And I didn't verbalize that. I just said, like, doing the next best thing. Because it's so easy for people to get into analysis paralysis. And for you to think about 500 different scenarios of how to do something and then what could go wrong and what could go right? And I think most people get tripped up in that. Whereas if you just focus on what's my next step or what that one foot in front of the other, then that helps you get out of that because you're still in action. And then it might. Where you end up, it might be totally different than where you even thought you would end up because you're moving.

Yeah. Most people were so programmed. If we're going to drive somewhere, we need that map to know the exact turns to make it to our destination. But real life doesn't always work that way. You're absolutely right there. I'll use working out as an example, but this will work for just about anything. Every year I see my gym packed the first week of January and it's possible to get a parking spot. Every machine, every station is a line of like three people deep. The second week we've lost about half the new people and by the third week it's pretty much back to normal. Now why do so many people give up 2 weeks into a 52 week year? Use an extreme example to illustrate. Let's say your New Year's resolution is I'm going to starve myself and work out six hours a day. How long do you think you'll stick with that approach?

Oh, right, yeah.

Most of us, myself included, probably give up around day three. How do those people who stick with it, stick with it? The whole key to that is two millimeter shifts done every single day. You start easy, start where you are and just leave with a little bit left in your tank and you'll actually look forward to going back the next day. On that next day you do just a little more. And if you did a 1% improvement every day over 365 day a year, that 1% will compound itself over and over again and it becomes 3700%. So 37 times improvement in a 365 day year. Tony actually interviewed a guy named Stu Menelman who used this approach for running. He actually went down to the Amazon. There was this indigenous tribe down there who for their 50th birthday they would run like a thousand miles. And so he went down there to figure out how he did it. And it's all by using this approach. You just start where you are and every day just do a little bit more. And he did the exact same thing. He ran a thousand miles, that's almost 50 marathons back to back on his 50th birthday, all by doing these two millimeter shifts.

Oh wow. Yeah. That's so cool. So cool.

Yeah.

So when you said. So going back to what you were saying earlier about how you were able to pretty much beat the PTSD through all of the work you've been doing, what do you think spent was like the first, what was the first step for you with that?

The first step? I, I knew it was going to be with nlp. I'd seen what I'd done with Tony and I'd been nlping myself via Tony's courses and you know, YouTube University for a long. So I'd seen the power of it. I didn't have, I wasn't certified. I wasn't, you know, I didn't have a formal education in it. So that's where I started. That's where, you know, we took the class together and all that. I asked, like I said, I peppered every, every coach there with questions about, you know, how do you beat it? And, you know, they tried their best to help me, but they didn't really have the answers I was looking for. And it just, it's the same thing that let me beat the brain injury. It was just every single day I'm gonna focus on this thing until I get there. And it's kind of like, you know, Tony talks about, you know, decide comes from the Latin root day, which means from and kaideer, which means to cut. When you make a true decision, you cut off any other possibility. That's just what I did. And you, you talk about, you know, some people lay down and just give up. And I know there are people who've had it way worse than I have. I, I, it's an individual choice and I, I don't fault anybody for doing that. But I also seen where people who can recover don't just because they don't really want to face that journey. It's an individual choice. But I would tell you where I was. I, there. There's no way I could settle for that, that kind of a life. It was just, it was no life for me anyway. Yeah.

And then you found that guy, was it Steve, Steve Andreas?

Yes.

You found his program, and then what do you think was the biggest thing through his program that really helped you overcoming?

Actually, it was a number. The, the course is huge, but I, I went through every. He went through all the different 15 types of reactions you can have at a PTSD and how to unwind them. And I just did the unwinding on myself. And once I learned how to do it, put it together, I threw in some hypnosis stuff too. More bolster some of the, the underlying patterns that lead to the PTSD and put together a program to actually help people. And I have a couple of PTSD cures other than myself, to my credit. And that is the most amazing feeling. Just to be able to, to lift a burden like that off somebody's shoulders is incredible. I can't even describe it.

That's gotta be amazing. Especially when you've walked through it too, and you know, what, what it's like and then being able to impact someone else in that way.

Yeah.

So I like what you said about the 15 types of reactions and then working to align them. So I'm imagining had. I've had a few people on that have talked about this in different ways and I haven't really. I want to be able to explore it more with you. But is that basically like you're noting down all the different ways that you can react and then it's like how to calm yourself down in order to. Or how. I don't know if that's calm yourself.

It's, it's like that. Yeah. People will basically tell me what are you going through or what they're going through. And it's. You remember page one of nlp, the map is not the territory. So I, I kind of have to translate. Okay, you're saying this, but okay, so it sounds like this reaction is happen. Oh yeah, yeah. So okay. That I know how to fix that. And then I do about a 10 to 15 minute talk. Just tell me what's going on. And I've gotten pretty accurate as far as diagnosing and fixing what ails them.

And so tell us about your program or your coaching program.

My program is actually, it's called Unlock U 2.0. And this all stemmed from my wife sitting there in a psychiatrist office. Nicole asked the question, how do we put him back together? I just, I was shell shocked at the time. I, I had no idea of, you know, what to even ask and. But that question really grabbed me because the, the psychiatrist explained, you're trying to meet some hypothetical ideal and you know, you can never reach it. But for whatever reason I was not able to let that go. And that thought really got to me because I, this for me goes back to like when I was very, very young and to think about what I missed out on, what kinds of experiences would have shaped me, that I never even engaged in things like that, how I approach life differently just because of it. It's started me down this journey of how do I rebuild my personality and become the person that I could have been. And I finally, believe it or not, found the answer. It's, it's not trying to meet that hypothetical ideal of who I would have been. It's. It's basically designing my personality the way I want it. And that's what the course is all about. One of my mentors in the hypnosis world taught me that every human being has the equivalent of a jet engine, which is your drive, your motivation, work habits and all that, but also an anchor, which is all the crap that holds you back, you know, negative emotions, limiting beliefs, things like that. Most people, when they want to do the thing where they want to, you know, level up in their life, they want to start by firing off the jet engines. Problem is, as long as that anchor is attached, the faster you go, the more drag it's going to produce. So my course is actually designed or divided into three sections. First one is anchors away. We, we clear out any kind of negative emotions. I do what's called a breakthrough session. I've helped people, like I said, with ptsd, eating disorders, things like that. We, we find what your anchors are and do a custom program to cut them away. We also do some generalized stuff, getting rid of distractions. I have a, a wonderful hypnosis to get rid of social media addictions, which is a disease these days, that if you, if you're someone who scrolls social media more than a little bit every day, and I'm talking more than like an hour, you have got some dopamine issues. What's happening is you're the people who design the iPhone and Facebook and all that. They've basically hijacked your brain with way more data than it's designed to take in. And so what happens is your brain gives its most, most precious resource, which is attention, just in tiny bits. And so we wind up distraction or distracted, just looking for this escapism type behavior. The average attention span up until about the 1980s was about 20 minutes. And would you care to guess what it is today?

I would think like three minutes, seven seconds. Oh my God.

Goldfish can do nine. That's what these phones and what social media is doing to our brains. That's a critical part. I actually, I put it way front in the course so people actually have the focus to finish it.

The stat is. I don't know if this holds true. I would bet that it does, though. Less than 10% of people who actually buy a course actually finish the whole thing. And that's not something I want. I want to impact people's lives. And so we really go down and do the deep, deep work to find what's holding you back and get rid of it. And then we move on to phase two, which is firing up those jet engines. That's state management. If you, you've been to a Tony seminar, which you and I have, you know all about state, what it can do for your performance. I have hypnosis that trains the NLP triad. Your focus, your language, and your physiology. Those three, when you learn how to steer them, can make you move Mountains. We also do a lot with timeline. You and I did timeline therapy together. We take it to a whole new level in the course though, go back and clear all kinds of negative events and I basically turn you into a timeline ninja. There's. I don't know if you remember the through time and in time timelines from NLP training.

Oh yeah.

When you have a through time timeline, which means it touches you and at some point you're someone who is more focused. You're in the moment, you're grounded. You also happen to be habitually late.

If you have more of an in time timeline. Yeah, in time, which means it doesn't touch you. Then you're someone who can, who is very focused. You can get things done in the office. You're very efficient. But you also miss out on some of that connection to life. You don't have the same juice from going to a concert or spending time with your kids as the other type timeline. Would I show you how to change them at will? We also do a lot with inner critic, getting rid of that which is the biggest factor, keeping people confined to their comfort zone. It's just that negative voice in your head saying, hey, you know you shouldn't be doing this. Hey, why are you working so hard? Things like that, we get you out of that. And that's phase two. We cut away your anchor. We fire up your jet engine in phase two. Phase three is all about finding the the right path for you. Every one of us. And I am the poster child for this. We all have hidden talents and abilities that just come naturally to us. And a lot of us started out on the wrong path. I was in my fourth decade before I found the right path for me and it came through a bump on the head. The course will help you identify those and actually get yourself aligned with them. We also have a module that will help you install literally inst the personality characteristics. Anyone. It can be someone you admire, could even be a fictional character. And if you wanted to be more adventurous, you could install Indiana Jones. If you wanted to be more playful, you can install Captain Jack Sparrow, things like that. But we help you actually get to where. To where you want to be, get your life going in the right direction.

Yeah. And so for someone that's not been exposed to this before, can you give an example of how you help them like install that?

Absolutely, yeah. Most people, NLP is really. It's hard to explain without reverting to jargon. So what I can do if, if you're all right with this is just show people how to do it.

Sure.

If you're listening, close your eyes for a second and think of something that is not too scary. We don't want to go crazy here, but we want maybe 3, 4, 5 on the scariness scale out of 10. Now when we think of anything, we usually hold a picture of it somewhere in the 360 degree sphere around us in our personal space. So if you think of where you hold that picture, reach out and touch it.

Trace the lines of it with your hands so you got a good grasp on it. Now take that picture and stretch it. Make it bigger and notice what that does to the feelings.

You tell the difference.

So take it and shrink it just like a window on your computer. Shrink it down to half. Half the size you had it. See what that does.

Change the feelings at all.

Take it, put it above you so that they're. You're looking up at it. Notice how that changes it.

Now put it, put it down so you're looking down onto it it and notice the difference.

Now take it and throw it behind you.

Did you feel emotional shifts playing with that picture?

Yeah. I really like that because you're basically helping people kind of get into different perspectives of that situation while also being able to like increase or remove the charge depending on what it is that they're. That they're looking at.

Absolutely. What we just did was underneath our level of conscious awareness, we have a whole system for encoding our world. And we just took that one aspect of that system and just played with it. And if you follow along with the exercise, you probably felt some emotional shifts going on. Just playing with a picture. It's that, you know, on steroids, basically that. That's what I do.

So cool. And then if you guys are in the car driving and you did not do that.

Yes. Don't. Yeah, don't do. While you're driving. Hopefully you did not get back and ed that.

Feel free to note. Feel free to rewind and go back to this later.

Yeah, it's really good because I think just even sharing one of the tools is helpful because I don't think a lot of people understand what. What a lot of this stuff is. But once you have a. A thing that they can have as a tool that they can use and then they see the difference, it obviously can. Can help them kind of grasp how it could help and benefit them more, you know?

Right, right. Most of us know that we have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind mind. What we don't realize is the subconscious mind is Actually thousands of times more powerful than the conscious mind. It controls everything in your body. Your breathing, your heart rate, your nervous system. And so when you have any kinds of stress, any kinds of bad habits, disorders, anything like that, talking to the subconscious and using that interface well, like we just did with the picture, can make a radical change in behavior. I remember my dad smoked for over 30 years, and I remember him trying to quit over and over again and failing repeatedly until he got hypnotized. Once he got hypnotized, he told me he never even craved cigarettes again. That's how powerful it is. I mean, if you know anybody who smoked or you, if you've been a smoker, you know how hard that is to quit. It is really addictive. And for him to not even crave cigarettes again after 30 years of smoking that. You know, I was probably 10 years old when that happened, and it just blew my mind. But I did not realize I was being set up for the career that I was at the time. Time. Yeah.

I was just thinking that it's amazing how, like, that happened at 10. But then it didn't really come out until after the injury. And then it. Almost like you. Almost now, like it's released you from. It's been released from that younger version of yourself.

Almost like someone was leaving breadcrumbs or, you know, I got forced into it.

Yeah. They're like, you're not on the right path.

Right? I definitely wasn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what do you think's been the hardest thing for you throughout all this? This?

Oh, it's. The hardest thing is you have good days and bad days. I. I've had plenty of the latter, but it's. It's just keeping that chin up and it's. You really. I mean, to. To get through something like that. If you've. If you know someone with a brain injury, I can tell you firsthand there is no way to translate that experience to someone who hasn't had it. There's just. You have all kinds of sensations and issues the. That until you have one. And I don't recommend becoming part of that club. But if you don't have it, there's really no frame of reference to get it. It's. It's a really, really tough, tough thing. But again, it's. It's that sticking to it is doing the thing just day in and day out that. That's been the hardest for me. The way I got past it was a. I define my purpose. Cannot achieve something until you define it clearly. And for me, it was actually going to that Tony event. Event. I actually have a funny story behind that. I was probably about three or four years in to my having my tbi and we decided we wanted to go to. To Tony. And knowing NLP and all the stuff that I did, I. I knew there was nobody who could translate Tony's message for, for my kids like I could. But being sensitive to light and sound, that. That is the last place I wanted to be. That. That place is like a rock concert times a million dollars. And so the time came to order the tickets, and Nicole thought I was nuts. And I told her, just go. I just order the ticket. I'll figure it out. And it's all about making that decision. I knew I had to draw a line in the sand. I had to practice what I'm now preaching. And what happened? It was the weirdest thing. I made every decision based on, will this get me closer to or farther away from my goal of being able to get through that? And over the next four months, I made more progress. It was so weird. Things just kind of opened up to me. I discovered new methods, things I never probably would have even sought out if I hadn't just made that, drawn that line in the sand and said, I'm doing it, but your brain gets really creative when it has to be. And in that four months, I probably made more progress than I had in the four years before that. Just going hardcore. Every single, every, every. Everything I did, everything I ate was all predicated on, you know, willis, help me get better. And that. That's when miracles happen. That's what it did for me, anyway. Yeah.

And I'm just wondering because, I mean, there's so. There's people out there that are struggling with something, and then they're hearing from different experts to do certain things, but nothing's helping. And so what do you think got you to just keep going until you were able to figure it out? Because I think people would have given up by now.

I. I ran into a lot of that. It's like a chad Holmes called PhD, pigheaded determin determination. It's all about making that, that commitment. It's what is it you want, which gives you direction, and why do you want it, which gives you the emotional impact to follow through on those days you don't feel like it. Right. Dedication to a goal cannot be done by halves. And once you. Once you have that in your sights, you've got to stay in contact with it. That's all discipline is. It's just Keeping in contact with what that purpose is. There'll be days you don't feel like it. Negative or lazy thoughts will start to enter your mind. Things like, why am I going through this? Why am I putting my. Through all this effort? This failure of will, this lack of drive, is a direct result of losing that vision of your purpose. When you have that purpose in your mind, that kind of failure just cannot occur.

Yeah. And I'm thinking, just us hearing you talk, there's also something about that. That frame, that mind, that mind frame that you have where I think a lot of people might say, like, why is this happening to me? Or why did this have to happen? Instead, you're just trying to figure out, how can I get through this? How can I make this better? Kind of like what you were saying earlier.

One thing that really helped me, there was a coach, guy named Alex Jeffries. Cool guy, but he taught me that success is standing on top of your problems. Failures being buried underneath them. So if you accept that definition, problems are therefore stepping stones. So if you're. If you're faced with a problem and you beat it, your view of life is. You're viewing it from a higher place now. And so I remember looking at two massive stepping stones and thinking, I have no clue how I'm going to do this. But again, it's just one foot in front of the other. I got to find somebody has figured out a way. I can't tell you. I went through probably a good two years of hardcore looking for the answer to how to. How to break ptsd. And the vast majority of what I came across, people meant well, but didn't really answer the mail as far as getting rid of it. And finally, just through trial and error and just not refusing to give up, I came across Steve and his program. And I followed that up with other stuff which expanded on it, and that got me to where I am. It's just a matter of the time's going to pass anyway. Where do I want to be years from now?

Yeah, it's funny. As you're talking, I'm sitting here looking at this book that I'm just reading now. It's called Relentless. I don't know if you've heard of it.

Heard of it? Yeah. I have not read it.

It's really good. The quote I wrote down from this morning was, everything is impossible until someone does it.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah. So that's great. I'm so excited to hear, like, where this is progressing, and I'm so glad that you are now helping People get through it too. Because I saw you walking through this and I. I just. I know everything that it took to get through. I mean, I don't know everything it took, but I saw as it happening, you trying.

You saw me when I was down. Yeah. I was in sad shape. Yeah, no doubt.

Yeah. You were always positive about it though. I don't think I ever saw you.

Yeah.

Where you were always able to try. You're trying to figure it out basically.

Right. Right. And that's. That's thing. It's again, I. I have to give my dad a lot of credit for that. I. I saw the opposite with him. He had all his injuries and health issues and all that and he got negative about it. And after that he started to spiral. And I. I remember seeing that as a little kid. I couldn't say anything to him, but I saw that and recognized when I hit similar situation, I recognized I had a choice. I could do things the way he did or. Or find another role model, which I decided to do.

So good.

So.

Okay, Matt, the time is here. So you have one piece of advice for the listeners on doing the thing. What do you give them?

Find what calls to you. I told you about my first Tony event and all that. It was 10 years ago and I got it in my head. I was in love with NLP and all what it had done for me, but I had it in my head for whatever reason that I couldn't be an NLP coach. And then, then, you know, years later, I wound up becoming one by virtue of getting a smack upside the head. So when you do what you love, it is very true. You will never work another day in your life. It's. You may need to learn some business skills in order to monetize it, but it is definitely worth it. Every one of us has unique talents, unique abilities, and so few of us ever really tap into what those are. So find things that light you up. What would you do for free? What do you lose track of time doing things like that? I see people all the time who I. They'll tell kids, oh, you should be a doctor. You should be a lawyer. You're so good at arguing. I've actually corrected people who've done this to my kids. I. Both my kids know. Only you know what lights you up. Only you know what's going to make you look forward to Monday morning versus dreading it.

Yeah, I just wrote. I wrote that down. What do you lose track of time doing? I think that's a really. I haven't heard that before. I think that's a really good question to ask yourself.

Yourself, that's an indication of being in a flow state. And when you, when you lose track of time, just you look up in four hours, it's gone by or whatever, you're having fun and you're doing something that you have a natural inclination for. Which, again, that, that comes from instinct. Tony, actually, if you've seen I'm not your guru on Netflix, if you haven't seen, I highly recommend it. But he said he always knows when he hits on the right answer for someone because their nervous system will let light up. And that having done NLP for several years now, I can attest to that. You will actually see it. So the question is, what lights you up? What gets you excited? Do that. And then you will naturally develop that pigheaded determination to get there. Just because Steve Jobs had a. Had a quote on that. He's like, if you don't love, if you're not having fun doing it, you're going to quit because you're sane. It's like if you love what you're doing, you'll stick with it through the hard times. That's the whole key. Now. I, I didn't love having a brain injury, but I love the idea of being able to play with my kids again and having a normal life again. And it's all about just again keeping in contact with that purpose. I can let myself down and mope. And I, I definitely had days when I did that, but I realized I couldn't stay there. If life has put you flat on your back, you just got to get up. You got to find a way, literally.

Why don't you share where people can learn more about you to your program and your coaching?

I give away free NLP training. We do exercises every Wednesday in my Facebook group, NLP Mindhackers. That's facebook.com group NLP Mind Hackers. You can also hit me@nlpmindhacks.com so good.

Well, guys, go check it out. Thank you so much, Matt, for joining me. You were awesome. And thanks for doing that exercise. I'm excited to listen back to this and do it when I'm, like, able to be completely present with it.

Oh, yeah, I've got all kinds of them. Yes. Thank you for having me. This was fun.

Awesome.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the thing. Do you have a burning question on doing the Thing that you'd like answered. How about an inspiring do the thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at dothothing callcast. Co or email us at hello at dothingpodcast. Com.