"HACK YOUR BRAIN To Destroy NEGATIVE THOUGHTS For SUCCESS!" | Mel Schawtz

Because as a culture, we are taught that, well, if you're successful, you get high grades, you're a great athlete, you're popular, give you self esteem. No, I call that other esteem, meaning you're betraying your authentic self to elicit approval or you calling validation from outside yourself.

Obviously, you spend a lot of time in the psychotherapy world as well, you know, for everything from leadership to family to everything. And I know your vision is to kind of have a holistic approach to life in general and kind of moving from what we refer to as being stuck to unstoppable or stuck meaning I'm not making progress, unstoppable, meaning I'm making consistent progress. Help the audience understand a little bit about how you discovered or how you kind of got into the field you're in, and then we'll jump into the possibilities.

Certainly.

I was approaching 40 years old and, and living the life that I thought I should be living. I was in business. My business was in Manhattan. I had built my little dream house, recently married two young kids, and driving home one day from work. I have what I call a defining moment, an insight that hits me in the new direction. And the insight was, this is the life I'm supposed to be living. I'm not wealthy, but I'm doing well enough. Yeah, but this isn't enough. I had this desire, this need for something deeper, more gratifying. I thought, I can't just continue to spend my life this way. I went home, I shared with my former wife. She became my ex wife, possibly because of this news that I was planning on closing the business. And she said with alarm, she said, what are you going to do? I said, I don't know. Now, I was not financially independent. I had to work today to pay tomorrow's bills. But I went to sleep that night excited, like a kid before their birthday.

Party, all full of possibility.

And I remember years ago, someone that said to me, what do you enjoy doing? And I recalled my answer. I said, I love to help people think differently, have aha moments. So I thought, well, what could that look like? Well, the revelation was there. I headed off to graduate school and a few years later established therapy practice. But I never believed in what they taught me in graduate school. And I went to a fine graduate school. It was a traditional way of thinking. And my thinking had opened up through some reading I was doing. And I'll share this story with you. So a couple of years later, I'm divorced and my sons are actually living with me. But on this particular day, they're with their mom. I go out for a bike ride. Beautiful spring day, and I have a full fledged anxiety attack. I became fearful about my future, financially, romantically, wondered how the divorce would impact the kids. I turned the bike around and headed back to my house. And I absentmindedly pulled a book off the bookshelf, which changed my life. It was called the Turning Point. Okay, perfect title.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

By a former quantum physicist named Fritjoff Capper. I start to read about this new worldview, that reality is not the way we were taught or the way we've operated for the last 300 years. That reality was, in fact, completely full of potential, basked in uncertainty. And I began to think, wow, if reality is uncertain and I embrace uncertainty, then I can reach possibilities. But then my life and everyone else's, we wanted answers. We want the things to be determined, which leads to fear. Ultimately, I came to see the more we need to know the future, the more anxious we'll become, because that's what we call it, the future. You can't know it. I gave a TEDx talk on that, on how to break free from anxiety by embracing uncertainty instead of fighting it. So at any rate, it's a rather long winded answer toward the fact that I developed my own approach toward achieving possibilities. Building self esteem, thriving in relationships. So I'm an enthusiast. I am passionate. I believe in human potential, and my work and my books are devoted toward how to harness that potential.

Yeah, well, it seems like, I mean, just in my own life, it seems like myself, and obviously I'm kind of like you are. I believe in ultimate possibilities at this stage of the game, but I wasn't always that way. I was more along the lines of what I've always known is what I'm always going to have. In fact, I'll never forget this. My father said to me a long time ago, he said, skagens don't get ahead, they get by. And what I learned about that, that became essentially a programming mechanism well into my early twenties, until a good friend of mine taught me to think differently. He said, you know, there's people who develop happiness and prosperity in life think a specific way, and people who never find it or never discover it also think in a specific way. And as a result, I had to look at my own limiting beliefs and roadblocks and mechanisms, stuff like that. They kind of change that pivot for me, help the audience understand a little bit about what hinders somebody from actually seeing, quote, unquote, ultimate possibility within themselves.

The Way I'll begin is by saying there's a common belief. And that common belief is it's hard to change. Well, that belief is a self fulfilling prophecy.

Yeah.

Who said it's hard to change? You may never have experienced it.

But.

But what you just described about the message you got from your own dad, that's chapter two in my book, the Possibility Principle. It's how we come into life. Full of possibilities, but because of an acute moment in life or chronic messages, often from parents, our sense of self or identity, it gets narrowed and then it becomes really challenging to escape that. But the pivotal question to ask ourselves at any time in life, looking around the belief that limits us, is how did I come to that belief? Oh, that's what my dad said. What if my dad hadn't said that? What if I had a different dad? So how did I come to that belief? And what makes me think that belief is true? Now, from beliefs we have millions of thoughts that come out of our beliefs. So my work is devoted very much toward helping people see their thought. You see thought happens, we don't see it. But when I teach you to see the thought, it's like a muscle memory. It's like knocking at the door. You hear the knock, you don't have to open the door. I can learn and teach people to see the thought and say, well, I'm having a thought. It's an old fearful thought. Well, I don't want to go there. Or it's a thought that's misleading me. It's just a thought. When we can see thought, old beliefs, we are free to embrace possibilities.

So would you say that maybe that. You know, we have a terminology we use which is we refer to as the challenge thought. So any, any thought that comes over a negative nature, we would like you to challenge it with an equal but opposite response. So for example, a thought, I'm not good enough. The challenge thought would be something nature of. No, I'm amazingly gifted. I just got to figure out what my purpose is like, what my aim at.

Yeah, you see, my approach is a bit different because then I can have a war being waged between two opposing thoughts and who knows which one will win. I'd rather see that old dominant thought, I'm not good enough and look at it and say, ah, there's that old thought coming again. It's kind of the technique I teach. Could be like fishing. You know, guys go out there and they fish and release. You catch the fish, you release it. I do that with thought because I don't want to battle this thought with that thought. I want to come into a place of stillness and presence within me where I can achieve intuitive wisdom, a deeper way of knowing. I don't get there when I'm in thought. I found that there's a sense of me that I can develop in the people I work with, which is inherently far more brilliant than just thought. Even if it's a good thought.

Yeah.

There's a deep place of wisdom that we can access when we can quiet ourselves from thought.

Well, a lot of times when we go in that quiet moment, that's when we can ask some of the more difficult or challenging questions. And one of the things I've discovered a long time ago is the type of question that I ask myself. My brain is going to give me the response to answer that type of question. So if I say, why am I not good enough? Or why does nobody love me? My brain answers that. If I ask my brain, what can I learn from this? Or what can I challenge this? Or how can I shape this? My brain will answer in likewise. Do you find that one of the biggest things that limits ultimate possibilities is literally the way in which we kind of ask ourselves specific questions?

Maybe Very much so. And I wrote an article called the Power of Questions. Imagine a school system where, you know, kids are in class. The teacher asks a question, you think if you have the answer, you raise your hand. It's boring, it's dull. What's that going on? Now imagine an educational system in which the kids are rewarded for asking the best question. And great questions don't have easy answers. So in relationships, doing marital counseling, I see that boy. The power of a question. She says to her husband, I'd like you to become more verbally intimate. And he goes off into his thing. But she doesn't ask, would you like to be that person? So, yes, on a relationship with ourselves, Steve, asking ourselves, how could I be more at peace with myself? What would make me feel more gratified or fulfilled? Questions like that point where you're paying attention. The power of a question is the question directs where our attention goes.

Absolutely.

The answer doesn't the answer, just the conclusion. So I agree with you. It's the power of questions.

Yeah, I mean, it definitely. It definitely is a directional method to gain, to maintain focus. I know there's someone escaped me at the moment that always says that what you focus on, you feel, you know, if you focus on all the pain that you've had, all the traumatic experiences you had, maybe a broken relationship the betrayal. You consistently repeat that, and you consistently feel that on a regular basis because of that essentially movie stream in the mind. Consequently, if you're able to focus on possibilities, which is one of the reasons I like your work so much, if you're able to focus on possibilities, you're able to eliminate a lot of those limiting beliefs, and instead, you know, start building bridge beliefs to actually getting those possibilities to become reality. You know, as you begin to look at this entire thing, especially as it kind of goes from what I refer to as the mind thing to the tactical thing, how are you able to bridge the hope of possibility to a tactical action?

Okay, so first I'd have to say there are people who will be listening to this interview who will think of possibilities in a negative way. You and I are using it in a positive way. So let's take a sentence that starts with the words what if? Now, there are those who say what if? In a positive, thoughtful, optimistic way. Yeah, those who say what if? Which leads to anxiety.

Yeah.

So how do we transition from there to the tactical? For me, the tactical comes from my work around teaching people to separate out and see the belief and the operating thought. Let's talk about feelings. Thought and feelings obviously work in tandem. It's my belief that thought actually comes before feeling, but. But we may not know, may not be on the radar. But when I'm feeling a certain way, suppose I'm feeling down in the dumps, pessimistic, skeptical. I'll pause and I'll ask myself, what was the thought that catalyzed that feeling? Then I'll see the thought and say, ah, that was it. So it's just that thought, okay, and it's gone. It evaporates. So the vehicle for me is, is to work with people and see, do they identify the feeling? Do they identify with thought? A rare small percentage of people integrates thought and feeling, which is the goal. So if you're a feeling person, ask yourself, what was the thought I had to set up this feeling? If you're a thinking person, do the reverse. Just orient toward what is it that's precipitating your experience?

Yeah, I mean, one of the lessons that I've learned over the years is that it seems like you can't really solve an emotional problem with a logical solution, and vice versa. An emotional problem almost needs an emotional solution. A logical problem almost needs a logical solution. And a lot of times, as I'm sure you've realized working with couples is that a lot of times one is coming from an Emotional place. One is coming from a logical place. And it has zero to do with what sex they are, of course.

And so it never makes sense to respond to someone who expresses a feeling by saying, that's not logical. Feelings are not supposed to be logical. But in communication, what we want to do is rather than dispute or invalidate or fall into that trap of right versus wrong that we all fall into. Yeah, sure, is ultimately to be able to ask the other person who's not listening to you, do you care how I feel now? If you have a relationship or a closer loving relationship with, we should say, well, of course I care how you feel. I can't say I love you and not care how you feel. But loving people become unfeeling as they battle over right or wrong. Simplify it. You don't see this the way I see that, but you care how I feel. That opens up the pathway for empathy and connectivity. Let me get in your shoes. Let me find out how you are experiencing me. Different than how I'm experiencing me.

Yeah, I mean, I would argue that those questions can feel pretty scary for someone who's more of a passive nature. In the personality style matrix, obviously you got from disc, Myers Briggs on and so forth, you have the more passive style personality. You've got someone who's more dominant. Like, you know, my personality is a very dominant, very bold personality style. Historically, I thought you, I thought you.

Were shy and.

You know, but so when we're doing these questions, what types of techniques? Because essentially what we're trying to do is we're trying to open up possibilities. Right. For this example, right now we're talking about maybe a marital relationship or a very tight knit intimate relationship. And maybe that person is a bold personality style who's married to or connected to someone who is a bit more of a passive personality style. I can assume that that passive personality style would have a hard time saying, do you even care how I feel? Even though they're dying to. So how would somebody combat that in order to kind of build the bridge to get from, hey, look, we're not making any momentum, we're not making any progress to the possibilities of building something beautiful.

That's a very good question, Steve. I would say to that person who you're describing as passive and you know, we're stereotyping gender, we're calling that person a her. I would say she's got a monologue going on inside herself that's private.

Yeah.

And that private monologue is he doesn't care how I feel. He never cares how I feel. Now I would be prompting her and asking her, why can't you express yourself? Why can't you tell him just how you feel or share that notion with him? And her storyline will be, well, he's going to get angry. He won't talk to me for two days. It'll get worse. It doesn't matter. The first thing in our own growth is we need authenticity. We need to find our voice. Even if your voice falls on deaf ears, you grew by finding your voice. You never want to subordinate your feelings or your thoughts.

Yeah. The funny thing is when you kind of look at those types of personality styles, and I've seen both male and female and kind of have either or. I've seen very dominant females in relationships and I've seen very dominant males.

And I've seen the situation where it's like once the person actually has the courage to speak up the first time, it's almost like the dominant personality style is kind of saying, oh, they're actually intrigued by that. Not necessarily battling back or argumentative. There are, obviously, there are abusive situations where that's a. There's pride, there's narcissism, there's all kinds of things that kind of placate into that. But as these relationships are kind of fostering, one of the techniques that I. That I feel like we share on is that the, you know, essentially, in fact, I'll say it this way. I had a quote one time when I was presenting on stage that used to go something like this. It would say, questions, open hearts, statements, close them. And when you're trying to actually build those connection points, to actually build a bridge, keep asking questions until the person, other person has their aha. Moments. Right. That other person, if you keep asking why enough times or how enough times, or, you know, what's right, what's wrong, what's missing, what's confusing. What I heard you say was all these different parts and pieces seem like you can get the conversation going. That breaks down the barriers to actually open the door for transparency.

So it's important. Tone matters, intention matters. If the why sounds prosecutorial, like gotcha, then the why won't get us anywhere. The why needs to come from genuine curiosity. There's a technique I teach couples which I call shared meaning. They're talking about something, let's call it intimacy. They're arguing. She says, tim, you have no idea how to be intimate. He says, I have no idea. Are you kidding me? I said, guys, could you take a moment and share with each Other, what you each mean by the word intimate. Two different things. Physical, sexual, emotional. Shared meaning slows down. And we ask questions around shared meaning, which is, I just heard you say this, so I want to be sure that I got that the way you intended it. So, you know, it's a gentle and inquiry, so asking questions, but from the right spirit, from the right tone, out of my desire to truly understand what it feels like to be you. That's the manner in which we ask the questions.

Once we continue to look at the relationship side of things and we're talking about possibilities, it seems like. I mean, I know couples that have struggled for decades trying to build a bridge with each other, and they love each other to keep fighting either with each other and for each other, but have yet to actually listen to one another. How important is it to actually have a mediator? Because I know a lot of, you know, a lot of those couples would, you know, from my perspective, would benefit from just having someone that can help them translate. Essentially. That's what psychotherapy and therapy in general is. It's a translation tool, is it not?

Completely. There are techniques I share, but I'm going to move back into your question in a moment. One technique that I developed, I call it the 5% rule. So if you're in a disagreement or an argument, the way our mind operates is we're hearing whatever we hear that we're going to dispute and prove it's wrong. That's our instinct. We need to do the opposite. We need to search for any small percent. I called it 5%. 5% of what you're hearing that you could agree with. And what I want you to do is take the 95% you don't agree with and put it up on the shelf for the moment. You can get back to it now. Correspond and validate and affirm the 5%. Now you know what happens now that other person surprisingly feels validated and heard, and they are now in the position to hear you. So whenever I'm facilitating what could be a contentious discussion, I move people toward the 5% rule. Find something to validate.

We see an absence of that in the political world.

Yeah.

Imagine how different it would be if we could teach this process to our.

Politicians a little bit.

Right. Let's find something to validate in each other that opens the pathway, and from there there's a convergence of communication rather than a divergence.

Absolutely. Let's pivot a little bit to the professional side of things. Right. You know, one of the things that I've Communicated a few times is I did. I found a study that was done in 2017 by Time magazine through a Harris poll. They redid the study in 2019, obviously before COVID was a thing. And as a result, they discovered that, you know, somewhere between 67% and 70% of the population would say that they feel unloved, unhappy, unfulfilled somehow, like life is just not what it's supposed to be. Kind of the moment that you mentioned early on about how you had your shift, specifically.

When you begin to look at that, do you find that most people are doing things they're really not supposed to be doing? They're not in their sweet spot. They're attorneys because their parents said you have to be an attorney. But really they're a painter or they're a. A painter. And really their hearts in law. How often do you find people who are misaligned with their ultimate kind of value that they bring?

So, of course my sample size.

Is skewed. It doesn't represent the mass of people. So having said that, the people I work with may have had a greater ability or discretion to be able to choose the path. But interesting question you asked. I'm working with a young man now who is graduating college and applying to law school. And his intention is he needs to get into a very top law school.

Yeah. How come?

Because his mother graduated Harvard Law School and that's why. So I start to talk to him. He shares his essay with me that he's sending off to school. And I said, I'm not hearing your passion for law in this essay. Can we talk about why you want to be an attorney there? It was just what you're talking about, Steve. It was, well, that's what I have to do. Now, regrettably, for most people, for many people, they may feel they don't have the choice.

They need their paycheck to pay the rent and put food on the table. I'm still a believer that, you know what, we can find a better way to do that and a way to do it that's more gratifying, meaningful for you. But we are taught as a culture that that might be high minded or a flight of fancy, you know. Now, having said that, there are certain people who come from well educated, very affluent families and they're going to be more inclined to believe that you can pursue your passion. But for most people, it is drudgery.

Yeah.

And it takes the heart and soul out of people's lives. I've had occasion when I'm working with A man who's had a heart attack, and I learned this either due to his relationships or anger or a job he hates. What I'll say is your heart attacked you. You didn't have a heart attack. Your heart attacked you because you're not living your right life.

You're. Yeah, absolutely. You know, as you were kind of mentioning that I had this piece that I'll share a little bit of our content. We always say that the. Essentially, people will sacrifice their possibility because of their hunger of validation. Do you find that also be true that they're so hungry for validation in one or any area that they kind of give up on their ultimate possibilities and potential?

So when you're saying that if one gives up on their possibility, let's say it's career or some aspiration, are you saying that they give up on that aspiration because they want the comfort of being validated for playing it safe?

Yeah. Well, somebody, you know, validation of someone that they love. No love and respect. You know, I find that at least the people that we work with a lot of times who are what I refer to as misaligned, they're misaligned because they are trying to get validation. My own sons, for example, I'm the stepfather in the relationship now, I've kind of adopted them mentally, emotionally, as my own. Right. Well, both of my children at one time or another have gone on this spree, if you will, about trying to get the validation from their own father. And I've tried to help them understand that it's hard for him to give something he's never experienced himself and to give him time kind of scenario. And as I kind of work with people and help people within our platform, because we both are in the life transformation space as we're trying to do that, one of the things I'm seeing over and over again is I'm seeing a reoccurring theme or a pattern, if you will, of people who are trying to basically be something that they're not. Therefore, their ultimate possibility is always, or it seems like it's always out of reach because they simply aren't really reaching for the right things.

So that question and what you're eliciting brings to mind work I do around self esteem. I propose that the term self esteem is misunderstood. It's a misnomer, because as a culture, we are taught that, well, if you're successful, you get high grades, you're a great athlete, you're popular, give you self esteem. No, I call that other esteem, meaning you're betraying your authentic self to elicit approval or you're calling validation from outside yourself. And as a culture, we are horribly informed around authenticity. We're taught to pursue other esteem. And that's what you're describing. Genuine, authentic self esteem means I won't betray my true self, I'll share it. I may care what you think, but I'm not going to alter or hide my true self. And to that end, the tendency is to act strong and hide your vulnerability, which is a completely backwards message to give people. Because acting strong is weak, because it's acting. But if I can embrace my vulnerability or insecurity and be myself, it means I'm not worried about what you think of me, which is actually strong.

Yeah. Well, it seems to me also that one of the things that I've seen on a regular basis is people have a hard time developing true authenticity or self esteem because they haven't done the work to really figure out who that person really is.

Yes.

How would somebody who maybe is on the fence listening right now, who doesn't really know if they are actually in their truest self or if they're acting right, how would we help them uncover how to discover their truest self so they can then amplify that?

So I wrote an article on this, finding authenticity. And in it I looked in the dictionary for a definition of authentic. Now, authentic or authenticity is usually referred to a work of art. How do I know this is authentic? It is what it appears to be. So then I correlate that to life, our own lives. Am I as I appear to be? So for myself, I catch myself, which is if I'm smiling, but I don't really feel like smiling, I'm being inauthentic. In other words, I catch myself at the root, which is if I'm acting, I'm not being authentic. Now, if I'm happy and feel like smiling, that's great. If I'm walking around with a smile on my face all the time, that's a personality mask I'm wearing. So to challenge or to test your authenticity, do I act? Do I speak? Do I behave in a way where my outside is in alignment with my inside? Or do I have stuff going on inside, tucked away that I don't want you to see? If so that's not authentic.

Okay, so if I'm understanding you correctly, your physiology, so your posture, your smile, your how you carry yourself, if it's not representing how you are thinking and feeling emotionally, then it's likely not your truest self in that Moment. Now, would you also say there are times when you can use your physiology to change maybe a negative thought pattern, Something in the lines of neuro linguistics, for example, where they use pinching of the hand or the words that you're using. Is there a time and place for both? Because it seems like that might get a little confusing to the average person.

Sure. I think your question there is a matter of intention, which is if I'm stuck in a place that I feel isn't good for me.

Yeah.

Should I choose, do I have the intention to exhale, square my shoulders back, pick up my walk a little bit, lighten my face up so I'm not grimacing?

Yes.

Those are behavioral techniques. But I don't believe I'm going to say something which I'm going to have to explain.

Sure.

I don't believe in the mind body connection because I don't believe there's a mind body separation. In other words, if mind and body are as one, the word connection misleads us Because a connection, it's like a tunnel or a bridge that connects. There's no mind body connection. Mind and body are as one. Why would we ever think they were separate? So whether I intervene around thought, feeling, physical, being, wherever I intervene, my belief is it impacts the whole.

Awesome. Well, look, I want to touch base or talk a little bit about the book, right. I want to help people understand kind of, you know, why it's a great read and why they should pick it up. So by doing so, what I'd like to do is I'd like to have a better understanding from your perspective of why was now the right time to get. Make sure it was released to the public. You know, what was missing from the conversation? Because there's obviously there's thought development, personal development all over the place. What was missing from the conversation? And you're like, you know what? The world needs to hear this message. Because I think they either got this wrong or they're not hearing this.

Let's go back to my experience after my anxiety attack. When I picked up that book. The Turning point that shifted my life. I thought, wow, this new worldview, this paradigm, and I'll put it simply, these messages when I talk about quantum physics. I was a poor science student, so. So nobody gets thrown by the science, okay? The simple principles, they are one, that reality is uncertain, not determined. It's not like living, playing a chess match. So I thought uncertainty, wow, that brings possibility. What if I embrace uncertainty? And number two.

As new agey and perhaps mystical as this Sounds. It appears that reality is inseparable. That reality, the universe, is one inseparable whole. It's hard to wrap your head around it, but I thought, wow, so if we shifted into that mind frame and we are all as one, you're different than me, but we impact each other. Then I fought in compassion, empathy, collaboration rather than conflict, kindness rather than aggressiveness can all surface. So the way we were taught for hundreds of years comes from 17th century science. We were taught Newton's determinism. If we have enough data, we can predict the future. Yeah, that's great to a point. And to an extreme it creates anxiety.

Sure.

We were also taught that reality was this giant machine. It was called a machine like universe. And we became the separate disconnected cogs in the machine with no meaning, no purpose, no connection. It would lead to epidemics of anxiety and depression and failed relationships. So I looked at the big picture and said, well, wait, if one out of two of us is going to have a psychological disorder, if most marriages fail, it may not divorce, but they don't thrive. If we're not succeeding at the game plan in life, I think it's due to the fact that we're operating from this 300 year old rule book for life. What would happen if I take these new principles, connectivity, inseparability, possibility, and brought them into my life? So I did it first myself. I had great results. Then I began to apply it throughout my therapy practice. And as I did learn more, I then thought, I now know enough about this to write this book, which took me years to write. So the book teaches us to.

Transcend our limitations. So whether it's to improve your communication or your relationships, to overcome anxiety or depression, to actual to your greatest possibility, it's about all of that. So out of the book, I then started more recently the Possibility podcast, in which I'm speaking on all these matters and interviewing great people to talk about possibilities and what gets in our way. And the culminating thing for me up to this point is in the next month I'm coming out with Zoom Live Zoom workshops on all these topics and digital programs. So I'm going to be covering overcoming anxiety. I'm going to be dealing with raising resilient children, cultivating intimate relationships, and building powerful self esteem. Four key points in most people's lives.

Absolutely. I would call them pillars.

Almost exactly the pillars.

Yes, absolutely.

So, you know, I feel like I'm 30 years younger than I am, perhaps because I came to this passion in midlife. And so it's still new for Me. And it's exciting. There's nothing else I'd like to be doing other than this.

That's awesome. Well, look, in the book, is there a specific chapter that you just enjoy writing more than another? I'm just curious. I always like to ask that authors. Yeah. Myself, I always have my favorite chapters, and it seems like everybody else's favorites are different than mine.

So the first two chapters were challenging because I had to take some very abstract ideas, philosophy and science, and not write on an academic level.

Yeah.

My intention was to bring this down so regular people can get it. Those were challenging. But when I came to the chapter, which was called recreating your past, and it goes to what you were speaking about earlier when your dad said to you, we get by, we don't get ahead.

Yeah.

I call those wave collapses, and there's a reason why. It's a quantum physics term. It's about when the place of pure potential collapses and becomes a specific thing. And metaphorically, that's what started happening to us. So that was my favorite chapter, which is, we roll up our sleeves and I show you how you can get out of that confinement, out of that trap of those beliefs that limited you.

Yeah. And I think that that's something everybody needs. That's one of the reasons. We all do. Yeah. That's one of the reasons why I think it's such a good read, is to make sure that you actually have what we call breakthrough all the time.

That's right.

Breakthrough is nothing more than going to the next level. That's it.

And I remind people that we can't call it a breakthrough if we don't sustain it and go to the next breakthrough. Otherwise, it's like a gravity field. We're going to get pulled back.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, dude, I've enjoyed hanging out with you.

Great talking with you.

Tell everybody where they can find more about you, and maybe even pick up the book. To understand.

I would say, folks, go to my website, which has everything, and it's my name, M E L S C H W A R T Z dot com. You'll find everything you need there.

Rock on. All right, guys, you heard it. Make sure you go visit melchwartz.com, pick up the book, learn a little bit more about Mel and what he has to offer. Maybe check out these new Zoom classes and enjoy the rest of your time, my friend. Thank you so much for coming on again, brother. I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Steve.

Great talking with you.

All right. Take care. You will. There was a lot of value bombs in that episode. And if you like that one, I know you're going to love this interview right here, so check it out.

I don't like to pretend that pain.

Isn'T a strong motivator.

It really, really can be, Right?

Some people lose someone in their life, and it motivates them to do more.

Be more, be better.