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In this compelling episode, host Joe Fier sits down with Dr. Don Wood, founder of the Inspired Performance Institute, to explore how hidden trauma and unresolved emotional “glitches” can sabotage your business, relationships, and health. Dr. Don shares his unique insights on how our brains protect us—often at the cost of our peace and performance—and reveals practical approaches to reset your mind for clarity, calm, and peak achievement. Whether you’re struggling with procrastination, chronic stress, or aiming to unlock higher levels in business and life, this conversation offers both eye-opening perspectives and actionable strategies.

Topics Discussed

• Why success might be fueled by fear
• Dr. Don explains how high-achievers are often unconsciously driven by underlying anxieties and survival instincts.
• Understanding trauma as a “glitch”
• Discover the difference between “big T” traumas and subtle “emotional concussions”—and how both impact decision-making and daily life.
• Brain’s survival system and business performance
• Insights into fight, flight, and freeze responses in entrepreneurship and how these patterns drive procrastination, burnout, or self-sabotage.
• Real-life examples of trauma affecting business
• Fascinating case studies, including high-performing traders and entrepreneurs, illustrate how childhood experiences unconsciously shape current behaviors.
• The science behind mind rewiring
• Dr. Don unpacks the connection between unresolved trauma, inflammation, and chronic conditions—showing how mental patterns directly affect health.
• Reprogramming your mind for growth
• Practical discussion on steps to identify and resolve subconscious glitches, improve resilience, and operate from a place of calm strength.
• Parenting insights
• Tips for creating a safe, supportive environment for children and understanding the lasting effects of language and experiences on kids’ development.

Resources Mentioned

• Inspired Performance Institute - inspiredperformanceinstitute.com
• TPE Blueprint - Trauma is a Toxin with Dr. Don Wood

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what if your procrastination, anxiety, or burnout isn't a flaw, but it's a

glitch in your brain's survival system?

And what if your success is secretly fueled by fear?

Costing you your peace and mind, your happiness.

So I invited Dr. Don Wood onto the show.

He's the founder of Inspired Performance Institute.

He's gonna break down how unresolved trauma, either big or small, are

quietly sabotaging your business, your relationship, your health,

and he's gonna reveal how high achievers probably like yourself.

Often live in fight or flight mode like all the time, and how rewiring

your mind can help you unlock calm, clarity, and peak performance.

Let's dive in and find out.

All right, Dr. Don Wood, we're doing this.

I'm so happy that you're here today.

How you doing, my friend?

I am doing great.

I appreciate it.

I got a little bit of a raspy voice, so it's a little off, but

apart from that, I feel great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm like, we've been chatting.

Your mind's clear.

I know that much.

So

that's what matters most.

Well, you, yeah, we've, we've been fortunate to connect through,

um, you know, delphi.ai and folks here in the podcast have, have

definitely heard me talk about it.

So it's cool to be able to build that out for you and, and

inspire Performance Institute.

Your, your, um, basically your practice, everything you do, which

we'll talk about here, which.

Has been blowing my mind ever since I learned about it.

And selfishly I'm like, oh man, this is, I can't wait, uh, until

you release that to the world.

So,

um,

excited about it.

Like when, when I came back, I was telling people, you know, our team about it.

They were like, like, how does that work?

And then after they got off the call with you, they were just like, oh my gosh,

I could see so many things we can do.

So we're all excited about it.

Cool.

Well, yeah, we'll definitely share it around when it's live too, and.

And what, what you do is just, it's super fascinating and you know, we've had the

pleasure to actually chat on another podcast of mine called the TPE Blueprint.

Quick little shout out there.

And it was a lot more angled to, uh, anxiety, trauma and

how it relates to, uh, toxins.

And it's kind of a different, well, similar topic, but we're gonna angle

it differently here for this show,

Sounds good.

Yeah.

Performance based as a business owner.

We were just talking about this, you know, we, as business owners, we

have our own forms of trauma that we develop around what the relationships,

the things that we do every day.

Some of it we don't, we're not even aware of.

Right?

It is absolutely.

And a lot of people aren't aware that, you know, a business trauma can have an

effect on your current business and it can make you afraid to make decisions.

You know, you can get into freeze mode.

I mean, the same way you can in any kind of a situation.

Uh, fight, flight, or freeze in normal life, right?

So if something is, you know, you've had an experience with something, you

could go into fight, flight, or freeze.

You can in business too.

Yeah.

And it will affect the way your mind will make decisions.

And so we're we're creatures, you know, of, of our environment.

And if our environment was dark and stormy at one point, it still

remembers that dark and stormy.

And, and when people say to me, well, I, I sabotaged myself and I

go, well, it's actually impossible.

You can't sabotage yourself.

The brain would never do that.

It's trying to protect you.

So if you had had a. A particular kind of situation in your business

and something looks like it's going in that direction, your mind will

move you in another direction.

Not to hurt you, but to protect you from running into that same thing.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And a lot of us might see that as, oh, I'm just procrastinating.

I keep avoiding this thing or beating myself up about

whatever it might be in the past.

all of those things, even procrastination or protection systems.

So I wrote my second book, and I called it Emotional Concussions, right?

Because not everything's a big T trauma.

So you know, we know the obvious Big T traumas, but if somebody's

had an emotional concussion, that can have an effect on the way

people's minds will work as well.

So for example, I had a lady very successful, owned her own business,

was doing really well, and she says, well, I sabotaged myself.

And I said, well, what do you mean?

She goes, well, I procrastinate all the time.

And she says, and I, I write it off to that fact that I must

be much better under pressure.

So that's why I procrastinate and I said, well, no, that's not true.

Nobody's better that way.

We're better when we take our time and do things right.

But we looked at it and it came back to when she was a child and her mother

was the principal at the school she went to, and she says, I remember my

mother calling me into her office.

And asked me to bring her homework.

She'd do this all the time.

And she goes, and I remember that red pen coming out, and

she'd underlined all my mistakes.

And so what her mind had learned to do was to try to wait as long as she could.

I don't have my homework ready.

Right?

So her mom couldn't criticize her,

and so the more she could put it off, the less chance it was of being criticized.

I could see that.

And something in business actually, just in, maybe this relates where

I've seen myself, but also I've, I've chatted with others and I think

someone even broke this down is.

Even when you're selling or, or you know, you wanna sell a new customer in your

business prospect, and for whatever reason you're not doing the, maybe you have the

call, but you're not doing the follow up, you're not doing a, all the things that

you know will probably aid in that sale.

I've heard, and maybe correct me if I'm wrong, or maybe any insights

you have, you're almost, your brain might be thinking about all the work

that, or the stuff that you need to do after they say, yes, let's go.

You might be actually, you know, preventing that

happening in the first place.

true.

All of those kinds of things have, it's just the way our minds work.

Our minds are trying to protect us from pain.

And pain can come from different areas, like that could become extra work.

And so if your mind sort of sees this is gonna be painful, it'll try

to put it off as long as possible.

So you may not be able to close that sale and you have no idea why.

Um, I'll give you another example.

I had a guy, very successful, uh, trader.

He did options, derivative stocks, and he says, and, and he comes

to see me and he goes, in the third quarter, I sabotage myself.

And I said, well explain what that means.

And he says, well, when the fourth quarter comes, he goes,

my anxiety goes through the roof.

He says, I avoid the office at all costs.

He says, 'cause I know if I go in there, my anxiety's gonna go crazy.

And he says, so I make excuses.

I tell everybody I'm burnt out.

I need a vacation.

You know, it's a pretty stressful world making those kinds of trades, you know,

and they're working on a quarter of a point a day, you know, stuff like that.

moving.

Yeah.

Always moving.

So they're having to watch everything so intently.

So he goes, so I don't know why, but it's, the fourth quarter is

always the time where I end up like trying to get out of it.

And he says, and I feel bad 'cause I leave all the work to my partners.

And he says, but then when the new year comes around, I'm all

fired up, but I go back to work.

So I asked him, I said, you know, any trauma?

And he goes, no, I had a great.

Childhood.

He goes, my dad was my hero.

He goes, he's my mentor.

Extremely successful guy.

He says, I learned so much from my dad.

And uh, and then he said something.

He goes, and my dad was the most resilient person I ever met.

And I said, all right, tell me about why he's so resilient

and what that means to you.

He says, well, he went bankrupt four times.

He says, so I remember as a kid, he says, we'd be flying in private jets.

He says, and then in the middle of night he would wake us up and have to pack up

and move 'cause we're getting evicted.

Oh,

Then we'd be back in private jets.

So he was making about 2 million a year.

What was his mind trying to do?

Protect him from losing it.

Keep it.

Yeah.

Hold onto it.

So the fourth quarter is the most volatile sometimes in the stock market.

So his mind would try to get him, keep him outta the office.

Geez.

That makes perfect sense.

And then after he goes through the program, he said, I've never felt so

much peace in my life driving home.

And then he, uh, sends me a message on December 15th,

that, that was his last day.

He was taking the rest of the year off

he goes, but, and he said it had his best year ever,

oh man.

That's.

but he had never identified where it came in from.

Well, that's what I'm curious here, because you've, and, and I know we

just jumped into it, but like your, your background is fascinating and I, I

definitely want you to tell the story of how even, you know, why you chose to go

this path, what, 15 odd years ago, but then, you know, maybe we do that, but

then I want to get into, yeah, how does this trauma show up in, and of course

we're talking entrepreneurship mainly here, but we're all humans and there's

all these underlying traumas that.

We're probably just completely unaware of that are affecting our daily lives

and performance can skyrocket if we just clear something or identify that.

Right.

Well, especially successful entrepreneurs, right?

People look and go, well, you know, my life's doing really good.

I've got my dream home.

I got my dream family.

Everything's going along really well, but they're doing little things that

could be affecting their enjoyment of it.

Um, so I got into this mainly because of my daughter.

So I'd always been an entrepreneur.

Um, so I was in insurance, mortgages, real estate, doing things like that.

And, um, my daughter ended up being diagnosed with two autoimmune

disorders, uh, Crohn's at 14.

And they said there's no cure for Crohn's who don't know what causes it.

And she ended up having 24 inches of her intestines taken out,

and they said there's nothing we can do.

She'll end up with a colostomy bag eventually.

And then she ended up with a second, um, autoimmune disorder

in her lungs and it was called idiopathic pulmonary hemo cirrhosis.

And that's where the iron and the blood gets released.

So again, they told us no cure for it.

We don't know what causes it.

So that sent me back.

My wife said, if we don't figure this out, we're gonna lose our daughter.

So I went back to school and started doing my research, and I went back, got

my PhD. And I always say, if you wanna solve a problem, send in an entrepreneur.

I didn't come into it to become a doctor.

I came in to figure out how to save my wife and my daughter.

And what I discovered is this unresolved trauma we didn't know she had was

creating the inflammation and then the inflammation compromised, or immune system

and neurotransmitters and neuroplasticity.

So the genes that regulate inflammation, upregulate.

The genes that regulate the immune system downregulate, and that's

the perfect recipe for disease.

So once we discovered that she had had trauma when she was six that she had never

shared, I started making the connection between the trauma people are experiencing

a lot of these illnesses that they have.

And so once I figured that out, I figured out a way to solve it

That's crazy that, and you're right, yeah.

The entrepreneurs are the ones that solve these problems and probably look at it

from a completely different lens too.

And I'm curious how, how was that experience?

So you obviously had the motivation, you know, to, you had a goal,

you, and very clear goal and, and love that you did that.

Like how did you approach.

I mean, going to school, I mean, you had all this business

background, but now here you are.

Fresh, clean slate, new beginning.

Um, yeah, I don't know, like was there a different approach that

you took it than, than I guess someone else would in that same seat

I think so because I came in saying, what have they missed?

'cause they all told us the same thing.

It didn't matter who we talked to.

They said, we don't know what causes Crohn's or the hemo acidosis.

We do know there's no cure for it.

So I said, that can't be possibly true.

They just haven't figured it.

Yeah.

So I'm gonna have to see what did they miss.

So I think I came in with that approach is what did they miss in that?

And I think the, the, the reason I found that out was because if, if you look at

the current way we train our doctors and train our medical profession is they go

in to become a doctor and very quickly they're siloed and taught a specialty.

So the people that were dealing with, my daughter's Crohn's were

gastroenterologists, well, they get zero psychological training,

Right.

so they would never have made that connection.

And then the people dealing with her hem sclerosis are dealing with autoimmune,

things like that and lung disorders.

Again, they know a lot about the lungs, they know a lot about the gut, but they

don't know anything about the psychology.

And that's where what I figured out is the root is in the psychology.

The Crohn's and the hemo acidosis were symptoms of the problem.

They weren't the problem.

Yeah.

So then I had to figure out how was trauma making these

changes to my daughter's health?

And so, and I'm not equating myself to, to him, but you, Elon Musk, I

heard him talk about one time they said, you know, how did you do this?

And Nassau can't do it.

Like you're putting rocket ships out, but you know, so much less cost.

He says, well, the way we looked at it is we engineered it backwards.

He says, we took a look at what they built and then started taking stuff

out, like what did they not need?

What was redundant?

And so he started to eliminate things to see if it would

still work by taking stuff out.

And it's sort of a little different, but it's that same mentality

of they've over-engineered it, which is what I realized.

They've over-engineered.

The Crohn's and Hemos.

Right,

So let's break it down.

What is it?

and, and look at it holistically as well.

It's, it's, you know, it's connected to everything else.

And, and like you said, it's this, the root is the psychology.

And that's, that's interesting.

I want you to unpack that if you could.

And just, so now that you know, you know, you've helped a lot of

people, including your daughter.

I guess explain how the psychology is the root and how that affects other

parts of our body and generally, and then of course how that can lead

to illness as well, if unresolved.

I believe 80% of the diseases and everything we're, we're, uh, treating

today are psychological based.

About 20% may be physical, but 80% are psychological.

Okay.

it's just the way the brain works.

So your brain and your mind.

When I talk about the brain, I'm talking about the computer, the physical computer.

When I talk about the mind, I'm talking about the software.

Which is a software that operates inside the computer.

So the brain, the physical brain is subject to physical damage.

If you get injured, the mind is subject to glitches and error

messages the way software is.

So trauma creates glitches and error messages, and your subconscious

mind operates in the present.

It sees everything is now.

So 95% of your minds operating on a subconscious level

fully present in the moment

mm.

When we have a traumatic event that is stored only humans store explicit

memory, we store tremendous amount of details about everything we've seen,

heard, or experienced in her life.

So that memory keeps activating the nervous system.

There's nothing happening, but the mind keeps looking at memory in real

time and turns on the nervous system.

Yeah.

So when you ask somebody, oh, what happened five years ago, like when I

worked with the Boston Marathon bombing survivors, they would start talking

about it and start shaking and crying.

And I would say, do you know why you're shaking and crying?

And they said, well, because I'm talking about what happened to me.

And I said, right, but your mind thinks there's a bomb about to go off.

It's looking at memory in real time.

That bomb went off five and a half years ago, but when your mind goes into

memory to start describing it, it's actually seeing the memory right now.

Thinking it's happening all over again,

that's what people have missed.

So my daughter's trauma was looping over and over and over.

They continued to activate her nervous system and that what that would do is

then put it into a fight or flight state.

So the genes that regulate, um, inflammation would upregulate

and Crohn's is just inflammation.

Same with the hemo cirrhosis.

So the inflammation stayed on and kept staying on because the memory

kept running in the background.

So what I did is create a technique that I can reset that

memory and, um, stop that loop.

That's incredible.

I mean, and the fact that it seems like a couple things need to happen

is well, really under identifying what is that unresolved trauma, right?

Like I, I'm thinking about that and there's.

Even if we don't think that we've had Big T trauma, you know, the,

the ones that, like you said, we've the pretty obvious ones.

Bombing is a big one,

you know, uh, but what are these smaller t traumas that are just

happening, you know, in our childhood schooling in our workplace?

Well, when, when I take people through the the process, a lot of times people may not

be thinking about it, but as I take 'em through the process, they start to pop up

Okay.

and so all of a sudden people go, gee, I haven't thought about this in

a long time, and then it'll come up.

Here's the best way to understand if the trauma is affecting you,

if you start to talk about it and you get emotional, it's active.

Ah, it's,

purpose to an emotion is a call for an action.

What's the purpose of fear run?

What's the purpose of anger attack?

So if you talk about something where you got somebody hurt you five years ago,

and as you start talking about it, you start to shake and cry is because your

mind's trying to get you to run or fight

five years ago.

a glitch.

It's

That's what I figured

You're like, from five years ago, it's like, how, how are

you gonna, you can't go back.

And so you feel that emotion.

So like we talk about professionals, I work with professional golfers and

I had one guy tell me about this one particular course that had a par three.

And he goes, every time I play that par three, he says, I can't

stop thinking about the water.

Hmm.

And he says, and almost every time I put the ball in the water, because

his mind was looking at the number of times he put the ball in the water.

Now people would say, well, you know, you just have to put that outta your mind.

That's not how the mind works.

So that's not a golf hole that's a threat to your survival.

If I keep putting the ball in the water, I miss the cut.

I don't get paid.

Mm.

And so now you've got guys who are still trying to grow on the PGA tour,

or they're on the Korn Ferry tour and they remember times where they

made those mistakes and missed a cut.

Mm-hmm.

Now they go back to that same spot, and that's why these guys, you see them,

you know, they get down to the back nine and all of a sudden start falling

apart because they probably lost it on the back nine at another tournament.

yep.

And the mind's going, what do I know about this place?

And starts to pull in the old memory and then all of a sudden

everything starts to tense up.

I wrote this down for myself, but the purpose of emotion is action.

And that's,

that

Nobody's ever thought about it that way.

No, that's, it's incredible because if you're having an emotion pop

up, you know, from something in the past, I'm imagining it's

maybe separating from anything.

Possibly happening in the moment, but even that could be tied to the past.

You know,

it seems like,

because your mind looks for similar and same

right?

to protect you.

So all of a sudden, say you got into an accident with a white van and you're

just driving along and a white van starts, you see a white van pulling

up to the corner, well, it's not gonna hit you, but all of a sudden, your

heart starts beating in your chest.

Why you're not in danger.

But your mind looks at the white van and then starts to say,

what do I know about white vans?

And starts to pull in the accident.

And your mind thinks it's happening now?

Right, and, and we're so dang smart as humans that it just feels like it's

happening all over again in real time.

so, the conscious mind cannot override that.

right.

It's subconscious survival based.

And that's why I said it's impossible to sabotage yourself.

Your mind's always trying to protect you.

It's dealing with faulty intelligence

So you have this subconscious layer that's really running the show,

but

we,

yeah, let's talk about that.

Because now at a, you know, at a logical or a conscious level, we realize,

okay, purpose, uh, or the purpose of emotions that we feel that pop up is to.

Act on something and, and like you said, it could be fear, you know?

So then, um, that's more of a, yeah.

Runaway or anger attack.

Uh, procrastination I'm sure is a whole nother thing, or, you know, anxiety,

a lot of us are dealing with that.

I know that's something you treat.

Uh, so Yeah.

I guess explain this whole layer of this, uh, the, the subconscious now and

how that is really the boss, it seems.

Yeah, the subconscious is your survival brain, and it runs about 95%.

So everything that's happening to you on a subconscious level,

you don't have to think about.

Are you thinking about that?

There's a hundred gallons of blood pumping through your system every hour.

Do you have to think about that at all now?

How many times your heart beats a day?

Right.

How much oxygen's being taken in, like none of that is conscious to us.

So 95% of those, all those actions that are going on, you don't have any conscious

awareness and don't need to attend to.

It's being run by the system and programmed to keep you alive.

So 95% of your mind's operating below your conscious awareness to keep you alive.

And so if it sees that there's a threat, then so no animal Joe can do this.

Only humans can because we store explicit memory about events and experiences.

Animals don't.

Animals are fully present in the moment.

They respond to their environment.

If there's a threat, they will respond.

If there's no threat, they're not thinking about threats.

They don't remember threats.

Right.

We've stored all that information.

So a zebra cannot feel fear of a lion unless there's a lion present.

Right,

The zebra's not sitting around thinking about lions.

It doesn't remember the lion chasing them yesterday, but if

a lion shows up, it's built into their DNA, that that's a threat.

right.

We have that same system, but we added explicit memory.

So every lion you've ever dealt with.

Has been recorded and stored in memory and keeps turning on the

system and is not supposed to.

So what we do is when you have a traumatic event, all your senses are

heightened, sight, smell, hearing.

So how's it recording that high definition, tremendous amounts

of detail stored in that memory.

So you can see if I, if you started to talk about something

that happened to you 10 years ago.

There was a traumatic event and started to try to talk about it.

You have to go into memory and all this high definition information

starts coming into the system and your subconscious operates and the

president goes, oh, that's happening now.

Oof.

We need to protect you from the threat.

Yeah.

Like, would it be safe to say that you almost have to detach this high fidelity,

this high definition outta your brain?

Um, so yeah, it doles maybe.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Is it a doling?

Is it a disassociation?

Like,

I

Yeah, it's not a disassociation.

So what we're gonna do, and this is the best way I explain it, if I asked you

what you ate for dinner last night, can you tell me what you ate for dinner?

I'm blanking on it right now.

Oh, hamburgers,

that's what

Yeah.

So when I asked you that and everybody's watching this, you looked up right

and you saw information, probably saw where you ate it, what you ate.

That's how you stored the information about dinner last night.

No animal does that.

That's why you can feed your dog the same thing every day.

He doesn't remember eating that yesterday.

This is just a new meal.

He's, he's actually responding to his environment in real time.

But because last night wasn't threatening or disturbing, it stored

as a fairly low resolution file.

Not a lot of detail, but enough to store it.

But if that was a, a threatening event, a traumatic event, and all

your senses are heightened now, that memory is extremely intense and that's

what turns on the nervous system.

It's a glitch.

So what I do in the process is I take that high definition memory.

Get your mind to reprocess it into the same format as to what

you ate for dinner last night.

Okay.

you can talk about it and it doesn't activate the nervous system.

People are blown away when I take 'em through the process.

The most dramatic one was a US Army sniper who is ordered to

shoot and kill a 12-year-old,

and for eight years he, he couldn't stop thinking about it.

And, uh, was drinking a lot, getting into fights, getting medicated constantly.

And so when I sat down with him, he said, I can't talk about this again.

He says, I got arrested last week at the va.

'cause I started picking up tables and chairs and throwing them.

And I said, well, here's the good news.

I don't need you to talk about it.

He said, well, what are we gonna do?

I said, we're gonna fix it.

He goes, well, how are we gonna fix it if I don't talk about it?

And I said, I, I'll, I'll need you just to pull up the memory.

And I said, you can talk about it if you want to, but I don't need you to.

And I said, if you prefer not to, I've got a technique that I can just

take you through the visual memory and reset it within two minutes.

Uh

And he said to me, he goes, how the bleep did you do this?

Why am I able to think and talk about it now and I'm not shaking and crying?

And I said, because for eight years your mind's been trying to

get you not to pull the trigger.

mm.

It's been calling for an action.

What would solve that problem?

Don't shoot.

Yep.

So his mind kept calling for an action that wasn't possible.

He can't not shoot.

Right?

It doesn't exist.

It's just information about an event that's life changing.

Oh yeah.

you equate that into business.

You know, people who have a business trauma and they don't understand

why they keep on making these changes that weren't beneficial.

Is because there was an old memory about, you know, I get

hurt when I expand my business.

I get to a certain level and I fail.

So they try.

They don't know that that's what they're doing, but their mind is diverting them

into another direction to protect them.

it's almost talk therapy.

Like you, you mentioned he was able to visualize, it sounds

like just you prompted him or cud him in a way to recall it in his

Mm-hmm.

I say, give me a minute, two minute highlight reel.

I said, if we made that whole thing into a movie, I'm looking for the trailer.

Got it.

And so he'll be visualizing it, but I'm taking him through a processes,

different techniques that I use

Yeah.

that is basically interrupting the process of recalling it.

Which then the mind and the real key, Joe, is, the reason I use four hours

is I've gotta get the mind and the brain into optimal condition to heal

Mm-hmm.

it.

That that's why traditional therapy is not very good for trauma,

because the mind's still stressed when you, so if I sat down with you and I said,

Joe, tell me about what happened to you.

You're stressed talking to me about it.

Your mind's not gonna make a change when it's feeling stressed.

So we don't even talk about trauma for the first two hours.

I'm giving you all science and education on how the brain works,

why it does what it does, and what I hear constantly is people saying,

well, that makes so much sense.

Yeah, of course that would happen.

How could it not happen?

So you're getting 'em into this mode.

And I know from before when we chatted in this alpha brain state,

this brainwave state, so it's

literally the calmest your, your mind and body can be right, so you feel safe

with

Yep.

new information.

And it takes a little bit of time to get the mind to feel safe.

And the reason it starts to feel safe is as I'm taking you through it, your

mind is absorbing this information.

And I'm saying, and one of the things that I've had, I literally, Joe,

people will cry when I say this.

There's nothing wrong with you and there's nothing wrong with your mind.

The reason you're experiencing these symptoms of fear or anger or

depression or anxiety is because that's the way our minds work.

Yeah.

There's nothing wrong with you.

Your mind is responding.

All of the things that they keep telling people that there's wrong with them.

You have anxiety.

We're gonna put you on anxiety.

Medication, anxiety's the symptom.

It's not the problem, but depression is the symptom, not the problem,

but they treat.

The symptom, which means they never solve the problem.

When it comes to business owners, like do you, are there some trends or

commonalities that you've seen from the folks that you've worked with that maybe

show up more often with entrepreneurs, people who are self-starters leaders,

you know, problem solvers than others that we should kind of maybe be

aware of, like, oh yeah, that's me,

Uh, you'll see a few different things.

One, you can see anger show up a lot, where things just

frustrate them really quickly.

And that may come from earlier when people just didn't listen to them,

or they had, they failed because they couldn't communicate their message,

and then they ended up not making it, you know, or even back into childhood

where nobody, they were really smart, but nobody listened to them, and they

were told that they weren't smart.

Um, any of those kinds of things will show up in an emotion in a situation.

So my wife, for example, dealt with fear and I didn't understand

it because I know I understood.

She had a very violent father, so I understood where the fear was coming

from, but she's now living with me and we're 10 years into our marriage.

We're living in our dream home.

We got three beautiful children.

Everything's going really well, a good business, and she's not enjoying it.

And I couldn't understand why she wasn't enjoying it.

And she'd say to me, well, what happens if that insurance company doesn't

renew the contract in two years?

And I went, why are you worried about a contract in two years?

She'd go, well, what happens if they don't?

Have you got a plan for it?

Or are you like, she was waiting for the, the shoe to drop and she couldn't relax?

So you see that a lot of times in successful entrepreneurs, they

can't relax 'cause there's that constant wind's, it gonna fall apart.

If I let my guard down, I'm gonna get hurt.

And they

I've been there.

don't enjoy for me, I had no trauma so I could enjoy the success we were having.

And I couldn't understand why she wasn't, because she wasn't in that house anymore.

I'm like, you're living with me.

I don't yell at my wife.

I've never hit my wife.

And yet she's operating in fear.

And until I understood where it was from, it was from her

traumatic childhood that kept on.

So if I would say something as simple as, no, I don't like that,

she would tear up and start to cry and she'd say, why are you mad at me?

And uh, Joe, I'd go, what are you talking about?

I'm not mad.

She'd go, yeah, I could tell you're getting mad.

I wasn't getting mad, but if I had a little tension change in my

voice, my vocal cords were a little tighter 'cause maybe I'm tired.

That sounded like I was yelling at her.

She was super sensitive to sound, super sensitive to her environment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We could come out of a store and she'd go, can you believe

how rude that clerk was to me?

And I'd go, where?

How is she rude?

Well, didn't you see the way she answered that question, or the way

she stuck the clothes in the bag?

I can't see any of that.

You are not seeing the same picture.

Yeah,

I'm not, I'm not living in that world and it, there was nothing wrong with

her and nothing wrong with me, right?

She was filtering through what I call your own set of

personal atmospheric conditions.

Right.

So her atmospheric conditions growing up were dark and stormy.

Mine were bright and sunny.

So I see the world through bright and sunny, right?

Doesn't mean that I'd ignore danger.

Right, but I'm not looking for it.

That's all she can look for,

Hmm.

because that's how she stayed safe as a child, you get hurt

if you put your guard down

Yeah.

It's not safe.

You gotta move, you gotta, yeah.

Fight or whatever it might be, but

there's a

constantly look for the danger, and she could see it everywhere.

and see it shows up, it seems like it's a spectrum.

It'll show up in everyone, you know, in some, a lot more debilitating

than maybe this underlying, uh, anxiety feeling that for whatever

reason, you know, and that might be preventing you from totally feeling

happy or focused or whatever it is.

Fatigued, I dunno, are there symptoms that you would, that you kinda see as

well, and of course that's not where the root is, but maybe like the signs.

Business owners are people that are like, Hey, maybe that's, that's,

that's worth going in emotions.

I know it leads to action, but you

Yep.

Well, you'll see them become workaholics, right?

That they can't stop working because if they let their guard down, they get hurt.

So they work and work and work and work and can't enjoy

the success they're having.

Because what they realize is, if I let my guard down, I'm gonna get hurt.

And so they don't get a chance to enjoy.

They burn out.

Hmm

And so those are the kinds of things that you'll see.

Um, and, and they can show up all kinds of different ways.

You can have somebody who's like a super successful person, really nice

guy, you know, generous, you know, doing all those kinds of things.

And then you find out he's an alcoholic, right?

Always got a gambling problem, right?

But he puts on a great image.

And a lot of times you don't realize that it's all coming from fear or

coming from being hurt, anger, but you'll see it in some of those emotions.

I'm curious, like, so as we kinda wrap it up here, I want to, I want to know

more about your, your process and, and just like the way that you would, I

guess start people along or maybe even some now stuff to kind of prime people.

If they're starting to nod their heads and be like, yes.

Okay, that sounds familiar.

And there's been a few things I can relate with.

I guess, what would you say to that?

Because I want to definitely give some actionable things if possible

here and then lead 'em your way, you know if If it's a good path.

Yeah, I think the idea is to identify what are your strengths, what are the

things that you're struggling with?

Um, and it's sometimes hard to sort of analyze ourself, you know?

So if you've got a good partner, good spouse, or somebody like

that, just say, what are the things that you think I should work on?

And you'd be, they'll probably tell you.

Yeah, so the key is being

open and not saying anything during

right.

But it's really good to, because a lot of times you don't identify with it.

You don't think that that's my, my issue, but it it definitely can be.

And so even somebody growing up with a lot of success and then something goes

wrong, right then, they could just get so upset when something doesn't go right.

And so this is my, my complaint with my wife and I, not complaint, but

she says about me, I hate to lose.

I'm competitive in a card game.

Like we play these games with our friends and I hate, she goes, why

do you get so upset when you lose?

I don't get like mad throwing things or anything, but I hate to lose.

But my childhood, I had a lot of successes stuff I did, and so it's not a bad

trait, like I'm not yelling at anybody or making a problem, but she can tell.

I hated losing.

And she never really, that didn't make any sense to her.

She didn't have, so even in successful, I mean, I'm using that as an example

of success can sometimes create problems too, that when we do get

hit with something and something goes wrong, how resilient are we?

Yeah.

You know, you see this a lot of times in really super talented athletes growing up.

They're the, they're the biggest, strongest kid.

And then by the time they get into college, they're no longer

that dominant athlete, and then all of a sudden things go wrong.

Right?

They can't handle

Mm-hmm.

because they're used to dominating.

Well, when you get to a certain level, it's pretty tough to dominate.

Yeah, it's interesting to think trauma can show up as a success as well.

So it's not always looking at maybe the dark sides or the the shadow, which

is what I think people would probably normally associate a trauma with

or something that's bringing up that emotion from the past.

And I don't know if trauma's always the right word.

Is there a better word to use it when it's a Success

Um, yeah, I mean actually it could be an actual fact.

Um, because you, your mind how it responds to things, just the smallest thing

going wrong, and that's why somebody could turn around and say like, why

did he get so upset over something so small was because he's never had that.

And then all of a sudden when it hits him, he doesn't know how to handle it

Right?

or her.

Right?

And then you're just like, wow.

They're just really super sensitive.

But they are, when things don't go their way.

Mm-hmm.

And so then they end up overcompensating.

There's all kinds of ways it'll show up, but the key to it, the best

advice I can give to somebody is try to identify what your personality

traits are with potentially something throughout your life.

And a lot of it comes back to childhood, believe it or not, because

the ages between zero and seven, our brains are actually literal.

We're not actually analyzing anything.

We're taking everything in right in, in real time, and not dissecting it.

We're just accepting it.

So between the ages of zero and seven, you're being told every day

you're stupid, you're an idiot.

You don't know what you're doing.

Then that becomes the system that your system's developing.

Or you can end up with the opposite where, oh, you're the smartest, you're the best.

Right?

And then the child ends up, something goes wrong when they get older and

it, the frustration level builds and they don't know how to handle it.

I'll, I'll give you an example.

A young man, um, he was a teenager and his dad said, I don't know what happened.

He says, all of a sudden he's playing these video games, right?

And he's smashing the wall, putting his fist through the

wall, and it came back to.

I said, what happened?

And he says, well, he had, I forget which game it was, he had the basketball

game with Jordan, and then it reset.

Well, you have to build Jordan back up again.

You know, he's only a 60% shooter when you start and becomes a 98% shooter.

He couldn't handle that.

he'd been so successful in the game and he had very successful parents and

everything was going well in his life.

And all of a sudden now he's playing a video game where he's

set back and he can't rebuild

Yeah.

That's tough.

Knowing what's possible, but now I gotta do it all over again and, and yeah.

Whatever I.

and totally outta character for the, for the, for the young man.

His dad said he's taking his tennis rackets and smashing them

on the ground when something goes wrong, and it came back to this.

Once we identified it, we were able to start working on it and reset it.

But before that, they just didn't understand it.

It was all of a sudden as well, I guess he's just, you know, this

is teenage years, he's losing it.

Well, that was the big factor.

I'm thinking as a, as a parent of two little ones, and I don't know if

this is something you would, you're, you would wanna speak on, but I'm

like, how do we prep our kids in this zero to seven age range Where,

yeah, it's almost like volatile.

It seems like if you go one way or the other, there's a spectrum here.

I don't know any, any tips or

Yeah, it's very, it's very easy.

You have to be very careful the words you choose.

Because children are literal with language.

And I'll give you a a good example.

When my wife was growing up when she was six, so she's in an already traumatic

childhood and uh, some of the women in the neighborhood, the mothers put together

a tea party for all the little girls.

So she was all excited 'cause she got to go to the tea party, get dressed

up, she gets there and one of the mothers greeting her says, oh my

gosh, Bridget, you're gonna be such a heartbreaker when you grow up.

And all the other mothers were like, oh yeah, bridge is

definitely gonna be a heartbreaker.

She said, I got sick to my stomach and went home.

What Bridget heard was, you're going to hurt people.

You're gonna break people's hearts.

Hmm.

A 6-year-old doesn't understand what that means, so we're

thinking I'm complimenting her.

They don't know that she's literally taking in, you're going to break a heart,

Mm-hmm.

be very careful that your children are understanding, right what you mean,

because they look for you for safety.

And so the best way, the best advice I can give to parents,

especially when you've got these young kids, is make your home safe.

It's gotta be the place they can come back to.

Doesn't mean that they get away with things.

Right.

You could, my, my dad never yelled, never raised his voice,

never hit us ever once, and raised three very disciplined children.

Nice.

I was never afraid of him, but I respected him and I, my, the biggest

thing for me is disappointing him.

Like I didn't wanna disappoint him, so that's how he raised us.

But you hear all these people saying, you know, spare the rod, spoil the child.

Mm-hmm.

Tell me where that makes sense.

I want my child to be afraid that I'm gonna hit 'em,

Right.

afraid that I'm gonna hurt 'em.

How is that productive?

It's not, I don't care what anybody

says.

I, I, I'd argue that all day.

Sure.

I'm with you.

Can they be disciplined?

Absolutely.

So we would, if something went wrong, we would be disciplined,

but it was always done in love.

So here's you explain, here's what you did wrong.

Here's the consequences, right?

So that the next time you'll think about it, right?

And then the child will go, okay, they may not like it, right?

But you do it without that, that anger in your voice, and that

creates that world of safety.

And that's how I grew up with that.

So it kept me calm, kept my nervous system calm, kept me healthy.

And that's the key thing is keeping that nervous sys system

calm in those early years.

And you're right,

yeah.

Bring in the safety.

So then we are, we're literally living in a safe world the

rest of our lives, ideally.

And of course, the outside world, we'll do other things, but if we can

The world's gonna bump 'em.

The world's gonna hit them right.

They need to know when they come home there's a safe place.

And that's why I said to Bridget, you know, she said.

I said, you had no place to land.

She was in flight all her childhood.

I had none of that.

And so my nervous system stayed regulated.

Now she's high functioning.

She didn't get into drugs or alcohol or anything like that.

She was just living in fear.

And that was, um, stopping her from engaging and enjoying

the success we were having.

It wasn't that she wasn't appreciative, right?

She was.

She was appreciative.

Appreciative and grateful.

But always looking for what's gonna go wrong,

Yep.

and I'm the opposite.

I'm just like, I don't understand why you're thinking that way.

She couldn't not think that way.

That was the program that was running.

I,

thank God that you've figured out a way to kind of reboot things.

The system, no matter what your be beginning was, right?

Like, and it's

like like I said on the website, you know, it's rebooting your

mind and you're literally.

Yeah, you're doing that.

So no matter if it came from that very, uh, you know, you can't land

anywhere at home because you're being whatever the abuse or trauma could be,

or all the way to success, you know, like I was the best at everything.

Um, yeah.

So how, I guess, what are the next steps here for a listener who might want to go

a little deeper into what you are doing?

Any of the, the TIP program, TIPP.

Um, I guess explain some of the next steps in, in tell where they can go.

Find you.

Yeah, if they wanna find out more, there's a lot of great testimonials on

our site that may relate to, to what you're dealing with, you know, from people

who've dealt with anxiety, depression, anxiety, addiction, even high performers.

You know, we work with a lot of professional athletes.

Um, Prince Fielder, his testimonials on our site, there's a pretty

high performer, six time All Star.

He says, if I had gone through your program, I've extended my

career by three to five years.

He says, I sat on benches with guys that were dealing with

depression, anxiety, panic attacks.

He, so a lot of what we think about these guys and we think, oh,

they've got it made, but they're dealing with the same things.

Mm-hmm.

And, but they just perform at a very high level,

That's all, all the way down to, you know, every one of us, we're all, we're

all dealing, walking around with this.

So, however you apply yourself into the world, um,

So I talk about we all have another gear,

Yeah.

we have another gear.

We just need to figure out how to reach that gear.

Oh man.

Because it actually affects the mitochondria in the cells, the

energy, the ATP in the cells.

And so, um, if you have trauma, it is pulling that energy.

So I have a lot of people go through the program and on the, on the athletic

side, who increase their personal s

Because they're literally getting, creating more energy.

Right.

Or maybe

it was at a, yeah.

It's probably creating and directing it in better places, right?

Yep.

That's why I love working with athletes 'cause they're measuring it all the time

Yeah.

so you can see it.

So we're seeing in this study that they did with DNA on the gene

regulation, inflammation coming down in, uh, immune system coming up.

That's, you know, you can't, how do you do anything but prove it by just saying,

here's the evidence, neuroplasticity changing, you know, mitochondria changing.

That tells you how much trauma is affecting us.

on the other podcast that I host, it's all about, uh, yeah, like how toxins

can really clog up the mitochondria.

And those are the, that's creating energy.

So like what you're saying is exactly what a lot of these doctors are saying as well.

And if you have inflammation or it's just clogged up, it's like your, your

body literally just goes haywire and,

Well, the, the best way to explain it too is, and this is sort of a simple analogy.

Trauma is a lion chasing us.

If a lion is chasing you right now, it makes sense to run, right?

So you could run on jagged rocks and bare feet, you will not feel the pain

Right.

because your mind's not gonna prioritize maintenance.

It's gonna prioritize survival.

So as long as you've got the trauma in the background, right, the mind is

focusing on survival, not maintenance.

There's where the toxins start to build up.

There's when all the system starts to go out of balance because the

maintenance isn't being done.

It's minimal maintenance.

When we're in survival mode

right.

and people will say, but I eat right?

I exercise, I take all my vitamins.

Why is this happening?

It's flushing it.

Yeah, there's some, some underlying things happening that, that are really

controlling all the levers it seems like,

Yep.

Can't methylate them.

Can't absorb them.

Because the system is saying our, our survival right now is more important

than using any of that stuff.

I'm happy that we got to chat a second time, first time

here for, uh, second time.

We'll link to the other episode too on the other podcast if you wanna jump back

and forth, get another flavor of you.

But I appreciate the work you've put into this, and I, I know you have a

lot more coming, the studies as well.

Of course.

When the, when your Delphi is live, we'll be sharing that because

I, I can't wait for that.

That's

gonna be really exciting.

It's all on.

It's gonna be on our website, inspire performance institute.com.

There you go.

Perfect.

Well, we'll link that as well and appreciate your time again

and um, yeah, just thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for the audience, Joe.

Yeah.