Anxiety and depression can at times seem inescapable, but what if we could persevere beyond it?

My guest Brian Robert Smith is on a mission to show us exactly how.

In today's episode he shares how finding your purpose and leading with the warrior mindset; gives you the ability to be in charge of your life today for an even brighter tomorrow.

Take back your control, find your purpose, and rise above any obstacle standing in your way starting now.

Key Highlights:

• Without Action Nothing Changes (2:57)
• What Is The Warrior Mindset? (7:25)
• Having Mentors & Guidance Expands Your Perspective (11:44)
• We Can’t Retreat & Make The World A Better Place (16:14)

About the Guest:

Brian Robert Smith is the Founder of The Presence Project and Lead coach of The Warrior Mindset Program. The mission of the organization is to eradicate anxiety and depression. Brian considers himself a lifelong student and has obtained certifications in yoga, meditation, breathwork and fitness but is adamant that the most important knowledge came from his own battle over anxiety and depression.

Connect with Brian:

Instagram: @_thepresence_project

Website: https://thepresenceproject.net/

About the Host:

Paul Finck is The Maverick Millionaire™. Paul brings to the table a vast array of knowledge and skill sets from 36+ years of sales, marketing and entrepreneurial life experience. He has consulted in numerous industries, including the Medical, Dental, Financial, Retail, Informational Marketing, Direct Sales, Multi-Level Marketing and Speakers/Coaches/Trainers. He is a former mortgage broker, real estate agent and investor. Starting with a desire to be great, Paul learned from several of the biggest names out there and Dared to be Different – he dared to be a Maverick. His successes include moving multi-millions of dollars in Real Estate, and over $20 million in informational products. With his primary focus on multiple streams of income, he has built up several businesses in Informational Marketing, Network Marketing, Real Estate Investing and now speaks and coaches internationally, teaching others how they can create this success in their own lives while Doing It Different – The Maverick Way.

Paul is well known for his success and his awesome family, and has appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, CNN Live, The Jane Pauley Show, The Montel Williams Show, local Channel 8 and Channel 11 News, Parents Magazine, and most local newspapers in his home state of Connecticut.

Connect with Paul:

https://www.themaverickuniverse.com/

https://www.instagram.com/paulfinckpro

https://www.facebook.com/groups/maverickuniverse/

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Welcome, welcome. Welcome to this episode of Mavericks do it different podcast and I'm your host, Paul THINK THE MAVERICK millionaire. And this is where we do it different talk about the components that create your life, and create your business to be something more something that you want in your world and your future. And today we've got a special guest, Brian Smith, and Brian is the founder of the presence project, and also lead coach of the warrior mindset program. Man, just those terms alone has me fascinated with what's going on his mission, the mission of the organization is to eradicate anxiety, and depression. Brian considers himself a lifelong student has obtained certifications in yoga, meditation, breathwork, and fitness. But his adamant that the most important knowledge came from his own battle over anxiety and depression. Please welcome Brian Smith to the podcast. Brian, welcome.

Thank you, Paul, thank you for having me.

It is a thrill to have you here. And I want to start off by explaining to me what is the presence project? And why did you start it.

So I started the presence project out of a necessity that I began to see in my own life. And that's really evolved over over a number of years. But it really started as a personal development program. And that's, that was really the main focus. And it's really evolved into a project, which, you know, I'll get into over the course of our conversation here. But as far as you know, anxiety and depression is concerned, this is really been, you know, the main focus and the drive behind, you know, the President's project, and really, you know, finding an eradication for it, and not just merely management and coping mechanisms, which is something that I saw in my own life through meditation, breathwork, yoga, and these different things, that I was merely managing and coping through life and not really accessing my innate, full potential in life. And then the more I started to see that in myself, the more I began to see to my clients, and just, you know, people around me is that we merely manage and cope through life, and we really need to access our just limitless potential and greatness. And that's, that's the idea behind it.

What do you mean by by coping mechanisms? Versus, and it sounds like what you're saying is coping mechanisms versus actually eradicating it, or give me some distinctions as to what that difference.

Yeah, so from what I started seeing, again, this personally, in my life, through things like meditation and breathwork, you know, especially with studying in India, and yoga, and these different things, it was all very passive, and, you know, just being okay, I had a lot of teachers that would just say, you know, whatever you're thinking, it's okay, it's okay, no matter how negative and demoralizing that it was at times, which, you know, at one end of the spectrum, I do understand our mind is going to have negative thoughts, but at the end of the day, we do have to take action on that negativity. And that's really, again, yeah, just very, you know, demoralizing aspects of our thought process. And if we're not taking that action, then it's never going to change. And that's, that's what happened to me over a number of years, again, and I was ending up in these very high states of anxiety and overwhelm, and then these deep states of depression, because I was just merely being okay with feeling terrible and miserable all the time.

There seems to be in our society and acceptance of negative thoughts, and acceptance of depression and acceptance of instead of the understanding that we don't have to live like that. We have a choice, and we can take control of it. And that sounds like that's your message.

Yes. 100%. And, and it's funny that, you know, you bring up society because, you know, there's obviously there's a societal standpoint that is making it like oh, it's just a normal state of consciousness that we just have to merely manage and cope with. And the the stance of the presence project and the warrior mindset is that it's not normal. It's not a normal state of consciousness that it's an altered state that we do have control over. And, but then also this, like the yogic and the philosophical and the more theoretical standpoint, from the spiritual side, meets, it's a different matter. Sujan vernacular but it's basically at the foundation, the same of it's, it's a normal state, it's okay. You just have to merely manage and cope with it, but through these techniques, instead of what society saying is more of consumption of material, and the other side is saying more consumption of the spiritual. And but there's somewhere in between. And that's taking action on our own thought process.

Yeah, that that don't have to live like that. And I've often talked about the, the dichotomy of if you're depressed, or you more importantly, even show up and say, oh, man, I'm, I'm just, you know, I'm not feeling it today. We're all accepting of that. Yeah. Like, well, why? Oh, I don't know. I just am not not feeling it. Versus if you showed up and said, I'm ecstatic. And then you ask them why and they block you up? And why is it that we accept the negative as it fell? Yeah, that's our, that's our status quo. That's our baseline of where we all must start. Instead of living continuously in that happy continuously in in euphoria, why? Why can't we be there?

I think that has a lot to do with finding your purpose. You know, your finding your purpose in life, like there's so many of us that have accepted mediocrity and averageness, like average existence in life, and, and think that there's no way out of it. And a lot of that comes down to societal conditioning, a lot of that comes down to spiritual conditioning, and not really making our own decisions or feeling that we have the ability to take control over one our minds and then our, our own lives.

Yeah, so. So we can take control, for sure make a difference in our future. Yep. And that message alone is so powerful. So few people understand that they have control over their future. That core belief that alone can move people past so many challenges in their world. With all that you're doing, explain the warrior mindset program and and what you do to help people get results.

So the warrior mindset, I like to call it the warrior mindset is a really popular word right now, we'd be having this warrior mindset. And I just, I love it, and it just resonates so deep with me. So that's really why I wanted to name it, the warrior mindset, but what it comes down to is really going to battle with these negative thoughts. Because, you know, for a long time, I was very passive. And I was, you know, really not taking action on that thought process. And it drove me deeper into depression deeper and deeper, and, you know, almost an illusion of coming out of it, and then going back in it. And it wasn't until I really snapped into it and said, I'm taking action on these thoughts. Yeah, and this was after years of being trained in the opposite way, with, you know, Eastern meditation and yoga, and all of these things, it is more of accepting of this stuff, which, at the end of the day, you do have to accept it, but then you take action on it, you know, not just accept it and just be passive for the rest of your life, you know, take action on these thoughts. And a lot of that has to do with, you know, affirmation, autosuggestion, and persistence, consistency, training, self discipline, self motivation, you know, not needing, you know, somebody to, you know, kick you in the butt every day to get going, like, you have to do this all yourself. And that's what it's all about developing, developing the confidence to self motivation to continuously grow in life, and then finding your true aid, which is essentially life purpose, but a little bit higher than that. So, I do like to use Arnold Schwarzenegger as an example of this. He had the life purpose of becoming the most famous bodybuilder of all time, which he did. And then he went and wanted to become the biggest star in Hollywood, which he did and then governor and then it just his trajectory just kept getting higher and higher. And, you know, we all know that he accomplished everything. And then you take a man like Robin Williams, who had a life purpose of winning an Oscar becoming very famous. And we all know how his story ended because he just he stopped at that level, and realize that just life purpose and attaining a goal isn't going to cure us of our depression and our negative thought patterns. It's a bit more than that.

You know, and, and it's, it's the moving the line. I hear exactly what you're saying it's, you got to keep moving the bar. Yeah, was complacency is so easy to step into. Oh, yeah. And I, I remember, I went to run a half marathon once, and I was so focused on running the half marathon and, and so I got into training I ran every day I got up to it. Then when I ran the half marathon, guess what I did? Right after that. I stopped running. Like, I forgot to do another goal. Yeah. And that's exactly what you're saying is you can't rest on your laurels, if you will, you've got to keep moving and understanding that there's a growth, another growth spurt for you, there's another level to to extend to, and never stop. Because there's an old expression from Plato, if you're not growing, you're dying. And to pay real close attention to that process. Every day, we must. That's it. You and I are in such alignment, it's so it's such a pleasure to get to know you, and to share you with our audience member. I'll repeat that. With with all that you do. I know it's important to get this message into understand to control your life. How do mentors and guidance and and and other people in our life? How does that affect us? What's what's the key to that?

I think it's an absolute necessity, because I was again, so and then everything that I teach and I talk about is all from direct experience of making a ton of mistakes. And luckily, having the awareness to own up to those mistakes, and then and then remedy them in some way. So I was always somebody who really wanted to do everything on my own. And, and it was a key reason for overwhelm for anxiety, and then driving me into depression, because I was just staying stuck with my own limited perspective. And that's the biggest thing of having mentors, having guidance, your perspective expands in so many different ways. And it just unlocks different levels of your own thinking, and it's not. And it's not about adopting somebody else's perspective. It's listening to somebody else's perspective to expand your own. And to come up with your own ideas, your own equation, I like to say like in the warrior mindset, we're looking, we're trying to find our equation for development for personal development and expansion. And we do that through, you know, through the the experiences of other people, right. So we always, no matter what we're doing, we're always influenced by others. So to seek out that influence, it's just incredibly important in the process.

Yeah, it reminds me of a quote from Einstein, a person cannot solve the challenge that they created with the same mind that created it. And so you need that stimulus from the outside world to create new synapses. Yeah, great new ideas that help you move forward to the next level to move forward to solve those challenges that you ended up. Immersed in? Yep. Which is that overwhelming that anxiety and that depression that can set in? Yeah, it's so it's so amazing. And I went through a similar journey. In my early years, I was very much a, a independent. Listen, I'll do it myself. I got this. And knowing that you cannot grow in isolation. Yeah, you got to have that stimulus and that collaboration with other people to create the next level of what you want to accomplish. And it's so easy to get caught in your chit chat.

The Oh, yeah, for sure.

Fascinating component. And we've talked so much with your presence project and your warrior mindset, anything that you'd like to share with the audience as far as who you are, and what you do and what makes you different. What

makes me different is I've developed my own experience of perspective on things like for example, meditation, breath work, and how to make them really practical and effective. So a lot of the times when it comes to like these spiritual modalities, we have this, this image that pops in our head and maybe a lot of judgment and that it's like this woowoo stuff, even though like now there's tons of science to back it up. But but there's also This other component where we think that we have to compartmentalize everything. So I really had been able to, like, merge everything together into one practice, and then take away some of the, you know, more esoteric components that really made everything so confusing. And then also, all the information out there on every subject, you know, at a click of a button, I hear it all the time with meditation, you know, Google meditation, there's so much information that I'm overwhelmed, right, so we live in this time where having all the information is a absolute blessing, we have all the information from human history right here on our computers. And it also has this negative effect of, I like to call it analysis paralysis, where we just read read, read, read, read, dive into more information we never actually implement. So implementing the information in the simplest most effective way is really what the presents project is all about, you know, making this easily digestible, digestible and practical for daily use.

It's so interesting and and people may have missed it only a lot of your training was in India was in a spiritual lands where you absolutely focused in on the the real deal went back to the roots of, of where this all started. It sounds like you've, you've learned to morph that into a new system that can activate in today's society. Yeah. Talk to us just a little bit about some of that differential, and you've mentioned it. And I'm almost surprised, because so many of you, oh, man, and they'll, they'll strap their stuff. Oh, I studied in India, and you almost take it and go. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, explain,

you know, I've really just started to see that, you know, it doesn't have to be one or the other, you know, it doesn't have to be like, I'm a yogi, and I pray I meditate for an hour or two hours a day, and I do the stretches, and all these different things, or, you know, I spent a lot of time in South America and, and those traditions, and, you know, it's a lot of it is, you know, spending time by yourself in the woods and doing all these ceremonies and, and all these different things, and it really takes us away from society. And the whole, you know, the conversation is always we want to make the world better, right? We want to make the world a better place, we want to help people. And we can't do that if we're retreating from society and going internal, just all the time and not being a part of, you know, the the growth process of the collective as a whole. So I started to see that there was this underlying message of retreat instead of, you know, action toward what we see as problems in society. And, you know, being able to fuse those two together, and be in the middle somewhere, you know, because like we say, like, there's, there's problems in society, there's problems in the spiritual community and getting somewhere in between that, I think, is really where the answer is.

There's a, there's a ton of people that are going to gravitate towards you, because you aren't that guy. You are not the the woowoo. And that you're bringing that information, though, with great understanding and having trained in it. And through that, what we might consider the present day and saying, Hey, here's how to utilize it in a real world, day to day in your life right now and create a magnitude of results.

Yeah, oh, yeah. Lots of results. And, you know, it's, it's just, yeah, it's incredibly, you know, just important, because, you know, there's so much good, there's so many good people and so much good in the world. And, you know, too often, again, like both sides focus in on like, the negative, like the negative and the and the problems and don't get me wrong, we have to see this right and accept it, but then we have to really focus in on okay, like, how can I contribute to the, you know, the betterment of society in whatever way that is, and we all have our own unique way to do that. And it's finding that and, again, that that's more of, you know, the finding our true aim, and then just walking toward it. Love that. Love

that. We're gonna go right into what I called the lightning round just to get to for all the audience, and we've got people listening from all around the world to get to know you, maybe on a personal level, just a little bit, pull back the curtain. So a couple quick questions. What is your favorite book?

My favorite book, I would have to say is man and his symbols. by young real life, Carl Jung Yeah, yeah he's

love that love the the author. And I don't know the book What's the man is simple so give me a synopsis.

So it's a lot about working with the dreams and the subconscious mind. So this is the first book that I read about sub subconscious and collective state and young in psychology in general. And I just fell in love with with his view on the mind and the psyche and everything. It's really he's just super intelligent person. But this book is really great for the layman. I've read the Red Book by him and it's very, very intellectual and a tough read. But but man it has symbols was actually written for the Layperson. So if anybody wants to dive into the subconscious, it's like incredibly beautifully written book.

I have not read it. I will definitely look it up. Your favorite movie?

Favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption. Oh, awesome.

They agree. It's definitely in my top 10 Yeah, yeah. Phenomenal. Just the message alone is with hope and vision you can create you can live a great life, regardless of where you start.

Exactly. And going through the through the sewer. Get there? That's it.

Whatever your definition of sewer is, yeah, you can get through it. Your favorite singer or band?

My favorite band right now at least his Naco and medicine for the people. They're like a folk reggae type band. He's really really good. Yeah, sort of like his own sound. Which he's just really really great. So yeah, then

very cool. Yeah. Well, pretty shade all this Brian, you are amazing love talking to you. We could probably talk for hours and hours and hours about philosophy and about psychology and really what happens on the internal components of the human mind and what creates a great life with all the people that are listening,

final words. Final words lean in. Just lean into it. Love that? Yeah.