Bob Choat shares a powerful narrative of transformation, emphasizing the importance of curiosity and adaptability in personal growth and professional success. He recounts his journey from a childhood marked by a speech impediment and a low IQ label to becoming a Marine Corps veteran, police officer, and a successful peak performance coach with multiple degrees and certifications. Choat illustrates how his early experiences in martial arts and a supportive environment cultivated his resilience and creativity. He stresses that the path to success is not linear and that individuals must embrace diverse experiences to thrive in an ever-evolving world. Choat passionately advocates for the idea that learning and unlearning are lifelong processes, urging listeners to explore their shadow selves and allow their authentic selves to emerge. He highlights the need for a strong 'why' to guide personal missions and encourages listeners to break free from societal labels that may hinder their potential.

Dr. Bob Choat is currently an executive and peak performance coach who grew up labeled as a moron, clinically, due to a currently outdated label for a low IQ test at young age. He developed his body through years of various martials and his mind through his insatiable curiosity and study. He served in the Marine Corps and was later recognized by MENSA for his genius level IQ. His story includes time as an LAPD officer, marine, fifth degree blackbelt, and double PhD in clinical psychology and neuropsychology while he works towards a third in physics!

He was also a certified hypnotist who took to the stage as "Bobby Spade" to perform stage hypnosis. His studies include getting certified as a master trainer in NLP and through the EEG institute to read brain waves. Bob has his own podcast called The School of Transformation and began the Integrated Mind Institute while also writing a book called Mind Your Own Fitness and is soon to launch his new book, Develop the Champion Within.

There is SO much more that could be said about Bob without scratching the surface, which I love. Please enjoy listening to his story, his insights, and advice on several topics including embracing uncertainty, developing curiosity, chasing our passions, becoming our whole self, integrating our shadow, having a beginner's mind, being a lifelong student and more!

You can find Bob at:

Bob Choat (@bobchoat) • Instagram photos and videos

(3) Dr. Bob Choat | LinkedIn

Helping You to Transform! | Making it my personal mission to elevate your performance.... (bobchoat.com)

Takeaways:

• Curiosity is essential for creativity; without it, we lose our ability to innovate and explore new ideas.
• The importance of understanding one's personal values and how they align with professional goals cannot be overstated.
• Embracing a beginner's mindset allows individuals to continuously learn and adapt to new experiences.
• Experiencing and expressing oneself authentically leads to personal growth and fulfillment.
• Building diverse skills and experiences can help individuals adapt to an ever-changing job market.
• Visualization techniques can rewire the brain and help individuals achieve their long-term goals.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• OpenAI
• Mindvalley
• International Coach Federation (ICF)
• School of Transformation

You're not going to have like one career and expect this to be the path.

Those days are long gone.

We tamped down that expressive side, we tamped down that creative side and we tamped down the shadow side.

So we need to allow that to come out and express once again.

I love helping people.

That's my foundation.

I think that's one of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps as a protector, the lapd.

All right, welcome to the Evolving Potential podcast.

I am super excited to have it here with me.

Bob Cho, the grand master of transformation.

He is a Marine Corps veteran.

He was a Marine once Marine, always Marines.

I hate saying he was a Marine, but former LAPD officer, fifth degree black belt and Kenpo Jeet Kune do instructor.

He has a PhD in psychology.

He's a certified master trainer in NLP.

He's a executive and peak performance coach, a certified hypnotherapist, as well as a former renowned stage hypnotist called Bobby Spade.

So this is very interesting.

We'll have to talk about that.

I like to consider all of this being what's called a polymath.

Someone who's incredibly gifted in multiple fields, has studied in multiple different fields and moved into the expertise field in at least one.

And so he is also the creative force behind the School of Transformation podcast.

He has his own podcast.

He's an accomplished author of a book called Mind you'd own Fitness, as well as his new book that's coming soon, Develop the Champion Within.

He has also co authored a book called Unleashing Firepower, the Masters of Business Excellence.

He's also started the Integrated Mind Institute and has been widely recognized in many articles for his expertise in peak performance.

So I am happy, grateful, excited for Bob to be here with me and we'll just kind of chat and see what sort of value we can provide.

Love.

First for you to talk about how you got involved in this world of transformation after transitioning out of a life of being a Marine and being a LAPD officer.

Yeah, I think even before the Marines, it's always about transformation.

So like with me, early on I had a major stutter and I was very anxious and under a lot of stress.

I had a father that was very abusive and everything.

And I was diagnosed.

So going back in clinical diagnosis, especially in the area of psychology, they had like these major labels and one of the labels that they had based on your IQ score, because I took an IQ score at age 5 and it was very low, it was at 70 and that was the cutoff point for a diagnostic label I like to call label, but it wasn't a label back then of moron.

And there was others as well.

Yeah, but that was an actual diagnostic what was done.

And I forget the gentleman's name who came up with it.

A psychologist back in the early 20th century.

And so back in those days we still had that.

And it wasn't changed till later on that they got rid of those.

I believe that was in the early 70s.

They finally got rid of it.

I had the diagnosis back in the 50s.

So.

Geez, that's crazy.

The technical term.

The technical term was like correct.

Yeah, geez.

Yeah.

So I was introduced even going like later on because it was in my file as a.

And so that that stuck with me in a sense.

And my mom recognized it.

I'm half Japanese and my mom recognized that that wasn't right.

So when I was living in Okinawa, she put me into martial arts.

So I lived there for three years to study goju and everything like that.

And that was my early transformation to have that shift.

And then that helped me quite a bit, including in school and so forth.

And then by the time I got to junior high I was like excelling in various subjects, like in math, for example, I was in seventh grade.

I was already doing algebra and then geometry in 8th grade and then going further on all the way to calculus in 10th grade and also doing physics and everything else early on.

So that whole nerd thing came on top of that.

Doing sports and involved in all kinds of other areas.

Even in a ninth grade, I still stuttered, but also performed with two other friends in a talent show.

So singing and dancing and all that kind of stuff, we ended up winning.

And so yeah, so transformation wasn't just later on.

It just was on ongoing thing.

I graduated early.

Do you feel like, in your personal opinion.

Sorry to cut you off.

Do you feel like in your personal opinion that a lot of the physical training stuff you did helped with your stuttering?

Helped with, you know, getting your thoughts out?

Or does that something that you didn't notice until later that you're kind of were able to overcome the stuttering?

Yeah, I still stuttered.

I think it helped quite a bit.

Especially a lot of the stuff in neuroscience.

We know that physical training helps with the brain in particular, like learning and memory and all those kind of things.

I think being able to sync up the brain.

I learned that much later in terms of the off sync, especially with stuttering and everything like that.

And if you if you have anxiety and stress, it creates that the sync between our verbal and.

And what we think, what we want to say and expressing it is just out, out of kilter.

And so I learned that and especially connecting with my body, doing the martial arts and then other sports and everything else that helped quite a bit more than I think physical fitness is important for the brain growth, but also in learning, being able to sync up our bodies and doing it a certain way.

Like for example in a martial arts, when I do was doing katas and having that sync that helped quite a bit.

And studying all the different martial arts and being able to move through different martial arts.

And then again my nerd self I would study and all that kind of stuff.

How does this thing work?

How does this thing work?

I look at the physics and physiology and and I would break it down.

Eventually going back to the stuttering part, I realized that I can also shift that nervousness that would have especially getting into public speaking.

So I recognized that and I studied that.

The same feeling in our body that we have a fear of production, everything like that.

That same feeling in our body is the same feeling of excitement.

And so I just shifted those words.

I understood that just like doing shifting in a martial arts.

And so once I understood that everything shifted in terms of public speaking, I was able to take something that was scary to me, public speaking to something that excited me and I can get out there now.

And now it's something I get to do, not something I fear to do.

That's really powerful.

So I've actually shared that, that with someone as well.

So it's like the idea that there is some sort of sensation that we experience and those sensations equal like a feeling.

And that feeling might be like upset stomach or tingling or heart rate increasing and stuff.

And then we create a story for that sensation.

So it's like, okay, well this sensation means I'm nervous.

I have so much anxiety.

Oh my gosh, I'm so, I'm so stressed.

And so we can switch that to that story to being excited.

And I've actually shared that with a coworker one time who was doing a job interview for some her some like dream job she wanted.

And she was like, oh my gosh, I'm just so nervous, I have so much anxiety.

And I was like, well, aren't you like excited about the opportunity?

Aren't you excited that you could potentially get this job?

She's like, well, yeah.

And I was like, do you know that excitement and anxiety feel the same in the body they have the same physiological response.

And she was like, no way.

And then, like, ended up telling me a week later that, like, it just completely changed her drive to the interview.

Completely changed her experience at the interview with that one little.

One little shift.

So that's.

That's a powerful one.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

We can look at anything that happens within our body, and we can interpret a number of different ways.

And a lot of.

A lot of the research in psychology has been done in a Western, Western world.

But when we look at, like, for example, in the Asian culture, they have a different interpretation of what's happening within our body.

Even facial expressions are much different.

So we have all these kind of different interpretations that we have to learn and understand.

Going through all the emotions and understanding that emotions are simply our interpretation of physiological things that happen with our own body.

There.

It's nothing else.

People think that emotions come before feelings.

No, your feelings come and then you have an interpretation called an emotion.

And we.

And then we have a thought that.

That interprets that as well.

So it starts with feelings to emotions to thoughts.

Yeah, see?

And that's.

That's it, Cash.

That's exactly what I am.

Actually.

I'm getting my master's in sociology right now.

To study primarily that, to study the factors of how our social group, how our cultural conditioning teaches us what sort of experiences we're having and what those mean.

And so those experiences could equal anxiety, or those experiences could just equal the normal human experience as the ebb and flow of normal emotion and sadness and grief and.

And all those things that are very normal to be thinking about, or maybe you are focusing too much on thinking about the future and blah, blah.

And like, that doesn't mean you have anxiety as a.

As an anxiety disorder.

And so I always struggle to want to go there with people because it's.

It's like a touchy subject.

It's like, okay, there are.

Are people that have it a little bit more intensely.

There are people that experience these things, and it's very real to them.

And I get it.

But at the same time, it's like if you were raised in a culture that never taught you the word anxiety, then you wouldn't have anxiety.

It would be more of a.

Just a human experience that you could learn to interpret in a way that's positive.

Correct?

Correct.

Yeah, I think.

In fact, I read an article recently, and the article talked about how a lot in today's younger generation, they see a lot of therapists and all this kind of stuff.

Go see a therapist and it turns out that that's led to a lot of emotional disorders.

And I think a lot of therapists inadvertently has created labels onto these people.

So this is what you're going through.

So now you're this.

And so you have this disorder.

And it's the same thing like going back to the 80s and early 90s where we heard about these kids like McMark in school and things like that, where they were supposedly molested by schools and all these things, but those were implanted memories.

So it's the same thing like that.

I think a lot of therapists, they don't know what they don't know, so they create these labels, these interpretations of what's happening within these people's bodies, and then all of a sudden they're this.

And I have told a lot of therapists and other people in the mental health build, don't try to interpret like what's going through these people as this, because you don't know yet.

Now you're creating something that didn't exist before.

Yeah, yeah, it, it honestly creates.

There's a whole social problem that I, that I see there.

And, and Daniel Smachtenberger, like a social philosopher, talks a lot about this as well, where it's like there's this need that we have for certainty and there's need, there's need we have for an answers and the quick fix.

And so there is a pressure on the reverse end, you know, of not just the therapist to feel the need to label, but for that person to be wanting a label for wanting, oh, if I know what it is, that I can start working on fixing it.

You know what I mean?

And so they, they're, they're going to the doctor, they're going to the therapist looking for a label, thinking that that will make them better, when in reality it generally turns into a lifelong condition at that point.

Correct.

I'm glad you brought up certainty versus uncertainty.

And you're absolutely right, is that people, and that's human nature.

You know, we, we create things that we want things to be a certain way.

And the truth is things change.

Things change all the time.

I've, I've been around for a long time and I've seen a lot of different changes through the many decades.

And, and a lot of the stuff was not even predicted to happen.

I mean, look at like the last year and a half when ChatGPT came out.

Now there's been a lot of new businesses created using the API from OpenAI to create all this kind of stuff.

And you probably saw OpenAI.

Sora.

No, I can't say.

Have.

No, tell me.

So SORA is a text to video creation.

You just do the prompt and it'll create amazing high resolution videos.

And there's already been short movies made with Sora and so it's not out for the general public yet.

How do you spell this?

S O RA Okay, I'm definitely gonna look that up.

That's crazy.

Yeah, it's a whole shift.

And now OpenAI's come out with a voice.

So it'll take 15 seconds of your own voice and it'll analyze it and then you'll type in like a sentence or something like that and it'll perfectly emulate your own voice.

Oh, man.

Sounds exactly the same.

Can send someone a voicemail through text.

Through text.

Yes, yes.

So things are shifting in terms of that, that we would not have known before.

And imagine what it's going to do to the future now, that's only when I said imagine.

That's all we can do is imagine.

We don't know what's going to happen, we don't know tomorrow what's going to happen, or even an hour from now, but we can imagine something that is going to shift.

It may or may not happen.

And that's a great thing about our imaginations.

We can try to predict with all predictions that we have, and you probably heard this term is basically done on predictive coding.

So basically what that means is that everything, all our decisions and everything we try to even imagine into the future, even like my, what I'm saying right now is based on past experiences and past knowledge.

Everything.

It's not based on current.

It's based on something I read an hour ago, two days ago, a year ago, 20 years ago.

But all that accumulation and everything I've studied and people I've been around and experienced and everything like that, that's what I'm making decisions, that's what I'm saying, even right at this moment, is all based on the past.

And so trying to predict the future, we don't know.

In chaos theory, things are chaotic.

And you mentioned earlier about certainty versus uncertainty.

It's always uncertainty.

You can't be certain about anything.

Yeah, and that's, and that's a big part of the podcast as well, is understanding the need for adaptation in this new world and resilience, you know, mental toughness and flexibility, you know, because.

Yeah, because everything is shifting so quickly.

And I don't, I, I truly don't think that people let themselves think enough about the consequences, you know, and the change that's coming because it is imaginative and we can only really imagine based on the past, as you're, as you're saying.

So it's like the past has generally changed kind of slow, you know, slowish, if you will, you know, for our own.

Compared to this, I would say, you know, could I slow.

Compared to back in the past?

No.

We've progressed so fast.

But compared to how, like what Moore's loss, you know, talks about how fast we're continually increasing the pace at which we're progressing, and people cannot predict, cannot predict the rate that we're going to progress at, and they cannot predict the rate that they're going to need to change at that.

They're going to need to adapt and move into a new field of work.

Correct.

You know, learn something new, change their skills.

Like, it's just, it's.

It's coming.

And so I think that this, you know, podcast ideally can serve as a place where people can understand how to kind of like shift and learn more and be more excited about life and be more curious and be more like a polymath.

So there is some diversity there amongst their skills so that they're able to shift into new fields fairly seamlessly without too much life stress, you know?

Correct.

I can recall years ago when key punch operators were like the big thing and they died overnight, when people focused only on that one skill set, when they lost that, when that whole field just died out, they had nowhere else to go.

And you're absolutely right.

We need to have a diversity of experiences, knowledge, learning, skill sets and so forth.

Yes, you can deep dive into one or two skills become in terms of master that, but it doesn't take long to become an expert in a skill set.

So you could become an expert in a few months.

It takes years to master something.

You can become an expert, and in some cases, some people have done it even within a month.

I say if you're deeply focused and you're only focusing on that one skill set, yes, you probably can do it within a month or two months to become an expert.

But still, we can learn.

And I'm constantly challenging my own beliefs.

And a lot of people, especially like in my age or older or even some younger, it's hard for them to make changes to learn something new.

Luckily for me, I've always embraced like learning new things and asking myself, is what I know now, is it based on fact?

For the present, it may have worked for the past, is it based on for the present?

And what do I have to learn now that will help to carry me into the future?

And who do I have to talk to?

Who do I have to surround myself with?

A lot of my friends.

A lot of my new friends are Gen Z.

And yeah, and then I have a lot of millennials as well.

And I, I got to know a lot of them because I do parkour.

I've been doing it for a lot of years and, and so doing, doing that, that, that kind of crazy stuff.

And yeah, in fact, a lot of the millennials that I was doing parkour with, once it got past 30, they stopped doing it because they said they, they just got too old to do it.

And I'm going to be 73, and I'm going to be 73 in August, and, and I still feel like, like agile.

Agile.

Y younger person.

Yeah, I understand that my body is much older than it used to be, but I say challenge yourself anyway.

Challenge yourself.

Now.

You're not going to probably running up buildings and jumping off of them or vaulting over a wall or doing any of these other things, but still, you can still challenge yourself at any age.

You can still grow at any age.

The brain is always changing anyway, whether you like it or not.

You, you can, you can have a change where it stops growing and you start losing what, what you know, or you can continue to grow and learn.

I remember reading about this one guy, I think it was about three years ago, where he graduated with his PhD in physics at the age of 89.

So he continued to grow.

Yeah.

Geez.

Yeah.

See, that's.

And that's the kind of stories I love.

Even like all the personal development guys that are out there doing their talks and learning and growing and reading and making new connections and going to these conferences at 89, you know, Brian Tracy and Bob Proctor and, you know, it's just crazy to see that amount of drive at such a older age to continue to take in more and more information and feel like they're pretty, pretty sharp still.

It's just not the common paradigm that people want you to believe or that we see too often we see it in, like, the, the blue zones or centenarians.

You know, it's like, oh, they're still able to maintain some sort of cognizance, but I think that there's, there's a lot of people out there doing it and there's a certain way that they're doing it.

I'm not sure exactly what you're doing, but you're doing it.

Yeah, I think we should continue throughout our life.

And if you're younger, especially like in your 20s, don't just try to settle on, like, one career path.

Get out there and experience different things, learn and grow, because that accumulation right there is going to help you into your 30s and 40s and beyond.

You're going to be able to see things much differently.

But if you get stuck only in one area, one way of thinking, and your parents may have done that, like one career the whole life, you may have seen your grandparents like that as well.

Well, things are much different in today's world anyway.

You're not going to have, like, one career and expect this to be the path.

Those days are long gone.

Yeah, see?

So I would.

I would love to talk about that because the identity shifts that go along with that are really hard to deal with, you know, so someone feeling a will.

I've put two or three years into college and doing this career, and so I need to stick with it because this is what I said.

So it's like my reputation resides on it.

Or it's because what someone wants for me, it's because it's a good job.

And they're really unwilling to shift into a new career because of that.

That fear of judgment or who am I outside of this thing that I've been working so hard on?

Like, if I've been working hard to be a doctor and I just.

I don't want to be a doctor anymore, it's like, well, all I've ever done is go to medical school.

I've spent my life going to medical school.

I spent my life trying to be a doctor.

This is who I am.

If I want to shift out of being a doctor, who am I now?

A lot of people get caught up, whether it's the families or otherwise, that this is a career you should be doing.

And a couple of friends of mine.

So about, oh, about 15 years ago, one of my female friends, when she was 42, at the time, she was a psychiatrist.

And she told me that she just doesn't feel it.

This is not what she wants to do.

And I asked her, what was it that you want to do?

And she says, I want to be an actress.

That's my thing.

That's what I feel resonates with me.

So at 42, she decided to give up her practice as a psychiatrist.

After all the schooling, going through college and medical school and also advanced schools in terms of psychiatry, she gave it all up to become an actress.

Back in the 90s, another friend of mine, his name is Barry and he was a lawyer up in San Francisco, a very top lawyer.

He came from a family of attorneys, siblings, parents, grandparents.

And that was like, what their family did.

So he's Jewish, and that was their thing.

And at the age of 50, he came to me and said that.

The same thing as a psychiatrist.

It just wasn't what resonated with him.

And we sat down and talked, and I asked him if you could think about something in your past that when you think about it, it brings you joy.

And he started thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking.

And all of a sudden, I saw his face just glow.

He says, you know, Bob, back when I was in college, I got to be the DJ of our college radio station.

And as he talked about it, his body language shifted big time.

And he just had that aha moment.

Six months later, he called me and he says, bob, guess what?

And I said, what?

He says, I'm now interning at a local radio station here.

And.

And then a year later, he.

He got out.

I think he was still doing law part time, but he was doing that full time as a.

As a radio dj.

And when I saw him, he completely changed.

He got rid of his big home and all kind of stuff that was obvious because you don't make much money as a DJ compared to what he was.

His $2 million a year, what he was doing as an attorney.

Yeah.

Yet.

Yet prior to that, he was walking like, he looked much older than his age.

Afterwards, he was walking with a.

He looked 20 years younger.

He was happy and he.

And he was doing something that he felt like play.

Yeah, see, that's so crazy to me.

Like, that is what I'm constantly harping on people is like, I'll talk to someone.

They're like.

I'm like, whoa, what do you.

What do you do outside of work?

A co worker or whatever.

And really telling me.

And we're trying to figure out.

I'm trying to figure out what it is that they're really interested in.

What are they trying to do?

What is their mission in life?

What are they trying to accomplish?

And it's like, oh, I'm gonna be an accountant or I'm gonna be a electrician.

And it's like that answer doesn't matter at all.

And there's no judgment towards it.

Unless, like, you don't actually want to do that, and you're just doing it because it's a good job.

You know what I mean?

So someone's like, oh, I love.

You know, I love sending electricity and I love I always put together parts and my dad's electrician and I love, like, that's a great story, then that's fine, then do that.

If you love numbers, you love really doing the accounting stuff, then, then do that.

But if it's just because it's a good job, it's like, it hurts my heart.

Yeah, yeah.

And eventually people will go into the 40s and 50s and they have a, what's called a midlife crisis.

And a midlife crisis.

Yeah.

You may have guys going, you know, like getting their sports car and doing all that kind of stuff.

The truth is, the midlife crisis is when people discover after all the years of doing a certain career that it really wasn't for them.

They get to thinking, is this really what life is all about?

Kind of mindset.

And I tell people, don't wait for that.

You need to go and have the different experience.

Find what resonates with you early in life, gain a lot of experiences.

Otherwise you're going to be the person who retires at the end of life.

And then they start doing the stuff, maybe what they really wanted to do or whatever like that, but then it's too late.

You know, they, they can't do all the kind of experiences early on.

And I said do it early.

By time you, you go through life, you'll be doing what you really, really want to do or what resonates with you.

Don't get caught up about what people say that you should be doing.

Now, having said that, you're going to have certain skill sets where you, there's stuff that you're good at and utilize that so other people may recognize what you're good at and you may not recognize that and you may poo poo it.

So, so to recognize that and embrace what you're good at, people have told me, like, Bob, you're good at doing this and this and this in terms of maybe motivation, everything like that.

Because they see me all the time, everywhere, speaking and helping people out, which I didn't do before.

I love helping people.

That's my foundation.

I think that's one of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps as a protector, the lapd, and even teaching women's self defense, doing bodyguard work and, and all kinds of different things throughout my life.

I like protecting like that, but I realized that I can't protect people.

Even Superman can't protect every single person.

But I can teach.

Yeah.

And, and so that's what resonates with me.

So even all the learning I'm doing Even in psychology and everything, it's not to become a psychologist or have a PhD, all this kind of stuff.

No, it's.

It's wanting to learn so I can take what I learn.

And yeah, I think it helps me, but also giving to others as well so they can make a difference for themselves.

Same, same, honestly.

And so I feel like this is a good spot that kind of leads us back to you talking about people having the importance of studying a diverse amount of things and really getting those experiences earlier in life so they can kind of see what they're good at, not getting too stuck in something that may not be for them.

And so very clearly seems to be something that you've understood early on.

And so that kind of leads us back to our conversation at the beginning is like, you know, how did you learn this early on?

Why did you experiment with so many different things?

And how did you gain that sort of insight at such an early time?

Curiosity.

You're just naturally curious.

Being curious, like crazy.

Yeah.

I always like when I see stuff.

I wanted to learn different things, and I was curious about it.

Whether it was experimenting with the chemistry set, building a rocket in terms of those things, or wanting to understand people, wanting to understand.

Hypnosis.

One of my first hypnosis books was in junior high, which I still have, and I have, like, so many more since then.

I just wanted to learn and study, and I have.

Gosh, I think I'm approaching, like 13,000 physical books.

So I read a lot.

Insane.

Yeah.

I get books every week.

Sometimes I'll pick up, like, in one day, 10 books.

Yeah.

And I go through books, and a lot of stuff is in other books.

I can skim through all that kind of stuff.

And I have even PDF copies of probably around 300,000 PDF copies of books, too.

But I like physical books.

That's.

That's.

That's like my thing.

I like learning and I like knowing.

And it seems like there's not enough time.

And I look at, like, even my books and I tell myself that, oh, my goodness, I only know, like, this much.

This much.

And I have all this kind of stuff.

I said, boy, I'm like an ant in terms of that.

Yeah.

So there's just not enough time to learn everything.

So I have to distill a lot of stuff and get focused as well and then say no to a lot of the other things that are worthless to me.

So I have to say yes to the growth part and the learning part and everything and then specify what is I want to learn.

Here and there and everything.

So it's a continuing process.

So that leads me to another question real quick because I saw on your resume that you had like an EEG certificate, right?

Correct.

You studied the eeg?

Yeah, I studied at the EEG Institute, which is like one of the premier EEG training, so from some of the pioneers in eeg.

So this idea of like being more tapped into like theta waves for a person who is like either ADHD or just like more of the daydreamy curiosity type person that place of hypnosis will take you to.

And so I feel like when I hear people talk about like being super curious, super daydreamy vision, I imagine their brain being a little bit further down there, you know, and then that would in my mind explain the stuttering at least a little bit as well, where it's like there is some sort of disconnect between this beta brainwave of being engaged and critical and using the analytical mind.

But as you learned to develop that, you had a.

You ended up having a very, very well integrated brain.

So I'm.

I'm very interested in having an integrated brain because mine was almost backwards where like I am super just like rational, analytical and.

And I had to kind of develop my true curiosity a little bit later in life.

So I would, I would say it wasn't till I was like 25 that I was really like, let.

Allowing myself to experiment, as you say, you know, allowing myself to look into the things that gave me joy that I was interested in and building that sense of curiosity, you know.

So I'm curious if you have any thoughts about like your specific brain and the idea, the idea of like even these Renaissance thinkers having these real integrated brains is part of what my book is about.

So that's kind of what I'm bringing it up.

It's like the idea of having a really well balanced brain between rational and imaginative, between intellect and imagination.

Yeah.

So our brains, and I would even go to go so far to say our bodies are integrated if we understand it.

So understand like we talked early on, the feelings with our own body and also the biological processes and so forth.

And I think that takes both curiosity but also rational thinking.

Both are very important and in being curious and wanting to know.

And even like Guck, you mentioned the imagination part imagining like what's happening.

I think it's important to, to be able to use the logical side and being able to break down the components in terms of understanding as well.

You know, how does this work?

How does this work?

How does this work?

So with me starting with, with being curious, then, then I'll go to logical.

So I wanted to know.

Like for example, I studied in a weekend.

I wanted to look at aikido.

So aikido is a Japanese martial arts.

And it's been around for a little bit.

Not like some of the ancient arts like jiu jitsu and things like that, but aikido.

I looked at it by starting off with curiosity.

How does aikido really work?

Then I had to go to a lodge.

I broke it apart in terms of its own parts.

And there's three wheels that are key.

So you have a small will.

So like do doing a twisting movement like this in order for a person.

So like that.

There's also a larger wheel like this.

So when the person's coming at you, you can go and you turn like this and they'll flip over.

Then there's a wheel like this, like turning this kind of will, so you can use that and then spin a person around.

So understanding those three wheels, you understand aikido, period.

So you just work within those three wheels.

And the same thing with a lot of other stuff like in Brazilian jiu jitsu and judo and some others, you understand joint movements.

So like right here you have this joint here.

So all you have to do is put like here and push down here.

You're going to be able to go.

So you focus here at every angle here, here, like that, so you can take control of that.

And so I look at in terms of logical, how the body systems work and everything like that, put together how physics works.

And so that's a logical slide.

But I had to be curious.

I had to start off with curiosity.

How does this work?

I had to ask a lot of questions.

And questions are very important for curiosity.

So anything you want to know, start with questions and then you can go deeper into that and understanding that maybe you have to understand, read a lot of other things.

I studied human physiology.

I studied both classical physics, which we call Newtonian physics, and gravitational physics and quantum physics and all this kind of stuff.

So just being curious in all those different areas just led me in terms of breaking down even martial arts techniques.

And so then you did the Marines, then you did lapd.

And then how did you kind of move into this coaching, public speaking role?

Yeah, I think I've always done something like that in terms of coaching.

I like helping people and like teaching and all that kind of stuff.

Whether it was teaching women self defense or even like when I had my businesses, I had an advertising, marketing firm back in the 90s and I had a lot of employees and I, to me they were like there that I can teach them, I can coach them and everything like that.

I didn't move into a professional coach, but I could still coach people and help them to develop and become their best.

And I took a lot of that stuff.

And then after I sold my business, I went back to school, got my master's in psychology and also studied hypnosis at Hypnosis Motivation Institute which is a year long school in Tarzana and then did Bobby Spade in Vegas and some other places.

And then I met a guy named Thomas Leonard.

So Thomas Leonard, he was a founder of Coach U and then also icf, International Coach Federation.

He passed away.

Gosh, it's been, has it been almost 20 years or something like that?

So.

But he passed away of a massive heart attack.

Now here's an interesting guy.

He came from the world of finance.

He was a certified financial planner that went into the coaching arena.

He developed his own techniques and all this kind of stuff.

But he was running ICF which is like the foundational certification for coaches across the world.

He started ICF and Coach U, which was like the very first official coaching organization while living in an rv and he traveled in his RV and did that kind of stuff.

And it wasn't until he, he moved to Arizona with his partner and they bought a condo, he was ready to settle down.

He ended up dying of a massive heart attack and yeah, but still he didn't allow living in RV to help for him to start that major organization.

And that's crazy.

Yeah.

So we could be wherever we're at and we think, well, we may not have this and that, but if you have an idea and you're curious about, like want to make changes, go out there and, and, and test it out, see, see where it takes you.

Listen to people, ask more questions and become curious and eventually you can have a seed that boom.

Something that's going to change the world again.

We talked earlier about uncertainty.

Well, we don't know what's going to be happening in the future, but if you have an idea and you put it out there, that idea may change, may have a ripple effect.

Like what Thomas did with International Coach Federation.

People are going through that and there's a lot of other coaching organizations that teach people how to get certified.

They go, they teach year long, but they started with this.

Just like ChatGPT has created a lot of different businesses.

So your idea may be the seed that launches a lot of other Ideas and you never know.

So let me ask you then, when you were doing your master's degree and doing a year long hypnosis, which is definitely not easy, what was the idea you had at the time?

Like, I know that you're curious, I know part of it is the curiosity, but I feel like the logical part had to also have something in mind with what you wanted to do with it.

Did you plan on being Bobby Spade?

Was that like the new career choice you wanted to take?

Or what was, what was no motivation there?

Yeah, so I think Bobby Spade was more of an accident.

It was like, okay, I didn't plan on that.

My, my, my goal was to go out there and teach what I've learned.

Being on stage was a natural offshoot of that.

And I came across a friend, one of my friends, who is a hypnotist, and he said, well, have you thought about doing stage hypnosis?

I said, no, I hadn't thought about doing stage hypnosis.

And he says it's a great tool to get, to draw people in for you to teach people about hypnosis, but in a really fun way where you get to bring people up on stage.

So I said, okay, let me give that a go.

And that's how Bobby Spade was born.

So it wasn't something I thought about, but it was something that all of a sudden happened from somebody else's input of an idea.

I have one question then.

As a former hypnotist, I know that there's a process behind choosing people in the audience as volunteers that are more suggestible.

Will you enlighten us real quick on that?

Sure, yeah.

So as a stage hypnotist, we do certain tests and everything like that to make sure that like certain audience members, we want to see how people respond.

So we do what's called suggestibility tests, number one.

Number two, and what a lot of people don't know is that as a stage hypnotist, I had somebody out there because I couldn't scan everybody.

So they would go and they would look at people in terms of how they respond and they would point them out.

So those are people I would invite onto stage.

And usually I would have more women and a few guys, but more women only because it's weird.

But a lot of guys will tend to follow the women in terms of like what they do.

And I know that when people come up on stage, they want to be there because maybe they had this subconscious thing of wanting to perform form in some way or another.

And I knew that so once I invited those people on stage, I would do more tests and everything like that to make sure that they're really suggestible enough to keep them there.

So I would have plenty of people.

Then I would send everybody else back down that.

Then I would pick those few people and then continue that.

And I would always start with women.

And people would look at that, and they would follow.

So you're studying sociology, including in social psychology.

So people would look at other people in terms of what to do.

So they would follow that.

So I would find the most suggestible person, and they would follow that along.

And we see this in other areas as well.

For example, in a lot of churches, like evangelical churches and things like that, you see people.

The same kind of thing.

The preacher would bring people up and they would do certain things we do in hypnosis.

We call a lot of what they do a shock induction.

So we do.

Like an example is in a church, they would put the hand down like this right here.

But this is after they watch somebody else to do it.

Put the hand here, and you got the power of Christ on, you know, like this.

And a person would stiffen up.

So that's.

That's a shock induction.

I did the same thing.

I would do a shock induction, and a person would stiffen up and do that kind of stuff.

And then I would do, like, hypnotic demonstrations and put a person across a chair and everything like that.

But they already had in their mind that this was going to happen because they may have seen it in the past.

People follow what other people do.

This is an inside secret that there's a lot.

We do it subconsciously all the time, throughout the day.

We watch other people and then we take cues from.

From those other people in terms of what to do and.

Or just don't do anything.

If we don't find cues, for example, in a crowd, we watch other people, and other people are watching other people, and we see some bad thing happened.

But in a crowd, people don't take action because they're looking around and they don't want.

They don't want to be the one to stand out.

Until somebody stands out and takes action.

That's a cue.

Then other people will come in and take action.

Same thing in stage hypnosis.

Same thing in churches.

Same thing throughout life.

We look for cues from other people.

And that's one of the secrets that I understood as a stage hypnotist.

And I think we need to understand it in terms of life as well.

We take cues from others, but you could be the one getting out there and setting the cue.

Exactly, exactly.

And that's a big part of my studies as well.

Sociology and having what I'm calling my book the Self Regulated Society.

Society of coaches, managers, teachers, leaders that are able to set that example, are able to give those proper cues in many different regards.

Like how do you respond when someone argues with you?

How do you respond when you're disrespected?

How do you respond when things aren't going your way?

Even my kid being 14 in freshman high school, it's like teacher gets frustrated and they lash out.

Teacher gets overwhelmed and they do this.

But it's like those are not the proper things that they should be learning.

And the teacher doesn't think about that as a part of the learning.

It's like, well, I'm a math teacher and I'm teaching my kid math.

And say, well, you're also teaching your kid how to handle frustration.

You're teaching your kid how to, how to have respectful communications.

You're teaching your kid all these different things as a teacher as well, Correct?

Yeah.

And school is an interesting thing, especially regarding teachers and everything like that.

And we as a society, and we see this in business and so forth, called the Pygmalion effect.

You probably heard about that.

I've heard of it.

I can't remember what it is right now, I'll be honest, but I.

Definitely sounds familiar.

Yeah.

So in a Pygmalion effect, and there's been movies, I think it was My Fair lady starting, Audrey Hepburn.

So basically what it is, is expectations.

So what we as a person believes about another person, we will subconsciously look at this person a certain way, whether they're a person that we see as a genius or we see them as less than we will act, we will act towards that.

And teachers do this on a subconscious basis if they don't understand this effect that they would have on a person.

So there was a study, the Pygmalion, that was done back in the late 60s.

And the researchers looked at teachers and the teacher.

So like a teacher was told that this group of kids are like high level geniuses.

This group of kids, they're just not that good.

So that what the teachers were told, the expectations, and at the end of the semester, these high level kids, they got much better and these other ones went lower.

And it turns out that it was all made up, what the teachers were told and what they expected.

Basically they were part of the study.

So what we expect of others, including that teacher we will do things and lead them down a certain way.

So we have to understand that about we expecting on our own selves, but also of others, whether we're a coach or teacher or anything like that.

We have to expect higher of every single person because we will take those kind of actions towards that.

Yeah.

That even brings in the labeling theory, which is what we call it in sociology, you know, is like where.

Yeah.

We're creating labels for these people that are, that are just not serving them in any sort of way.

You know, just like your label of, you know, moron.

I hate to even say, yep, yeah, it's so silly, but yeah, it's like.

And, and that there's lots of different things that go along with that.

There's lots of little micro actions, you know, how much attention that kid is getting, you know, the sort of subconscious facial expressions that they're perceiving from, you know, that teacher is a scowl or is it a smile and things like that are all affecting that kid and that kid's development.

And I just think that teachers necessarily think about it like that.

And so they do try to find these labels and then, and then it becomes hard for a kid.

Imagine you're a kid who, you know, has not generally performed well, but you would like to change your stars, you'd like to turn things around.

But now your teacher has always been treating you like this kid who's lesser than.

That's a hard thing to break out of.

Yeah.

As well as the label.

Yep.

I, I can.

And, and by the way, the term, because of my IQ, my very first IQ test was 70 and, and back then they didn't look at the outside circumstances that actually led to it, the stresses and everything like that.

And well, I didn't understand until later on and wasn't until I was, I believe, 34 years old, I retook the IQ test and I scored a 156.

So.

So I went from, from being that moron to, to a genius level and eventually I was a member of Menza, but it wasn't my thing.

So.

Geez.

Yeah, that's, that's crazy.

So you've been working with clients most of this time, you said.

And so I guess kind of a hard question, kind of a big question.

But obviously we deal with resistance in clients.

You know, an op, we have, we have certain statements that help us get through resistance and things.

I'm just kind of curious on a general level, what have been some of the things that you've learned over the time that have Allowed you to overcome resistance with any sort of clients that you've worked with, people that are struggling to accomplish change.

Yeah, I think early on I would use a lot of data and stuff like that.

And it turns out that it didn't work.

It didn't resonate with them.

So I shifted back and I started rereading Milton Erickson and some of the stuff that he did.

I have a whole shelf full of Milton Erickson, folks.

Milton Erickson was very famous wizard of the West.

Yes.

So I started using metaphors and stories and everything to get into the person's subconscious mind.

That helped to influence them to break through the resistance.

And so once I realized that we as humans, data doesn't resonate with us, but the narrative does.

By data you mean like what to eat, how to work out, how to.

Work out, or according to the percentage of this and all this kind of stuff.

Yeah, people don't resonate with that because it doesn't go into the brain.

Now, having said that, if a person is a very.

Well, if they're very intellectual and very logical, that tends to work with a lot of those people.

But for the most part, stories work amazingly well.

So stories that relate to the person, that's reason I tell a lot of the people that go into coaching and otherwise have a number of different stories, but you want to have something that relates to that person that you're working with.

So now they go into that.

They have an understanding of where they need to shift.

It gets into them on emotional basis versus trying to tell them what they should or shouldn't do.

That doesn't work.

It doesn't work at all.

They'll shut down and they'll regress and they just won't listen.

You need to open them up.

And I found that using stories and metaphors and things like that always work because now you're breaking through that resistance.

And I've done it with hypnosis clients.

I learned a lot about resistance and with especially with people that have a fear of hypnosis.

So I had to educate them and what it was beforehand instead of going right into the hypnosis where they were resistant to educating them on what it really was.

And I use stories and things like that.

Just tell them that hypnosis is not sleep.

It's more if focused concentration.

So.

And so I would tell them that if you're truly intelligent and you're intelligent.

Right, I said, and using focus, concentration, you'll be much better.

So if you're an intelligent and focused person, you'll do really well because they're.

Thinking if they're intelligent and focused, they're going to not be able to get hypnotized.

And you're flipping it on them.

Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense.

Like that pre.

Framing is incredibly important to that.

Yeah.

So I am curious about.

You have this huge, huge resume.

Right.

And so when you're, let's say, trying to get a client or telling someone what you do, trying to really, like, sell your services, how do you give some sort of elevated pitch that is not egotistical and listing out a giant list of things?

Yeah.

So it.

So in terms of like me telling people like, what I do, I always start like with.

With a question.

And my resume is not on my elevator pitch at all.

My focus is, is.

Is on the person.

And like any.

Anything like you mentioned being curious.

So I would ask a person a question that was.

That's.

And.

And based on the answer on their question, question, as I get to know them, then I would bring in in terms of what I do that can help them or help somebody else that they know.

So I would ask them, for example, have you or anybody else had like this issue?

And I would listen beforehand, listen.

And they've already told me their issue.

I think it's in people that, for example, are mentalists.

They're very observant.

So observation.

And if you, as a coach, you can help that person by feeding back to them what their issue is.

So like, if you or somebody else that you know, has the issue, this issue, and they don't know that they told me that, or I will listen, look at their body language.

Then what?

I'll ask them that question.

I said.

Then I would say, okay, here's my card or just call me or I have my QR code.

Then I would lead them in terms of that specific issue.

But again, I have to listen for that in terms of that.

That's a really good answer, actually.

Yeah.

Because I think a lot of people don't listen.

They don't look at the person.

They have a standard thing that they say to everybody.

And I don't think that really works very well.

And yeah, I find myself, me and my wife call it mouth vomiting because it's not literal vomiting, but it's like you.

You just open your mouth, some random stuff comes out.

Because we do so many diverse things.

My wife's got like three jobs and she studies a million different things and she's always educating herself like me.

So when someone comes up to like, oh, what do you do?

It's like, it's always a different answer, you know?

And so I've been like, we've both been in this place of like, I just, I just like to feel better about how I respond to that question of like, what do I do?

And when I have such a diverse.

Without being like, well, I'm, you know, working on a book and I'm doing this podcast and I'm doing this and I'm getting my master's degree.

And then all of a sudden it's like someone's kind of overwhelmed and it sounds like I'm kind of just bragging on myself.

Yeah.

Somebody asked me what I do, then I would basically go back to them and everything like that.

I always like to try to make it about the other person because at the end, all this kind of stuff that I'm learning and all the certifications I've had and all the education I have.

I actually have two PhDs, one in clinical psychology and one in neuropsych.

Studied neuroscience, had postdoc in neuroscience, and currently studying physics, so working towards my PhD in Physics as well.

Because I like to learn.

I'm curious.

But all this kind of learning and everything I've read and all that kind of stuff is meaningless to the person.

All they care about is how I can help them.

And the only way I can do that is to listen to them, have them give me their resume, their information, everything like that.

I'm.

If I can pull out what I've learned and all this kind of stuff that can help them, then that's what's important.

It's not about me, it's about them, period.

So would you say that you.

I can say that I learned that the hard way.

I can 100% attest to that.

And I really resonate with what you were saying before with, you know, people not resonating with the data and it actually being, in my opinion, more detrimental to be what's called the advice monster and giving people adventure advice because ultimately not only do they not.

Does it not resonate with them so they don't really do it, but then they end up beating themselves up about not being able to do it.

They feel like, oh, well, he gave me, oh, he gave me this personalized meal plan that was just for me.

He spent his time on it and I can't even follow it.

I'm not self disciplined.

I, I, I.

All the, and then all these labels, all this identity stuff around the fact that they couldn't follow the meal plan that I gave them, when in reality, it's like I never really actually connected with them and helped them find a why for it.

I didn't even need to give them a meal plan.

I could have just talked to them, them about what's their reason for this.

And when I started asking questions as opposed to giving advice, my whole business changed, turned around and everything, and I was getting a lot better results with everyone.

So I guess my question is, did you have to learn that the hard way?

Did you have to kind of give people the data and you're like, why is this not working?

And deal with the frustration?

And then is that kind of what potentially led you to doing more schooling and more certifications and stuff?

Was understanding this stuff better?

Yeah, well, learning.

Learning about people, I think is very important and having, like, a lot.

A lot of different knowledge.

But I think a lot of people who are experts get caught up into the expert paradox where what we learn.

And because it's commonplace around us, right?

And because it's commonplace around us, we think it's.

It's everywhere.

So we would spurt out stuff that for us is like, okay, this is, like, down here for them.

They have no idea.

And, yeah, so I have to, like.

I had to backtrack off that.

I had to go back to a beginner's mindset, especially when I'm dealing with people and tell myself, they don't know what I know, I don't know what they know.

I have to ask questions to understand where they're at.

I can't just throw stuff out.

It doesn't work.

And I've told other experts the same way.

I said, imagine yourself, you're now in the Amazon jungle, and you come across like a tribe of people there.

They know what they know about what's going on there.

You don't know what you don't know.

You may even have a PhD, but you don't know what you don't know.

And they try to show you all this kind of stuff, but it goes over your head because for them, it's commonplace for you.

You're a beginner, you're an infant in a lot of cases in that environment.

So they would have to teach you as if you were an infant again, at that basic level, for you to start learning of how to survive in that environment.

Well, we as experts, we have to understand that.

That the people we're dealing with, unless they have a lot of education in that arena, they don't know what you know.

So we have to go back down here.

And the only way to do that is be curious enough to discover that person and where they're at and what they're dealing with and what they know.

And then you can take your knowledge piece by piece at that beginner's level and just help them just enough.

Not this much, just enough that they can utilize that one piece of thing that will help them move forward.

Then you can add on to that, but you can't throw everything at them.

And so I had to learn that way myself, to back off with everything.

I know people don't care about all this other stuff.

All they care about is what I know that can help them specifically and.

How much you care.

So asking those questions, but also show care as well.

Yeah, see, that.

See, that's.

That actually answers my other question that I was going to ask you too, because I'm curious about this place of feeling confident enough to work with people that you've not in fields in which you've not worked.

So, like a CEO, you know, or a firefighter, first responder, you know, I know you've been in the military, but for me, it'd be like, military as well.

These are people that I have no experience in their field, but yet I want to be, like a peak performance consultant.

And so I have to be able to show up in those fields and feel confident and not deal with imposter syndrome.

And so I actually kind of think that you can.

You can chime in, but I feel like that may be a good method.

It's like, okay, well, I don't need to try and prove myself.

I need to try to get to know them and figure out a way that I can provide a solution to their problems or a service or be of value.

Yeah, I think people get caught up in.

And we see this in industry.

Like, if you don't have experience in our field, we're not going to hire you.

So you need experience, even though you may have experiences in other areas, but they want experience.

Like, you've worked in this industry and doing this kind of stuff.

The problem with hiring those kind of people is they get caught up in the same mindset and they're unable to grow.

We see, like, industries falling apart and the average major corporation dies after, what, 25 years because they have been unable to change.

It takes somebody coming outside with a different outlook or a different way of looking in order to make shifts.

We think about, like, the story of Henry Ford.

And typically automobiles back in the day were made one car at a time.

They were handmade One car at a time.

And he looked outside of the automobile industry where they did the packing, the grocery like pack industries where they had the lines where people would just pack all the way down through and came out with the final product all boxed up and everything like that.

So he did the same thing with making automobiles.

Prices dropped down.

He shifted a whole industry.

And in terms of like with you with peak performance, it's the same way you have experiences in other arenas.

And even in peak performance, we're all humans.

So those experience that knowledge and everything you have can help other in other arenas.

In a Special forces arena, you don't have to have been in special forces, but you have knowledge that can help a special forces person in terms of their mindset and help them to grow.

And those are usually people that are open and same thing working with CEOs.

Again, they're still humans.

So they may be locked into one way of thinking, but you bring in a different perspective that can help them to going higher.

Because they may be stuck at a plateau based on what they've already experienced, their knowledge and in their industry.

But you bring in something that's going to take them here, that's going to be the breakthrough which is very important.

And then plus your own experiences in life and what you've gone through will count as well because you're unique and your uniqueness can help somebody to have major breakthroughs.

So yeah, utilize that.

And we have to realize those are kind of gifts that we possess as we continue to learn and so forth.

And like with you, Todd, you, you have a lot of different perspectives and you're continuing that.

And I don't have what you have.

So you have a lot to teach, including an area of peak performance.

I appreciate that.

That's, that's very good insight.

And, and I like the fact that you said they're all humans as well.

So it's like that commonplace of, okay, I may not understand what it's like to be a special forces officer, but I do understand how to be human.

Like I have studying the human experience and groups of humans and, and things like that with sociology and psychology and the mind.

And so that is a.

Yeah, a big part of everything that I'm studying.

So.

Yep, thank you for that.

You're welcome.

With us moving forward into not only needing to adapt faster than ever with the changing tides, we also have to be able to maintain some sort of autonomy with our thinking.

Away from influence, away from addiction, away from dysregulation, away from distraction.

And I'm Curious.

What comes to mind amongst your many tools, you know, for people to be able to maintain a sense of autonomy and if they do have a mission, to be able to stay on track and to avoid all those things.

So you mentioned our why, and I think that needs to be put on a forefront and put it on a board somewhere, like, have it written down right in front of you and go back to that, have that understanding.

And everything that you do, everything that you learn, every experience you engage in should be connected to that, that why, that personal mission and so forth.

And once you start gravitating away from that and you have people pulling you here and there and there and there, it's important to have another.

So you have your why.

But there's also a key word I don't think a lot of people use, and that's the word no.

So you have to learn to say no.

You say yes to the things that connect with your why.

You say no to everything else.

People will pull you, pull you, pull you, pull you in different directions.

And you may have some cultural issues or certain guilt, like, well, you know, like so and so wants me to go do, do this and do this and do this.

Well, you got to learn to say no.

I can remember when I stopped drinking years ago when I was with lapd.

I stopped and some of my friends went, I go out with them and they would offer me beer, and I said, nope, nope, I don't do that.

And he said, oh, you teetotaler.

And all that kind of stuff.

They were trying try to cut me down.

I said, I stuck with my guns.

I knew where I wanted to be.

And that wasn't that.

I did not need those kind of things, and I knew better ways of raising my own self up.

So I stopped doing that kind of stuff.

I was not influenced.

I said no.

And to this day, I learn to say no more often.

And I say yes to the things that connect me with where I want to move forward too.

And yeah, so I don't go to parties and I don't do this and I don't all these other kind of things.

So that's.

That's what's helped me.

So in terms of connecting to your why, you know, we've both done the NLP course, and last time we talked, I remember we even went through like, a little exercise of imagining what your life would be like and let's say three years from now.

And imagine, you know, it's.

It's ideal.

Like, imagine you've built the business to where you want it to be.

Imagine that you have the podcast guest that you want to have on that you, you're published in whatever journal you want to be published in or magazine or your book is on the shelf of what bookstores and, and to really like let yourself go there.

And I think that when you say you have to have that vision, you have to have that.

Why?

I think that at best, maybe somebody might have it written down, but not necessarily have visualized and fully embodied.

It can picture what it looks like and it feels very real to them, very visceral.

And so yeah, I kind of wanted to talk about that process of visualization because I know that visualization is important to you to make that vision more real.

How do you make that vision more real?

Yeah, so what we want to be able to get to.

So we want to make sure that we use all our senses.

That's very important.

Not just the visual part of it, but even with the visual, we want to be able to expand that out and we look at what's called an nlp, the sub modalities of each one of these.

But I'm just going to make it a little bit clearer and not use words like that.

So on the visual part, I want to look at it like the way you look at right now in terms of your environment.

You see, you see what you see the colors make it three dimensional all around you, as if you're in that experience.

And then darker.

Bright.

Yeah, dark or bright things like that.

And then the auditory, the same thing.

And the kinesthetic, your physical body is.

You're, you're actually in it.

And even the smells and the taste, you're actually in that environment three years from now.

And you want to specify what is that date three years from now?

What is it that you're actually doing and where you at?

Are you in your new home?

Are you doing your work?

What does that look like?

What does that environment look like?

What does it sound like?

What does it feel like?

Is it.

Maybe you smell like baked goods.

You can smell.

Maybe you just had a breakfast you haven't had before.

Maybe you're in another country and you're vacationing, but you want to be at that specific date, that whole environment.

Use all your senses to be involved in that environment.

Now there's another thing you need to look at as well, because that's never going to happen until you understand your current reality.

Where are you at right now?

Because if you don't understand the truth of where you're at now, this Is not going to happen because you may put your mind like, okay, my current reality, but you may lie to yourself.

You need to be truthful with yourself.

Your current reality.

Now you see what's going to be happening in the future in your current reality.

Now we're going to go back to the future, and you're going to backtrack.

You're going to think about, okay, what did I do the week before in order to get to me to where I got to, and what did I do the week before all the way back down to your current reality.

So now, in essence, have a roadmap that you're going to now move forward on.

So this is the action I have to take tomorrow or this afternoon from where you started.

This is the next step I'm about to take.

Next step, next step.

Now, having said that, because of uncertainty, we don't know what's actually going to happen yet.

If you have a roadmap, you can make adjustments.

This is where you.

You mentioned earlier about being flexible, being adaptable.

So when something happens, we need to be flexible.

But you're still moving forward towards making that happen.

It may not be exactly the same yet.

It may be better.

You have something to focus on on terms of that.

You're moving forward towards that thing, but you're doing it in each present moment.

Each present moment.

And again we will come, like, in each moment, we're going to come to a different path, different paths.

We may have, like, this path, this path, this path.

We make this decision, this decision, this decision, this decision.

So we have to look at which decision is going to be the best that's going to be focused on our why we take that path.

We take this path, we take this path.

So it's not like a straight line, but it's going to be like this, like this, like this all the way through till you eventually get there and just realize that.

And I enjoy that.

I don't want things certain.

I don't want things to be like, boom, boom, boom.

I want to go through these different challenges eventually going to get me there.

To me, that's fun.

So do you believe in the flip side also of really, like, allowing yourself to do some of the shadow work?

Which I guess would be like, okay, if I don't do this in three years, this is what I'm going to feel.

I'm going to be disappointed in myself.

I'm going to be in the same place I am now because I feel like a lot of sales scripts will take people through that and nlp, personal breakthrough session or whatever might take people through that.

And so do you think that that's a necessary part of the process as well, is to truly allow yourself to feel what it would feel like if you don't accomplish this thing and you never accomplish this thing?

Sure.

I think if.

If it's set up right at the beginning and really having a person in embracing that why, I think all that others, including the fear, what will go away, especially if they stay on track.

Because the truth is, your why could be what you're already involved in right now, what you're doing in a moment.

So once you understand that you're what you're doing, your why right now, you're going to have this goal, you're going after.

But if you do your why in a moment, I think that that goes away.

Now, having said that, yeah, I think if we take a person through that process and what if you get off track in terms of your why?

Where would your life be?

What would it be like?

Imagine that part that may force them to get back into that, staying on track with their why.

And I like to tell people that we're all going to have, like, certain goals and objectives and outcomes and all this kind of stuff, but it's most more important, like, yeah, you may not have the same outcome in three years, but if you're still on track with your why, even if it's a different outcome where you.

What you're feeling is still going to be the same as if your previous outcome and you have this outcome as long as you stay true to your why all the way through.

Because I love that.

Yeah, because things change anyway.

Uncertainty.

We talked about that.

Chaos theory talks about it as well.

And Edward Lorenz, who created chaos theory and butterfly effect and all that kind of stuff, and he talked about that.

So something on the outside may happen.

We don't know.

Like, we may have our path, but something may affect that path and so forth.

Like one little idea in a book.

One little idea in a book, and it takes you.

Oh, my gosh, yeah.

And look at your own path.

Look at all the things that affected you, that led you to where you're at now, interviewing me on your podcast, and then what's going to be happening in the future, all this kind of stuff.

And you think back going back to high school, would you have thought about, like, you would be doing something like, where you're at now?

Not at all.

Not at all.

Not at all.

I thought I was going to be a personal trainer, strength coach, like yeah.

And some sort of college gym or something.

Yeah, yeah.

And here you are, you're.

And a year from now you may be on some major stage.

You never know.

And you know, like somebody like Tony Robbins or something like that.

You never know.

I know, I know.

I met Tony Robbins back in the early 80s and I never expected him to become the Tony Robbins we see now.

Yeah, it's crazy.

It's absolutely insane.

So my rational brain and can't help but think about what's going on behind the scenes, what's going on underneath the surface of like something.

When you say focus on your vision and make it very central, make it a whole central experience.

Because I know it's to some person that's going to sound like the Law of Attraction.

It's going to sound like, oh, if I imagine it enough, it'll come true.

And there may be, there may be something to that.

You know, from all the books I've read, I think there may be something to that and I can't deny it entirely, but I.

What I see is this like rewiring of the nervous system.

Correct.

You know, Correct.

And so it's like when you're imagining this thing and you're making it a very central experience, then you're able to create a comfortability or a sense of certainty around that thing coming to you.

Whereas if it's like me being a millionaire is something that's unfamiliar to me.

I've never thought about being a millionaire.

I've never been a millionaire.

I'm confused, you know, what it even means to be a millionaire.

It's kind of daunting if I've never really let myself imagine that.

Truly imagine what it's like then when it comes scary.

And then when the opportunity even comes around, I may shy away from it because it's scary and I may not even be conscious.

It may be subconscious because my nervous system is overwhelmed and like this million dollar idea that could pan out and could be amazing for me ends up being something that I'm avoiding.

And so then on the flip side of, of really creating that pain response around the negative experience.

So, you know, in three years I will feel discouraged and I'll feel in the way that I never went after my dream.

I'll feel sad.

Those, those sorts of negative experiences then begin to rewire the nervous system to feel negatively for not doing the thing that you should be doing.

And so I just wanted to make sure that we kind of like touched on that because I know that you're kind of into Neuroscience and all this stuff.

And so I don't want to just leave it at, like, to create your vision or to make your vision more clear.

We just make it very sensual into all the logical people.

They're like, that's.

That's a challenge for me.

That's a challenge to even, like, really go inside and, okay, what's it smell like?

What's it taste like?

What's it feel like?

What's it.

I'm very.

In my head, I'm like.

And so to overcome that challenge, but also to understand the importance of making it a central experience for rewiring the nervous system.

Correct.

I'm curious your thoughts on that.

Yeah, let me go a little bit further.

So we'll start off especially you mentioned neuroscience.

So neurons that fire together wire together.

And that's been said over many, many, many decades.

And it's based in evidence in terms of how our.

How our.

How our brains work, including cognitive flexibility, neuroplasticity, and so forth.

When we learn something new, our brains will start connecting those kind of things.

So the actions we take and so forth, our brains will connect it.

And the more times we do it, the stronger it gets, the less we do something or when we stop doing something that we had already had a strong connection with, they start weakening, because now we're focused on that kind of stuff.

For example, I remember back in grade school, I had to memorize all the state capitals of every single state in the United States.

You think I know it now?

Heck, no, I don't know it now because I'm not focused on that.

That's not even a thing.

Why would I want to know that?

I mean, it's.

It's irrelevant.

So what's irrelevant for me just doesn't exist anymore.

Plus, I can Google it or something like that, or have that kind of thing.

That makes it easier.

Yet as.

As we talked about before in terms of, like, focusing on what we want.

And then I backtrack all the way back to the current reality, part of your current reality, in order to.

To gain experiences.

You practice.

Now you can practice in a mine.

In martial arts, we do katas.

We do a physical manifestation of actual things.

But we can do what's called scripting.

So we can script out what we want to do, and we practice that.

For example, going back to grade school, we did fire drills, correct?

And those fire drills, the more we did it.

So when something actually happens, we would follow that out.

We would do the same thing.

And so we can take actions on something we want to focus on.

And you mentioned money.

So we can read something from maybe an expert on money, especially becoming a millionaire.

But what did they do?

What were some of the actions that they took?

So don't just read a book.

Find something that you can do actionable within a book itself and do it and take action on it.

Practice it, practice it.

But you can script out on your mind.

You can even practice it in your mind.

Because when we practice in our mind, it's the same thing.

Our mind doesn't know the difference between something we actually done or something we imagined.

So you imagine, but it's not just about thinking that you're going to be a millionaire.

That doesn't work.

But it's to practice in your own mind.

What are the steps that I need to do on a regular basis?

I can have you practice.

If you've never done a fire drill before, I can have you imagine being in that environment and going to each step to get to where you need to be, just imagining that kind of stuff.

So that's kind of clarity that you have to have in your imagination.

What am I actually?

What are the physical things I'm actually doing?

That's going to help to help me to wire my brain.

So when the actual thing comes, it's going to be a lot easier.

In the Marines, we did practice over and over and over again, Especially like in recon and force recon, practicing towards a mission.

We do the specific mission, but we would practice it over and over and over and over again and then became easier.

Yeah, we had circumstances where we had to adapt or those kind of things because things change.

Things don't always go according to plan.

But the more you practice and looking at it from a lot of different perspectives, diversity, I think helps a lot in terms of being able to make decisions.

Remember I said early on, all our decisions, everything we do is based on our past knowledge and past experiences, including what we practice as part of that.

So going to be a lot easier when we move forward because we're going to make the decisions, better decisions.

Especially when we have a lot of diversity in terms of what we studied and everything like that.

Our decisions are going to be that much better moving forward.

So we can make a decision now and the next one and next one, the next one based on the past.

Our brain is wired that way.

So you'll be able to move forward and be able to get what you want.

But you cannot sit back and read something or take a course or take a class or even, I think, a really good Coach helps you to put into practice and gives you homework and everything like that, and making sure that you stay on track towards that, that you're wiring your brain in terms of that way.

But just don't sit back and read something and think that you know what you know and you don't know that you only have the knowledge out of the book.

You have to take that and put in action.

Practice, practice, practice, practice, wire that brain.

And then, yeah, you'll be able to get to where you need to get to.

I love that.

And I feel like I find myself.

And so I'm curious your opinions on this, but I find myself seeing that need for a really strong why being very important for corporations as well as for entrepreneurs, as well as for even athletes and in organizations, sporting organizations.

And so it's kind of funny, like being an expert in that, being able to take people through that, you know, is something that can be very valuable that I don't, I don't know if people really understand how valuable that is, how everything kind of stems down from that values level.

Yeah.

You have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think it goes back to really learning to understand them so they can understand, you know, what are the values in terms of that, if they know their why.

And I'm glad you mentioned values, because if your why doesn't match up with your own personal values, then what you find in terms of what you're helping with doesn't become valuable.

And so I think all that has to match up again in initial coaching sessions.

Do you do values solicitation at all?

No, I can't say I do.

I didn't do the master prac.

And that's when you're supposed to learn that.

So I've studied it on my own.

I'm pretty, I'm pretty familiar with values elicitation, but I've never actually taken someone through it.

We'll, we'll, we'll talk about that.

Off.

But they basically just want to find out what is it that a person value the most.

So there's typically, we want to narrow down from a whole list of values and values and a lot of different things.

Narrow down to your top five values and, and then you want to find their number one, what's called driver value.

So that driver value usually doesn't change.

It can, but usually doesn't change.

This is what drives them.

So you need to connect that with that why.

And whatever they do, they're going to be utilizing that.

So with your coaching program, once they, they know that and they value that based on their top value.

And you're always going to be connecting that.

They're going to be moving forward.

So the lessons you give them or the coach or the.

Not, not the lessons, but the actions that they're going to take is going to be based on that in addition to their.

Their why.

And they will find that valuable.

So you can't, like, generalize with everybody, especially like, with coaching.

What works for one person is not going to work with somebody else.

So it really goes back down to what we said at the beginning.

Know them.

Once you know them and what you put them through is you connect that to them, they're going to want to move forward again.

It's a subconscious thing, but you need to find what, that why, what their values are, and even their own beliefs.

While beliefs could be changed because I've changed my beliefs quite a bit through the years, what I used to believe 20 years ago has shifted today as I gain new knowledge, new experiences and so forth.

Yeah.

So I'm not the same a person.

In fact, by the way, I'm not the same person now as I was when we first started this interview.

I'm a whole different person.

It's crazy.

So there's a.

There's a guy named Richard Barrett.

I don't know if you've heard of him.

He, like, consults with organizations, and he's even consulted with countries.

And he has this, like, whole model built around, like, Eastern philosophies and like, consciousness as well as cultural values.

And so what he does is he goes into a place and he figures out what are the current values that you're seeing?

So it goes and talks to the employees, what are the current values that you're seeing in the corporation?

Then he asks them, what are the current values you'd like to see in the corporation?

And then the manager goes to the manager, owner, leader, whoever, and goes, what sorts of values would you like to see in your business?

You know, what would you really like to represent your business?

And then the.

The amount of difference between those values is cultural entropy.

And so it's like the further out of line those values are, the more problems you have in your corporation.

And so the idea is to figure out ways in which you can kind of line those values up.

And so I feel like that that gap is kind of what most people are experiencing on a micro level with themselves.

It's like, okay, well, what sort of values do you believe in?

You know, what sort of values would you like to see in the world?

What sort of values are you living?

You know what sort of values are being rewarded in the world as well right now and how much differences between those is how much dysregulation, dysfunction and things that we're experiencing in our own life.

Yeah, going back to the organization.

So in terms of values, depending on how the organization is structured, because a lot of companies, especially larger companies, they have a top down management style and then you have like startups that have a bottom up management style and a top down is more dictatorial style.

The bottom up is now you have everybody embracing the values and the missions.

Everything is from here, the employees on a line and in society we're also affected, whether it's culturally, in others, whether it's a top down or bottom up.

So bottom up is going back to our core self.

And a lot of people don't know who they are.

Remember Socrates says know thyself.

A lot of people don't know who they are.

Their whole self is taken from other people.

Whether again it's their culture, whether it's the educational system, family members and so forth.

Then we're given, going back to talking about identity.

People will have their, their labels as who they are, but, but it's not who they are, that's just a label.

And a label could be their profession.

So a lot of people, when you ask them who are you?

They may say, well I'm a lawyer, I'm a doctor and all this kind of stuff.

No, that's just a label.

That's not who you are.

It's.

So we need to go back to know thyself.

And based on know thyself we discover our why.

But that's very difficult because people may be scared of finding out who they really are.

And it could be like you mentioned earlier, that shadow self too.

Do you have any tips for someone who feels like maybe they're not in the line of work, but they don't know what their line of work could be?

You know, they're, they're really struggling with that and they don't know themselves.

Yeah.

I would tell people or ask of them, what is it that when you were like really young, what is it that resonated with you?

What is it that, that when you think about it, like I did with Barry, that where he finally discovered that, that DJ self and everything else, which it was always there, or the psychiatrist who, her, her actress self.

I think a lot of people will tend to tamp that down.

And even like with me I had to do that as well.

And it could be that shadow side.

So we need to integrate, as Carl Jung talks about, the shadow self.

We need to maybe integrate that shadow in terms of discovering our whole self too, so we could discover who we are.

And the shadow self is that side that we don't want other people to know.

So we walk around wearing a mask all the time, what we hide from the world.

So we want the world to see this part.

And eventually we come to believe that this mask is us.

And I dealt with that myself, I.

In terms of running an international martial arts organization.

I wanted to have people look at me as this really tough hardcore guy and not the guy who plays with puppets and does ventral quizzes or does all these other kind of things.

That is the opposite of that.

Not the person who loves art and, and so forth.

Not the person who, who just enjoys, you know, even something acting silly or whatever, even going in a middle store in a store and playing with kids and everything like that or things like that.

So I put on this Persona.

And so once I uncovered that and exposed the person who was maybe more caring and things like that.

Now I always had a part of that, but that was as a protector.

So protector was stronger in my mind.

But the truth is that shadow self, and the shadow self is not somebody who is like mean or anything like that.

It could be somebody who's, who's caring that you didn't want to expose that.

So whatever that is, you need to bring that out, integrate it.

Now if you, if you have a lot of, if emotional mental issues, then you need to build strong and from yourself before you start going in, doing shadow work or something.

Because it can make things worse, especially when you see that side of you that you didn't want.

But we expose that all the time, inadvertently.

We'll judge other people, but it's truly we're judging our shadow self and so forth.

Would you say there's a breakthrough that you had that allowed you to kind of have that freedom mentally to really just allow yourself to be the quote unquote weirdo or the diverse person who, you know, both experienced caring as well as, you know, being a hard ass.

Now how did you, how did you come to allow yourself to be that person?

I realized and I think it goes back to curiosity and studying and reading a lot in order to.

Again, I studied a lot of shadow work and everything and, and so I think it was curiosity that allowed me to bring that out more than anything else.

Again, I'm curious by nature anyway and curious about myself was very important.

And Was there superficial self that I wanted the world to see, or was there something deeper?

So once I did that and I went down and just exposed that and let it out, oh, my gosh.

It just got to be really, I think, interesting at first and then exciting second.

But I got to bring something out that I think helped me quite a bit.

And I don't, like, worry about making mistakes or whatever, because I know that as humans, we're all going to make mistakes.

And even when I'm speaking on stage, if I make a mistake, I make a mistake.

But I don't allow that to stop me.

If I can act silly around people and just like a little kid, a little kid, you see a toddler running around and they're doing stuff and everything, they don't really care.

They don't care about any of that kind of stuff.

They'll go out in the middle of public and maybe seeing appearance, trying to stop and everything like that.

So, in essence, that was me coming out, being like that again and just expressing myself.

I get to act silly.

I'm allowed to act silly.

Other people, adults may see that initially, but the truth is, on a subconscious basis, those adults want to be like that again.

Those adults want to be a kid again, but they fear it.

They fear what other people may think about them.

And yes, we think in terms of more rational ways as an adult than we did as a kid.

We don't.

We're not going to jump in front of a car and doing those kind of things and so forth.

We understand that.

But we also tamp down that curious side, we tamp down that expressive side, we tamp down that creative side, and we tamp down the shadow side.

So we need to allow that to come out and express once again.

That's powerful.

And I have to touch on something you said that was really important to me because you said it sims back to curiosity.

And I was curious where you're going to go with that.

Oh, got it.

And so that was very.

That was a very good answer, though.

Like you said, you said you were curious about if you had more to offer.

I don't know those are your exact words, but it was something around the back.

Yeah.

You're curious, you know, is.

Is this it?

Or do I have more to offer?

Is there more of me?

Is there a deeper level of myself that I have not uncovered and really brought to the world?

You know?

And to me, like, that is one of the most solid, best forms of curiosity that someone could have.

Is like, is there.

Is there more that I can give, Is there more that I can do?

Is there, is there more to me, you know, and so like yeah, I'm glad that that was your answer.

Around like how do you find that freedom of really just being yourself?

And it's like, well I have to sit down and ask myself like is there, is there more to me that I'm just not really showing and to allow myself to be curious about that.

Well, I'm always, yeah, think, think about creativity because without curiosity you can't be creative.

And you look at a five year old and among five year olds, 95% are creative.

By the time we become adults, only 5% of the population is creative and really curious.