July 11, 2024 • 35 mins
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Mindset Coach Declan O'Donoghue, a qualified hypnotherapist and acupuncturist from County Kerry, Ireland. Declan shares his unique journey from overcoming personal struggles to working with renowned personal development expert Bob Proctor. He discusses how he helps individuals challenge their doubtful minds, find their purpose, and listen to their inner truth.
Declan opens up about his transition into personal development, the impact of hiring his first coach, and the transformative power of mentorship. He also delves into his experiences with anxiety and the role of hypnotherapy in overcoming it. Declan's story is a testament to the power of persistence, visualization, and unwavering belief in one's dreams.
Discover how Declan built his dream home, the importance of having a clear "why," and the value of personal development in achieving one's goals. Whether you're a CEO, athlete, or someone seeking growth, this episode is packed with insights and practical advice to help you on your journey to self-discovery and success.
Don't miss this opportunity to learn from Declan O'Donoghue's wisdom and experience. Tune in now!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Good evening everybody. Today I'm joined with Mindset Coach Declan O'Donoghue.
Declan is a qualified hypnotherapist and acupuncturist from the beautiful County Kerry in Ireland.
He began his personal development company during his eight years working with
Bob Proctor, known famously for the movie The Secret.
Declan helps people to tune into their doubtful mind and challenge it so that
(00:24):
they can find their own why and listen to their truthful voice inside,
allowing them to discover their purpose in life.
Jackson, that sounds very interesting, a very powerful statement.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Yeah, it's an honour to be asked to be on your podcast. Thanks for having me.
Very good. I think let's just start off with just finding out a bit,
how did you end up in personal development first?
(00:47):
What was the thirst for it? Who introduced you?
Yeah, definitely by luck, I think. Well, does anything happen by luck, I wonder.
But But for me, it was a little bit like how I got into acupuncture.
I had back pain for quite a long time.
And actually, the day after September the 11th attacks in New York,
I had my first ever acupuncture session.
Now, I never had anything physically wrong with me. I had a lot of emotionally
(01:10):
trapped fear in my kind of lower back area.
And this acupuncturist released years of pain. And I remember saying,
someday I will do this. So I actually trained about eight years later.
And I did that for about 10 years. And then my business, you know,
I loved healing people and helping people, but I probably wasn't very business savvy.
(01:30):
So I hired a coach just thinking I needed some motivation.
The reason I hired her was because I was a big fan of personal development on
YouTube and I was trying to apply everything.
And I kept hearing, oh, you know, you need a coach, you need a coach,
but I didn't really have a fund for that at the time.
So I avoided it for 18 months. And it seemed like I knew that the,
(01:50):
just like acupuncture was the cure for my back pain, I knew that like having
a coach and hiring a coach would be the cure, but it was like at arm's length,
it was just beyond my reach.
And eventually when I, like I literally borrowed money from my wife,
from the credit union, I hired my first coach and it just, you know,
things just took off in, in personally, professionally.
(02:10):
And, you know, I think for the same thing, I remember having a great experience
as an acupuncture client made me want to become one and the same thing,
experiencing what it was like to have incredible guidance and mentorship from a dedicated person.
It was transformation.
And I said, look, much the same intention I had for healing people with my needles.
(02:31):
I wanted to do it with coaching. So I trained with Bob Proctor,
as you mentioned in the intro there.
He was known for the movie The Secret. But, you know, long before that and long
after that, he had an amazing career helping people.
With personal development and he created like a network of coaches and I became
one of those that parked together a consultant and it gave me a great,
it helped me to cut my teeth in the industry.
(02:53):
Bob had a really good name and reputation. So, you know, we attracted clients
and worked with them for years, but I kind of do a lot more of my own type of
stuff now that I've learned from everyone develops their own style.
Eventually, as is your, you know, your own career, you'll
have a different style and different preferences to other models
and stuff like that and even with your podcast it's going
to be unique so I really created my own unique kind of
(03:15):
branch now that that helps me to live the life I want to
live and I focus a lot with CEOs now
and athletes is mindset for athletes and
for high achievers is is really what I want to
spend my days doing now so yeah it was just personal
experience got me into it and I'm
really happy doing it's lovely what was the support like I
(03:36):
mean I'm a fan a huge fan of Bob Proctor's I did thinking into
results years ago and um yeah yeah
it was very very good and it is life-changing and I think when you
try to explain to people that perhaps aren't into personal development they
think you're just you know they don't understand I think
it's really one of those things that you have to do you know yourself
and and it can't be taught you have to have the desire to want to do it you
(03:58):
know I found doing something like that a lot of people fail along the way because
their hearts aren't really in it they want to they say they want help but their
hearts aren't there they don't want to do the work and they don't believe in
in in what what he's teaching you really.
Maybe maybe they're trying to buy a silver bullet by throwing money at
a coach or something like that but i think you know i i probably
(04:18):
got on very well in as a client because you know well first of all i felt very
irresponsible like you know my wife and i hadn't taken our family on any kind
of sun holiday or anything like that so i thought well if i had when we're spending
money i should be doing it on that and i being the dad of the family and you
know kind of going like oh oh my God, you're, you know, you're a waster.
Like, for God's sake, you know, I really had this dilemma over doing it.
(04:40):
And then when I did, it was, what was the best thing they got,
you know, my kids and my wife probably got to see the real me coming to the surface.
I myself got to see the real me come into the surface. So it was,
you know, I have a client, I have a colleague actually, who wrote a book all
about money and she wanted to change the conversation of money in the family
home. Her name is Martha Adams.
She wrote a book called Cleopatra's Riches. It's a really good book. and
(05:03):
martha said to me she goes like deckton we've got investment properties
and different things in toronto but she goes without doubt
the best investment i ever made was that program you just
mentioned there thinking results she spent it like i think
she spent six thousand dollars on it and she said it keeps giving back to my
children my husband myself and i was like that's a good point and that's been
the same for me but you know like maybe people out there would have different
(05:25):
experiences with personal development because and i think largely you you know
you're not buying trying something in order to get more knowledge, this is this might be.
You know something someone's heard before but knowledge necessarily doesn't
mean power you know knowledge is potential power and you have it's the understanding
of it and the application.
That that changes us you know you you can absorb that's
(05:46):
what i was doing for 18 months on my own i was absorbing classic books
and listening to tony robbins and all these different podcasts and
everything but you gotta apply it and you won't apply
it because you know like the resistance that's
in there is like i'd say to people when i stand in the front of
the personal development seminar in some of the hotels or conference
centers in Ireland or abroad I'll say
(06:08):
to them look you're not here because there's something that's wrong
with you like you're you're here because you're you're following a feeling that's
very right in all of us to grow to flourish to change to to have more of life
and people would be like I'm not telling any of my friends I'm coming here now
you know like it's it's a very strange attitude but it's not just Irish it's
It's everywhere has that kind of a self-help.
(06:30):
I remember putting on a hood and a baseball cap going into Waterstones in Cork
to buy my first Preston development book.
It was called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson.
I was dealing with wicked anxiety at the time.
I remember being like, I'm not telling, I remember seeing The Secret in one
of my friend's houses one time on their shelf.
And about two years later, I was like, but you saw that movie. I saw it on your shelf.
(06:53):
And they're like, no, I never saw that movie. goofy I was like
you did see the movie so people are a
bit funny about about personal development but um what did
you find like at the start I don't know if you can remember because it's so
long ago but I know at the start people feel
like you said that they're embarrassed about to go into it that
they don't want to kind of admit that they're doing something different and I
(07:14):
remember my friends would slag me years ago and
think I'll clear us off for rocker which I probably am to an extent in their
heads because I'm doing something they're not fast forward
years later are asking me oh how do you do that and how
did you get into that and they they look at the success part but they're forgetting
about those years that I crawled to be
better those books that I read the things and when you
first find this information you're going around so excited wanting everyone
(07:37):
to learn it and my biggest challenge was I actually have to take thinking into
results twice oh yeah quite young when I did it but I had to do it twice because
I wasn't used to looking inside you know And when you do all this mental work,
it just was just alien-like to me.
I just thought this is rubbish. I'm paying money for rubbish until it really got in.
(07:57):
Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's, that's, again, look, it's the understanding and the application.
Like, you know, people, we really are using our subconscious mind a lot.
Like, you know, you'll hop into your car this afternoon.
I mean, and you'll just drive without even thinking of the radio on the podcast
on what you're actually doing is you're putting your right foot on a certain,
you know, a certain amount of pressure being applied on the accelerator,
(08:20):
a certain amount of pressure in and out with the clutch.
And then if you have two cars and you go from one car to the other,
you have to move your legs and your feet in a completely different way.
If it's a two liter engine or a one liter engine, if you have five people in
the car or less, we are incredibly powerful at using stuff that we learn and understand.
We learn and understand tying our laces. Once upon a time, we didn't.
(08:43):
We learned, like you remember going from a button phone to a smartphone,
you never thought you'd get the hang of it.
And then when they do an upgrade, it's like, oh, flip it. This is all odd now.
How do I get into this? it's it's seconds like we once
we once with with repetition and understanding we learn
everything we learn anything and off we go from there you know you'd
be totally goofy at the beginning you'd burn every dish like
my daughter is 13 now and she's a pretty good cook but at the beginning she
(09:06):
burned a few saucepans and we throw away a few bits and pieces but everyone
makes mistakes and i think it's it's so foreign to some people it's like well
well i do think and it's like yeah but you can think in a different way what
you on about think in a different way it's like i was i'm in a committee in a local club.
And I was saying, let's just start a fundraising group and just make loads of
money and then use it for whatever we want. And they're like,
(09:27):
well, shouldn't we find out the price of what we wanted for first?
And I was like, if you want, yeah, but I just think from the end and we work
our way back and figure it out along the way.
It's like, you know, you can have this type of way of doing it.
You can have another way. I even think that saying, thinking outside the box is old-fashioned now.
It's like we have to just originate our ideas and figure it out along the way.
(09:50):
It seems to be, there's a really good author called Neville Goddard,
and he talks in one of his chapters of his book, he talks about something called the effortless way.
And the effortless way is like from originating an idea to seeing it in its
fruition. He goes, what must be done to achieve it?
And he goes, one answer is nothing. nothing he says
like once you have it conceived it's it is done somewhere enjoy
(10:12):
your way of like finding your way to it along the way
and i think that is so foreign to so many people you have to have a plan you
have to have a budget you have to know every single person that's going to get
you there and if you don't don't even move one eyelid like don't even move one
millimeter and that's where that's it's the starting that stops most people
fortune favors the brave and you absolutely.
(10:35):
You know what was it this will smith
or somebody made famous recently like fail forward fail often fall
fit you know i know fail forward
yes if you're going to fail fail forward don't be afraid to drop
along the way and and do yeah that makes sense here's
here's one of the things because i'm sure there's people listening and they're
a bit frustrated now they're like all right i know what you're saying deckton but what
(10:57):
i do with people is i get them to kind of sit back at the at the very beginning
and just kind of close their eyes and start learning how to close the conscious
mind and you know we we're very quick to
check the bank balance and then it's like okay that's my status right
now or we're quick to check our waistline or who am I
to do this you know Marianne Williamson has a lovely poem
our deepest fear and she says like who people might want to say who am I to
(11:19):
shine who am I to to shine my light in the world and she's like well who are
you not to you know you weren't born to play small and in fact one of the other
lines in her in her piece that she she wrote says when you shine your light
you kind of inadvertently.
Empower and inspire others to do the same and that's
why your friends are asking you that now you know but the
(11:40):
what i would get them to do is put their hands on their on their chest
put their hands on their heart and just just understand that the same mechanism
that would hold you back if you you know let's say your your child got a kite
stuck in the chimney and next thing you get a ladder to go get the kite you're
going into unfamiliar territory so there's a very normal part of you that goes,
(12:00):
I don't like this ladder.
It's wobbly. It's windy. Why did I buy her this feckin kite?
What am I doing this stupid thing for? That system is really good.
It keeps you from, if your friend is driving too fast in the car,
you'd be like, will you slow down, please?
You know, if the kids are messing and you're maybe visiting a viewpoint in the
West of Ireland, some cliff face, and they're running around messing,
(12:22):
you're like, kids, come back, stay here.
You know, that safety mechanism is good, but it's overacting when
people think about starting a a business or changing their career or creating
something like you've done online with with your excellent instagram and everything
oh i couldn't do that it's like of course you could oh no no no you could do
that here i can't and that mechanism familiar with it to make them know that
we all get imposter syndrome at the start it's the mindset and the pushing and yes persevering.
(12:48):
100 100 of people get that and then the others like you said a bit mad we just
i'm not not listening to that anymore.
You know, that, listening to that inner voice, Michael Singer,
he wrote a really good book called The Untethered Soul.
And he said, if you're reading this book and you're reading the lines of this
page and you're saying to yourself, I don't have an inner voice,
he goes, that's the voice.
(13:08):
We do, you know, oh my God, you know, do I look okay?
Like, is there something, oh my God, did I spill something on my dress?
But I better look down, you know, like, like the little voice that's always
going, oh, she's here now. I don't like her.
We had a bit of a falling out, you know, a wonderful day to be there at this wedding.
It's it's the it's it never stops bob
used to say to us like he said imagine you're there
(13:29):
was you know it's predominantly female orientated consultancy but
he would say imagine going to a bachelorette party and you're away somewhere
at a retreat for the weekend because there's going to be that one who's got
the clipboard and she's running around the place going okay girls like seven
o'clock we're going to be here and then eight o'clock we're having prosecco
and then we're getting into the into the bus and then like somebody wants to
(13:50):
have a weekend away and they're They're like,
if she doesn't stop with that freaking clipboard, you know, she's going to get it.
He goes, those control freaks, they have to go to the bathroom.
They have to sleep. They have to eat. You will get some respite from them for the weekend.
He says, however, your inner voice, if you don't start standing up to it and
challenging it, it's going to keep telling you, stay here.
(14:11):
Here is better. Don't change.
Don't move forward. Who do you think you are? If you You don't stand up to that.
You will stay exactly where you are and you'll keep thinking there's something
wrong with you and there's nothing wrong with you.
You're just not challenging these norms that you've just accepted, right?
Did you, when you were younger, did you always have a big vision or was that
(14:32):
kind of when you went into the personal development, you said,
no, I deserve more? Or did you have that inside you already?
Yeah. My granny had a great saying, she'd say like notions, you know,
if you came up the hallway, first time I was spraying links,
you know, and she was like, oh, come here. No oceans.
I was obviously going down to meet some girl in the village or something. He's like, no oceans.
The next time I heard that was from my mom and dad. I think I was in my early
(14:54):
twenties and I was working for Francis Brennan from At Your Service.
So I worked in his hotel in Kinmare.
And I had mixed with, I worked in hotels in Waterville as well.
I'd met really famous and very wealthy people like JP McManus or Tiger Woods
or all these celebrities that would come through Kerry to play golf.
And I started to realize they were the soundest flipping people.
And I had this idea that, you know, rich people are bad or whatever.
(15:18):
And I kind of started to say, so you're telling me that you do this?
And they're like, yeah, Jesus, that's amazing.
Because I'd just be chatting to them like a regular everyday person,
like what's your man's name?
Andrew Lloyd Webber or David Gray or any of these people I got to meet who were
millionaires, you know, I would just be chatting. They were just the most ordinary people.
They wanted poached eggs the same as the other flipping tourists, you know.
(15:40):
So it started to get me thinking, well, if they can, I can. And I can remember
coming home to mom and dad saying, you know, mom and dad, I know there's a future
for me, like in this hotel business kind of stuff. I was going down that road.
I said, I want to be the type of person that stays in Francis Brennan's place,
like six, 700 pounds, Irish pounds a night. It was at the time.
I want to stay there. I don't want to be someone working there.
Not that there's anything wrong with the hotel industry or anyone listening to that.
(16:03):
And they were like, oh, notions like my own parents. Now, they weren't trying to hold me back.
They weren't being critical. but I was making them a little bit uncomfortable
in their own skin because they maybe never had that ambition and that aspiration
and you know years have gone by like next week I'm going to.
My wife and kids were going to like what you call it euro camps it's like 400
quid for the week you know but i've also stayed in trump's place in in donald
(16:28):
trump's hotel in new york which was like
nearly a thousand euros a night and this kind of stuff you know so i have ended
up staying in some of these places but you know what i'd say to some of the
clients is you're not better or worse than anyone you're just living your life
with more awareness and you have more choice and you're doing more of what you
want to do it's not i think a lot of your friends are people that might have
(16:48):
I've been uncomfortable things.
What if I change and I lose the love of my friends and family?
What about if I change and I get a bit isolated or I get left out of things?
And look, that doesn't happen all that much.
I think that's one of the worries that the little voice will use against you,
you know, to stop you from starting.
Me personally, when I went through that transition, my family definitely did.
(17:10):
And I did. I lost a lot of friends. But like, you know, we all change in life.
And I did. I tried to pay for them to do the same courses I was doing, the same mindset.
And they didn't have the interest. So, like I said, you have to want to do it yourself.
But my family, it's amazing. You think, you know, and to my family that are
listening, but they love you.
But then they do become uncomfortable when you go down this other path in life.
(17:33):
And it's so strange. It's such a strange feeling.
It is. And when, you know, I've had close personal difficulties with that at times.
And I think, you know, actually, Bob, God rest him, his last interview he did
was in January. he died following February.
But in that interview, I was only listening to it the other day,
a friend of mine from New Zealand sent it to me.
And that question comes up first. He's doing an interview with a lady called Peggy McCall.
(17:56):
And somebody says, what about if you have a spouse who's totally against personal
development, how do you deal with it?
And Bob just answered very quickly. He says, I let nothing bother me.
He says, I have a goal, that goal. Now, I agree with Bob, ladies can conceive
and have a baby, men can't, right?
So I would look at when my wife conceived our three children.
(18:17):
She took care of them, gave birth to them, nourished them.
I look at ideas like that, like I have been given an idea that is very precious
and it was, it's mine to mind, it's mine to nurture, it's mine to bring to life.
And I have a responsibility, I've been given this idea to do,
and I have a responsibility to take care of it.
And, you know, you wouldn't just give your baby to anyone.
(18:40):
You would give it to a mom or a dad or someone to mind if you were going out
for dinner or something,
you know, you'd really be careful with your precious little child i
have i had to start becoming that way with my
ideas and i know that you're obviously trying to go
out and help your friends but after a while you have to realize that
you've got to do it for you it's your dreams it's your goal
it's your wishes and you've got to protect it because most people will like
(19:03):
we all have we all have an enormous capacity for change more than
we actually think we do once upon a time you left your
house and you had to take your car keys and your wallet and
now and then it became the car keys the wallet and the phone then it
became the car keys the wallet the phone face mask and then
then it was the mat you know the car keys the phone the
wallet and now it's known face mask again so we changed we we
(19:24):
stood five meters apart like we we have a huge capacity
for change but nobody likes having
change forced upon them so if you're telling your friends and
family and loved ones that you're about to do this thing you're inadvertently changing
them in some small way because they have you in this little
pocket get out of their mind but you're like but hang on no no you live here
(19:44):
kira you don't you don't do something different so you're inadvertently changing
them they feel the resistance and that's why they don't know like as the good
lord said forgive them lord for they know not what they do it's a little bit
like that they don't know why they don't like it but you're changing them.
You know and you've helped your family over the years i mean one of the things
my own family said was money isn't everything here they got the wrong they got
(20:07):
the whole wrong idea of what i was doing when I was chasing businesses and to be a better person.
But do you find that you've somehow educated your family and having a different
understanding on money in the background and the beliefs, I suppose, about money?
Or possibly i don't know i i i would say grown belief in some grown skepticism and others,
you know i i genuinely don't let it bother me i used to really really let what
(20:32):
everyone and anyone thought about me really bother me but i don't anymore so
you know you've asked a good question but i suppose i don't have an answer for
you because i don't like any other human being's opinion of me is none of my
business and i think that's a very good thing to live by and,
there's a really good book by a gentleman called napoleon hill it's called think
and grow rich and in that book he he he interviewed
(20:53):
500 of the most successful people at the time and they
boiled all of these success principles down to about 13 principles like
persistence and decision making and auto suggestion like
what you repeat to yourself all the time but in the back of the book he says
this book will not be completed without having a conversation about the element
that holds most of us back a destructive force called fear and from talking
(21:13):
to all these people he started to realize there was about six basic fears and
one of those six basic fears is fear of criticism,
fear of, you know, people laughing or pointing or sniggering or talking about you.
It's really hurtful. You know, if you've heard, I heard somebody said something
about you, even the strongest, toughest person goes, really? What?
We don't like being talked negatively about. So I had to honestly not really care.
(21:38):
Do you know what I heard about you the other day? No. And I don't want to know.
Yeah. You know, like that's no, if someone said that to me, Hey,
Dec, you know what I heard? I heard this about you. I was like,
whatever you heard, keep it.
If someone had the balls to say it to my face, then I listened to it.
If they said it to somebody else, none of my business.
You don't want to know what they said? No, no, not really. It used to bother me so much.
(21:59):
It's like, you know, somebody who's an addict giving up something.
I was addicted to the drama and the stress and the anxiety of,
what about if I'm not good enough for other people?
How did you overcome that yourself? You said you had anxiety.
Anxiety I mean you come across very confident obviously this years of of dealing
with what you were dealing with yourself but what do you think you were anxious about?
(22:22):
Oh everything everything and anything like the best you
know you called out there with with bob with the coaching
for about eight years it was all about helping people as you
know from the program you did really get clear on what you
want but what i realized were yes clients were going on get
what they wanted but they were bringing a lot of baggage with them so that's
why i've added hypnotherapy to my repertoire i studied
(22:43):
with marissa peer i put something called rapid transformational hypnotherapy
rapid transformational therapy and it's really really good
and i'm studying other other hypnotherapy now from different sources
I want to get very you know very good at it I feel
it's great so what I learned from her was kind
of clean out the pipes and then from Bob to start over and
put in new stuff so I love I love that's why I kind of come up with my own kind
(23:05):
of system I guess but to answer your question I realized I had overachieved
I was carrying like I thought it was normal the way I described it one time
to a counselor I went to see was that you know like a one liter milk carton
I said I feel like I've got one of them in my stomach,
and two corners are pointing outwards and two corners are pointing inwards.
And he was like, jeepers. And I'd had that my whole life.
(23:27):
I would feel the fear and do it anyway. But hypnotherapy helped me to learn
that the fear was just like a little inner child or that fear mechanism overreacting,
going, for God's sake, will you stop going into all these new businesses?
And will you stop standing on stages and talking in front of people?
Will you stop Will you stop doing podcasts?
Will you stop? You know, I was carrying anxiety that I look.
(23:49):
I mean, I developed it my first day of school.
I went right back in a really, really amazing 30 session one day.
My very first day of school. Yeah.
I think you're holding, are you blocking something? Your mic?
Oh yeah, I just knocked the microphone. Sorry.
Yeah, I went right back in the hypnotherapy session to my first day of school
and I was able to see how anxious I was.
(24:11):
That was one of the first times I remember someone dying when I was young and
getting really anxious about that. My grandfather passed away.
All of a sudden, we didn't expect it. And so, yeah, look, it was developed,
like, as I said this morning, like your accent, like freckles.
You know some things are some things are genetic and some
things are environmental so you know my mom is is
(24:32):
a absolutely wonderful lady but it's so easy to wind her up you
know you just say something at you go away you're not serious like
i would say herself i always say like herself and her sisters like my aunties
you know when they're together it's like you can wind them up so easy it's like
you know what i heard go away it's like you know the the meerkats in those in
those in those they pop their head out of the sand going what's there is there
(24:53):
something to be afraid of So I think I was like a high strung kind of a person.
And I think I developed, I lived in an environment where to be a little bit
afraid and a little bit anxious.
And my dad's as cool as a breeze, but I was probably around my mom more and
she was probably more anxious.
And I picked up that that was the way to be. so there was no there was no one
thing in particular but I,
(25:13):
just developed it over years just became I just became someone that lived with
anxiety and I still feel the feelings of it you know I still get sweaty pants
and I will have a I will have a sleepless night sometime but I know what it is and I go okay.
He's here when you can identify. I do think that helps. My husband was diagnosed
with Tourette's syndrome at 36.
(25:34):
He was diagnosed, sorry. And I mean, you think, how did you go that long in life without it?
But when he was diagnosed, interestingly enough, his twitching and his Tourette's
got so much worse. It was almost he could say, oh, okay, that's what it is now.
And his Tourette's got so much worse. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I guess that that can happen,
I suppose. I don't know if it happened necessarily with anxiety for me,
(25:54):
but it was great to to understand why I would be, you know, at my friend's wedding
and all of a sudden totally unable to eat food and have to go up and take off
my suit and like go and have an hour's nap in bed and come back down.
And then I'd be starving, but it was just, I don't know, was it picking up on
other people's anxiety?
Was it my own social anxiety? I don't know what it was, but that used to happen.
(26:17):
Were you making a speech? No, just being just in attendance.
I remember being at a conference in Mexico, the same thing happened just sitting
in a room at a great week it was night seven it was the end night
everyone was it was one of these everyone dressing in white kind of parties and
i just sat down and i looked at this beautiful food and i couldn't eat
a morsel i was just gripped with anxiety so sometimes there was no cause at
(26:38):
all but it was great to great to learn about it and overcome it and yeah i suppose
as they say still i still feel the symptoms sometimes but i know what it is
now and i just go So I just calmed myself down very quickly and move on.
And I think, again, just like knowing, like I was a very, I still do acupuncture
for friends and family, but I loved when people would come in,
(27:00):
the poor things, and they'd be so lost.
I mean, you're usually the last person people come to see when you're in acupuncture.
Nobody wants the needles.
So to help them with back pain after years of nothing working.
You know, it was really good.
It was a good thing. So the same with coaching. coaching if somebody
comes to me like I'm helping a woman at the
moment in America she's she's really got clear clear
(27:23):
reasons why she's dealing with anxiety there's so much has happened in
the last few years she's you know so much has gone on in her life the poor thing
but I'm helping her to understand that's normal to be as anxious as she is and
now let's work with it and it's I can speak from a place of absolute understanding
and I think that's I think that's what I admire about your work so far because you've lived,
(27:45):
you're not just doing what you've studied, you've actually lived it,
you've had anxiety, you've had a time that you weren't successful,
then you've had a time that you went into success, you've had a time that you
didn't have a family, you didn't have a penny, then you went in and I think
people can resonate with that.
You can hear your passion.
I'm interested though why you gave or, well, I know you said you do that for
friends and family, but how come you don't do acupuncture for other people, I suppose?
(28:08):
You just want to concentrate on the other side. Well, never...
Yeah, never, never say never, you know, I'm, I really, I love this.
And I think there was just, just wanting to explore something a bit different.
I had been, I put a clinic in, in of all places like Cars I've been in Southwest Kerry.
I remember someone driving, driving through and kind of going acupuncture in
Southwest Kerry, like people who moved away and they've come home,
(28:31):
they couldn't believe it. So look, it did very, very well.
And I remember being all excited and telling Bob, Bob was like a third grandfather.
I was like, Bob, oh, I'm after selling my clinic and now I'm 100% working with
you. And he was like, why'd you do a dumb thing like that for?
And he was like, you had a source of income. Why didn't you get somebody else
to just come in? And I never thought of that, but I did want a clean break.
There was a lot of reasons. I remember one time being in Toronto for a week
(28:54):
at a conference and I just started applying myself and I had done very well.
And I'd probably created a business success there that totally eclipsed what
I could do with acupuncture.
And I think that was one of the reasons, you know it was it was quite a very
good financial week and i remember thinking god i'd
have to do an awful lot of acupuncture sessions to do that so i
mean that was just one very basic reason it was monetarily
(29:17):
better to to to give it up in one sense and
not be in the clinic all day every day you know
waiting for people and then people might do a no show and you're like ah so there
was a lot of reasons i could work from home and actually look isn't it always
easy to join the doctor looking backwards about six months after i closed the
clinic down we had this thing called COVID-19 floating around the place so I
(29:38):
would have been You see it happened for a reason you would have been paying
your overheads and whatnot,
that's yeah yeah I believe everything happens I'm just I know the the listeners
can't see at the moment what where Declan is sitting at the moment he's in his
bedroom with the most beautiful view of Kerry I have ever seen Declan tell us
how you you did this on the vision board first yeah,
(30:00):
Yeah. So my grandfather had this field where our home is now.
And I remember when I was dawdling about would I actually hire a coach or not,
I remember one of the reasons I wasn't willing to go ahead was I didn't actually
have a purpose. I didn't have a why. I didn't have a goal.
And I'm a bit of a soccer fan. I like Liverpool Football Club.
And she did a really cool technique. She got me to close my eyes and hold a
(30:23):
microphone and imagine. Now, it worked very well with me because I love visualization.
So she got me to stand in the middle of Anfield with a
microphone phone with my eyes closed and she goes you've got
it's halftime the players have left the pitch and you've got one chance
to tell all of your fellow fans what's your one dream in life and i hadn't i
said i don't know and she goes what's your one dream deck and just tell the
(30:43):
people in in the stadium i was like i don't know and she still doesn't she still
doesn't remember this but she banged the table and she was like tell them what
you want to do in life and i was like i swear to
god my bottom eyelids filled up with with with
tears it spilled over the side like a bucket under
a under a hose pipe i was like oh jesus there's tears
like it was so weird and i said and my you know the way a child like their their
(31:07):
bottom lip curls up and the sides their mouth goes down i was like a blubbering
little baby and i goes i want to build a house for my wife and children so they'll
be proud of me i i'm getting feckin tears again i was saying it but that was it and i never saw
this field in that way before i never i just
i don't know what the hell it was so i drew a vision board we started
looking at houses online then we started saying where would we even put
(31:29):
it and we came over here one day and my dad used
to have animals here grazing and all that we came down my wife and i and we
stood here and we were like i'll actually send you a video after on whatsapp
and show you the the montage or whatever of the two of us on the field and we
used to come here for valentine's we'd bring a table and chairs and a bottle
of champagne and strawberries and And we'd sit here in the grass kind of going,
one day our home will be here.
(31:50):
And there was not a chance we were going to get a mortgage, not a hope.
They loved her. She was a teacher, French and English, five years or more.
The banks loved her. But then there was this fella, as the mortgage person we
were working with called me an aquapuncturist.
You know, like, you're an aquapuncturist. I was like, no, actually, acupuncture.
But I had one year's of books, which showed that I had triple my income because
(32:12):
of the coaching, which was great.
And I was like, look at me, Mr. Fancy Pants. I've, you know,
now I've got the six figure business and they were like, yeah, great.
But you know, central office in Dublin, we need three years of books.
But Bob and other people were like, you persist. If you want that house,
you visualize it. You see it, you keep going.
And one day I was driving to Carlsalline and there's lots of forestry around
(32:32):
here. And there was this logging truck going through the town and I had to pull in to let him go.
And next thing the sun was shining in my eyes. So I kind of moved the visor
and all of a sudden I see EBS Bulldogs.
And I walked in, I was like, could you get me a mortgage? And he was like, well, I'd love to try.
And off we went. And it was just like within a couple of, within no time at all with the mortgage.
So that was way ahead of what everyone else said. No, everyone has said no, no, no.
(32:56):
But you keep like persistence, as I said, as one of the chapters in Think and Grow Rich.
And again, you can say, oh, I know how persistence is, but it's the understanding
and the application when everyone else is saying no.
They said no to me one day. And my friends, Sean and Holly came over and we
planted willows that are, look, you can see them there.
We planted those willow trees the day the bank said no. And then my son Dylan
and I came in and we planted bluebells because his mom wanted loads of bluebells to take off here.
(33:20):
Every time they were trying to plant doubt in my mind, I planted abundance on
this field. And we've got potatoes there, salads.
We've got a well. We've got a fresh water well. We've got access to the sea. We swim down there.
We've hosted Christmases here. We've had my mom and dad's 50th wedding anniversary here.
And it was all, Paul, I wasn't going to listen to any fecker saying,
no, you know, this is my dream.
(33:42):
It's my baby. I get to gestate it and bring it to life. Nobody else.
And that's the thing, you know, so when I found my first ever why, it changed my life.
And that's what I do. I, you know, a 72 year old client in New Zealand at the
moment, I need 50 years running an amazing company, a very successful guy,
and I'm helping him to find his next why.
It's great. It's absolutely beautiful and it's
(34:04):
our birthright to really be following our dreams and it's
not bs you know people go it sounds
very american it's not it's not you're you're
either working you know you don't have to give up your day job either you just
start working on your dream like turn off the flipping skybox
for a little while and just start journaling and visualizing and you'll be surprised
where it'll take you exactly you have us all motivated today thank you so much
(34:27):
for taking the time to come on the podcast and just if anybody wants to book
in with Declan or see what he's doing online how do we get you Declan?
So my website is Declan at Declan O'Donoghue oh
sorry that's my email address Declan at DeclanO'Donoghue.com you might
as well have my email now but DeclanO'Donoghue.com it's
the Donoghue with the g-h-u-e and all that so DeclanO'Donoghue.com go
(34:48):
on my website and there's a contact form you can fill out or
I'm on Instagram I'm on TikTok talk and look we'll
see you know as i say if i can help you i will if i can't i'll
direct you where else to go and that's it you know
there's no i don't do any kind of pressurized selling it's just if
i'm for you great if i'm not that's grand and off we go but whatever you do
if you call me or if you call somebody else i really really recommend that you
(35:11):
you have a coach i recommend that you're doing daily work on your personal development
and you're cheating nobody else on yourself when you're not doing the work so
if you're going to pay someone to be your coach
do the damn work okay don't you're not going to throw money at something that's
going to work you have to do the work take responsibility for your life and
you're going to you're going to really be grateful to yourself every day that
(35:32):
you do that oh thank you so much jack for taking the time today okay bye-bye talk soon bye-bye.
Good evening everybody. Today I'm joined with Mindset Coach Declan O'Donoghue.
Declan is a qualified hypnotherapist and acupuncturist from the beautiful County Kerry in Ireland.
He began his personal development company during his eight years working with
Bob Proctor, known famously for the movie The Secret.
Declan helps people to tune into their doubtful mind and challenge it so that
(00:24):
they can find their own why and listen to their truthful voice inside,
allowing them to discover their purpose in life.
Jackson, that sounds very interesting, a very powerful statement.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Yeah, it's an honour to be asked to be on your podcast. Thanks for having me.
Very good. I think let's just start off with just finding out a bit,
how did you end up in personal development first?
(00:47):
What was the thirst for it? Who introduced you?
Yeah, definitely by luck, I think. Well, does anything happen by luck, I wonder.
But But for me, it was a little bit like how I got into acupuncture.
I had back pain for quite a long time.
And actually, the day after September the 11th attacks in New York,
I had my first ever acupuncture session.
Now, I never had anything physically wrong with me. I had a lot of emotionally
(01:10):
trapped fear in my kind of lower back area.
And this acupuncturist released years of pain. And I remember saying,
someday I will do this. So I actually trained about eight years later.
And I did that for about 10 years. And then my business, you know,
I loved healing people and helping people, but I probably wasn't very business savvy.
(01:30):
So I hired a coach just thinking I needed some motivation.
The reason I hired her was because I was a big fan of personal development on
YouTube and I was trying to apply everything.
And I kept hearing, oh, you know, you need a coach, you need a coach,
but I didn't really have a fund for that at the time.
So I avoided it for 18 months. And it seemed like I knew that the,
(01:50):
just like acupuncture was the cure for my back pain, I knew that like having
a coach and hiring a coach would be the cure, but it was like at arm's length,
it was just beyond my reach.
And eventually when I, like I literally borrowed money from my wife,
from the credit union, I hired my first coach and it just, you know,
things just took off in, in personally, professionally.
(02:10):
And, you know, I think for the same thing, I remember having a great experience
as an acupuncture client made me want to become one and the same thing,
experiencing what it was like to have incredible guidance and mentorship from a dedicated person.
It was transformation.
And I said, look, much the same intention I had for healing people with my needles.
(02:31):
I wanted to do it with coaching. So I trained with Bob Proctor,
as you mentioned in the intro there.
He was known for the movie The Secret. But, you know, long before that and long
after that, he had an amazing career helping people.
With personal development and he created like a network of coaches and I became
one of those that parked together a consultant and it gave me a great,
it helped me to cut my teeth in the industry.
(02:53):
Bob had a really good name and reputation. So, you know, we attracted clients
and worked with them for years, but I kind of do a lot more of my own type of
stuff now that I've learned from everyone develops their own style.
Eventually, as is your, you know, your own career, you'll
have a different style and different preferences to other models
and stuff like that and even with your podcast it's going
to be unique so I really created my own unique kind of
(03:15):
branch now that that helps me to live the life I want to
live and I focus a lot with CEOs now
and athletes is mindset for athletes and
for high achievers is is really what I want to
spend my days doing now so yeah it was just personal
experience got me into it and I'm
really happy doing it's lovely what was the support like I
(03:36):
mean I'm a fan a huge fan of Bob Proctor's I did thinking into
results years ago and um yeah yeah
it was very very good and it is life-changing and I think when you
try to explain to people that perhaps aren't into personal development they
think you're just you know they don't understand I think
it's really one of those things that you have to do you know yourself
and and it can't be taught you have to have the desire to want to do it you
(03:58):
know I found doing something like that a lot of people fail along the way because
their hearts aren't really in it they want to they say they want help but their
hearts aren't there they don't want to do the work and they don't believe in
in in what what he's teaching you really.
Maybe maybe they're trying to buy a silver bullet by throwing money at
a coach or something like that but i think you know i i probably
(04:18):
got on very well in as a client because you know well first of all i felt very
irresponsible like you know my wife and i hadn't taken our family on any kind
of sun holiday or anything like that so i thought well if i had when we're spending
money i should be doing it on that and i being the dad of the family and you
know kind of going like oh oh my God, you're, you know, you're a waster.
Like, for God's sake, you know, I really had this dilemma over doing it.
(04:40):
And then when I did, it was, what was the best thing they got,
you know, my kids and my wife probably got to see the real me coming to the surface.
I myself got to see the real me come into the surface. So it was,
you know, I have a client, I have a colleague actually, who wrote a book all
about money and she wanted to change the conversation of money in the family
home. Her name is Martha Adams.
She wrote a book called Cleopatra's Riches. It's a really good book. and
(05:03):
martha said to me she goes like deckton we've got investment properties
and different things in toronto but she goes without doubt
the best investment i ever made was that program you just
mentioned there thinking results she spent it like i think
she spent six thousand dollars on it and she said it keeps giving back to my
children my husband myself and i was like that's a good point and that's been
the same for me but you know like maybe people out there would have different
(05:25):
experiences with personal development because and i think largely you you know
you're not buying trying something in order to get more knowledge, this is this might be.
You know something someone's heard before but knowledge necessarily doesn't
mean power you know knowledge is potential power and you have it's the understanding
of it and the application.
That that changes us you know you you can absorb that's
(05:46):
what i was doing for 18 months on my own i was absorbing classic books
and listening to tony robbins and all these different podcasts and
everything but you gotta apply it and you won't apply
it because you know like the resistance that's
in there is like i'd say to people when i stand in the front of
the personal development seminar in some of the hotels or conference
centers in Ireland or abroad I'll say
(06:08):
to them look you're not here because there's something that's wrong
with you like you're you're here because you're you're following a feeling that's
very right in all of us to grow to flourish to change to to have more of life
and people would be like I'm not telling any of my friends I'm coming here now
you know like it's it's a very strange attitude but it's not just Irish it's
It's everywhere has that kind of a self-help.
(06:30):
I remember putting on a hood and a baseball cap going into Waterstones in Cork
to buy my first Preston development book.
It was called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson.
I was dealing with wicked anxiety at the time.
I remember being like, I'm not telling, I remember seeing The Secret in one
of my friend's houses one time on their shelf.
And about two years later, I was like, but you saw that movie. I saw it on your shelf.
(06:53):
And they're like, no, I never saw that movie. goofy I was like
you did see the movie so people are a
bit funny about about personal development but um what did
you find like at the start I don't know if you can remember because it's so
long ago but I know at the start people feel
like you said that they're embarrassed about to go into it that
they don't want to kind of admit that they're doing something different and I
(07:14):
remember my friends would slag me years ago and
think I'll clear us off for rocker which I probably am to an extent in their
heads because I'm doing something they're not fast forward
years later are asking me oh how do you do that and how
did you get into that and they they look at the success part but they're forgetting
about those years that I crawled to be
better those books that I read the things and when you
first find this information you're going around so excited wanting everyone
(07:37):
to learn it and my biggest challenge was I actually have to take thinking into
results twice oh yeah quite young when I did it but I had to do it twice because
I wasn't used to looking inside you know And when you do all this mental work,
it just was just alien-like to me.
I just thought this is rubbish. I'm paying money for rubbish until it really got in.
(07:57):
Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's, that's, again, look, it's the understanding and the application.
Like, you know, people, we really are using our subconscious mind a lot.
Like, you know, you'll hop into your car this afternoon.
I mean, and you'll just drive without even thinking of the radio on the podcast
on what you're actually doing is you're putting your right foot on a certain,
you know, a certain amount of pressure being applied on the accelerator,
(08:20):
a certain amount of pressure in and out with the clutch.
And then if you have two cars and you go from one car to the other,
you have to move your legs and your feet in a completely different way.
If it's a two liter engine or a one liter engine, if you have five people in
the car or less, we are incredibly powerful at using stuff that we learn and understand.
We learn and understand tying our laces. Once upon a time, we didn't.
(08:43):
We learned, like you remember going from a button phone to a smartphone,
you never thought you'd get the hang of it.
And then when they do an upgrade, it's like, oh, flip it. This is all odd now.
How do I get into this? it's it's seconds like we once
we once with with repetition and understanding we learn
everything we learn anything and off we go from there you know you'd
be totally goofy at the beginning you'd burn every dish like
my daughter is 13 now and she's a pretty good cook but at the beginning she
(09:06):
burned a few saucepans and we throw away a few bits and pieces but everyone
makes mistakes and i think it's it's so foreign to some people it's like well
well i do think and it's like yeah but you can think in a different way what
you on about think in a different way it's like i was i'm in a committee in a local club.
And I was saying, let's just start a fundraising group and just make loads of
money and then use it for whatever we want. And they're like,
(09:27):
well, shouldn't we find out the price of what we wanted for first?
And I was like, if you want, yeah, but I just think from the end and we work
our way back and figure it out along the way.
It's like, you know, you can have this type of way of doing it.
You can have another way. I even think that saying, thinking outside the box is old-fashioned now.
It's like we have to just originate our ideas and figure it out along the way.
(09:50):
It seems to be, there's a really good author called Neville Goddard,
and he talks in one of his chapters of his book, he talks about something called the effortless way.
And the effortless way is like from originating an idea to seeing it in its
fruition. He goes, what must be done to achieve it?
And he goes, one answer is nothing. nothing he says
like once you have it conceived it's it is done somewhere enjoy
(10:12):
your way of like finding your way to it along the way
and i think that is so foreign to so many people you have to have a plan you
have to have a budget you have to know every single person that's going to get
you there and if you don't don't even move one eyelid like don't even move one
millimeter and that's where that's it's the starting that stops most people
fortune favors the brave and you absolutely.
(10:35):
You know what was it this will smith
or somebody made famous recently like fail forward fail often fall
fit you know i know fail forward
yes if you're going to fail fail forward don't be afraid to drop
along the way and and do yeah that makes sense here's
here's one of the things because i'm sure there's people listening and they're
a bit frustrated now they're like all right i know what you're saying deckton but what
(10:57):
i do with people is i get them to kind of sit back at the at the very beginning
and just kind of close their eyes and start learning how to close the conscious
mind and you know we we're very quick to
check the bank balance and then it's like okay that's my status right
now or we're quick to check our waistline or who am I
to do this you know Marianne Williamson has a lovely poem
our deepest fear and she says like who people might want to say who am I to
(11:19):
shine who am I to to shine my light in the world and she's like well who are
you not to you know you weren't born to play small and in fact one of the other
lines in her in her piece that she she wrote says when you shine your light
you kind of inadvertently.
Empower and inspire others to do the same and that's
why your friends are asking you that now you know but the
(11:40):
what i would get them to do is put their hands on their on their chest
put their hands on their heart and just just understand that the same mechanism
that would hold you back if you you know let's say your your child got a kite
stuck in the chimney and next thing you get a ladder to go get the kite you're
going into unfamiliar territory so there's a very normal part of you that goes,
(12:00):
I don't like this ladder.
It's wobbly. It's windy. Why did I buy her this feckin kite?
What am I doing this stupid thing for? That system is really good.
It keeps you from, if your friend is driving too fast in the car,
you'd be like, will you slow down, please?
You know, if the kids are messing and you're maybe visiting a viewpoint in the
West of Ireland, some cliff face, and they're running around messing,
(12:22):
you're like, kids, come back, stay here.
You know, that safety mechanism is good, but it's overacting when
people think about starting a a business or changing their career or creating
something like you've done online with with your excellent instagram and everything
oh i couldn't do that it's like of course you could oh no no no you could do
that here i can't and that mechanism familiar with it to make them know that
we all get imposter syndrome at the start it's the mindset and the pushing and yes persevering.
(12:48):
100 100 of people get that and then the others like you said a bit mad we just
i'm not not listening to that anymore.
You know, that, listening to that inner voice, Michael Singer,
he wrote a really good book called The Untethered Soul.
And he said, if you're reading this book and you're reading the lines of this
page and you're saying to yourself, I don't have an inner voice,
he goes, that's the voice.
(13:08):
We do, you know, oh my God, you know, do I look okay?
Like, is there something, oh my God, did I spill something on my dress?
But I better look down, you know, like, like the little voice that's always
going, oh, she's here now. I don't like her.
We had a bit of a falling out, you know, a wonderful day to be there at this wedding.
It's it's the it's it never stops bob
used to say to us like he said imagine you're there
(13:29):
was you know it's predominantly female orientated consultancy but
he would say imagine going to a bachelorette party and you're away somewhere
at a retreat for the weekend because there's going to be that one who's got
the clipboard and she's running around the place going okay girls like seven
o'clock we're going to be here and then eight o'clock we're having prosecco
and then we're getting into the into the bus and then like somebody wants to
(13:50):
have a weekend away and they're They're like,
if she doesn't stop with that freaking clipboard, you know, she's going to get it.
He goes, those control freaks, they have to go to the bathroom.
They have to sleep. They have to eat. You will get some respite from them for the weekend.
He says, however, your inner voice, if you don't start standing up to it and
challenging it, it's going to keep telling you, stay here.
(14:11):
Here is better. Don't change.
Don't move forward. Who do you think you are? If you You don't stand up to that.
You will stay exactly where you are and you'll keep thinking there's something
wrong with you and there's nothing wrong with you.
You're just not challenging these norms that you've just accepted, right?
Did you, when you were younger, did you always have a big vision or was that
(14:32):
kind of when you went into the personal development, you said,
no, I deserve more? Or did you have that inside you already?
Yeah. My granny had a great saying, she'd say like notions, you know,
if you came up the hallway, first time I was spraying links,
you know, and she was like, oh, come here. No oceans.
I was obviously going down to meet some girl in the village or something. He's like, no oceans.
The next time I heard that was from my mom and dad. I think I was in my early
(14:54):
twenties and I was working for Francis Brennan from At Your Service.
So I worked in his hotel in Kinmare.
And I had mixed with, I worked in hotels in Waterville as well.
I'd met really famous and very wealthy people like JP McManus or Tiger Woods
or all these celebrities that would come through Kerry to play golf.
And I started to realize they were the soundest flipping people.
And I had this idea that, you know, rich people are bad or whatever.
(15:18):
And I kind of started to say, so you're telling me that you do this?
And they're like, yeah, Jesus, that's amazing.
Because I'd just be chatting to them like a regular everyday person,
like what's your man's name?
Andrew Lloyd Webber or David Gray or any of these people I got to meet who were
millionaires, you know, I would just be chatting. They were just the most ordinary people.
They wanted poached eggs the same as the other flipping tourists, you know.
(15:40):
So it started to get me thinking, well, if they can, I can. And I can remember
coming home to mom and dad saying, you know, mom and dad, I know there's a future
for me, like in this hotel business kind of stuff. I was going down that road.
I said, I want to be the type of person that stays in Francis Brennan's place,
like six, 700 pounds, Irish pounds a night. It was at the time.
I want to stay there. I don't want to be someone working there.
Not that there's anything wrong with the hotel industry or anyone listening to that.
(16:03):
And they were like, oh, notions like my own parents. Now, they weren't trying to hold me back.
They weren't being critical. but I was making them a little bit uncomfortable
in their own skin because they maybe never had that ambition and that aspiration
and you know years have gone by like next week I'm going to.
My wife and kids were going to like what you call it euro camps it's like 400
quid for the week you know but i've also stayed in trump's place in in donald
(16:28):
trump's hotel in new york which was like
nearly a thousand euros a night and this kind of stuff you know so i have ended
up staying in some of these places but you know what i'd say to some of the
clients is you're not better or worse than anyone you're just living your life
with more awareness and you have more choice and you're doing more of what you
want to do it's not i think a lot of your friends are people that might have
(16:48):
I've been uncomfortable things.
What if I change and I lose the love of my friends and family?
What about if I change and I get a bit isolated or I get left out of things?
And look, that doesn't happen all that much.
I think that's one of the worries that the little voice will use against you,
you know, to stop you from starting.
Me personally, when I went through that transition, my family definitely did.
(17:10):
And I did. I lost a lot of friends. But like, you know, we all change in life.
And I did. I tried to pay for them to do the same courses I was doing, the same mindset.
And they didn't have the interest. So, like I said, you have to want to do it yourself.
But my family, it's amazing. You think, you know, and to my family that are
listening, but they love you.
But then they do become uncomfortable when you go down this other path in life.
(17:33):
And it's so strange. It's such a strange feeling.
It is. And when, you know, I've had close personal difficulties with that at times.
And I think, you know, actually, Bob, God rest him, his last interview he did
was in January. he died following February.
But in that interview, I was only listening to it the other day,
a friend of mine from New Zealand sent it to me.
And that question comes up first. He's doing an interview with a lady called Peggy McCall.
(17:56):
And somebody says, what about if you have a spouse who's totally against personal
development, how do you deal with it?
And Bob just answered very quickly. He says, I let nothing bother me.
He says, I have a goal, that goal. Now, I agree with Bob, ladies can conceive
and have a baby, men can't, right?
So I would look at when my wife conceived our three children.
(18:17):
She took care of them, gave birth to them, nourished them.
I look at ideas like that, like I have been given an idea that is very precious
and it was, it's mine to mind, it's mine to nurture, it's mine to bring to life.
And I have a responsibility, I've been given this idea to do,
and I have a responsibility to take care of it.
And, you know, you wouldn't just give your baby to anyone.
(18:40):
You would give it to a mom or a dad or someone to mind if you were going out
for dinner or something,
you know, you'd really be careful with your precious little child i
have i had to start becoming that way with my
ideas and i know that you're obviously trying to go
out and help your friends but after a while you have to realize that
you've got to do it for you it's your dreams it's your goal
it's your wishes and you've got to protect it because most people will like
(19:03):
we all have we all have an enormous capacity for change more than
we actually think we do once upon a time you left your
house and you had to take your car keys and your wallet and
now and then it became the car keys the wallet and the phone then it
became the car keys the wallet the phone face mask and then
then it was the mat you know the car keys the phone the
wallet and now it's known face mask again so we changed we we
(19:24):
stood five meters apart like we we have a huge capacity
for change but nobody likes having
change forced upon them so if you're telling your friends and
family and loved ones that you're about to do this thing you're inadvertently changing
them in some small way because they have you in this little
pocket get out of their mind but you're like but hang on no no you live here
(19:44):
kira you don't you don't do something different so you're inadvertently changing
them they feel the resistance and that's why they don't know like as the good
lord said forgive them lord for they know not what they do it's a little bit
like that they don't know why they don't like it but you're changing them.
You know and you've helped your family over the years i mean one of the things
my own family said was money isn't everything here they got the wrong they got
(20:07):
the whole wrong idea of what i was doing when I was chasing businesses and to be a better person.
But do you find that you've somehow educated your family and having a different
understanding on money in the background and the beliefs, I suppose, about money?
Or possibly i don't know i i i would say grown belief in some grown skepticism and others,
you know i i genuinely don't let it bother me i used to really really let what
(20:32):
everyone and anyone thought about me really bother me but i don't anymore so
you know you've asked a good question but i suppose i don't have an answer for
you because i don't like any other human being's opinion of me is none of my
business and i think that's a very good thing to live by and,
there's a really good book by a gentleman called napoleon hill it's called think
and grow rich and in that book he he he interviewed
(20:53):
500 of the most successful people at the time and they
boiled all of these success principles down to about 13 principles like
persistence and decision making and auto suggestion like
what you repeat to yourself all the time but in the back of the book he says
this book will not be completed without having a conversation about the element
that holds most of us back a destructive force called fear and from talking
(21:13):
to all these people he started to realize there was about six basic fears and
one of those six basic fears is fear of criticism,
fear of, you know, people laughing or pointing or sniggering or talking about you.
It's really hurtful. You know, if you've heard, I heard somebody said something
about you, even the strongest, toughest person goes, really? What?
We don't like being talked negatively about. So I had to honestly not really care.
(21:38):
Do you know what I heard about you the other day? No. And I don't want to know.
Yeah. You know, like that's no, if someone said that to me, Hey,
Dec, you know what I heard? I heard this about you. I was like,
whatever you heard, keep it.
If someone had the balls to say it to my face, then I listened to it.
If they said it to somebody else, none of my business.
You don't want to know what they said? No, no, not really. It used to bother me so much.
(21:59):
It's like, you know, somebody who's an addict giving up something.
I was addicted to the drama and the stress and the anxiety of,
what about if I'm not good enough for other people?
How did you overcome that yourself? You said you had anxiety.
Anxiety I mean you come across very confident obviously this years of of dealing
with what you were dealing with yourself but what do you think you were anxious about?
(22:22):
Oh everything everything and anything like the best you
know you called out there with with bob with the coaching
for about eight years it was all about helping people as you
know from the program you did really get clear on what you
want but what i realized were yes clients were going on get
what they wanted but they were bringing a lot of baggage with them so that's
why i've added hypnotherapy to my repertoire i studied
(22:43):
with marissa peer i put something called rapid transformational hypnotherapy
rapid transformational therapy and it's really really good
and i'm studying other other hypnotherapy now from different sources
I want to get very you know very good at it I feel
it's great so what I learned from her was kind
of clean out the pipes and then from Bob to start over and
put in new stuff so I love I love that's why I kind of come up with my own kind
(23:05):
of system I guess but to answer your question I realized I had overachieved
I was carrying like I thought it was normal the way I described it one time
to a counselor I went to see was that you know like a one liter milk carton
I said I feel like I've got one of them in my stomach,
and two corners are pointing outwards and two corners are pointing inwards.
And he was like, jeepers. And I'd had that my whole life.
(23:27):
I would feel the fear and do it anyway. But hypnotherapy helped me to learn
that the fear was just like a little inner child or that fear mechanism overreacting,
going, for God's sake, will you stop going into all these new businesses?
And will you stop standing on stages and talking in front of people?
Will you stop Will you stop doing podcasts?
Will you stop? You know, I was carrying anxiety that I look.
(23:49):
I mean, I developed it my first day of school.
I went right back in a really, really amazing 30 session one day.
My very first day of school. Yeah.
I think you're holding, are you blocking something? Your mic?
Oh yeah, I just knocked the microphone. Sorry.
Yeah, I went right back in the hypnotherapy session to my first day of school
and I was able to see how anxious I was.
(24:11):
That was one of the first times I remember someone dying when I was young and
getting really anxious about that. My grandfather passed away.
All of a sudden, we didn't expect it. And so, yeah, look, it was developed,
like, as I said this morning, like your accent, like freckles.
You know some things are some things are genetic and some
things are environmental so you know my mom is is
(24:32):
a absolutely wonderful lady but it's so easy to wind her up you
know you just say something at you go away you're not serious like
i would say herself i always say like herself and her sisters like my aunties
you know when they're together it's like you can wind them up so easy it's like
you know what i heard go away it's like you know the the meerkats in those in
those in those they pop their head out of the sand going what's there is there
(24:53):
something to be afraid of So I think I was like a high strung kind of a person.
And I think I developed, I lived in an environment where to be a little bit
afraid and a little bit anxious.
And my dad's as cool as a breeze, but I was probably around my mom more and
she was probably more anxious.
And I picked up that that was the way to be. so there was no there was no one
thing in particular but I,
(25:13):
just developed it over years just became I just became someone that lived with
anxiety and I still feel the feelings of it you know I still get sweaty pants
and I will have a I will have a sleepless night sometime but I know what it is and I go okay.
He's here when you can identify. I do think that helps. My husband was diagnosed
with Tourette's syndrome at 36.
(25:34):
He was diagnosed, sorry. And I mean, you think, how did you go that long in life without it?
But when he was diagnosed, interestingly enough, his twitching and his Tourette's
got so much worse. It was almost he could say, oh, okay, that's what it is now.
And his Tourette's got so much worse. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I guess that that can happen,
I suppose. I don't know if it happened necessarily with anxiety for me,
(25:54):
but it was great to to understand why I would be, you know, at my friend's wedding
and all of a sudden totally unable to eat food and have to go up and take off
my suit and like go and have an hour's nap in bed and come back down.
And then I'd be starving, but it was just, I don't know, was it picking up on
other people's anxiety?
Was it my own social anxiety? I don't know what it was, but that used to happen.
(26:17):
Were you making a speech? No, just being just in attendance.
I remember being at a conference in Mexico, the same thing happened just sitting
in a room at a great week it was night seven it was the end night
everyone was it was one of these everyone dressing in white kind of parties and
i just sat down and i looked at this beautiful food and i couldn't eat
a morsel i was just gripped with anxiety so sometimes there was no cause at
(26:38):
all but it was great to great to learn about it and overcome it and yeah i suppose
as they say still i still feel the symptoms sometimes but i know what it is
now and i just go So I just calmed myself down very quickly and move on.
And I think, again, just like knowing, like I was a very, I still do acupuncture
for friends and family, but I loved when people would come in,
(27:00):
the poor things, and they'd be so lost.
I mean, you're usually the last person people come to see when you're in acupuncture.
Nobody wants the needles.
So to help them with back pain after years of nothing working.
You know, it was really good.
It was a good thing. So the same with coaching. coaching if somebody
comes to me like I'm helping a woman at the
moment in America she's she's really got clear clear
(27:23):
reasons why she's dealing with anxiety there's so much has happened in
the last few years she's you know so much has gone on in her life the poor thing
but I'm helping her to understand that's normal to be as anxious as she is and
now let's work with it and it's I can speak from a place of absolute understanding
and I think that's I think that's what I admire about your work so far because you've lived,
(27:45):
you're not just doing what you've studied, you've actually lived it,
you've had anxiety, you've had a time that you weren't successful,
then you've had a time that you went into success, you've had a time that you
didn't have a family, you didn't have a penny, then you went in and I think
people can resonate with that.
You can hear your passion.
I'm interested though why you gave or, well, I know you said you do that for
friends and family, but how come you don't do acupuncture for other people, I suppose?
(28:08):
You just want to concentrate on the other side. Well, never...
Yeah, never, never say never, you know, I'm, I really, I love this.
And I think there was just, just wanting to explore something a bit different.
I had been, I put a clinic in, in of all places like Cars I've been in Southwest Kerry.
I remember someone driving, driving through and kind of going acupuncture in
Southwest Kerry, like people who moved away and they've come home,
(28:31):
they couldn't believe it. So look, it did very, very well.
And I remember being all excited and telling Bob, Bob was like a third grandfather.
I was like, Bob, oh, I'm after selling my clinic and now I'm 100% working with
you. And he was like, why'd you do a dumb thing like that for?
And he was like, you had a source of income. Why didn't you get somebody else
to just come in? And I never thought of that, but I did want a clean break.
There was a lot of reasons. I remember one time being in Toronto for a week
(28:54):
at a conference and I just started applying myself and I had done very well.
And I'd probably created a business success there that totally eclipsed what
I could do with acupuncture.
And I think that was one of the reasons, you know it was it was quite a very
good financial week and i remember thinking god i'd
have to do an awful lot of acupuncture sessions to do that so i
mean that was just one very basic reason it was monetarily
(29:17):
better to to to give it up in one sense and
not be in the clinic all day every day you know
waiting for people and then people might do a no show and you're like ah so there
was a lot of reasons i could work from home and actually look isn't it always
easy to join the doctor looking backwards about six months after i closed the
clinic down we had this thing called COVID-19 floating around the place so I
(29:38):
would have been You see it happened for a reason you would have been paying
your overheads and whatnot,
that's yeah yeah I believe everything happens I'm just I know the the listeners
can't see at the moment what where Declan is sitting at the moment he's in his
bedroom with the most beautiful view of Kerry I have ever seen Declan tell us
how you you did this on the vision board first yeah,
(30:00):
Yeah. So my grandfather had this field where our home is now.
And I remember when I was dawdling about would I actually hire a coach or not,
I remember one of the reasons I wasn't willing to go ahead was I didn't actually
have a purpose. I didn't have a why. I didn't have a goal.
And I'm a bit of a soccer fan. I like Liverpool Football Club.
And she did a really cool technique. She got me to close my eyes and hold a
(30:23):
microphone and imagine. Now, it worked very well with me because I love visualization.
So she got me to stand in the middle of Anfield with a
microphone phone with my eyes closed and she goes you've got
it's halftime the players have left the pitch and you've got one chance
to tell all of your fellow fans what's your one dream in life and i hadn't i
said i don't know and she goes what's your one dream deck and just tell the
(30:43):
people in in the stadium i was like i don't know and she still doesn't she still
doesn't remember this but she banged the table and she was like tell them what
you want to do in life and i was like i swear to
god my bottom eyelids filled up with with with
tears it spilled over the side like a bucket under
a under a hose pipe i was like oh jesus there's tears
like it was so weird and i said and my you know the way a child like their their
(31:07):
bottom lip curls up and the sides their mouth goes down i was like a blubbering
little baby and i goes i want to build a house for my wife and children so they'll
be proud of me i i'm getting feckin tears again i was saying it but that was it and i never saw
this field in that way before i never i just
i don't know what the hell it was so i drew a vision board we started
looking at houses online then we started saying where would we even put
(31:29):
it and we came over here one day and my dad used
to have animals here grazing and all that we came down my wife and i and we
stood here and we were like i'll actually send you a video after on whatsapp
and show you the the montage or whatever of the two of us on the field and we
used to come here for valentine's we'd bring a table and chairs and a bottle
of champagne and strawberries and And we'd sit here in the grass kind of going,
one day our home will be here.
(31:50):
And there was not a chance we were going to get a mortgage, not a hope.
They loved her. She was a teacher, French and English, five years or more.
The banks loved her. But then there was this fella, as the mortgage person we
were working with called me an aquapuncturist.
You know, like, you're an aquapuncturist. I was like, no, actually, acupuncture.
But I had one year's of books, which showed that I had triple my income because
(32:12):
of the coaching, which was great.
And I was like, look at me, Mr. Fancy Pants. I've, you know,
now I've got the six figure business and they were like, yeah, great.
But you know, central office in Dublin, we need three years of books.
But Bob and other people were like, you persist. If you want that house,
you visualize it. You see it, you keep going.
And one day I was driving to Carlsalline and there's lots of forestry around
(32:32):
here. And there was this logging truck going through the town and I had to pull in to let him go.
And next thing the sun was shining in my eyes. So I kind of moved the visor
and all of a sudden I see EBS Bulldogs.
And I walked in, I was like, could you get me a mortgage? And he was like, well, I'd love to try.
And off we went. And it was just like within a couple of, within no time at all with the mortgage.
So that was way ahead of what everyone else said. No, everyone has said no, no, no.
(32:56):
But you keep like persistence, as I said, as one of the chapters in Think and Grow Rich.
And again, you can say, oh, I know how persistence is, but it's the understanding
and the application when everyone else is saying no.
They said no to me one day. And my friends, Sean and Holly came over and we
planted willows that are, look, you can see them there.
We planted those willow trees the day the bank said no. And then my son Dylan
and I came in and we planted bluebells because his mom wanted loads of bluebells to take off here.
(33:20):
Every time they were trying to plant doubt in my mind, I planted abundance on
this field. And we've got potatoes there, salads.
We've got a well. We've got a fresh water well. We've got access to the sea. We swim down there.
We've hosted Christmases here. We've had my mom and dad's 50th wedding anniversary here.
And it was all, Paul, I wasn't going to listen to any fecker saying,
no, you know, this is my dream.
(33:42):
It's my baby. I get to gestate it and bring it to life. Nobody else.
And that's the thing, you know, so when I found my first ever why, it changed my life.
And that's what I do. I, you know, a 72 year old client in New Zealand at the
moment, I need 50 years running an amazing company, a very successful guy,
and I'm helping him to find his next why.
It's great. It's absolutely beautiful and it's
(34:04):
our birthright to really be following our dreams and it's
not bs you know people go it sounds
very american it's not it's not you're you're
either working you know you don't have to give up your day job either you just
start working on your dream like turn off the flipping skybox
for a little while and just start journaling and visualizing and you'll be surprised
where it'll take you exactly you have us all motivated today thank you so much
(34:27):
for taking the time to come on the podcast and just if anybody wants to book
in with Declan or see what he's doing online how do we get you Declan?
So my website is Declan at Declan O'Donoghue oh
sorry that's my email address Declan at DeclanO'Donoghue.com you might
as well have my email now but DeclanO'Donoghue.com it's
the Donoghue with the g-h-u-e and all that so DeclanO'Donoghue.com go
(34:48):
on my website and there's a contact form you can fill out or
I'm on Instagram I'm on TikTok talk and look we'll
see you know as i say if i can help you i will if i can't i'll
direct you where else to go and that's it you know
there's no i don't do any kind of pressurized selling it's just if
i'm for you great if i'm not that's grand and off we go but whatever you do
if you call me or if you call somebody else i really really recommend that you
(35:11):
you have a coach i recommend that you're doing daily work on your personal development
and you're cheating nobody else on yourself when you're not doing the work so
if you're going to pay someone to be your coach
do the damn work okay don't you're not going to throw money at something that's
going to work you have to do the work take responsibility for your life and
you're going to you're going to really be grateful to yourself every day that
(35:32):
you do that oh thank you so much jack for taking the time today okay bye-bye talk soon bye-bye.
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