The Hidden Traumas Sabotaging Entrepreneurs’ Success! with Dr. Don Wood

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
what if your procrastination, anxiety,or burnout isn't a flaw, but it's a

(00:04):
glitch in your brain's survival system?
And what if your successis secretly fueled by fear?
Costing you your peaceand mind, your happiness.
So I invited Dr. Don Wood onto the show.
He's the founder of InspiredPerformance Institute.
He's gonna break down how unresolvedtrauma, either big or small, are

(00:25):
quietly sabotaging your business,your relationship, your health,
and he's gonna reveal how highachievers probably like yourself.
Often live in fight or flight modelike all the time, and how rewiring
your mind can help you unlock calm,clarity, and peak performance.
Let's dive in and find out.

(00:46):
All right, Dr. Don Wood, we're doing this.
I'm so happy that you're here today.
How you doing, my friend?
I am doing great.
I appreciate it.
I got a little bit of a raspyvoice, so it's a little off, but
apart from that, I feel great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm like, we've been chatting.
Your mind's clear.
I know that much.
So
that's what matters most.
Well, you, yeah, we've, we'vebeen fortunate to connect through,

(01:08):
um, you know, delphi.ai and folkshere in the podcast have, have
definitely heard me talk about it.
So it's cool to be able tobuild that out for you and, and
inspire Performance Institute.
Your, your, um, basically yourpractice, everything you do, which
we'll talk about here, which.
Has been blowing my mind eversince I learned about it.

(01:29):
And selfishly I'm like, oh man,this is, I can't wait, uh, until
you release that to the world.
So,
um,
excited about it.
Like when, when I came back, I was tellingpeople, you know, our team about it.
They were like, like, how does that work?
And then after they got off the call withyou, they were just like, oh my gosh,
I could see so many things we can do.
So we're all excited about it.
Cool.

(01:49):
Well, yeah, we'll definitely shareit around when it's live too, and.
And what, what you do is just, it's superfascinating and you know, we've had the
pleasure to actually chat on anotherpodcast of mine called the TPE Blueprint.
Quick little shout out there.
And it was a lot more angledto, uh, anxiety, trauma and
how it relates to, uh, toxins.

(02:10):
And it's kind of a different, well,similar topic, but we're gonna angle
it differently here for this show,
Sounds good.
Yeah.
Performance based as a business owner.
We were just talking about this,you know, we, as business owners, we
have our own forms of trauma that wedevelop around what the relationships,
the things that we do every day.
Some of it we don't,we're not even aware of.

(02:31):
Right?
It is absolutely.
And a lot of people aren't aware that,you know, a business trauma can have an
effect on your current business and itcan make you afraid to make decisions.
You know, you can get into freeze mode.
I mean, the same way you canin any kind of a situation.
Uh, fight, flight, or freezein normal life, right?

(02:52):
So if something is, you know, you'vehad an experience with something, you
could go into fight, flight, or freeze.
You can in business too.
Yeah.
And it will affect the wayyour mind will make decisions.
And so we're we're creatures,you know, of, of our environment.
And if our environment was darkand stormy at one point, it still
remembers that dark and stormy.

(03:14):
And, and when people say to me,well, I, I sabotaged myself and I
go, well, it's actually impossible.
You can't sabotage yourself.
The brain would never do that.
It's trying to protect you.
So if you had had a. A particularkind of situation in your business
and something looks like it's goingin that direction, your mind will

(03:35):
move you in another direction.
Not to hurt you, but to protect youfrom running into that same thing.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And a lot of us might see thatas, oh, I'm just procrastinating.
I keep avoiding this thingor beating myself up about
whatever it might be in the past.
all of those things, evenprocrastination or protection systems.

(03:57):
So I wrote my second book, and Icalled it Emotional Concussions, right?
Because not everything's a big T trauma.
So you know, we know the obviousBig T traumas, but if somebody's
had an emotional concussion, thatcan have an effect on the way
people's minds will work as well.
So for example, I had a lady verysuccessful, owned her own business,

(04:18):
was doing really well, and shesays, well, I sabotaged myself.
And I said, well, what do you mean?
She goes, well, Iprocrastinate all the time.
And she says, and I, I writeit off to that fact that I must
be much better under pressure.
So that's why I procrastinate andI said, well, no, that's not true.
Nobody's better that way.

(04:39):
We're better when we takeour time and do things right.
But we looked at it and it came backto when she was a child and her mother
was the principal at the school shewent to, and she says, I remember my
mother calling me into her office.
And asked me to bring her homework.
She'd do this all the time.
And she goes, and I rememberthat red pen coming out, and

(05:01):
she'd underlined all my mistakes.
And so what her mind had learned to dowas to try to wait as long as she could.
I don't have my homework ready.
Right?
So her mom couldn't criticize her,
and so the more she could put it off, theless chance it was of being criticized.
I could see that.
And something in business actually,just in, maybe this relates where

(05:25):
I've seen myself, but also I've,I've chatted with others and I think
someone even broke this down is.
Even when you're selling or, or you know,you wanna sell a new customer in your
business prospect, and for whatever reasonyou're not doing the, maybe you have the
call, but you're not doing the follow up,you're not doing a, all the things that
you know will probably aid in that sale.

(05:46):
I've heard, and maybe correct meif I'm wrong, or maybe any insights
you have, you're almost, your brainmight be thinking about all the work
that, or the stuff that you need todo after they say, yes, let's go.
You might be actually,you know, preventing that
happening in the first place.
true.
All of those kinds of things have,it's just the way our minds work.

(06:08):
Our minds are trying toprotect us from pain.
And pain can come from different areas,like that could become extra work.
And so if your mind sort of seesthis is gonna be painful, it'll try
to put it off as long as possible.
So you may not be able to closethat sale and you have no idea why.
Um, I'll give you another example.

(06:29):
I had a guy, very successful, uh, trader.
He did options, derivative stocks,and he says, and, and he comes
to see me and he goes, in thethird quarter, I sabotage myself.
And I said, well explain what that means.
And he says, well, when thefourth quarter comes, he goes,
my anxiety goes through the roof.
He says, I avoid the office at all costs.

(06:51):
He says, 'cause I know if I go inthere, my anxiety's gonna go crazy.
And he says, so I make excuses.
I tell everybody I'm burnt out.
I need a vacation.
You know, it's a pretty stressful worldmaking those kinds of trades, you know,
and they're working on a quarter of apoint a day, you know, stuff like that.
moving.
Yeah.
Always moving.
So they're having to watcheverything so intently.

(07:13):
So he goes, so I don't know why,but it's, the fourth quarter is
always the time where I end uplike trying to get out of it.
And he says, and I feel bad 'causeI leave all the work to my partners.
And he says, but then when thenew year comes around, I'm all
fired up, but I go back to work.
So I asked him, I said,you know, any trauma?
And he goes, no, I had a great.
Childhood.

(07:33):
He goes, my dad was my hero.
He goes, he's my mentor.
Extremely successful guy.
He says, I learned so much from my dad.
And uh, and then he said something.
He goes, and my dad was the mostresilient person I ever met.
And I said, all right, tellme about why he's so resilient
and what that means to you.

(07:54):
He says, well, he wentbankrupt four times.
He says, so I remember as a kid, hesays, we'd be flying in private jets.
He says, and then in the middle of nighthe would wake us up and have to pack up
and move 'cause we're getting evicted.
Oh,
Then we'd be back in private jets.
So he was making about 2 million a year.
What was his mind trying to do?

(08:17):
Protect him from losing it.
Keep it.
Yeah.
Hold onto it.
So the fourth quarter is the mostvolatile sometimes in the stock market.
So his mind would try to gethim, keep him outta the office.
Geez.
That makes perfect sense.
And then after he goes through theprogram, he said, I've never felt so
much peace in my life driving home.

(08:38):
And then he, uh, sends mea message on December 15th,
that, that was his last day.
He was taking the rest of the year off
he goes, but, and he saidit had his best year ever,
oh man.
That's.
but he had never identifiedwhere it came in from.
Well, that's what I'm curious here,because you've, and, and I know we
just jumped into it, but like your,your background is fascinating and I, I

(08:58):
definitely want you to tell the story ofhow even, you know, why you chose to go
this path, what, 15 odd years ago, butthen, you know, maybe we do that, but
then I want to get into, yeah, how doesthis trauma show up in, and of course
we're talking entrepreneurship mainlyhere, but we're all humans and there's
all these underlying traumas that.
We're probably just completely unawareof that are affecting our daily lives

(09:21):
and performance can skyrocket if wejust clear something or identify that.
Right.
Well, especially successfulentrepreneurs, right?
People look and go, well, youknow, my life's doing really good.
I've got my dream home.
I got my dream family.
Everything's going along really well,but they're doing little things that
could be affecting their enjoyment of it.
Um, so I got into this mainlybecause of my daughter.

(09:46):
So I'd always been an entrepreneur.
Um, so I was in insurance, mortgages,real estate, doing things like that.
And, um, my daughter ended upbeing diagnosed with two autoimmune
disorders, uh, Crohn's at 14.
And they said there's no cure forCrohn's who don't know what causes it.
And she ended up having 24 inchesof her intestines taken out,

(10:10):
and they said there's nothing we can do.
She'll end up with acolostomy bag eventually.
And then she ended up with asecond, um, autoimmune disorder
in her lungs and it was calledidiopathic pulmonary hemo cirrhosis.
And that's where the ironand the blood gets released.
So again, they told us no cure for it.
We don't know what causes it.

(10:31):
So that sent me back.
My wife said, if we don't figure thisout, we're gonna lose our daughter.
So I went back to school and starteddoing my research, and I went back, got
my PhD. And I always say, if you wannasolve a problem, send in an entrepreneur.
I didn't come into it to become a doctor.
I came in to figure out how tosave my wife and my daughter.

(10:52):
And what I discovered is this unresolvedtrauma we didn't know she had was
creating the inflammation and then theinflammation compromised, or immune system
and neurotransmitters and neuroplasticity.
So the genes that regulateinflammation, upregulate.
The genes that regulate the immunesystem downregulate, and that's

(11:13):
the perfect recipe for disease.
So once we discovered that she had hadtrauma when she was six that she had never
shared, I started making the connectionbetween the trauma people are experiencing
a lot of these illnesses that they have.
And so once I figured that out,I figured out a way to solve it
That's crazy that, and you're right, yeah.

(11:35):
The entrepreneurs are the ones that solvethese problems and probably look at it
from a completely different lens too.
And I'm curious how,how was that experience?
So you obviously had the motivation,you know, to, you had a goal,
you, and very clear goal and,and love that you did that.
Like how did you approach.
I mean, going to school, Imean, you had all this business

(11:56):
background, but now here you are.
Fresh, clean slate, new beginning.
Um, yeah, I don't know, like wasthere a different approach that
you took it than, than I guesssomeone else would in that same seat
I think so because I came insaying, what have they missed?
'cause they all told us the same thing.
It didn't matter who we talked to.

(12:17):
They said, we don't know whatcauses Crohn's or the hemo acidosis.
We do know there's no cure for it.
So I said, that can't be possibly true.
They just haven't figured it.
Yeah.
So I'm gonna have tosee what did they miss.
So I think I came in with thatapproach is what did they miss in that?

(12:39):
And I think the, the, the reason I foundthat out was because if, if you look at
the current way we train our doctors andtrain our medical profession is they go
in to become a doctor and very quicklythey're siloed and taught a specialty.
So the people that were dealingwith, my daughter's Crohn's were

(13:00):
gastroenterologists, well, theyget zero psychological training,
Right.
so they would never havemade that connection.
And then the people dealing with her hemsclerosis are dealing with autoimmune,
things like that and lung disorders.
Again, they know a lot about the lungs,they know a lot about the gut, but they
don't know anything about the psychology.

(13:22):
And that's where what I figured outis the root is in the psychology.
The Crohn's and the hemo acidosiswere symptoms of the problem.
They weren't the problem.
Yeah.
So then I had to figure outhow was trauma making these
changes to my daughter's health?
And so, and I'm not equating myselfto, to him, but you, Elon Musk, I

(13:45):
heard him talk about one time theysaid, you know, how did you do this?
And Nassau can't do it.
Like you're putting rocket shipsout, but you know, so much less cost.
He says, well, the way we looked atit is we engineered it backwards.
He says, we took a look at what theybuilt and then started taking stuff
out, like what did they not need?

(14:05):
What was redundant?
And so he started to eliminatethings to see if it would
still work by taking stuff out.
And it's sort of a little different,but it's that same mentality
of they've over-engineeredit, which is what I realized.
They've over-engineered.
The Crohn's and Hemos.
Right,

(14:26):
So let's break it down.
What is it?
and, and look at it holistically as well.
It's, it's, you know, it'sconnected to everything else.
And, and like you said, it'sthis, the root is the psychology.
And that's, that's interesting.
I want you to unpack that if you could.
And just, so now that you know,you know, you've helped a lot of

(14:47):
people, including your daughter.
I guess explain how the psychology isthe root and how that affects other
parts of our body and generally,and then of course how that can lead
to illness as well, if unresolved.
I believe 80% of the diseases andeverything we're, we're, uh, treating
today are psychological based.
About 20% may be physical,but 80% are psychological.

(15:11):
Okay.
it's just the way the brain works.
So your brain and your mind.
When I talk about the brain, I'm talkingabout the computer, the physical computer.
When I talk about the mind,I'm talking about the software.
Which is a software thatoperates inside the computer.
So the brain, the physical brainis subject to physical damage.

(15:34):
If you get injured, the mind issubject to glitches and error
messages the way software is.
So trauma creates glitches and errormessages, and your subconscious
mind operates in the present.
It sees everything is now.
So 95% of your minds operatingon a subconscious level

(15:56):
fully present in the moment
mm.
When we have a traumatic event thatis stored only humans store explicit
memory, we store tremendous amount ofdetails about everything we've seen,
heard, or experienced in her life.
So that memory keepsactivating the nervous system.

(16:18):
There's nothing happening, but themind keeps looking at memory in real
time and turns on the nervous system.
Yeah.
So when you ask somebody, oh, whathappened five years ago, like when I
worked with the Boston Marathon bombingsurvivors, they would start talking
about it and start shaking and crying.

(16:38):
And I would say, do you knowwhy you're shaking and crying?
And they said, well, because I'mtalking about what happened to me.
And I said, right, but your mindthinks there's a bomb about to go off.
It's looking at memory in real time.
That bomb went off five and a halfyears ago, but when your mind goes into
memory to start describing it, it'sactually seeing the memory right now.

(17:01):
Thinking it's happening all over again,
that's what people have missed.
So my daughter's trauma waslooping over and over and over.
They continued to activate her nervoussystem and that what that would do is
then put it into a fight or flight state.
So the genes that regulate, um,inflammation would upregulate

(17:22):
and Crohn's is just inflammation.
Same with the hemo cirrhosis.
So the inflammation stayed on andkept staying on because the memory
kept running in the background.
So what I did is create atechnique that I can reset that
memory and, um, stop that loop.

(17:44):
That's incredible.
I mean, and the fact that it seemslike a couple things need to happen
is well, really under identifyingwhat is that unresolved trauma, right?
Like I, I'm thinkingabout that and there's.
Even if we don't think that we'vehad Big T trauma, you know, the,
the ones that, like you said,we've the pretty obvious ones.

(18:05):
Bombing is a big one,
you know, uh, but what are thesesmaller t traumas that are just
happening, you know, in ourchildhood schooling in our workplace?
Well, when, when I take people through thethe process, a lot of times people may not
be thinking about it, but as I take 'emthrough the process, they start to pop up
Okay.

(18:26):
and so all of a sudden people go,gee, I haven't thought about this in
a long time, and then it'll come up.
Here's the best way to understandif the trauma is affecting you,
if you start to talk about it andyou get emotional, it's active.
Ah, it's,
purpose to an emotionis a call for an action.

(18:46):
What's the purpose of fear run?
What's the purpose of anger attack?
So if you talk about something where yougot somebody hurt you five years ago,
and as you start talking about it, youstart to shake and cry is because your
mind's trying to get you to run or fight
five years ago.
a glitch.

(19:09):
It's
That's what I figured
You're like, from five yearsago, it's like, how, how are
you gonna, you can't go back.
And so you feel that emotion.
So like we talk about professionals,I work with professional golfers and
I had one guy tell me about this oneparticular course that had a par three.
And he goes, every time I playthat par three, he says, I can't

(19:33):
stop thinking about the water.
Hmm.
And he says, and almost every timeI put the ball in the water, because
his mind was looking at the number oftimes he put the ball in the water.
Now people would say, well, you know, youjust have to put that outta your mind.
That's not how the mind works.
So that's not a golf hole that'sa threat to your survival.

(19:59):
If I keep putting the ballin the water, I miss the cut.
I don't get paid.
Mm.
And so now you've got guys who arestill trying to grow on the PGA tour,
or they're on the Korn Ferry tourand they remember times where they
made those mistakes and missed a cut.
Mm-hmm.
Now they go back to that same spot, andthat's why these guys, you see them,

(20:20):
you know, they get down to the backnine and all of a sudden start falling
apart because they probably lost it onthe back nine at another tournament.
yep.
And the mind's going, whatdo I know about this place?
And starts to pull in the oldmemory and then all of a sudden
everything starts to tense up.
I wrote this down for myself, butthe purpose of emotion is action.

(20:43):
And that's,
that
Nobody's ever thought about it that way.
No, that's, it's incredible becauseif you're having an emotion pop
up, you know, from somethingin the past, I'm imagining it's
maybe separating from anything.
Possibly happening in the moment, buteven that could be tied to the past.
You know,
it seems like,

(21:03):
because your mind looksfor similar and same
right?
to protect you.
So all of a sudden, say you got intoan accident with a white van and you're
just driving along and a white vanstarts, you see a white van pulling
up to the corner, well, it's not gonnahit you, but all of a sudden, your
heart starts beating in your chest.
Why you're not in danger.
But your mind looks at the whitevan and then starts to say,

(21:25):
what do I know about white vans?
And starts to pull in the accident.
And your mind thinks it's happening now?
Right, and, and we're so dang smartas humans that it just feels like it's
happening all over again in real time.
so, the conscious mindcannot override that.
right.
It's subconscious survival based.

(21:45):
And that's why I said it'simpossible to sabotage yourself.
Your mind's always trying to protect you.
It's dealing with faulty intelligence
So you have this subconscious layerthat's really running the show,
but
we,
yeah, let's talk about that.
Because now at a, you know, at a logicalor a conscious level, we realize,
okay, purpose, uh, or the purpose ofemotions that we feel that pop up is to.

(22:10):
Act on something and, and like yousaid, it could be fear, you know?
So then, um, that's more of a, yeah.
Runaway or anger attack.
Uh, procrastination I'm sure is a wholenother thing, or, you know, anxiety,
a lot of us are dealing with that.
I know that's something you treat.
Uh, so Yeah.
I guess explain this whole layer ofthis, uh, the, the subconscious now and

(22:31):
how that is really the boss, it seems.
Yeah, the subconscious is yoursurvival brain, and it runs about 95%.
So everything that's happeningto you on a subconscious level,
you don't have to think about.
Are you thinking about that?
There's a hundred gallons of bloodpumping through your system every hour.
Do you have to thinkabout that at all now?

(22:52):
How many times your heart beats a day?
Right.
How much oxygen's being taken in,like none of that is conscious to us.
So 95% of those, all those actions thatare going on, you don't have any conscious
awareness and don't need to attend to.
It's being run by the system andprogrammed to keep you alive.

(23:17):
So 95% of your mind's operating below yourconscious awareness to keep you alive.
And so if it sees that there's a threat,then so no animal Joe can do this.
Only humans can because we store explicitmemory about events and experiences.
Animals don't.

(23:38):
Animals are fully present in the moment.
They respond to their environment.
If there's a threat, they will respond.
If there's no threat, they'renot thinking about threats.
They don't remember threats.
Right.
We've stored all that information.
So a zebra cannot feel fear of alion unless there's a lion present.

(23:59):
Right,
The zebra's not sittingaround thinking about lions.
It doesn't remember the lionchasing them yesterday, but if
a lion shows up, it's built intotheir DNA, that that's a threat.
right.
We have that same system,but we added explicit memory.
So every lion you've ever dealt with.

(24:20):
Has been recorded and stored inmemory and keeps turning on the
system and is not supposed to.
So what we do is when you have atraumatic event, all your senses are
heightened, sight, smell, hearing.
So how's it recording that highdefinition, tremendous amounts
of detail stored in that memory.

(24:42):
So you can see if I, if youstarted to talk about something
that happened to you 10 years ago.
There was a traumatic event andstarted to try to talk about it.
You have to go into memory and allthis high definition information
starts coming into the system andyour subconscious operates and the
president goes, oh, that's happening now.

(25:04):
Oof.
We need to protect you from the threat.
Yeah.
Like, would it be safe to say that youalmost have to detach this high fidelity,
this high definition outta your brain?
Um, so yeah, it doles maybe.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Is it a doling?
Is it a disassociation?
Like,
I
Yeah, it's not a disassociation.

(25:25):
So what we're gonna do, and this is thebest way I explain it, if I asked you
what you ate for dinner last night, canyou tell me what you ate for dinner?
I'm blanking on it right now.
Oh, hamburgers,
that's what
Yeah.
So when I asked you that and everybody'swatching this, you looked up right
and you saw information, probablysaw where you ate it, what you ate.

(25:45):
That's how you stored theinformation about dinner last night.
No animal does that.
That's why you can feed yourdog the same thing every day.
He doesn't remember eating that yesterday.
This is just a new meal.
He's, he's actually respondingto his environment in real time.
But because last night wasn'tthreatening or disturbing, it stored
as a fairly low resolution file.

(26:06):
Not a lot of detail,but enough to store it.
But if that was a, a threateningevent, a traumatic event, and all
your senses are heightened now, thatmemory is extremely intense and that's
what turns on the nervous system.
It's a glitch.
So what I do in the process is Itake that high definition memory.

(26:27):
Get your mind to reprocess itinto the same format as to what
you ate for dinner last night.
Okay.
you can talk about it and itdoesn't activate the nervous system.
People are blown away when Itake 'em through the process.
The most dramatic one was a USArmy sniper who is ordered to
shoot and kill a 12-year-old,

(26:48):
and for eight years he, hecouldn't stop thinking about it.
And, uh, was drinking a lot, getting intofights, getting medicated constantly.
And so when I sat down with him, hesaid, I can't talk about this again.
He says, I got arrestedlast week at the va.
'cause I started picking up tablesand chairs and throwing them.
And I said, well, here's the good news.

(27:09):
I don't need you to talk about it.
He said, well, what are we gonna do?
I said, we're gonna fix it.
He goes, well, how are we gonnafix it if I don't talk about it?
And I said, I, I'll, I'll needyou just to pull up the memory.
And I said, you can talk about it ifyou want to, but I don't need you to.
And I said, if you prefer not to,I've got a technique that I can just
take you through the visual memoryand reset it within two minutes.

(27:32):
Uh
And he said to me, he goes,how the bleep did you do this?
Why am I able to think and talk aboutit now and I'm not shaking and crying?
And I said, because for eightyears your mind's been trying to
get you not to pull the trigger.
mm.
It's been calling for an action.
What would solve that problem?
Don't shoot.
Yep.
So his mind kept calling foran action that wasn't possible.

(27:56):
He can't not shoot.
Right?
It doesn't exist.
It's just information aboutan event that's life changing.
Oh yeah.
you equate that into business.
You know, people who have a businesstrauma and they don't understand
why they keep on making thesechanges that weren't beneficial.

(28:17):
Is because there was an oldmemory about, you know, I get
hurt when I expand my business.
I get to a certain level and I fail.
So they try.
They don't know that that's what they'redoing, but their mind is diverting them
into another direction to protect them.
it's almost talk therapy.
Like you, you mentioned he wasable to visualize, it sounds

(28:37):
like just you prompted him or cudhim in a way to recall it in his
Mm-hmm.
I say, give me a minute,two minute highlight reel.
I said, if we made that whole thing intoa movie, I'm looking for the trailer.
Got it.
And so he'll be visualizing it, butI'm taking him through a processes,
different techniques that I use

(28:57):
Yeah.
that is basically interruptingthe process of recalling it.
Which then the mind and the real key,Joe, is, the reason I use four hours
is I've gotta get the mind and thebrain into optimal condition to heal
Mm-hmm.
it.
That that's why traditional therapyis not very good for trauma,
because the mind's still stressed whenyou, so if I sat down with you and I said,

(29:21):
Joe, tell me about what happened to you.
You're stressed talking to me about it.
Your mind's not gonna make achange when it's feeling stressed.
So we don't even talk abouttrauma for the first two hours.
I'm giving you all science andeducation on how the brain works,
why it does what it does, and whatI hear constantly is people saying,
well, that makes so much sense.

(29:43):
Yeah, of course that would happen.
How could it not happen?
So you're getting 'em into this mode.
And I know from before when wechatted in this alpha brain state,
this brainwave state, so it's
literally the calmest your, your mindand body can be right, so you feel safe
with
Yep.
new information.
And it takes a little bit of timeto get the mind to feel safe.

(30:06):
And the reason it starts to feel safeis as I'm taking you through it, your
mind is absorbing this information.
And I'm saying, and one of the thingsthat I've had, I literally, Joe,
people will cry when I say this.
There's nothing wrong with you andthere's nothing wrong with your mind.
The reason you're experiencingthese symptoms of fear or anger or
depression or anxiety is becausethat's the way our minds work.

(30:29):
Yeah.
There's nothing wrong with you.
Your mind is responding.
All of the things that they keep tellingpeople that there's wrong with them.
You have anxiety.
We're gonna put you on anxiety.
Medication, anxiety's the symptom.
It's not the problem, but depressionis the symptom, not the problem,
but they treat.

(30:50):
The symptom, which meansthey never solve the problem.
When it comes to business owners,like do you, are there some trends or
commonalities that you've seen from thefolks that you've worked with that maybe
show up more often with entrepreneurs,people who are self-starters leaders,
you know, problem solvers than othersthat we should kind of maybe be

(31:11):
aware of, like, oh yeah, that's me,
Uh, you'll see a few different things.
One, you can see anger showup a lot, where things just
frustrate them really quickly.
And that may come from earlier whenpeople just didn't listen to them,
or they had, they failed because theycouldn't communicate their message,
and then they ended up not making it,you know, or even back into childhood

(31:37):
where nobody, they were really smart,but nobody listened to them, and they
were told that they weren't smart.
Um, any of those kinds of things willshow up in an emotion in a situation.
So my wife, for example, dealtwith fear and I didn't understand
it because I know I understood.

(31:57):
She had a very violent father, so Iunderstood where the fear was coming
from, but she's now living with meand we're 10 years into our marriage.
We're living in our dream home.
We got three beautiful children.
Everything's going really well, a goodbusiness, and she's not enjoying it.
And I couldn't understandwhy she wasn't enjoying it.
And she'd say to me, well, what happensif that insurance company doesn't

(32:20):
renew the contract in two years?
And I went, why are you worriedabout a contract in two years?
She'd go, well, whathappens if they don't?
Have you got a plan for it?
Or are you like, she was waiting for the,the shoe to drop and she couldn't relax?
So you see that a lot of timesin successful entrepreneurs, they
can't relax 'cause there's thatconstant wind's, it gonna fall apart.

(32:44):
If I let my guard down,I'm gonna get hurt.
And they
I've been there.
don't enjoy for me, I had no trauma so Icould enjoy the success we were having.
And I couldn't understand why she wasn't,because she wasn't in that house anymore.
I'm like, you're living with me.
I don't yell at my wife.
I've never hit my wife.
And yet she's operating in fear.

(33:07):
And until I understood whereit was from, it was from her
traumatic childhood that kept on.
So if I would say something assimple as, no, I don't like that,
she would tear up and start to cryand she'd say, why are you mad at me?
And uh, Joe, I'd go, whatare you talking about?
I'm not mad.
She'd go, yeah, I couldtell you're getting mad.

(33:28):
I wasn't getting mad, but if Ihad a little tension change in my
voice, my vocal cords were a littletighter 'cause maybe I'm tired.
That sounded like I was yelling at her.
She was super sensitive to sound,super sensitive to her environment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We could come out of a storeand she'd go, can you believe
how rude that clerk was to me?

(33:50):
And I'd go, where?
How is she rude?
Well, didn't you see the way sheanswered that question, or the way
she stuck the clothes in the bag?
I can't see any of that.
You are not seeing the same picture.
Yeah,
I'm not, I'm not living in that worldand it, there was nothing wrong with
her and nothing wrong with me, right?
She was filtering throughwhat I call your own set of

(34:11):
personal atmospheric conditions.
Right.
So her atmospheric conditionsgrowing up were dark and stormy.
Mine were bright and sunny.
So I see the world throughbright and sunny, right?
Doesn't mean that I'd ignore danger.
Right, but I'm not looking for it.
That's all she can look for,
Hmm.
because that's how she stayedsafe as a child, you get hurt

(34:33):
if you put your guard down
Yeah.
It's not safe.
You gotta move, you gotta, yeah.
Fight or whatever it might be, but
there's a
constantly look for the danger,and she could see it everywhere.
and see it shows up, itseems like it's a spectrum.
It'll show up in everyone, you know,in some, a lot more debilitating
than maybe this underlying, uh,anxiety feeling that for whatever

(34:55):
reason, you know, and that might bepreventing you from totally feeling
happy or focused or whatever it is.
Fatigued, I dunno, are there symptomsthat you would, that you kinda see as
well, and of course that's not wherethe root is, but maybe like the signs.
Business owners are people that arelike, Hey, maybe that's, that's,
that's worth going in emotions.

(35:17):
I know it leads to action, but you
Yep.
Well, you'll see thembecome workaholics, right?
That they can't stop working because ifthey let their guard down, they get hurt.
So they work and work andwork and work and can't enjoy
the success they're having.
Because what they realize is, if Ilet my guard down, I'm gonna get hurt.
And so they don't get a chance to enjoy.

(35:39):
They burn out.
Hmm
And so those are the kindsof things that you'll see.
Um, and, and they can show upall kinds of different ways.
You can have somebody who's like asuper successful person, really nice
guy, you know, generous, you know,doing all those kinds of things.
And then you find outhe's an alcoholic, right?

(36:00):
Always got a gambling problem, right?
But he puts on a great image.
And a lot of times you don't realizethat it's all coming from fear or
coming from being hurt, anger, butyou'll see it in some of those emotions.
I'm curious, like, so as we kinda wrapit up here, I want to, I want to know

(36:20):
more about your, your process and, andjust like the way that you would, I
guess start people along or maybe evensome now stuff to kind of prime people.
If they're starting to nodtheir heads and be like, yes.
Okay, that sounds familiar.
And there's been a fewthings I can relate with.
I guess, what would you say to that?
Because I want to definitely givesome actionable things if possible

(36:41):
here and then lead 'em your way,you know if If it's a good path.
Yeah, I think the idea is to identifywhat are your strengths, what are the
things that you're struggling with?
Um, and it's sometimes hard tosort of analyze ourself, you know?
So if you've got a good partner,good spouse, or somebody like
that, just say, what are the thingsthat you think I should work on?

(37:03):
And you'd be, they'll probably tell you.
Yeah, so the key is being
open and not saying anything during
right.
But it's really good to, because a lotof times you don't identify with it.
You don't think that that's my, myissue, but it it definitely can be.
And so even somebody growing up with alot of success and then something goes

(37:24):
wrong, right then, they could just getso upset when something doesn't go right.
And so this is my, my complaint withmy wife and I, not complaint, but
she says about me, I hate to lose.
I'm competitive in a card game.
Like we play these games with ourfriends and I hate, she goes, why
do you get so upset when you lose?

(37:46):
I don't get like mad throwing thingsor anything, but I hate to lose.
But my childhood, I had a lot of successesstuff I did, and so it's not a bad
trait, like I'm not yelling at anybodyor making a problem, but she can tell.
I hated losing.
And she never really, thatdidn't make any sense to her.
She didn't have, so even in successful,I mean, I'm using that as an example

(38:12):
of success can sometimes createproblems too, that when we do get
hit with something and somethinggoes wrong, how resilient are we?
Yeah.
You know, you see this a lot of times inreally super talented athletes growing up.
They're the, they're thebiggest, strongest kid.
And then by the time they getinto college, they're no longer

(38:32):
that dominant athlete, and thenall of a sudden things go wrong.
Right?
They can't handle
Mm-hmm.
because they're used to dominating.
Well, when you get to a certainlevel, it's pretty tough to dominate.
Yeah, it's interesting to think traumacan show up as a success as well.
So it's not always looking at maybethe dark sides or the the shadow, which

(38:53):
is what I think people would probablynormally associate a trauma with
or something that's bringingup that emotion from the past.
And I don't know if trauma'salways the right word.
Is there a better word touse it when it's a Success
Um, yeah, I mean actuallyit could be an actual fact.
Um, because you, your mind how it respondsto things, just the smallest thing

(39:17):
going wrong, and that's why somebodycould turn around and say like, why
did he get so upset over something sosmall was because he's never had that.
And then all of a sudden when it hitshim, he doesn't know how to handle it
Right?
or her.
Right?
And then you're just like, wow.
They're just really super sensitive.
But they are, when thingsdon't go their way.

(39:38):
Mm-hmm.
And so then they end up overcompensating.
There's all kinds of ways it'llshow up, but the key to it, the best
advice I can give to somebody is tryto identify what your personality
traits are with potentiallysomething throughout your life.
And a lot of it comes back tochildhood, believe it or not, because

(40:01):
the ages between zero and seven,our brains are actually literal.
We're not actually analyzing anything.
We're taking everything in right in,in real time, and not dissecting it.
We're just accepting it.
So between the ages of zero andseven, you're being told every day

(40:21):
you're stupid, you're an idiot.
You don't know what you're doing.
Then that becomes the systemthat your system's developing.
Or you can end up with the opposite where,oh, you're the smartest, you're the best.
Right?
And then the child ends up, somethinggoes wrong when they get older and
it, the frustration level builds andthey don't know how to handle it.

(40:44):
I'll, I'll give you an example.
A young man, um, he was a teenager andhis dad said, I don't know what happened.
He says, all of a sudden he'splaying these video games, right?
And he's smashing the wall,putting his fist through the
wall, and it came back to.
I said, what happened?
And he says, well, he had, I forgetwhich game it was, he had the basketball

(41:06):
game with Jordan, and then it reset.
Well, you have to buildJordan back up again.
You know, he's only a 60% shooter whenyou start and becomes a 98% shooter.
He couldn't handle that.
he'd been so successful in the gameand he had very successful parents and
everything was going well in his life.

(41:27):
And all of a sudden now he'splaying a video game where he's
set back and he can't rebuild
Yeah.
That's tough.
Knowing what's possible, but now I gottado it all over again and, and yeah.
Whatever I.
and totally outta character forthe, for the, for the young man.
His dad said he's taking histennis rackets and smashing them

(41:49):
on the ground when something goeswrong, and it came back to this.
Once we identified it, we were ableto start working on it and reset it.
But before that, theyjust didn't understand it.
It was all of a sudden as well,I guess he's just, you know, this
is teenage years, he's losing it.
Well, that was the big factor.
I'm thinking as a, as a parent oftwo little ones, and I don't know if

(42:13):
this is something you would, you're,you would wanna speak on, but I'm
like, how do we prep our kids inthis zero to seven age range Where,
yeah, it's almost like volatile.
It seems like if you go one way orthe other, there's a spectrum here.
I don't know any, any tips or
Yeah, it's very, it's very easy.
You have to be very carefulthe words you choose.

(42:34):
Because children areliteral with language.
And I'll give you a a good example.
When my wife was growing up when she wassix, so she's in an already traumatic
childhood and uh, some of the women inthe neighborhood, the mothers put together
a tea party for all the little girls.
So she was all excited 'cause she gotto go to the tea party, get dressed

(42:55):
up, she gets there and one of themothers greeting her says, oh my
gosh, Bridget, you're gonna be sucha heartbreaker when you grow up.
And all the other motherswere like, oh yeah, bridge is
definitely gonna be a heartbreaker.
She said, I got sick tomy stomach and went home.
What Bridget heard was,you're going to hurt people.
You're gonna break people's hearts.

(43:17):
Hmm.
A 6-year-old doesn't understandwhat that means, so we're
thinking I'm complimenting her.
They don't know that she's literallytaking in, you're going to break a heart,
Mm-hmm.
be very careful that your children areunderstanding, right what you mean,
because they look for you for safety.

(43:39):
And so the best way, the bestadvice I can give to parents,
especially when you've got theseyoung kids, is make your home safe.
It's gotta be the placethey can come back to.
Doesn't mean that theyget away with things.
Right.
You could, my, my dad neveryelled, never raised his voice,
never hit us ever once, and raisedthree very disciplined children.

(44:01):
Nice.
I was never afraid of him, but Irespected him and I, my, the biggest
thing for me is disappointing him.
Like I didn't wanna disappointhim, so that's how he raised us.
But you hear all these people saying,you know, spare the rod, spoil the child.
Mm-hmm.
Tell me where that makes sense.

(44:23):
I want my child to be afraidthat I'm gonna hit 'em,
Right.
afraid that I'm gonna hurt 'em.
How is that productive?
It's not, I don't care what anybody
says.
I, I, I'd argue that all day.
Sure.
I'm with you.
Can they be disciplined?
Absolutely.
So we would, if something wentwrong, we would be disciplined,
but it was always done in love.

(44:45):
So here's you explain,here's what you did wrong.
Here's the consequences, right?
So that the next time you'llthink about it, right?
And then the child will go, okay,they may not like it, right?
But you do it without that, thatanger in your voice, and that

(45:06):
creates that world of safety.
And that's how I grew up with that.
So it kept me calm, kept my nervoussystem calm, kept me healthy.
And that's the key thing iskeeping that nervous sys system
calm in those early years.
And you're right,
yeah.
Bring in the safety.
So then we are, we're literallyliving in a safe world the
rest of our lives, ideally.

(45:27):
And of course, the outside world,we'll do other things, but if we can
The world's gonna bump 'em.
The world's gonna hit them right.
They need to know when theycome home there's a safe place.
And that's why I said toBridget, you know, she said.
I said, you had no place to land.
She was in flight all her childhood.

(45:49):
I had none of that.
And so my nervous system stayed regulated.
Now she's high functioning.
She didn't get into drugs oralcohol or anything like that.
She was just living in fear.
And that was, um, stoppingher from engaging and enjoying
the success we were having.
It wasn't that she wasn'tappreciative, right?

(46:10):
She was.
She was appreciative.
Appreciative and grateful.
But always looking forwhat's gonna go wrong,
Yep.
and I'm the opposite.
I'm just like, I don't understandwhy you're thinking that way.
She couldn't not think that way.
That was the program that was running.
I,
thank God that you've figured outa way to kind of reboot things.

(46:33):
The system, no matter whatyour be beginning was, right?
Like, and it's
like like I said on the website,you know, it's rebooting your
mind and you're literally.
Yeah, you're doing that.
So no matter if it came from thatvery, uh, you know, you can't land
anywhere at home because you're beingwhatever the abuse or trauma could be,
or all the way to success, you know,like I was the best at everything.

(46:55):
Um, yeah.
So how, I guess, what are the next stepshere for a listener who might want to go
a little deeper into what you are doing?
Any of the, the TIP program, TIPP.
Um, I guess explain some of the nextsteps in, in tell where they can go.
Find you.
Yeah, if they wanna find out more,there's a lot of great testimonials on

(47:15):
our site that may relate to, to whatyou're dealing with, you know, from people
who've dealt with anxiety, depression,anxiety, addiction, even high performers.
You know, we work with a lotof professional athletes.
Um, Prince Fielder, his testimonialson our site, there's a pretty
high performer, six time All Star.

(47:36):
He says, if I had gone throughyour program, I've extended my
career by three to five years.
He says, I sat on benches withguys that were dealing with
depression, anxiety, panic attacks.
He, so a lot of what we thinkabout these guys and we think, oh,
they've got it made, but they'redealing with the same things.
Mm-hmm.
And, but they just performat a very high level,

(47:58):
That's all, all the way down to, youknow, every one of us, we're all, we're
all dealing, walking around with this.
So, however you applyyourself into the world, um,
So I talk about we all have another gear,
Yeah.
we have another gear.
We just need to figure outhow to reach that gear.
Oh man.
Because it actually affects themitochondria in the cells, the

(48:18):
energy, the ATP in the cells.
And so, um, if you have trauma,it is pulling that energy.
So I have a lot of people go throughthe program and on the, on the athletic
side, who increase their personal s
Because they're literallygetting, creating more energy.
Right.
Or maybe
it was at a, yeah.

(48:38):
It's probably creating and directingit in better places, right?
Yep.
That's why I love working with athletes'cause they're measuring it all the time
Yeah.
so you can see it.
So we're seeing in this studythat they did with DNA on the gene
regulation, inflammation coming downin, uh, immune system coming up.
That's, you know, you can't, how do youdo anything but prove it by just saying,

(49:02):
here's the evidence, neuroplasticitychanging, you know, mitochondria changing.
That tells you how muchtrauma is affecting us.
on the other podcast that I host, it'sall about, uh, yeah, like how toxins
can really clog up the mitochondria.
And those are the, that's creating energy.
So like what you're saying is exactly whata lot of these doctors are saying as well.

(49:24):
And if you have inflammation or it'sjust clogged up, it's like your, your
body literally just goes haywire and,
Well, the, the best way to explain it toois, and this is sort of a simple analogy.
Trauma is a lion chasing us.
If a lion is chasing you rightnow, it makes sense to run, right?
So you could run on jagged rocks andbare feet, you will not feel the pain

(49:47):
Right.
because your mind's notgonna prioritize maintenance.
It's gonna prioritize survival.
So as long as you've got the traumain the background, right, the mind is
focusing on survival, not maintenance.
There's where the toxinsstart to build up.
There's when all the system startsto go out of balance because the

(50:09):
maintenance isn't being done.
It's minimal maintenance.
When we're in survival mode
right.
and people will say, but I eat right?
I exercise, I take all my vitamins.
Why is this happening?
It's flushing it.
Yeah, there's some, some underlyingthings happening that, that are really
controlling all the levers it seems like,
Yep.
Can't methylate them.

(50:30):
Can't absorb them.
Because the system is saying our, oursurvival right now is more important
than using any of that stuff.
I'm happy that we got to chata second time, first time
here for, uh, second time.
We'll link to the other episode too onthe other podcast if you wanna jump back
and forth, get another flavor of you.
But I appreciate the work you've putinto this, and I, I know you have a

(50:52):
lot more coming, the studies as well.
Of course.
When the, when your Delphi islive, we'll be sharing that because
I, I can't wait for that.
That's
gonna be really exciting.
It's all on.
It's gonna be on our website,inspire performance institute.com.
There you go.
Perfect.
Well, we'll link that as welland appreciate your time again
and um, yeah, just thank you.
I appreciate it.

(51:13):
Thanks for the audience, Joe.
Yeah.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Hidden Traumas Sabotaging Entrepreneurs’ Success! with Dr. Don Wood