October 9, 2025 • 26 mins
Welcome to Pay Attention — a podcast guiding you from the chaos of the mind 🌀 to the clarity of the open heart ❤️. (broadcast every Wednesday at 10 am PST / 1 pm EST).
We're going BACK TO THE ARCHIVES on this powerful episode of The Pay Attention Podcast.🌿
In this episode, host Holly McNeill welcomes Dr. Don Wood, PhD — author, speaker, and Founder & CEO of the Inspired Performance Institute.
Dr. Wood is the creator of the revolutionary TIPP Method (Trauma Informed Performance Psychology) — a neuroscience-based approach proven to help people heal from trauma, stress, anxiety, depression, and addiction, unlocking their true potential for peak performance.
In this deeply insightful conversation, Dr. Wood opens up about the origins of TIPP and the science behind reprogramming the mind for healing and high achievement. From personal transformation to professional breakthroughs, you’ll learn how unresolved trauma affects the brain and how TIPP empowers thousands to regain clarity, confidence, and calm. ✨
If you’re ready to heal, perform at your best, and live with fulfillment, this episode will change the way you think about the mind-body connection.
👉 Feeling inspired? Connect with Dr. Don Wood and let him know you heard him on The Pay Attention Podcast!
📘 Facebook: facebook.com/DrDonWoodPhD
📸 Instagram: @drdonwood
🎵 TikTok: @drdonwood
💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drdonwoodphd
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Welcome to Pay Attention.
A podcast guiding you from the chaos of the mind to the clarity of the heart.
Here's your host, Holly McNeil.
Hello and welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of Pay Attention, where we're learning
(00:27):
to pay attention to the hidden influences in our bodies and minds for a moment to moment
so that we can make decisions and move our lives forward from a place of clarity and objectivity.
I'm coming to you again from the beautiful Upper Valley of Vermont.
I've been here a week.
I've got another week to go and the leaves are gorgeous and I'm so grateful to be here.
(00:51):
So, so yay for that.
And for those of you who've had a chance to listen to my initial podcast,
this might be a little bit of a repeat, but given my guest I have today, I think it repeat is a little bit warranted.
So, I am an architect and why is an architect teaching mindfulness?
Well, age 34, I hit a low, low, low point and vowed to find better.
(01:16):
And in my 20-year journey, I searched through neuroscience, psychology, Buddhism and spirituality,
and in doing so, I had this amazing understanding of these profound, simple truths on how our mind works,
and how your mind works, and how if you understand these truths, and why we're not taught these before,
(01:37):
when we're young, how you can change them.
And so, our guest today knows all about that.
I've had the pleasure and honor of speaking to him before.
He's a trauma expert, an author, a speaker, CEO, and founder of the Inspired Performance Institute.
Please welcome Dr. Don Wooddon.
Thank you so much for coming today.
(01:58):
Holly, I appreciate the invitation.
I enjoyed so much the last time we spoke, so I'm really looking forward to what we're going to talk about today.
Yes, yeah, I'm excited about it.
And for now, why don't you just give a little introduction of who you are and your institute,
and all you've done, you'll be more time with Ian to dig into that a little bit more.
But yeah, take it away.
Well, like you, I started on a different journey.
(02:21):
You were an architect and got into this.
I was an entrepreneur, a business owner.
And the reason I got into this was because of my daughter, who had two autoimmune disorders.
And the first one was Crohn's.
The second one was called idiopathic pulmonary hemociderosis.
And I wasn't even doing any of this.
So I went back to school, got my PhD, and started putting the research together.
(02:45):
Because the second disorder was technically a death sentence or could be.
So a lot of people would die within five to ten years with that diagnosis.
Because the lungs basically bleed out.
And it's the iron in the blood.
The immune system dumps the iron, which dumps the blood.
And she could choke to death and die.
So I had to figure out how to save her life.
(03:07):
And that was sort of my motivation.
And I always say I think the best part for me is if you want to solve a problem,
bring it in entrepreneur.
Because we look for the niches, right?
And that's why I think what you do is interesting, because then we talked about this before,
an architect builds.
Right?
You see things before it's ever there.
I think that was your advantage.
(03:28):
It's because you had to imagine and create something out of nothing.
Right.
And which is what most people don't do.
Right?
They wait for something to be built.
And then they see it.
Right.
You know, both of us had that, I think, insight to be able to see something that wasn't
there.
And that's, I think, was the secret for me developing the program.
That, that, yeah, I've heard the story before.
(03:50):
And it is an amazing, amazing story.
And in your right, I, and I so appreciate being able to be here, to talk to people that
I'm sure as you do as well.
Yes.
So I'm going to have a little fun with you today.
There are three things that I teach people about how the mind works.
So I want to launch those at you.
And you can, you know, give me insights, expand on it, or, you know, maybe tell me like, maybe it's not quite that way.
(04:16):
Or whatever you think, okay, I trust you.
Okay.
Okay.
So here we go.
The first one is that the mind is habit based.
That whatever we, yeah, whatever we think about over and over and over again, whether consciously,
or unconsciously, becomes habit and thus our conditioning.
(04:37):
We start to believe it.
We start to take it on as our identity or personality and become so solid and so real that we just think this is who we are.
And, and, and why is that?
And why does that happen?
And, and, and what's the science behind that?
Well, it's, it's actually, I called it coding.
So people say behaviors, right?
(04:58):
But if we look at the brain as a computer, right?
The brain will code, right?
The computer will code at no point if you're typing into your computer, will your computer say, why are you doing this?
Exactly.
It accepts the code.
So if you repeat something over and over, your brain isn't judgmental.
(05:19):
You're subconscious brain anyway.
You're subconscious brain is literal.
So if you say, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, right?
I'll never make it, right?
It'll code that for you to protect you, not to hurt you.
Because what it's going to do is make sure that you don't get hurt.
Don't go and take that.
So if you say, I'm not good enough, I can't make it in this career.
(05:41):
And then you say, oh, I sabotaged myself.
Well, no, you condition your brain to protect you from pain.
So if you're not good enough, why would you want to go into that career?
And that's the neuron signs.
I mean, there's the nerve cells when, you know, the more we think about it,
there's this neuron at this patterns in our heads that all connect that.
(06:03):
And the more we do it, the stronger it is.
Yeah, it's like walking a path.
So if you, so you're out in Vermont, right?
So if there's all these, you know, big fields and you walk through that field every single day,
you're going to groove a path.
Right.
And the number one fear for the human mind is uncertainty.
So what does habits and behaviors do create certainty?
(06:26):
Even if they're not good for you, it's still certain that I can do it.
Right.
Well, you've already, you know what you've already moved into the second, third thing I teach,
which I love this.
So this is, I'm going to go over them.
I get the second one is that the mind does not discriminate between good and bad conditioning.
It doesn't ask any questions.
(06:47):
Right.
The subconscious.
Yeah, the subconscious mind.
Right.
So 95% of all that we're creating are habits and patterns are happening and that subconscious mind.
Absolutely.
What I understand.
Thank you.
And, you know, when we're kids, we're so open.
Right.
We're so open, but we're also vulnerable to our situations.
(07:08):
And 50% of children are adult people, are adult children at a divorce,
and 80% of children go through trauma.
So when we're open and the brain does not discriminate,
then when we're in traumatic situations,
and don't have that parent to help us transform that pain into understanding,
and it turns into trauma, then that's what gets conditioned, correct?
(07:31):
Yeah.
And even with the best of intentions, the words that we use with children have an effect.
Because between the ages of zero and seven,
the brain is literal.
So it's taking an information, right,
and then figuring out what does this mean?
What does it mean about me, right?
That's right.
(07:52):
And that's exactly me.
And so if you have a child that's constantly being criticized,
then the child is learning, I just don't measure up.
I'm not good enough.
I'm not smart enough for whatever it is.
So the words are so powerful to a child who has no life experience.
Now you could take that language and take it to an adult
who's saying they're 30s.
(08:13):
They're going to hear it completely different than a child.
And I give you an example.
My wife grew up in a very traumatic childhood.
And so between my wife and my daughter, right,
I learned a lot from them.
They're the heroes because they experienced it.
But my wife, when she was six years old,
living in a traumatic household to begin with,
(08:34):
she goes to a tea party that the mother's in the neighborhood put on.
And so she was all excited because she loves dressing up.
And so her grandmother got her all dressed up.
She went to the tea party.
And the mothers are greeting the little girls.
And when Bridget comes in, one of the mothers says to her,
oh my gosh, Bridget, you're going to be such a heartbreaker
when you grow up.
(08:55):
And all the other mothers are like, oh yeah,
Bridget's definitely going to be a heartbreaker.
When she told me this story, she was crying.
She says, I got sick to my stomach and went home.
What she heard at six was, I'm going to hurt people.
I'm going to break their hearts.
Yeah.
And the last thing she wants, she's such a loving person.
She's thinking, oh, they see something bad in me.
(09:17):
Wow.
Now they're complimenting her.
But she doesn't know that she doesn't have enough life
experienced to understand that language.
Right.
It's amazing.
And you told me this story before when our in our last conversation.
I talked, I thought about it.
It only takes once.
Right.
When you're a child, for you to really just for your subconscious to grab on to that and say, wow, this is who I am.
(09:41):
The subconscious mind doesn't question, is this good for me?
Should I even be believing this?
And then you talked about how, how, how we're literal.
Right.
So we have this, our frontal prefrontal cortex, right, doesn't develop to where 25 different for men and women.
And we have this, this emotional center, this limbic system.
And really we're the only ones that's there.
(10:04):
So if there's a problem, it's our fault.
It's my fault, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And again, like you're, you're right, the subconscious, because it's literal, doesn't see things as right or wrong, good or bad.
So whatever you're doing, and it's survival based.
So everything it's doing is focused on keeping you alive.
(10:25):
So if you, like when people say, oh, I sabotaged myself, I go, it's impossible.
Your brain can't sabotage you.
It's protecting you.
But it may be dealing with some faulty intelligence.
So you as an architect, this makes sense.
If somebody gives you information and you build on that information, and then there's a mistake in that information, right?
(10:46):
You're taking the information as, as fact.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, about building your solid foundation, I've had, I did a,
I've been deadwood South Dakota. I did a retaining wall with a retaining wall consultant on a Denver.
And I came in one morning on my, on my little notes, the pink slips I had, it said retaining wall,
slipping, houses above slipping, right?
(11:07):
Like slipping down the mountain, right?
So yeah, exactly right.
If you don't have that solid foundation, which unfortunately a lot of us don't,
yeah, you're building on that.
Yeah, you're building that information.
If you're relying on that information, so if you're a child at, say, three years of age,
and somebody told you that one plus one equals three, and then you take that information in,
(11:31):
and then you get into college, and somebody has an equation for you, and then you come up with your answer,
and everybody else has a different answer, you're convinced you're right.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, because that leads exactly into my third point.
And we may discuss this at all. So this is pretty good.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
(11:52):
Well, after, yeah, I knew this was going to be good.
So the third one you've also touched on, and that is that the mind, one of its main job,
the subconscious mind, is to protect you, to keep you safe.
And so it does so by saying, I learned this from you, that, you know, the conditioning,
we have so far kind of work, so we're going to keep that going.
So it will use all that nasty self-talk to dissuade you, to keep you in that comfort zone,
(12:20):
free from risk and vulnerability, even if what's in there in that comfort zone isn't healthy for you.
Exactly. I use this story of if you walk two miles every day to get food,
and you had to navigate through snipers and landmines, but every day you got there and you got back.
So your mind now thinks I can do this, and then somebody goes,
(12:41):
Holly, what are you doing? There's a safe way, a hundred yards down that road,
it's lit, there's really safe. You're mind you're not accept that knowledge, right?
At value. So it will want, so that's why habits form.
Habits reform to give the mind research into whether this is safe.
And so if you didn't get killed every day, go in there,
(13:04):
somebody goes, go this way, your mind's going to go, oh no, I don't know that that's safe.
So the way to break that habit is to repeat something,
build a new neural pathway that provides, I say, think of repetition,
his research for the brain.
Yeah, that's awesome. I've heard it called laws of transformation.
(13:25):
That your brain creates these laws of transformation that any new idea must pass through.
Yes.
And if the new idea doesn't meet with that conditioning, it's often altered or rejected in favor of existing conditioning.
Exactly.
Again, going back to your background as an architect, if you were building something and some other architect comes in says, no, you're wrong, you didn't do that right.
(13:47):
They're not going to convince you by just telling you that.
You know, architects have big egos. That's right.
Besides the ego, you're also not going to say, hey, listen, I think I'm right. I'm not taking your word for it.
Give me proof.
Give me evidence before I'm going to change this drawing.
Otherwise, you could, if you just took his word and didn't challenge it, that's the way your brain works.
(14:12):
Right.
I'm not going to take what you told me as proof until I can establish it.
And I know it's safe.
Right. And so, so thank you for validating those three things I teach. I appreciate that.
You know, given, like I said, as an architect, my job is to take little pieces from all over what I've learned and put them together.
(14:34):
So, so thank you.
But then, like you said, then to change that, to do the research, I call it stepping back,
getting off that thoughts, emotions, and feelings, chaotic subconscious highway, so that you can look at it differently and question it.
And you've got a program, right, that you did you teach people, or how do we, now that we know these things in mind is habit-based,
(14:56):
it doesn't discriminate between good and bad conditioning, doesn't ask questions, and it will protect your existing programming.
How do you take that information now and start to change it, start to turn it around, it takes time, right?
It takes time because the mind wants proof, and it's not going to just make it. And it's actually a good reason, good thing that it does do that.
Because if I could come up to you and you've been doing something that's kept you safe all along, and I just say, oh no, you need to eat charcoal, or you need to eat poison, and you go, oh okay, I'll do that.
(15:28):
No, your mind's not going to accept it, because it's trying to protect you. So those habits, even if they may not be the best habit, have formed as a survival technique.
So the only way that you can do something is to make the changes slowly. So that's what our program does, is we have two reasons habits formed though.
(15:52):
So the other reason a habit will form is from trauma. So what I do is in our program, the first four hours of our program are all designed to reset the trauma loop.
Because it filters to its trauma to respond to its current environment because your subconscious is always in the moment, always present.
(16:14):
It even sees memory as present.
Yes.
It's a glitch. It's looking at old data in real time.
If you don't get that trauma out of the way, that's what created the habits and behaviors.
First we get that trauma out of the way, and then the person listens to a series of audios designed to make changes to the habits.
(16:40):
Because the habits won't change just because we resolve the trauma.
But it's a lot easier to change the habits when the trauma isn't pulling it back into a safety message.
If that makes sense.
Yeah, it does.
It does.
And my question I have for you then, is there...
So I have found that when you go back to all those old habits, and thank you for explaining the other way a habit is formed and how that...
(17:10):
I love, you know, we all...
Only life there is is in the present moment, but understanding that the subconscious mind is in the present moment seeing the past is very, very interesting.
But do you see it?
I find that I trust myself more.
The more I step back and question those traumas and get those out of the way.
Is there...
(17:31):
Where does trusting in yourself and giving yourself compassion for your situation come into all of this?
Well, it's a good part of...
That's what I sort of do in the program is get them to sort of take a look at it.
And I'll give you an example.
I had a lady who...
She had a very bad relationship with her parents.
She was very angry at them.
She's in her 30s.
(17:53):
And, you know, she got along with them to some extent, but she had a lot of frustration and anger about...
And then, so where to come from.
But when she was four, she had a sister, a nine-year-old sister, and then a one-year-old sister.
And so she was four.
And she says, and her parents went out, hired a babysitter, a male babysitter.
(18:14):
And he tried to sexually assault the nine-year-old.
And the nine-year-old was smart enough to say, let me put my sisters away.
I don't want them to see this.
And she hid them all in the bathroom.
Smart kid.
And he was going to be on the door, trying to get in, and they wouldn't let them in.
And then eventually the parents weren't gone for that long, and they came home.
(18:36):
And she says, and then he left right away.
And she goes, my parents didn't believe us, that that happened.
And so she said, so she was telling me that this really created a lot of anger in her,
that why didn't our parents protect us, why?
And so here's what I did.
This is exactly what you're talking about.
(18:57):
Let's step back for a second.
I said, you were four.
Is that right?
She goes, yes.
I said, I don't know because I wasn't there.
Is it possible that your parents did protect you?
Right?
They just didn't involve you in it.
Maybe they got that guy arrested.
Maybe he went, did you ever have him babysit again?
She goes, no.
(19:18):
And I said, he, where did he, they get him from?
She's, we worked with my dad.
Did you ever see him at work again?
No.
So I said, is it possible that your parents just didn't want to bring a four-year-old
and keep reminding her about this?
Handle it.
Got the guy arrested her.
And she goes, never thought about that.
And I said, and your parents never talked about it because they don't want to keep bringing this trauma up to a four-year-old.
(19:44):
So everybody sort of, now, was it the right thing to do to ignore it?
No.
But maybe that shifted her.
Because she had never seen, never taken that as a possibility that her parents maybe really did protect her.
They just didn't engage a four-year-old at it.
Wow.
So that's just what you're talking about.
Step back, let's take a look at it.
(20:06):
Oh, yeah, look at it.
Definitely.
Doesn't have the experience.
I mean, you can imagine if you had a four-year-old, would you want to bring her into court and have her witness seen all this stuff now?
Wow.
And that space, you're exactly right.
That space and that, that even that suggestion from someone they trust, you know, from a professional can really help to shift that.
Oh, yeah, getting, because otherwise you're in the middle of it, even in the present moment.
(20:30):
It's always, like you said, it's always there and it's influencing, it's influencing all your decisions.
Oh, how you move.
I know this.
I've lived it, you know, for 34 years.
I was, two years after I graduated college, I was put in charge of the largest historic preservation project in my state.
(20:54):
I had 10 to 20 men standing around me at construction meetings, all listening to what I had to say, large and in charge, but total imposter syndrome.
No.
Low self worth.
I couldn't even see what I had accomplished.
You can't even see it.
When you're in it, it's true, right?
You can't even see what, how it's affecting you.
Is that right?
(21:15):
Yeah, you look at all the celebrities that end up in drug use and all these people who are famous, you're thinking, oh, they've got everything going for them.
They have imposter syndrome.
They're figuring somebody's going to figure this out and realize that I'm not that smart.
I'm not that good, right?
And then it's going to come crack.
I'm going to lose everything.
Right.
And that's the way the mind works.
(21:36):
It's always going to be.
It's protecting you.
So the negative bias to protect yourself.
Yes, yes.
That's right.
And it's negatively biased naturally.
Not to hurt your skin, but to protect you.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
Well, if you are, if you're, if somebody's listening to this and maybe they're feeling that way, like an imposter or maybe they're stuck in that trauma, how do they get a hold of you?
(22:01):
What's the first best step?
Tell us, you know, tell, you know, what's what's their first step?
Like, if to, to try to figure out to know what they don't know, right?
Just they just know they're miserable or, or stuck.
What's the first step for them?
Well, we have a program.
We have a couple different ways of doing it.
One, you can come to Orlando and do a one on one with me.
(22:22):
Or we have an online version of it so you can do the whole program on your own, in your own home, by yourself.
And that's very effective.
I mean, my wife is my biggest fan.
But when I told her I'm going to do an online version, she goes, yeah, I don't think that's going to work.
It works amazing.
And so we've got a lot of really good results.
And we just shot it in virtual reality.
(22:44):
So we haven't launched that yet, but that's another version.
And then I do groups.
This next Monday, I'm going to be in Georgia doing a group of 50 wardens of prisons.
And I'm taking a group of 50 men, or men and women.
And through the program all in the same room.
That is amazing.
Nobody has to share their trauma.
(23:06):
So at no point do I need anybody to stand up and start talking about what happens to them.
I can clear the trauma without even knowing what it is.
Yeah, that is amazing.
That is amazing.
Because of how the mind works, right?
The mind asks, so the key is, and this is what I, people say, how do you do that?
No way.
(23:27):
And I said, the key is to get the mind into optimal condition.
And the optimal conditions will allow the healing to start.
The problem is when people have a lot of trauma, their mind never gets into that optimal condition
to heal because it's so focused on survival.
So what I do is create the optimal conditions for the mind and body to heal.
(23:49):
And then it naturally heals.
Dr. Wood, you have been ahead of me like every step of this conversation.
I'm just going to ask you one thing you wanted to leave them with.
And if that wasn't it, please tell me anything else.
Is that what you would leave somebody with?
Actually, do. Well, actually start.
And this is what I start with and it really sort of sums it up.
(24:13):
And I've had people sit and cry when I say this to them, even early on.
What I say to if I was sitting with you right now, I'd say,
Holly, there's nothing wrong with you.
There's nothing wrong with your mind.
Yeah, your mind works perfectly fine.
It's just dealing with a series of glitches and error messages that it keeps responding to.
All we have to do is clear that up and your mind goes back to optimal condition.
(24:37):
I love that. I love love love that.
Thank you so much, John.
I know that we have your information.
We have your links that we will put in the show notes.
Thank you for being here.
I've been so enjoyed our conversations.
And I hope the listeners out there have enjoyed it as well because it's again,
it's just some, like you said, there's nothing wrong with your mind.
(24:58):
It's functioning as it should be.
We just need to know how it's functioning and how we can change it.
Exactly. It's got information and it's relying on that information just like you as an architect.
If you've got the information.
Yeah, yeah. This being should hold up this, you know, this floor,
which holds up this roof.
And if it doesn't have right, exactly.
It's information.
(25:19):
It's a bio computer as it is.
It's totally a computer.
And I say, think of the brain as a computer.
The mind is the software.
Nice.
And the mind is running software.
And software is prone to glitches and error messages.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is.
It's one of my classes I teach is called simple and obvious.
We make it so complicated.
But it's really quite straightforward.
(25:40):
So thank you again for being here today, Dr. Wood.
And yes, thank you.
Yeah, please, please stay on afterwards.
Thank you to our listeners.
I hope this was helpful to you.
I hope this is, you know, helped you to understand kind of how the mind works
and how you can change it.
Please reach out to Dr. Wood on at the inspired performance institute.
(26:04):
I think it's inspired performance institute.com.
For more information.
And please join me for another episode down the road.
Maybe not.
Well, I have one more maybe in the upper valley of Vermont.
But please join me for another episode of Pay Attention.
Thank you.
Thanks, Holly.
Thanks for watching Pay Attention with Holly McNeil.
(26:25):
Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe.
See you next week on Wednesday at 10 o'clock, Pacific.
Welcome to Pay Attention.
A podcast guiding you from the chaos of the mind to the clarity of the heart.
Here's your host, Holly McNeil.
Hello and welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of Pay Attention, where we're learning
(00:27):
to pay attention to the hidden influences in our bodies and minds for a moment to moment
so that we can make decisions and move our lives forward from a place of clarity and objectivity.
I'm coming to you again from the beautiful Upper Valley of Vermont.
I've been here a week.
I've got another week to go and the leaves are gorgeous and I'm so grateful to be here.
(00:51):
So, so yay for that.
And for those of you who've had a chance to listen to my initial podcast,
this might be a little bit of a repeat, but given my guest I have today, I think it repeat is a little bit warranted.
So, I am an architect and why is an architect teaching mindfulness?
Well, age 34, I hit a low, low, low point and vowed to find better.
(01:16):
And in my 20-year journey, I searched through neuroscience, psychology, Buddhism and spirituality,
and in doing so, I had this amazing understanding of these profound, simple truths on how our mind works,
and how your mind works, and how if you understand these truths, and why we're not taught these before,
(01:37):
when we're young, how you can change them.
And so, our guest today knows all about that.
I've had the pleasure and honor of speaking to him before.
He's a trauma expert, an author, a speaker, CEO, and founder of the Inspired Performance Institute.
Please welcome Dr. Don Wooddon.
Thank you so much for coming today.
(01:58):
Holly, I appreciate the invitation.
I enjoyed so much the last time we spoke, so I'm really looking forward to what we're going to talk about today.
Yes, yeah, I'm excited about it.
And for now, why don't you just give a little introduction of who you are and your institute,
and all you've done, you'll be more time with Ian to dig into that a little bit more.
But yeah, take it away.
Well, like you, I started on a different journey.
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You were an architect and got into this.
I was an entrepreneur, a business owner.
And the reason I got into this was because of my daughter, who had two autoimmune disorders.
And the first one was Crohn's.
The second one was called idiopathic pulmonary hemociderosis.
And I wasn't even doing any of this.
So I went back to school, got my PhD, and started putting the research together.
(02:45):
Because the second disorder was technically a death sentence or could be.
So a lot of people would die within five to ten years with that diagnosis.
Because the lungs basically bleed out.
And it's the iron in the blood.
The immune system dumps the iron, which dumps the blood.
And she could choke to death and die.
So I had to figure out how to save her life.
(03:07):
And that was sort of my motivation.
And I always say I think the best part for me is if you want to solve a problem,
bring it in entrepreneur.
Because we look for the niches, right?
And that's why I think what you do is interesting, because then we talked about this before,
an architect builds.
Right?
You see things before it's ever there.
I think that was your advantage.
(03:28):
It's because you had to imagine and create something out of nothing.
Right.
And which is what most people don't do.
Right?
They wait for something to be built.
And then they see it.
Right.
You know, both of us had that, I think, insight to be able to see something that wasn't
there.
And that's, I think, was the secret for me developing the program.
That, that, yeah, I've heard the story before.
(03:50):
And it is an amazing, amazing story.
And in your right, I, and I so appreciate being able to be here, to talk to people that
I'm sure as you do as well.
Yes.
So I'm going to have a little fun with you today.
There are three things that I teach people about how the mind works.
So I want to launch those at you.
And you can, you know, give me insights, expand on it, or, you know, maybe tell me like, maybe it's not quite that way.
(04:16):
Or whatever you think, okay, I trust you.
Okay.
Okay.
So here we go.
The first one is that the mind is habit based.
That whatever we, yeah, whatever we think about over and over and over again, whether consciously,
or unconsciously, becomes habit and thus our conditioning.
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We start to believe it.
We start to take it on as our identity or personality and become so solid and so real that we just think this is who we are.
And, and, and why is that?
And why does that happen?
And, and, and what's the science behind that?
Well, it's, it's actually, I called it coding.
So people say behaviors, right?
(04:58):
But if we look at the brain as a computer, right?
The brain will code, right?
The computer will code at no point if you're typing into your computer, will your computer say, why are you doing this?
Exactly.
It accepts the code.
So if you repeat something over and over, your brain isn't judgmental.
(05:19):
You're subconscious brain anyway.
You're subconscious brain is literal.
So if you say, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, right?
I'll never make it, right?
It'll code that for you to protect you, not to hurt you.
Because what it's going to do is make sure that you don't get hurt.
Don't go and take that.
So if you say, I'm not good enough, I can't make it in this career.
(05:41):
And then you say, oh, I sabotaged myself.
Well, no, you condition your brain to protect you from pain.
So if you're not good enough, why would you want to go into that career?
And that's the neuron signs.
I mean, there's the nerve cells when, you know, the more we think about it,
there's this neuron at this patterns in our heads that all connect that.
(06:03):
And the more we do it, the stronger it is.
Yeah, it's like walking a path.
So if you, so you're out in Vermont, right?
So if there's all these, you know, big fields and you walk through that field every single day,
you're going to groove a path.
Right.
And the number one fear for the human mind is uncertainty.
So what does habits and behaviors do create certainty?
(06:26):
Even if they're not good for you, it's still certain that I can do it.
Right.
Well, you've already, you know what you've already moved into the second, third thing I teach,
which I love this.
So this is, I'm going to go over them.
I get the second one is that the mind does not discriminate between good and bad conditioning.
It doesn't ask any questions.
(06:47):
Right.
The subconscious.
Yeah, the subconscious mind.
Right.
So 95% of all that we're creating are habits and patterns are happening and that subconscious mind.
Absolutely.
What I understand.
Thank you.
And, you know, when we're kids, we're so open.
Right.
We're so open, but we're also vulnerable to our situations.
(07:08):
And 50% of children are adult people, are adult children at a divorce,
and 80% of children go through trauma.
So when we're open and the brain does not discriminate,
then when we're in traumatic situations,
and don't have that parent to help us transform that pain into understanding,
and it turns into trauma, then that's what gets conditioned, correct?
(07:31):
Yeah.
And even with the best of intentions, the words that we use with children have an effect.
Because between the ages of zero and seven,
the brain is literal.
So it's taking an information, right,
and then figuring out what does this mean?
What does it mean about me, right?
That's right.
(07:52):
And that's exactly me.
And so if you have a child that's constantly being criticized,
then the child is learning, I just don't measure up.
I'm not good enough.
I'm not smart enough for whatever it is.
So the words are so powerful to a child who has no life experience.
Now you could take that language and take it to an adult
who's saying they're 30s.
(08:13):
They're going to hear it completely different than a child.
And I give you an example.
My wife grew up in a very traumatic childhood.
And so between my wife and my daughter, right,
I learned a lot from them.
They're the heroes because they experienced it.
But my wife, when she was six years old,
living in a traumatic household to begin with,
(08:34):
she goes to a tea party that the mother's in the neighborhood put on.
And so she was all excited because she loves dressing up.
And so her grandmother got her all dressed up.
She went to the tea party.
And the mothers are greeting the little girls.
And when Bridget comes in, one of the mothers says to her,
oh my gosh, Bridget, you're going to be such a heartbreaker
when you grow up.
(08:55):
And all the other mothers are like, oh yeah,
Bridget's definitely going to be a heartbreaker.
When she told me this story, she was crying.
She says, I got sick to my stomach and went home.
What she heard at six was, I'm going to hurt people.
I'm going to break their hearts.
Yeah.
And the last thing she wants, she's such a loving person.
She's thinking, oh, they see something bad in me.
(09:17):
Wow.
Now they're complimenting her.
But she doesn't know that she doesn't have enough life
experienced to understand that language.
Right.
It's amazing.
And you told me this story before when our in our last conversation.
I talked, I thought about it.
It only takes once.
Right.
When you're a child, for you to really just for your subconscious to grab on to that and say, wow, this is who I am.
(09:41):
The subconscious mind doesn't question, is this good for me?
Should I even be believing this?
And then you talked about how, how, how we're literal.
Right.
So we have this, our frontal prefrontal cortex, right, doesn't develop to where 25 different for men and women.
And we have this, this emotional center, this limbic system.
And really we're the only ones that's there.
(10:04):
So if there's a problem, it's our fault.
It's my fault, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And again, like you're, you're right, the subconscious, because it's literal, doesn't see things as right or wrong, good or bad.
So whatever you're doing, and it's survival based.
So everything it's doing is focused on keeping you alive.
(10:25):
So if you, like when people say, oh, I sabotaged myself, I go, it's impossible.
Your brain can't sabotage you.
It's protecting you.
But it may be dealing with some faulty intelligence.
So you as an architect, this makes sense.
If somebody gives you information and you build on that information, and then there's a mistake in that information, right?
(10:46):
You're taking the information as, as fact.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, about building your solid foundation, I've had, I did a,
I've been deadwood South Dakota. I did a retaining wall with a retaining wall consultant on a Denver.
And I came in one morning on my, on my little notes, the pink slips I had, it said retaining wall,
slipping, houses above slipping, right?
(11:07):
Like slipping down the mountain, right?
So yeah, exactly right.
If you don't have that solid foundation, which unfortunately a lot of us don't,
yeah, you're building on that.
Yeah, you're building that information.
If you're relying on that information, so if you're a child at, say, three years of age,
and somebody told you that one plus one equals three, and then you take that information in,
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and then you get into college, and somebody has an equation for you, and then you come up with your answer,
and everybody else has a different answer, you're convinced you're right.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, because that leads exactly into my third point.
And we may discuss this at all. So this is pretty good.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
(11:52):
Well, after, yeah, I knew this was going to be good.
So the third one you've also touched on, and that is that the mind, one of its main job,
the subconscious mind, is to protect you, to keep you safe.
And so it does so by saying, I learned this from you, that, you know, the conditioning,
we have so far kind of work, so we're going to keep that going.
So it will use all that nasty self-talk to dissuade you, to keep you in that comfort zone,
(12:20):
free from risk and vulnerability, even if what's in there in that comfort zone isn't healthy for you.
Exactly. I use this story of if you walk two miles every day to get food,
and you had to navigate through snipers and landmines, but every day you got there and you got back.
So your mind now thinks I can do this, and then somebody goes,
(12:41):
Holly, what are you doing? There's a safe way, a hundred yards down that road,
it's lit, there's really safe. You're mind you're not accept that knowledge, right?
At value. So it will want, so that's why habits form.
Habits reform to give the mind research into whether this is safe.
And so if you didn't get killed every day, go in there,
(13:04):
somebody goes, go this way, your mind's going to go, oh no, I don't know that that's safe.
So the way to break that habit is to repeat something,
build a new neural pathway that provides, I say, think of repetition,
his research for the brain.
Yeah, that's awesome. I've heard it called laws of transformation.
(13:25):
That your brain creates these laws of transformation that any new idea must pass through.
Yes.
And if the new idea doesn't meet with that conditioning, it's often altered or rejected in favor of existing conditioning.
Exactly.
Again, going back to your background as an architect, if you were building something and some other architect comes in says, no, you're wrong, you didn't do that right.
(13:47):
They're not going to convince you by just telling you that.
You know, architects have big egos. That's right.
Besides the ego, you're also not going to say, hey, listen, I think I'm right. I'm not taking your word for it.
Give me proof.
Give me evidence before I'm going to change this drawing.
Otherwise, you could, if you just took his word and didn't challenge it, that's the way your brain works.
(14:12):
Right.
I'm not going to take what you told me as proof until I can establish it.
And I know it's safe.
Right. And so, so thank you for validating those three things I teach. I appreciate that.
You know, given, like I said, as an architect, my job is to take little pieces from all over what I've learned and put them together.
(14:34):
So, so thank you.
But then, like you said, then to change that, to do the research, I call it stepping back,
getting off that thoughts, emotions, and feelings, chaotic subconscious highway, so that you can look at it differently and question it.
And you've got a program, right, that you did you teach people, or how do we, now that we know these things in mind is habit-based,
(14:56):
it doesn't discriminate between good and bad conditioning, doesn't ask questions, and it will protect your existing programming.
How do you take that information now and start to change it, start to turn it around, it takes time, right?
It takes time because the mind wants proof, and it's not going to just make it. And it's actually a good reason, good thing that it does do that.
Because if I could come up to you and you've been doing something that's kept you safe all along, and I just say, oh no, you need to eat charcoal, or you need to eat poison, and you go, oh okay, I'll do that.
(15:28):
No, your mind's not going to accept it, because it's trying to protect you. So those habits, even if they may not be the best habit, have formed as a survival technique.
So the only way that you can do something is to make the changes slowly. So that's what our program does, is we have two reasons habits formed though.
(15:52):
So the other reason a habit will form is from trauma. So what I do is in our program, the first four hours of our program are all designed to reset the trauma loop.
Because it filters to its trauma to respond to its current environment because your subconscious is always in the moment, always present.
(16:14):
It even sees memory as present.
Yes.
It's a glitch. It's looking at old data in real time.
If you don't get that trauma out of the way, that's what created the habits and behaviors.
First we get that trauma out of the way, and then the person listens to a series of audios designed to make changes to the habits.
(16:40):
Because the habits won't change just because we resolve the trauma.
But it's a lot easier to change the habits when the trauma isn't pulling it back into a safety message.
If that makes sense.
Yeah, it does.
It does.
And my question I have for you then, is there...
So I have found that when you go back to all those old habits, and thank you for explaining the other way a habit is formed and how that...
(17:10):
I love, you know, we all...
Only life there is is in the present moment, but understanding that the subconscious mind is in the present moment seeing the past is very, very interesting.
But do you see it?
I find that I trust myself more.
The more I step back and question those traumas and get those out of the way.
Is there...
(17:31):
Where does trusting in yourself and giving yourself compassion for your situation come into all of this?
Well, it's a good part of...
That's what I sort of do in the program is get them to sort of take a look at it.
And I'll give you an example.
I had a lady who...
She had a very bad relationship with her parents.
She was very angry at them.
She's in her 30s.
(17:53):
And, you know, she got along with them to some extent, but she had a lot of frustration and anger about...
And then, so where to come from.
But when she was four, she had a sister, a nine-year-old sister, and then a one-year-old sister.
And so she was four.
And she says, and her parents went out, hired a babysitter, a male babysitter.
(18:14):
And he tried to sexually assault the nine-year-old.
And the nine-year-old was smart enough to say, let me put my sisters away.
I don't want them to see this.
And she hid them all in the bathroom.
Smart kid.
And he was going to be on the door, trying to get in, and they wouldn't let them in.
And then eventually the parents weren't gone for that long, and they came home.
(18:36):
And she says, and then he left right away.
And she goes, my parents didn't believe us, that that happened.
And so she said, so she was telling me that this really created a lot of anger in her,
that why didn't our parents protect us, why?
And so here's what I did.
This is exactly what you're talking about.
(18:57):
Let's step back for a second.
I said, you were four.
Is that right?
She goes, yes.
I said, I don't know because I wasn't there.
Is it possible that your parents did protect you?
Right?
They just didn't involve you in it.
Maybe they got that guy arrested.
Maybe he went, did you ever have him babysit again?
She goes, no.
(19:18):
And I said, he, where did he, they get him from?
She's, we worked with my dad.
Did you ever see him at work again?
No.
So I said, is it possible that your parents just didn't want to bring a four-year-old
and keep reminding her about this?
Handle it.
Got the guy arrested her.
And she goes, never thought about that.
And I said, and your parents never talked about it because they don't want to keep bringing this trauma up to a four-year-old.
(19:44):
So everybody sort of, now, was it the right thing to do to ignore it?
No.
But maybe that shifted her.
Because she had never seen, never taken that as a possibility that her parents maybe really did protect her.
They just didn't engage a four-year-old at it.
Wow.
So that's just what you're talking about.
Step back, let's take a look at it.
(20:06):
Oh, yeah, look at it.
Definitely.
Doesn't have the experience.
I mean, you can imagine if you had a four-year-old, would you want to bring her into court and have her witness seen all this stuff now?
Wow.
And that space, you're exactly right.
That space and that, that even that suggestion from someone they trust, you know, from a professional can really help to shift that.
Oh, yeah, getting, because otherwise you're in the middle of it, even in the present moment.
(20:30):
It's always, like you said, it's always there and it's influencing, it's influencing all your decisions.
Oh, how you move.
I know this.
I've lived it, you know, for 34 years.
I was, two years after I graduated college, I was put in charge of the largest historic preservation project in my state.
(20:54):
I had 10 to 20 men standing around me at construction meetings, all listening to what I had to say, large and in charge, but total imposter syndrome.
No.
Low self worth.
I couldn't even see what I had accomplished.
You can't even see it.
When you're in it, it's true, right?
You can't even see what, how it's affecting you.
Is that right?
(21:15):
Yeah, you look at all the celebrities that end up in drug use and all these people who are famous, you're thinking, oh, they've got everything going for them.
They have imposter syndrome.
They're figuring somebody's going to figure this out and realize that I'm not that smart.
I'm not that good, right?
And then it's going to come crack.
I'm going to lose everything.
Right.
And that's the way the mind works.
(21:36):
It's always going to be.
It's protecting you.
So the negative bias to protect yourself.
Yes, yes.
That's right.
And it's negatively biased naturally.
Not to hurt your skin, but to protect you.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
Well, if you are, if you're, if somebody's listening to this and maybe they're feeling that way, like an imposter or maybe they're stuck in that trauma, how do they get a hold of you?
(22:01):
What's the first best step?
Tell us, you know, tell, you know, what's what's their first step?
Like, if to, to try to figure out to know what they don't know, right?
Just they just know they're miserable or, or stuck.
What's the first step for them?
Well, we have a program.
We have a couple different ways of doing it.
One, you can come to Orlando and do a one on one with me.
(22:22):
Or we have an online version of it so you can do the whole program on your own, in your own home, by yourself.
And that's very effective.
I mean, my wife is my biggest fan.
But when I told her I'm going to do an online version, she goes, yeah, I don't think that's going to work.
It works amazing.
And so we've got a lot of really good results.
And we just shot it in virtual reality.
(22:44):
So we haven't launched that yet, but that's another version.
And then I do groups.
This next Monday, I'm going to be in Georgia doing a group of 50 wardens of prisons.
And I'm taking a group of 50 men, or men and women.
And through the program all in the same room.
That is amazing.
Nobody has to share their trauma.
(23:06):
So at no point do I need anybody to stand up and start talking about what happens to them.
I can clear the trauma without even knowing what it is.
Yeah, that is amazing.
That is amazing.
Because of how the mind works, right?
The mind asks, so the key is, and this is what I, people say, how do you do that?
No way.
(23:27):
And I said, the key is to get the mind into optimal condition.
And the optimal conditions will allow the healing to start.
The problem is when people have a lot of trauma, their mind never gets into that optimal condition
to heal because it's so focused on survival.
So what I do is create the optimal conditions for the mind and body to heal.
(23:49):
And then it naturally heals.
Dr. Wood, you have been ahead of me like every step of this conversation.
I'm just going to ask you one thing you wanted to leave them with.
And if that wasn't it, please tell me anything else.
Is that what you would leave somebody with?
Actually, do. Well, actually start.
And this is what I start with and it really sort of sums it up.
(24:13):
And I've had people sit and cry when I say this to them, even early on.
What I say to if I was sitting with you right now, I'd say,
Holly, there's nothing wrong with you.
There's nothing wrong with your mind.
Yeah, your mind works perfectly fine.
It's just dealing with a series of glitches and error messages that it keeps responding to.
All we have to do is clear that up and your mind goes back to optimal condition.
(24:37):
I love that. I love love love that.
Thank you so much, John.
I know that we have your information.
We have your links that we will put in the show notes.
Thank you for being here.
I've been so enjoyed our conversations.
And I hope the listeners out there have enjoyed it as well because it's again,
it's just some, like you said, there's nothing wrong with your mind.
(24:58):
It's functioning as it should be.
We just need to know how it's functioning and how we can change it.
Exactly. It's got information and it's relying on that information just like you as an architect.
If you've got the information.
Yeah, yeah. This being should hold up this, you know, this floor,
which holds up this roof.
And if it doesn't have right, exactly.
It's information.
(25:19):
It's a bio computer as it is.
It's totally a computer.
And I say, think of the brain as a computer.
The mind is the software.
Nice.
And the mind is running software.
And software is prone to glitches and error messages.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is.
It's one of my classes I teach is called simple and obvious.
We make it so complicated.
But it's really quite straightforward.
(25:40):
So thank you again for being here today, Dr. Wood.
And yes, thank you.
Yeah, please, please stay on afterwards.
Thank you to our listeners.
I hope this was helpful to you.
I hope this is, you know, helped you to understand kind of how the mind works
and how you can change it.
Please reach out to Dr. Wood on at the inspired performance institute.
(26:04):
I think it's inspired performance institute.com.
For more information.
And please join me for another episode down the road.
Maybe not.
Well, I have one more maybe in the upper valley of Vermont.
But please join me for another episode of Pay Attention.
Thank you.
Thanks, Holly.
Thanks for watching Pay Attention with Holly McNeil.
(26:25):
Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe.
See you next week on Wednesday at 10 o'clock, Pacific.
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