Rebuilding Yourself from the Inside Out | Mike Wood (EP 147) - Playing Injured

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:08):
This episode is about learning to genuinely love
who you are.
We're joined by Mike Wood, theCOO of an$100 million
construction company who alsopours his energy into helping
people break free from anxiety,depression, and old beliefs that
run their lives.
Mike didn't learn how to readuntil he was 25 and spent years
battling anxiety, but ultimatelyrebuilt himself from the inside

(00:33):
out.
In this conversation, he breaksdown the tools that changed
everything for him from boxbreathing and gratitude to
rewriting the subconsciousstories we all carry.
It's simple, it's honest, andit's full of things that you can
start to use today.
I hope you enjoy the show.
Who is Mike Wood and uh how doeshe spend his time today?

SPEAKER_02 (00:52):
I spend my days working for Jarrett Companies.
I'm a COO of a hundred milliondollar a year construction
company, and spend a lot of mytime trying to give back these
days.
Built a 10-week program, justlife coaching, teaching people
how to get rid of anxiety,depression, visit prisons, try

(01:13):
to work with people who've gottime to work.
Yeah.
Um just just trying to giveback.
That's what I my my focus isthese days.
That's what I want to do when Igrow up, is give back.

SPEAKER_00 (01:24):
Yeah, yeah, and giving back.
And also, too, you've had yourown battles with anxiety, with
depression, which is kind of howyou got into this work in the
first place.

SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:35):
I I guess take us through that.
I guess your journey with thatand how you even got into this
space of coaching other people.

SPEAKER_02 (01:44):
You know, I I kind of grew up I grew up in LA
County, and I have a rare formof dyslexia.
And I kind of grew up, didn'tlearn how to really read past
the second grade level until Iwas 25 years old.
And with that came a lot ofnegative core beliefs that were

(02:04):
created when I was really youngthat just haunted me.
You know, it haunted me until Iwas 27, 28, or 48, 49 years old.
And you know, I'm 50 52 now.
And you know, having thesenegative core beliefs that
you're stupid, it it just itkind of just haunts you.

(02:25):
And it it was it was prettytroubling for me, to be honest.
You know, it I I knew I wassmart at some level, but the
voices in my head kept tellingme otherwise, and I didn't know
how to deal with it.

SPEAKER_00 (02:36):
Yeah, you know, I uh when I was young, I struggled
with reading too.
Yeah, I would have to leaveclass at certain points to
really dig in and practice myreading.
I would have teachers send mehome with reading passages to
practice over and over and overagain.
Yeah.
And uh really that really didn'thelp.

(02:57):
I was just memorizing thesepassages until I started I just
started reading faster because Iwas memorizing what I was
reading.
But yeah, um, yeah, I struggledwith it, and I do think that it
did have, you know, an effect onmy kind of self-concept around
school, around learning, right?

SPEAKER_02 (03:15):
Yeah, your self-confidence, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (03:17):
Yeah, yeah.
It made me kind of try todevelop other things to make me
valuable, uh, be a class clownand act out a lot, you know.
But very interesting hearingyour story and kind of mine, and
and it was definitely somethings that I know I had to
break from from that earlychildhood.

(03:37):
So I know for you, so it soundslike you kind of until around 25
or so is when you kind of startto have a breakthrough and a
little bit of a.

SPEAKER_02 (03:47):
With reading, yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I I had a job whereI'd put out lane closures on the
interstate so everybody could goto work, and then I'd have all
this time.
All I'd have to do is stand upcones the rest of the day.
So I'd have hours sitting bymyself.
And and I just started readingthe front page of the USA Today.
And then, you know, after awhile, I would get past that
front page and I would go towhatever what intrigued me.

(04:08):
And it was politics at thattime, politics and sports.
And I just kept reading andreading and reading, got to a
point where you know I wascomfortable reading.
I I still have readingcomprehension issues, but you
know, with every curse, youknow, which dyslexia uh you
could say is a curse, but I'vebeen able to do math in my head
since I was three, and it'sproblem-solving math, you know,

(04:30):
like uh being able to do simpleequations in your head, and it's
really benefited me doing thejob that I do now.
And, you know, so it's just youknow, the lesson of of life is
to understand that not everyevery curse is is a bad thing,
not every bad thing is is bad,and not every good thing is a

(04:51):
good thing.
It's there's gonna be a yin andyang with everything.
So not knowing how to read leftscars, and I had to end it and
go through that, but you know,the other side of that is there
was a gift there that I justneeded to learn how to take
advantage of.

SPEAKER_00 (05:06):
It sounds like some self-de self-acceptance there,
right?
Yeah, and I know the tagline youhave is is learn to love being
you.
Yeah.
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (05:17):
Yeah, you know, so what uh I got to about 45 years
old, you know, and I had someother issues, you know, that you
know, you we talked before westarted here about young men,
you know, just trying to findtheir way.
And one of my other issues thatI had and I struggled with for a
very long time is being afraidto fight.
As a young man growing up inLancaster, California, at the

(05:40):
time, the this town I was in wasgoing through a recession, and
they had all the air airplanejobs, manufacturing jobs left
town, and so all these emptyhomes got filled with inner city
kids from Watts, LA, you know,just all these troubled areas.

(06:02):
And so we went from being a poormiddle class town to having
gangs, guns, and in our schoolsjust like instantly in junior
high.
And I I didn't realize it, butsometime in in junior high, I
just started being afraid offighting, you know, and and I
didn't know why, I was terrifiedof it.

(06:24):
I could I could put a helmet onand run full speed and smash
into somebody all day long, butI was scared of a fist fight,
and it didn't make any sense.
And I so I would run fromfights, and the shame of it from
like 12 to 18 made it to where Iwas so ashamed that I wouldn't
ever run again.
I actually learned how to box.
And so for the next three orfour years, I fought in the

(06:46):
street probably 70, 80 times,and I realized that I didn't
like hurting people, but I was Iwas fighting my own demons,
trying to figure out how to makethat fear go away because I
could never make the fear goaway.
So I started boxing, getting inthe ring, taking into a healthy
place, but I still could neverget rid of that fear, and I

(07:07):
realized the reason the wholereason I created this course is
rewriting old core beliefs.
And I realized when I'm 49 yearsold, that the whole reason that
I fought all that time isbecause my dad, who left when I
was one and a half years old,came to Tennessee and hung out
with him, and he was drunk onenight talking about how he never

(07:29):
went down in a fight, and itcreated some core belief because
I got into an elevated emotionand a clear intention was what
he was telling me that you youcan't look bad in a fight.
You have to you have to stay up.
And I and I created this corebelief that all of a sudden I'm
terrified, not of a fight, I wasterrified of losing a fight.

(07:49):
And it took me 30 years tofreaking figure that out, and a
lot of fights and a lot ofignorance and just a lot of
emotions that didn't need to bethere, but they were all created
off of a core belief that Irewrote and it all went away
just that quick.
And it's it's how thesubconscious mind works.

(08:09):
And over the last seven years,since I kind of went on a
spiritual journey here, itdidn't start out as a spiritual
journey, it started out as beingsick and tired of being sick and
tired.
You know, I I had achieved everygoal in life that I that I
wanted, you know, when as I wasyounger, I wanted a house, you
know, the the wife, the perfectwife that's beautiful, your best

(08:33):
friend.
And then you want enough moneyso she could stay home with the
kids, and then enough money tojust every next step that I set
out there, I achieved all thosegoals.
And I would be happy for about amonth, and then the voices in my
head would get louder and louderand louder, and I became more
miserable after each goal, and Ihad reached about every goal

(08:56):
that I could have possiblyimagined money, everything by
the time I was 45, and I wasstill miserable, and I realized
there was no achieving anythingin the outside world that was
gonna make me happy.
And I told my boss, the owner ofJarrett, a while back, I told
him, I said I was gonna quiet mymind by any means necessary, and

(09:16):
I meant it.
I mean, I just turned my focusinward, and over the last seven
years, I think I've just reallyunderstood what the power of the
subconscious mind and and how itactually works.
You know, we all drive a car,but nobody really reads the
owner's manual, right?
We're operating something farmore intelligent with this with

(09:39):
these bodies that is infinitelymore intelligent than per
virtually any computer that's onthe planet, and we don't know
how it truly works.
In the subconscious mind, likewe we breathe automatically,
right?
But we can take control over it,so it's it's happening
subconsciously, you know.
We walk subconsciously, we drivesubconsciously, and we react

(10:03):
subconsciously 95% of our days.
Scientists have basically saywe're living like zombies 95 of
our days, yeah.
And as I start to understandlike the rules of how the that
the supercomputer that we arethe programmers of, it works.
Now I can manipulate it.
Now I can wake make it work forme.

(10:23):
I could re I could reprogram itand and make it work for me.
And it it's like, oh my gosh,this is a gift.
You know, when I figured it out,I just want to scream it from
the mountaintops and and shareit with the world.

SPEAKER_00 (10:35):
You know, first, because uh we we definitely
gotta dive deeper into asubconscious mind, right?
But uh, you know, listening toyour story, I think it's
something that a lot of men gothrough, right?
You know, I think of Val, youknow, as a young kid, we you get
these beliefs, or you know,folks tell you, hey, if you
don't get girls, right, thensomething is wrong with you,

(10:58):
right?
And so now you try to doeverything you can to get the
validation and approval ofwomen, right?
And then you get that, and thenyou realize that this didn't
make me feel better, right?
I still feel empty.
Talk about money, right?
You get this amount of money andyou make this, then you will,

(11:19):
you know, you're the man, right?
And so you do everything you canto get this amount of money, and
then you get it, you know, youlook at your life and you're not
really excited about thedirection you're going, right?
You get an apartment or acertain house, and it's kind of
the dream house or the dreamapartment, and then, you know,
six months, a year, two yearsdown the line, you're like, you

(11:41):
know, at the end of the day,it's just kind of just a house,
and uh I've gotten used to itand I just don't feel it
doesn't, it hasn't done what Ithought it would do for me.
For a short period of time,these things feel good, but then
you still are back to where youwere.
And so it found it sounds likeyou go through a journey that a
lot of a lot of men go through.

(12:02):
Yeah.
And then you realize that, oh,the journey is the the inner
journey, right?
The mind, right?
Yeah, that spiritual journey ofof looking to kind of find you
know the love for yourself andand you know from source, right?
Yeah.
And you went down that journeyyourself.

SPEAKER_02 (12:26):
With with a serious intensity, man.
With an intensity.
Oh my gosh.
I I I was meditating three orfour hours a day.

SPEAKER_00 (12:36):
Right.
So tell me this, was there awhere was there some type of
pain that made you kind of gothrough this inflection point,
or was it frustration, right,that you felt that made you go
at this intensity?

SPEAKER_02 (12:49):
I guess what I oh my gosh, it was like a breaking
point, you know.
So like it, I I started, I gotthis job.
I've been at Jarrett for about12, 13 years now, and we grew a
company from two and a halfmillion dollars a year to a
hundred this year.
And it's it was on a tremendousgrowth curve.
Most companies go broke growingthat fast, 3,900 growth in in 13

(13:13):
years.
And in the middle of it, we hadsome problems.
And we I dove in and was fixingproblems and got to the other
end of it and realized how manymistakes that I made.
And so once I fixed all theseproblems and systems using the
problem-solving skills that Iwas gifted with, and I got the
business kind of structurallysound to where it was double

(13:34):
checks on everything, isbasically the systems.
And we got all those things inplace, and then I realized how
many mistakes that I had madebecause I did an autopsy of
everything and took extremeownership of whatever was going
on.
And when I got to the end ofthat, I was like, dude, this is
miserable.
Like, I am miserable.
I I am making more money than Iever thought I would make.

(13:56):
And my brain just won't shut up.
It was like with everyachievement, the noise in my
head was getting louder andlouder and louder.
It I knew I was doing good, Iknew I had everything, but I
didn't know how to turn thevoices off in my head that were
telling me I was stupid,unworthy, and unlovable.
Those were my three major ones.

SPEAKER_00 (14:17):
Say it one more time.
What were they?

SPEAKER_02 (14:19):
Ugly or not ugly.
So there's four major that weall have in common, but the
first one, ugly, I didn't reallyhave an issue with, but
unworthy, unlovable, and stupid.
Like we all, those are alluniversal for everyone.
We we all have issues and theyall fall into all four of those
categories.
Yep.
Wow, and they're and they're andthey're powerful, but once you

(14:41):
understand it, it's just it'sjust like we're computer
programmers.
That that shit that's coming onin our head, it's just coming
from a program, and it's easy tochange once you understand.
You know, it takes courage.
You have to have the courage togo face those fears because it's
scary and it's hard, it's noteasy, but the process is easy.
I've created a writing programthat you could do, you could

(15:04):
rewrite one within an hour byyourself once you understand the
the all the the process of beingable to do it.
Yeah, it's so for me, you know,it it wasn't one point, it was
an accumulation of a life livedof trying to feel better, trying

(15:25):
to achieve all the things and doall the things and listen to the
world and say you got to achievethis and do all this.
A lot of what you said, you saidit a lot better than than I did,
but it's all of those things,and then realizing you're still
freaking miserable.
And I have everything that Ineeded, and I was still
miserable, and it was evengetting worse.
It was it was getting worse.
You know, there's stories ofbillionaires, people that set

(15:48):
out their goal to become abillionaire, and two years later
they're ready to commit suicidebecause they thought that was
gonna fill the hole, and itdoesn't, you know, it it it just
doesn't.
The only thing that's gonna fillour hole is living in service to
others and quieting the mind,bringing 100% of our attention
into the present moment becausethat's the only place that peace

(16:10):
is found.
One of the things that thesubconscious mind does is it
pulls us into it, it lets usknow that the future and the
past is all a lie.
The only thing that it trulyexists is the present moment.
Right here, right now, talkingto you, this moment is the only
thing that's ever happened.
Everything that's ever happenedto us has happened in the
present moment.

(16:31):
So when I was in kindergartenand I couldn't spell my name
like everybody else, and Irealized for the first time
everybody else was smarter thanme.
I got into an elevated emotionalstate, and I got I left that
moment feeling stupid.
That's when I started spellingMike instead of Michael because
I couldn't spell my name.
In that moment, I programmedthat I was dumb.

(16:52):
That was the first time thatthat happened.
Now I would have lived with thatfor the rest of my life, feeling
that way, because it happened inthe present moment, and the
subconscious mind is trying toprotect us from ever feeling
that way again.
So it puts us on high alert,like scanning the room.
So I'm never gonna feel stupidagain.
And in doing that, it makes usthe noise of being on high

(17:14):
alert.
One, it pumps cortisol, which isliterally killing us all and
making us sick.
But then two, it it pulls usinto the past instead of being
able to be present in the in thepresent moment.
So it's the subconscious mindliterally has no concept of
time.
Everything that has everhappened to us is still
happening right now.

(17:37):
It's kind of powerful becauseit's it's it's a curse and it's
a gift, and it's the cursebecause it's the pain is still
happening now.
But the beautiful thing is thatwe can go back, we could use our
imagination right now and goback to any moment that was
negative and filled withnegative and fear, a moment like

(17:59):
that, and we could rewrite it.
We could use our imagination,give compassion, love, and
forgiveness for everybodyinvolved.
Like, so if let's say my dad didsomething to me, or my you know,
a student or something made mefeel a certain kind of way, I
can go back to that moment withmy imagination because the
subconscious mind doesn't knowthe difference between

(18:19):
five-year-old me and now, and Icould use my imagination,
reframe the whole thing withcompassion, love, and
forgiveness, and all of a suddenit moves it out of a fear bucket
to where the subconscious minddoesn't have to protect us from
it anymore, and now all of asudden that memory is gone, and
I don't have those all thosebullshit thoughts coming in my
head all day long, every day,telling me I'm not worthy, I'm

(18:42):
not love lovable, and I'm stupidbecause that memory is gone.
That old core belief is yeah,it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 (18:51):
Yeah, so you talked about first being in a
heightened emotional state,which left the imprint of
whatever moment it is.
Yep, that's how it gets created.
Right.
First, it's that it's that highemotional state.
Yes.
And so now, and then you realizethat the subconscious mind

(19:13):
doesn't have a time stamp,right?
It it is now there to protectyou.
And pretty much it develops likethis container of capacity,
right?
You start to go a little bitthere, don't go, don't go too
far, right?
We don't want you to feel likethis again, right?
Yep.
And so then you are saying inorder to reprogram it, you need

(19:39):
to imagine it, right?
Yep.
Almost put yourself back in thatemotional state and reimagine
what should have happened orsomething that was more of
benefit to you to reprogram thatinto a more positive imprint as
opposed to a negative imprint.

SPEAKER_02 (19:59):
You were following along.

SPEAKER_00 (20:01):
I'm following.
I'm following.
Yeah, I'm following.
And so I think, you know, we wetalk a lot about therapy, right?
You talk a lot about going inand spending some time for
healing to go back to a lot ofthese moments, right?
And I think a lot of people areeither afraid to go back into

(20:23):
those moments or they don'tspend time there.
They they talk about thosemoments, but they don't
necessarily reprogram it, right?

SPEAKER_02 (20:32):
That's that's where my struggle.
I I I think therapy, traditionaltherapy is is great for a lot of
reasons.
It helps you understanddynamics, it'll help you
understand somebody's asociopath, or you know, it lets
you understand the dynamic andhelps you navigate
relationships.
It's beautiful for that.
But going back to heal, justgoing back and talking about

(20:54):
your old trauma and notreprogramming it is it does
nothing for you.
You could talk about your traumaall day long and all you're
doing is digging it up andstaring at it.
You're not doing anything for soa lot of what I I have a I have
a hard time with traditionaltherapy for uh some reasons.
Because if you just if if a kidwas you know molested as a kid

(21:17):
and you just dig it up and youand you just having them relive
it, that but it's almost gonnamake it worse on them.
Now it might it if once youbring in forgiveness, now all of
a sudden you can start thehealing process, right?
And it's in every majorreligion, like it Jesus talks
about it, like he was on thecross, right?
And and as he was getting nailedto the cross, he said, I forgive

(21:40):
you, for you know not whatyou've done.
That didn't do anything toabsolve what was happening to
him, but it freed him from anypain that I was causing because
it's all mental.
When you free somebody, Istarted practice unjust instant
forgiveness for everyone a whileback.
And I started practicing in thecar, right?

(22:01):
You're on the way home back towork, somebody's gonna cut you
off.
Like it's it's inevitable.
Somebody's gonna cut you off, dosomething silly.
I instantly started forgivingthem the moment I would get cut
off because it freed me fromthat pain.
I would just make up a storylike, oh man, this kid's got to
this dude's gotta get home tohis kid, his kid's sick, you
know.
He I hope everybody's safe andwell.

(22:22):
I, you know, I wish him nothingbut the best.
Now I I'm maintaining my ownpeace in my head, and we can get
into this too, but there's twochemicals that are being
produced at any one time, andthe they get produced based off
the content of our thoughts.
So if I'm having negative,fearful thoughts, it's producing

(22:43):
cortisol.
If I'm having compassionateloving thoughts, I start
producing cortisol.
And there's a switch in yourbrain that's going to go off and
get flipped it after two minutesof having either one of those
thoughts.
So if you just constantlymaintain compassionate loving
thoughts, you're over here in ain a drug-induced state of

(23:03):
happiness, right?

SPEAKER_00 (23:05):
So you said first I I what you said cortisol, and
then what was the secondchemical oxytocin?
Oxytocin, right?
Yeah, that's the love, the love.
The love drug.
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (23:15):
Yeah, I believe that we are built in a way that the
opposite of love is not hate,it's fear.
Because that's how our brain isdesigned.
It's chemically designed toreact to fear, and and this is
how the the brain works.
Like it's designed, everythingabout all of this is designed to
protect us.

(23:35):
So let's imagine that you're atwo-year-old little boy and
you're walking along the edge ofa pool and you fall in, right?
You you get air, you get waterin your lungs, somebody picks
you up out of there and you'refreaked out.
You can tell you, you know, youcouldn't breathe for a second,
somebody saves your life.
The subconscious mind is gonnatell that little boy to hold
that memory at a high level.

(23:57):
So the next time it's walkingalong the edge of the pool, it
goes, Oh, hell no, I can get onthere to that pool.
I'm freaked out by it.
And it and it forces you to stayover here so you don't fall in
the pool and drown the nexttime.
That's how the subconscious mindis designed to protect you.
The problem is, is it's going toprotect you from everything that
you put everything that youattach to your ego.

(24:21):
So, like, Josh, what do you dofor a living?
I work in IT project management.
All right.
So I'm gonna say something, I'mgonna say something mean.
All right, but you just it'sjust a it's just a little trick.
All right, let's do thiswhenever I'm coaching with
somebody.
All right, Josh, if I tell youright now that you are the
shittiest IT guy that I haveever met, yeah, in your gut
right now, did you just feel afunky little feeling?

(24:43):
Like it's like you have aphysical reaction, yeah.
Okay, so that's that's yoursubconscious mind protecting you
because you have attached beinga good IT guy to your to your
ego, what I would say yourChristmas tree.
You hung the ornament on yourChristmas tree that says you're
a good IT guy.
Now that's just an attachment.
So the subconscious mind istrying to protect you from any

(25:05):
attack on that, the same way itwould that little boy falling in
the pool.
They're not the same thing.
So if I tell you right now,Josh, you are the shittiest
attorney I have ever met in mylife, that you have no physical
reaction, yeah, because youdon't have that on, you've not
attached that to your tree.
So the problem with thesubconscious mind now is we're

(25:28):
all running around here sincewe're two years old.
We start putting attachments onourselves.
I'm a football player, I'm afriend, I'm a good son, I'm a
husband, I'm a dad, I'm a I'm aI'm a friend, I'm all of these
things.
And now, if any of those thingsget attacked, I have that
physical response in my belly.

(25:49):
Yeah.
And and so, like one of the oneof the biggest things that I
ever took off was being ahusband.
And so when my wife came to meand she would have a moment of
like, hey, what are you doinghere?
What's going on?
Because she stays at home andI'm at work with a lot of you
know young, beautiful people orwhatever.
And she asked me a question.
In the past, I'd be like, Don'tyou know that I love you?

(26:12):
Don't you know I give youeverything?
I would have a physical responsebecause I was trying to defend
myself.
But now, when I take that off mymap, when she calls me, if she
has any kind of rough moment, Icould simply just be calm with
her and go, okay, baby, help meunderstand what's going on so I
can make you feel better.
What could I do?
You know, so because I don'thave that physical response that
you just had in your gut, right?

(26:33):
Because I I remove all of myattachments.
You know, I started out withremoving a shoe guy, you know.
When I did it the first time,I'm not gonna be a shoe guy
anymore because I wear Jordansevery day.
With this outfit, I wear Jordansover to work, but and then I
took off being a Titans footballfan because it was making me
miserable every time they lost,and then I took off politics.

(26:53):
You know, I used to be a big oldDemocrat, wanting to argue and
come home and watch football orwatch you know, MSNBC or the
news, and it was making memiserable.
So I I literally in one episode,I took off all three of those
things, and it's so simple todo.
All you gotta do is say out loudthat I no longer identify with
being a Titans fan.
Yeah, I I I enjoy watchingfootball, but I'm so much more

(27:15):
than a Titans fan.
And all of a sudden, it can'taffect me no more.
As long as I'm you just told thesubconscious mind that's that's
an ornament that's no longer onyour tree.
And so within a week, my lifechanged just by doing removing
those three things.
Now, when my shoes got dirty, Ididn't care.
I was like, it's just shoes,it's wonderful.
I'm grateful I'm wearing theseshoes.
I don't care if they get dirty,they're they're meant to get

(27:37):
dirty, you know.
So those attachments is what'sthe subconscious mind is in
conflict with because that's notreally a threat to our life.
None of those things are athreat to our my life, but the
subconscious mind is defendingit as if a gun's being pointed
at my head.
And so that's what creates allthis turmoil in our body because

(27:59):
that that physical response thatyou had when I said that to you,
it's it's 99% of the people thatI say that to, they have the
exact same response becauseanybody who cares about their
job has now attached that totheir ego.
And now the subconscious mind isgonna do everything it can to
protect you because it thinksthat's your life, it thinks
that's who you are as a physicalbeing.

SPEAKER_00 (28:21):
And you know, we talk about uh attaching
ourselves to you know a lot ofthings, you know, your your
career, um like you said, howyou stand politically, yeah, you
know.
Yeah, it's a big deal.
Yeah, what you do for a living,yeah, like you mentioned, your
water, your race, religion,right?

(28:42):
And so you feel the need todefend it.
You don't even have an open mindto other folks and other people,
right?
And you have this, it's almostlike you are trying to prove
that your way is the right way,right?
As opposed to kind of justletting go and and flowing,
right?
Yeah, and and protect honestly,it's almost just self-protection

(29:06):
from the emotional charge thatyou feel, right?

SPEAKER_02 (29:09):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (29:10):
When you have conversations and different
things like that, it's almostlike poison.
They talk about kind of poisonthat you have inside of you, you
know, as opposed to just flowingwith love, right?

SPEAKER_02 (29:19):
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Because when when you do releaseall of that, you know, I I could
literally ask anybody, and theanswer is always the same.
You I may have to ask itmultiple times, but like, all
right, what's your what's yourgoal in life?
Somebody's gonna say, you know,I want to retire, I want to make
this much money, I want to findthis person, I want to do all
that.
But at the end of it, you wantthat to be happy, right?

(29:41):
That it's for you so you canfind peace and and joy.
Well, peace and joy is rightnow, you can find it right now.
We don't need to search, wedon't need anything for it.
Like all that stuff in the 3Dworld, everything out here that
you can see with your eyes open,it's not gonna bring one ounce
of peace.
It's how we process theinformation as it's as it's
working through the systemthat's gonna bring us peace.

SPEAKER_00 (30:02):
Yeah, you talk about these because you know, even we
mentioned it before, right.
We have all these differentthings that we feel like we need
to obtain for a certain feelingor a certain emotion.
You know, whether it's it'sself-respect, whether it's
feeling the feeling of beingvalued, you know, the three

(30:23):
things you a few things youmentioned, feeling worthy,
feeling lovable, right?
Feeling smart, right?
Yeah.
Beautiful.
And and feeling feelingbeautiful, right?
Handsome.
So you you do everything you canto restrict your diet and
everything like that.
And put all this pressure on it,right?
For for a feeling, for emotion,right?

(30:45):
And like you said, you can feelthese things in the moment.
And then when you do do thosethings, you do it from a place
of abundance, right?
From a place of love, as opposedto kind of a place of gripping
and grinding for it, right?
You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (31:03):
Well, you anything we try to hold on to is going to
cause us pain.
Doesn't matter what it is.
I I realized I was doing thisfor a while, that I would go out
and just randomly have the bestnight ever.
And then that next weekend, Iwould try to mimic that night
that I had the week before, andeverything would just be a
disaster.
Everything nothing was funnylike it was last week, nothing

(31:25):
was natural like it was lastweek, everything because I was
holding on to how much fun I hadthe weekend before, you know,
and they were just signs.
It was the universe trying totell me, you know, that you
can't hold on, and I just wasn'tlistening to the to the to the
message.
But anything that we attach toand try to hold on to it's is
gonna bring pain.
We we just this life is supposedto be lived like like we're in

(31:48):
the middle in a kayak in themiddle of a river, and all we're
supposed to do is let thecurrent carry us down.
Maybe we need to steer away fromyou know rocks in the in the
thing, or maybe you know, keepourselves from hitting the
banks.
But so we do have to stay awake,but we don't have to, we don't
have to paddle, we don't have todo anything.
This this this the world is theuniverse is just gonna carry us

(32:11):
down the river beautifully, andand it's not about a goal out in
front of us, it's it's ajourney, it's every step that
gets us to that place.

SPEAKER_00 (32:20):
Yeah, that's yeah.
No, you I mean you hit it righton the head.
I'm I'm thinking about one ofthe things when I came into this
year, you know, I was thinking Iwanted uh I wanted to be okay
with things not going the way Iwanted.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (32:38):
It's acceptance, right?

SPEAKER_00 (32:39):
Acceptance.

SPEAKER_02 (32:40):
Yeah, this is Buddhism 101.

SPEAKER_00 (32:42):
Not having, not necessarily having an agenda
with certain things, right?
And it's so tough.
And then, you know, uh formyself, I it was uh it's it's
been quite a few things thisyear that have not gone the way
I wanted it to go and how Ienvisioned it to go.
And what it does is it's it itis painful, right?

(33:05):
Because I realized that I wasattached to it, I had a kind of
an agenda, but also too, what itwhat it's made me do is kind of
step back in faith and lookwithin and trust that something
better or bigger that I couldn'teven imagine or fathom is on its
way.

SPEAKER_02 (33:25):
You know, this brings me to a cool little, you
mind if I tell you a little bit,but yeah, yeah, this is great.
So, like it's wise old farmer,right?
Back in the day, you know, athousand years ago, there's a
wise old Chinese farmer.
And he had at that time, if youhave a horse, you're rich.
All right.
So he's got his horse out there,and his horse runs away.

(33:46):
And here comes the neighbor, thelittle guy, and he's like, Man,
I can't believe this happened toyou.
This is this is terrible.
You you know, you just lost yourhorse.
This is the worst thing thatcould ever happen to you.
And the wise old farmer justlooks at him and says, Man, I
don't know if this is good orbad.
About a week later, his horsecomes back and brings a mare
with him.
And here comes the littleneighbor.

(34:07):
Oh my gosh, you're so rich.
You have two horses now.
Your horse came back and broughtyou another horse.
You're the richest man that Iknow.
I you have two horses.
And the wise old man just lookedat him and said, I don't know if
this is good or bad.
So, about a week later, hisoldest son is trying to break
that bear and gets kicked offand breaks his leg.

(34:28):
You know, the oldest son runningyour farm for you.
You know, that's a big deal.
Here comes a little neighboragain.
Oh, that horse is the devil.
I can't believe this happened.
Like, what are you gonna do?
How are you gonna farm your landwith your without your help of
your son?
And the the wise old farmer justlooked at and said, Man, I don't
know if this is good or bad.

(34:49):
About a week later, militarycomes to town, there's a war,
and they're taking the oldestsons and drafting them into the
military, but his leg's broke,so he ain't going.
So, the moral of the story isjust we don't ever know if
anything is good or bad.
And it it's not for us to decidewhether it's good or bad, it's
it's the journey, it's the upsand the downs.

(35:11):
It's it that is what isimportant, is for us to accept
it all as a gift that we're evenliving this life, the good and
the bad.

SPEAKER_00 (35:19):
Yeah, yeah.
And yeah, you know, I've I'vedefinitely heard that story
before, but every time I hearit, it just makes me smile of
like you don't know.
And so just just just allow it,you know, and and respond well,
right?
Because uh, you know, somethings that can happen to you,

(35:42):
right?
It probably wouldn't make yousuffer as much.
Oh, not anymore uh than thingsthat would happen to me, right?
But we we all uh everybody hastheir own thing that they're
dealing with internally thatmakes them respond in another
way or not, you know.
And that story is just always uhamazing to me because we can

(36:05):
look back on our own lives andlook at certain situations like,
man, if that didn't happen, thiswouldn't have happened.
If this didn't happen, then thiswouldn't have happened.
And so uh you can always evenwith the when you know we can
put quotations, right?
When the bad things happen,yeah, you can know that it's

(36:26):
something for our benefitcoming.
Yeah, so let's attack it, let'sattack this.

SPEAKER_02 (36:31):
Yeah, yeah, let's enjoy this, let's let's be pay
patient.
Like, I don't know for you, butlike for me, a lot of when bad
things happen, I used tooverreact and make them worse.
I would compound it by myreactions instead of just being
peaceful, calm, compassionate,not throwing any darts, not
trying to defend myself.
That would have made my life somuch easier, and I would have

(36:53):
moved through life a whole lotsmoother.
But you know, those reactionsthat I had that were were loud,
emotional, they made me dumb,you know, and they and they do
for everyone.
You know, moving to a businessstandpoint, because I've kind of
taken the spiritual world andbrought it to work, right?
And and I've used all this atwork, every aspect of all the
spiritual world.

(37:14):
I use it at work, and and andthe world is catching up.
Forbes top 10 list of the mostsuccessful companies, they all
just they rank emotionalintelligence two times higher
than your IQ.
And the reason is because whenwe get into an emotional state
and we get elevated, we just getdumber.

(37:35):
So it doesn't matter how smartyou are, if you're in a pressure
situation, you that you'relosing your IQ points by the
second.
You you literally become dumbwhen you become emotional.
And those who are able toregulate their emotions and keep
their emotions in check are theones that are able to thrive in
stressful situations andmaintain their ability to think

(37:58):
in the middle of a you know apressure cooker.

SPEAKER_00 (38:01):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, we've all donedumb things.
Oh, I have.

SPEAKER_02 (38:07):
Oh my gosh.
I got a laundry list.
I hope we don't talk about allof them.

SPEAKER_00 (38:13):
So you talk about taking control of your thoughts,
and we talked a little bit aboutit, right?
Yeah.
But man, I can imagine as a COOof a of a of a company, how many
thoughts go through.
And then even when you talkedabout all the success, all these
thoughts coming through.

(38:34):
And I think a lot of men whenthey're living their day-to-day
lives, they got all thesedifferent thoughts that come
through.
And thoughts, they don't evenknow where these thoughts came
from, right?
It's just crazy thoughts.
I guess how have you found to beable to quiet the mind or or or
calm the mind for yourself?

SPEAKER_02 (38:57):
That the best and easiest way for anybody to do it
is with breath work.
The the one I teach in week one,I basically want everybody to
start is is the box, Navy SEAL'sbox breathing, right?
I don't know how if everybodythat knows it's listening to it,
but basically you just inhalefor four seconds, you count in
your head, and then you holdyour breath for four seconds,

(39:18):
and you exhale for four seconds,and you hold again, and you just
keep that cycle going.
The Navy SEALs it's a very rareelite group, right?
And the Navy decided they wantto figure out how to recruit
these special individuals thatactually make it through.
Because they had like a 350people show up for a for a

(39:41):
training, a three-week trainingcourse, and like six, seven,
eight people make it through.
That's it's it.
And so they'd need more NavySEALs to do things in the world,
so they'd want to find more.
And they did a they theyinterviewed every Navy SEAL for
15 years and did a study.
They found out that they had twothings in common.
The only two things that all ofthem had in common.
Some were big, some were small.

(40:03):
So it it size nothing, nothingmatched up except for these two
things compassion for yourfellow man and mastering the
breath work that they teach you.
And and the reason why isbecause they both quiet the
mind.
If you and I became friends inthe in the Navy SEALs, right?
We're both in there, we're twoweeks into a three-week program

(40:26):
and we're miserable, right?
We hadn't been sleeping, wehadn't been eating, they've been
running us, working us out 18hours a day, we we ain't got
that much food in us.
And if your brain, if you and Iare on a 10-mile run and you're
like, F this man, I'm I'm done,I can't do this and shit no
more.
If your brain starts telling youto quit, you're gonna quit,

(40:48):
right?
But if I'm running alongside youand you know you're my friend
now, and I'm like, You ain'tquitting, Josh, you ain't
quitting.
If I gotta carry you to thefinish line, me having
compassion for you now, justturned my brain off.
Right now, I'm not thinkingabout quitting, I'm not thinking
about how painful I am.
I'm just gonna keep moving.

(41:09):
And the breath work does thesame thing when you bring 100%
of your attention into that NavySEALs box breathing technique,
just a simple focus on yourbreath, it turns the brain off.
It's a simple trick and itbrings you into the tension into
the present moment where thereare no thoughts, you're just
present in the in the moment,and now all of a sudden, all the
anxiety comes down, and yourbody will just go, it'll just

(41:32):
continue to go.
David Goggins has proven thatthe body will just go and go and
go if you don't let it stop,right?
So that's what it's about isabout turning off that mind.
So the the trick that I use now,because you know, I sit in I got
seven different companies,right?
And so one of the things that'suh integral is a double check on

(41:53):
everything.
So we have morning meetings fortwo or three hours every single
morning, starts at six o'clockand go into eight or nine
o'clock every morning, andthat's the meat of my day.
And some of these meetings canget boring, but we go over every
job, we touch on everything, andso we write all the notes on the
day, and that they don't do itnext week.
I can do it, so I can manageseven companies by sitting in
those meetings in the morning.
But if I lose focus or I can getin there and just you know, lose

(42:18):
it, but I'm nobody even knowsthat I'm doing it, but I'm just
in there doing my box breathing.
I do a different form of it, butI'm just in there focused on my
breath.
And I leave those meetings, Ifeel revived, refreshed, amazing
when I leave the meeting becauseI haven't had any thoughts for
the last two, three hours.
Yeah, you know, and I just goback, go back to my breathing,
go back to my breathing throughthrough the time.

(42:39):
So for me, that's an amazingway.
But there's there's Eckhart Tollhas a great book out, The Power
of Now.

SPEAKER_01 (42:47):
Power of Now, yep.

SPEAKER_02 (42:48):
Yeah, and it's it it he calls them portals into the
now, and there's hundreds ofthem, there's thousands of
portals into the now.
Like everybody's ever heardeverybody's heard the phrase
stop and smell the roses.
That's a portal into the now.
If you just close your eyes fora second, take in whatever
smells you can, try to identifythem.
You're in the present moment.
The brain is turned off, allyou're you're focusing on your

(43:10):
senses, you've just now turnedyour brain off and brought
yourself into the presentmoment.
Like there's literally hundredsand hundreds of ways to just
bring your attention into thepresent moment.
But but breathing is, you know,every rel every major religion
on the planet talks about this,but it's it's that's where the
breath of God was was breathedinto us.

(43:32):
The the breath is how you accesseverything.
Like I can control my lungs orthey can breathe subconsciously.
So I I can't physically make myheart beat faster by focusing on
my heart, but I can take controlof my lungs and make my heart
slow up, slow down, or speed up.

(43:53):
Same thing with the pulse in mybrain.
Like it it beats at three orfour times the rate of my heart.
But if I slow my breath downenough, that calms down.
And after about 15 or 20minutes, I can make them pulse
at the same rate, which doessomething pretty amazing.
And it's it's a whole meditationand whatever.
The the deeper you take it, thefurther you go inward, it just

(44:16):
keeps opening up and opening upand opening up, and you just
gain more access to a hiddenworld that's that's pretty
powerful and amazing.

SPEAKER_00 (44:24):
100%.
And you, you know, I the breathwork thing, I've I've really
gotten into it.
I would say maybe over the lasttwo, three months or so of kind
of meditation, breath work.
And obviously, I've heard ofbreath work and meditation,
maybe most of my life, honestly.
And then you kind of go throughthese ebbs and flows, right?

(44:45):
And then, you know, now, youknow, I actually did some breath
work this morning for fiveminutes.
I mean, it's called called a uhpsychological sigh, where you
take a deep breath in, hold it,then you take another short one
in through the nose, then youlet it out through the mouth,
right?
You do that for five minutes.

(45:06):
And obviously, box breathing isis amazing.
Yeah, but you know, I guess yousaying it, I didn't realize how
much how it does make you morepresent, even than just
meditation itself, right?

SPEAKER_02 (45:22):
When you just sit there, you know, you still kind
of yeah, it brings you into thepresent moment, tells you it
tells your entire system I amsafe.
It it literally tells yourentire system that you are safe.
Your subconscious mind can relaxbecause you've just switched it
all over and let it know thatthe true self is here, we are
calm, we are in control.

(45:42):
I got this.

SPEAKER_00 (45:43):
You got it, yeah.
And and I think this is such abig tool for men to listen to
because your mind spirals, andthen that's how you talk about
the anxiety and depression andgetting into these low states
and almost kind of uh uhcreating these things in your
mind, right?
Spiral, and these are just kindof just stories and a lot of

(46:05):
times illusions that you'retelling yourself.
You know, Mark Twain has a greatquote where he says, A lot of
bad things have happened to me,and some actually happen, right?
Something along those lines.
Yeah, only some of it actuallyhappened, right?

SPEAKER_02 (46:23):
Yeah, and because it's all a segment of your
memory.

SPEAKER_00 (46:25):
Yeah, he says, you know, I a lot of things have
happened to me, but only a fewactually happen, right?
And so a lot of times it is ourmind spiraling and our mental
and these stories that we'vetold ourselves over and over,
and if you can have these toolsof kind of regulating your
nervous system, calming yourmind down with breathing

(46:45):
techniques, things that can takefive minutes, right?
Out of your day.

SPEAKER_02 (46:50):
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
So here's another quick littleone.
So we that when you just saidthat, you know, your mind starts
to spiral.
The reason our minds spiral is acortisol, it's a drug-induced
state.
Well, the reason why it spiral,because cortisol is designed,
it's that fear state that itputs you in.
So, like cortisol is designed.

(47:10):
Let's say you and I we're gonnaget paid a million dollars,
right?
And we got to go stay in thewoods for one night.
The catch is there's a hungrylion in the woods, right?
So we're gonna go out there,we're gonna get some sticks,
we're gonna climb a tree, andwe're gonna we're gonna be on
high alert, right?
The lion's not there, but we'reon high alert.
That cortisol is gonna bepumping through us because

(47:33):
cortisol is designed to keep usalive, it's designed to keep us
on high alert.
Because if we just got crawledup in the tree and fell asleep,
the lion's gonna come eat us andwe're you know, we're dead.
But if we're prepared, we mightbe able to fight the lion off
and survive.
That's what cortisol is designedto do.
The problem is now we got allthose attachments and we got

(47:53):
these things that that thatsubconscious mind is defending.
And when that cortisol goes in,it puts you on high alert, it
wakes you up.
That's why sometimes you you'relaying in bed thinking about
shit and you can't sleep.
You're ruminating on the samething, the same thing.
It's cortisol keeping you awake.
It's a it's a drug that'sliterally killing you, it's

(48:14):
poison into your body, but it'skeeping you on high alert for a
potential threat.
And the one of the best toolsthat anybody can use, and it's
kind of corny for men.
Men, let's get over this.
It's a little corny.
I'm gonna let you know this isamazing and it works every
single time because at twominutes of compassionate loving
thoughts will switch off thatcortisol and you'll be able to

(48:36):
go right to sleep, right?
If you if you're having a hardtime going to sleep, get out a
pad and paper and start writingat right at the top of the
paper.
I am grateful for, and thenwrite a dot and say, I'm
grateful for the air in mylungs.
I'm grateful for my family, I'mgrateful my kids are healthy,
I'm grateful that I could see,I'm grateful, and just write
whatever it is you can think ofthat you're grateful for for 10

(48:57):
minutes.
The first two minutes, it'sgonna flip that switch in your
brain.
You're gonna stop makingcortisol that's keeping you up
and not allowing you to sleep,you're gonna start producing
oxytocin.
Then after another eightminutes, you're gonna have
enough oxytocin, you'll be ableto go right to sleep.
Won't even have a problem doingit.
And it's just because you changethe content of your thoughts and

(49:20):
then thus changing the chemicalsthat your brain is making, and
it allows you to go to sleep.
So on random days, I'll stillwake up and I won't feel very
good.
I'll go to work and I knowsomething's in there in that
stomach, like we we identifiedearlier, because I live in
oxytocin so much.
Now, if I have a random badfeeling, I if I'm left alone

(49:41):
with it, I'm gonna chase it downto its source and make it go
away.
But on random days, I'm at work,I don't have time, I don't have
the silence, whatever.
I'll just grab my notebook andstart writing what I'm grateful
for for 10 minutes, and that'sgone.
It it won't it won't haunt me nomore or it'll go away.
My stomach will feel amazing,everything is safe, I'm
beautiful, and I'll just move onwith my days.

(50:01):
The thing that happens, so I Iteach this in my program in in
week one.
One of the two of the majorthings is uh a gratitude journal
and box breathing or one ofthese other tools.
And if you do, there's lots ofways to program a subconscious
mind.
One of them is auto suggestion.
So if you do something everyday, like learning how to walk
or drive or whatever, you becomereally good at it, right?

(50:23):
It just all of a sudden startsto change who you are, and now
all of a sudden you drive andyou don't think about it.
Well, if you wake up everymorning and you write for 10
minutes what you're gratefulfor, you're just gonna start
randomly having thoughts thatyou're grateful for stuff in the
middle of the day without eventrying.
So you're gonna program yourmind to just be grateful all the
time, and then you'll just be inthis drug-induced state all the

(50:45):
time, and you're gonna feelamazing.
And you ain't even gone back andhealed anything.
This is just a manual shift ifyou're feeling bad, where you
could start to do this and itworks.
You know, we should have allbeen taught this in in first
grade, you know, kindergarten.
This is stuff that we could alldo.
And my when I when I realizedhow powerful this was, my son

(51:05):
was seven and he'd come upstairsfor the first time, freaked out,
like in tears, snot coming outof his nose, and he's just
freaked out the boogeyman wasgonna get him.
And I've been doing a gratitudejournal for about three months
at the time.
And I was like, Tuck, I knowwhat's wrong with you and I can
help you.
And he's crying, he's like, Oh,okay, well, what are you gonna
do?
I said, Tuck, you just gottaplay a game with me.
And he he said, Okay, but Idon't know how to play.

(51:28):
I said, It's really easy.
All you gotta do is say whatyou're grateful for.
And he's still crying, like, butyeah, I don't I don't know how
to do that.
I said, It's easy, I'll gofirst.
So I said, I'm grateful for ourhouse.
He said, Okay, but I don't knowwhat I'm grateful for.
I said, Well, what about yourcats?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm grateful for Leroy and Nala.
All right, so now we're going.
And he's grateful for his mama,and then he's grateful for his

(51:49):
room, and he's grateful for allthese things, and we we're going
after about two minutes.
He ain't crying no more.
I'm like, wait a minute, is thisreally working right now?
After about five minutes, he'ssmiling.
After about 10 minutes, we'relaughing, we're having a good
conversation.
15 minutes in, and I'm like,Holy shit, this little boy was
just terrified.
Yeah, and he is happy, smiling,just going nuts.

(52:13):
And I'm like, All right, Tuck,time to go back downstairs, get
in bed.
Gave me a hug, went downstairs.
I never heard another word fromhim.
And that was the day that theGrateful Game was born in my
house where we play the GratefulGame whenever he's not feeling
good or whatever, or we'll justdo it randomly because you know
he's a young kid and wants toplay a game with his dad or
whatever.
But I was just blown away.

(52:33):
I knew it was working for me,but I just watched a little boy
go from panic stricken about theboogeyman gonna get him to going
to sleep 15 minutes later.
I never heard of that, like, butit's just a simple switch of the
content of his thoughts made thechemicals in his brain switch,
and he's ready to go to sleep.

(52:53):
He's drug-induced happy 15minutes later.

SPEAKER_00 (52:56):
It's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 (52:57):
Yeah, focusing on the good, yeah, focusing on the
good, but it has a it has aphysical response, you know.
Right, we're back to greenscreen.
I don't know if you can seethat.

SPEAKER_00 (53:07):
Yeah, I do see it on my end.
I'm I'm back on green screen forfolks who are listening.
Okay, here we are.
Yeah, and so you really you youare focusing on the good.
Yeah, and I think a lot ofpeople when they get into a rut,
they are in this state ofconstantly thinking about the
bad.
Right.
You get into a rut, everythingis negative, everything is ah,

(53:31):
the world is against me, ah,they keep nagging me.
Ah, I can't catch a break asopposed to, man, it's a lot of
good.
You just gotta look, you justgotta focus on that.
Yeah, right.
And then all that other stuff,you know.
You like you said, I love howyou you said it, you switch the
flip.
I mean, you you flip the switch,right?
Yes in your mind, right?

SPEAKER_02 (53:51):
Yep, and you start it your brain chemically starts
producing different chemicals,like it's science, like science
has proven that when you dothis, it switch it changes the
chemicals in your brain.
It's like, why do we not knowthis?
It's because they're sellingdrugs to us and nobody wants to,
that you ain't gonna make nomoney off.
Everybody learns how to play thegrave game.
There's no these drugs are goingaway.

SPEAKER_00 (54:13):
These drugs will go away.
All these drugs.
And you know, I uh you you saidanother big thing.
I think, you know, learning tolove being you is forgiveness,
self-forgiveness.
Yeah.
And I think it's so much in mylife, so many things.
I'm like, man, I wish I wouldhave done this instead.

(54:35):
Uh man, I wish, you know, I, youknow, maybe took this a little
bit more serious.
Maybe I would I wish I wouldhave focused in here a little
bit more.
Man, I wish I wouldn't have saidthat in that moment, you know.
And so we got all everybodywho's listening to this, you and
I, we have a lot of things wherewe can go back and wish we would

(54:57):
have done things differently.
And when it comes to thatself-acceptance, when it comes
to loving yourself, I think it'ssome self-forgiveness that has
to come in play.

SPEAKER_02 (55:09):
Forgiveness is everything.
And for me, that was one of thehardest things for me to do.
And it took me about nine monthsof a process to kind of get
there.
And it didn't start with thefocus on me.
And and one of the things wasthe trigger of it, is I I kind
of just had this, you know, weall have beliefs and we have
knowings, right?

(55:30):
We know we're talking here rightnow, but people have beliefs
about religion and and whatwe're all here for and whatever.
But it this the fact I I Ibelieve this is this is a
knowing for me, what I'm aboutto say, is that we're all
connected, we're all one, right?
Yeah, we're we're this is theessence of God in all of us is

(55:53):
is this is God experiencingitself through us as
individuals, like it's havingall these experiences.
We're it says it in every majorreligion, it says it in
Buddhism, but when it when itbecame a knowing for me, when I
started to experience it, I Istarted to realize that when I
say something bad or somethingnegative, I started having a

(56:14):
major aversion.
Like I would feel terrible.
And it I started to realize,well, this is another
subconscious mind thing.
The subconscious mind doesn'tknow that anybody else exists or
it truly understands that we areall one.
Because if you say somethingnegative about anyone, you are
going to have a negativephysical reaction to it.

(56:37):
You may not know it because wemay not be sensitive enough to
feel it.
But if you live in oxytocinenough and then you say
something negative, it is goingto immediately pull you into
cortisol and you're going tofeel it.
But if you live, if you live incortisol, you're never gonna
know the difference.

SPEAKER_00 (56:51):
Yeah.
It's just like food, right?
It's just like food.
If you used to eating a healthydiet and you eat something bad,
you'll feel it, right?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (56:59):
If you're sensitive enough, you're you're gonna
you're gonna feel it.
So for me, the way that I wasable to finally start to have
love and compassion for myselfwas giving unconditional love to
everyone, doesn't matter who itis.
If somebody's doing something tome, I love them anyway.
So most of us don't trulyunderstand unconditional love

(57:21):
till we have a kid.
But why shouldn't I love my kidthe way that I love my kid?
Why shouldn't I love you thesame way?
Why should I hold that love backfor you?
You know, I just met you, Idon't know you, but that love
that I gave my kid was amazing.
I didn't ask for anything inreturn.
I just I loved him from themoment I saw him.

(57:42):
Well, why shouldn't I do thatfor you and everybody else that
I meet?
And when you actually start topractice that out into the
world, then you're gonna startto realize, oh man, I messed up
here.
And well, wait a minute, I justforgave everybody else for the
last six months for everythingthat they did and their their
mistakes and their errors.
And well, what about me?
I I I deserve that too.

(58:04):
And and for me, that's how itcame full circle for me the a
practice for the last year, twoyears of unconditional love for
everyone, which isn't easy.
But once I was able to make thata practice in my mind and
actually try to implement that,then when it came back around to
me, all those mistakes that I'vemade, all those regrets, well,

(58:25):
hell, I've done forgivingeverybody else for all of their
stuff.
Now it's easy.
And when you realize that we'reall connected, you can't do one
without the other.
You can't forgive everybody elseand not forgive you, or you
can't forgive yourself and notforgive everybody else as well.
It's it's symbiotic.
We have to forgive everyone, andmost people have a problem with

(58:50):
one or the other.
The people that I've worked withthat have gone through my
program, that typically have amost people have a harder time
forgiving themselves becausemost people are willing to just
help people, they'll give themthe shirt off their back.
Most people are genuinely kindand want to do for others, but
they don't give themselves thesame grace and forgiveness.
They don't, they just neverpractice that.

(59:20):
So when you have those corebeliefs, you're like, okay, yes,
I want to help everybody else.
Because obviously, Josh, youdeserve it, but I, you know, I
got these thoughts in my headthat tell me I'm not worthy, but
you know, you are, of course youare.
But it's it's a symbiotic thing.
We need to do it for everyone,and then it makes it easy to do
it for ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 (59:40):
Yeah, you know, you you just said something big
there because I know for myself,right?
If if you and I talk aboutthings not going my way, if
things don't go my way or I makea mistake, or you know, things
just they don't pan out.
Yeah, I start to look inward atmyself instead of looking at the
full picture, right?
Okay, what what are all thefactors here of why it didn't go

(01:00:03):
the way it did, right?
Yeah, I think some of it ishealthy to look at yourself.
To grow, right?
And then it sometimes it can getto a point where it's some shame
there and you are not ready torebound and keep going.
Right.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:19):
And so it's hard.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so what I realized is that Iwas having these beliefs of when
things go wrong, I must not begood enough.
Right.
Yeah.
Or I'm unworthy.
Right.
Yeah.
And so I spiral.
Right.
And so it, you know, being ableto be aware of that and kind of
flip the switch, being able totalk with you and have a

(01:00:42):
conversation with you isreminding me that, hey, let's
look at the good, let's flip theswitch, and we can always kind
of look at our own internalbeliefs and start to flip them.
Right.

SPEAKER_02 (01:00:53):
You know, there's a there's a basketball analogy,
right?
I grew up playing basketball,love basketball.
Michael Jordan, he said a quoteof his just shook me.
I was like, oh my gosh, ofcourse you're the greatest of
all time.
This one statement that he said,he said he didn't care if he
ever missed a shot.
How powerful is that?
Because all of those oldnegative things were never

(01:01:14):
haunted him.
He did he just kept taking thenext shot because he never cared
if he missed a shot.
Like that's unhuman.
That that that if you could takethe shot keep missing the shot
and just know you're gonna makethe next one and just keep
taking the shot.
That's that that's that's that'sthe secret sauce, right?
But yeah, who has the power inthe mind, mental power to not

(01:01:37):
care if you ever miss a shot?
Like to truly not care if youfail on the to hit winning the
game, winning shot, right?
Yeah, and that, but that's whatcreates the ability to be the
greatest player of all time.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:50):
Yeah, 100%.
And then I think that's what itgoes back to of getting our our
internal right.
So, you know, when you'reshooting these shots, whether
it's in business, podcasting,whatever your endeavor is, yeah,
you're coming at a from a placeof abundance, you know.
Yeah, whether you fail, whetheryou succeed, it doesn't get to

(01:02:10):
your head.
And when you fail, it doesn'tget to your heart, right?

SPEAKER_01 (01:02:14):
Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:14):
And so, I mean, it's a it's a beautiful place to be
in.
So I'm thinking aboutsubconscious mind again, right?
You talked about gratitudejournal, the gratitude gain,
gratitude as a whole.
Yeah, you also talk about breathwork, being in the present
moment.
What else?
What else is there to help folksin terms of meditation, man?

SPEAKER_02 (01:02:38):
Like so you you got you got a handful of things, you
know, removing things from yourfrom your Christmas tree,
removing ornaments, it's a bigdeal.
Like you could go through allthis stuff.
You could I realized becauseI've rewritten close to 200 core
beliefs, you know.
I've done this whole process.
I've imagined myself back into apainful place, reframed it with

(01:03:00):
compassion, love, andforgiveness.
And I now I mean I have a hardtime finding new ones, right?
It's a gift if I feel bad, so Ican go find it.
But then I realized some days Iwas still feel bad.
I was like, what is happening?
Well, I realized it wasn't anold core belief chasing me
anymore.
Now it was an attachment that Ihad.
So then I had to really focus onattachments and give them get
them get them away.

(01:03:20):
So my program, it's 10 weeksbecause it's filled with there's
a lot of things that make up amentally healthy person, right?
It's not just one thing, it's alot of things.
And the first three weeks of itis is manually taking control.
So when you do face all thedifficult challenges, you could

(01:03:44):
manually bring yourself backinto a peaceful place.
And and because the first threeto five core beliefs somebody
does, it it stirs up the entiresystem and all these old core
beliefs, they don't like it.
Your system hates it, they hateall those negative core beliefs
because there's like protectorparts, and they call it internal

(01:04:05):
family systems.
Like so you have this hurt childthat's three, and there's a
protector part trying to protectit, and none of it wants to do
it anymore.
You you free five of them, andthe system starts to go nuts,
they all start to scream, and soyou're two months into doing
core beliefs, and you're youfeel 10 times worse than you

(01:04:26):
ever did.
You know that you're healing,you know that you're on the
right path, but without allthese manual tools to actually
calm it all the system downmanually, you you'll quit.
You won't do this.
This is a challenging thing thatthat the program that I'm built,
but this is the only wayforward, like logically, these
are action items.
One plus one equals two, andthis will work, it works for

(01:04:47):
everyone.
Now, there are some folks thatI've run come across that are
chemically imbalanced, you know,and they just need to see a
doctor and they need to getchemicals because hormones throw
things out of whack.
But the healthy, miserableperson, which is most people,
will all benefit from thisbecause we all work the same
way, our systems are all workingthe same way.

(01:05:07):
So I guess to answer yourquestion, there's a lot of
things that can really help.
So gratitude, breath work.
The next thing I move people tois meditation.
And in the meditation, there's abeautiful moment when we have
we're sitting there payingattention, we got our headphones

(01:05:27):
on and we're meditating, andwe're listening to a guided
meditation, and we're followingalong, and then all of a sudden,
squirrel, we're over herethinking about work tomorrow,
and with and we realize we'vebeen thinking about that for 30
seconds, and then that momentwhen you realize, all right, I'm
thinking about work tomorrow,and I and I'm meditating.
Whoa, wait a minute.

(01:05:48):
I'm I got two thoughts there.
There's a moment when yourealize that you are somewhere
other than where you're supposedto be, there's two thoughts
there.
Wait a minute, we can't have twothoughts at the same time,
right?
You ever have two thoughts?
You can't have two thoughts atthe same time.
What is happening in thatmoment, though?
There are two thoughts.

(01:06:09):
And if you hold on to thatmoment, those thoughts in your
mind's eye start getting furtherand further away.
And you can only last for asecond, two seconds, three
seconds, four seconds, fiveseconds, five seconds, you you
done hit the jackpot.
And what I mean by that isbecause the further that gets
away, you start to ask thequestion who's who's staring at

(01:06:30):
these two thoughts?
Who's witnessing these twothoughts?
It's you, you are the witness ofyour thoughts.
That's the true self.
And it's really the first timefor most people that they ever
actually are in a place wherethey realize that wait a minute,
I've just detached from mythoughts and sat in the witness
seat, and and that's a that's agolden nugget.

(01:06:53):
And so, like at the third week,we're we're meditating, or
actually that's that's yeah,that's week two.
And we we get that moment, weget that separation between our
thoughts and our and our trueself, and we get familiar with
the witness, the true self.
And that's a powerful momentbecause the way the brain works

(01:07:16):
is like if you dive into an ITproblem, right?
So you got the problem here, andyou take your mind and you just
immerse in it, right?
You are in it, you're notthinking about nothing.
You you you in that moment,that's that's a form of
meditation.
Single point of focus is ameditation.
So when you're diving into an ITproblem, you are literally
meditating.
You probably enjoy your job whenyou're doing that because

(01:07:38):
everything's calm, everything'srelaxed, you're not thinking
about the future, past, you'rejust in the problem.
That's what the mind is supposedto be used for, but then we're
supposed to take that tool,which is the mind, and put it on
the shelf and let it sit there,right?
That's what yogis do, that's whythey meditate in in caves for 15
years, so they could put thatmind on the shelf when they're

(01:07:58):
done using it and then livetheir days in the present
moment.
But when they need the mindagain, you grab that tool off
the shelf and you and youimmerse yourself with it.
But most people don't have theability to separate from it, so
that is a major tool that Ibelieve you could only learn
through meditation.
So it doesn't matter if you'regood at it.

(01:08:19):
Actually, sucking at meditationactually is a good thing because
you you have more opportunitiesto catch that moment when you
realize that you just gotdistracted and then hold on to
it as long as you can.
And when you get separation, nowall of a sudden, that awareness,
it's like Wizard of Oz when theypulled the curtain and it's just
the little old man back there,he's not scary.

(01:08:41):
It you your body has a systemawareness that you can't undo.
It's like seeing the little olddude back there, you're not
scared anymore.
And when when you when you havethat moment where you've
disconnected from your thoughtsand you've it's kind of
visceral, and you know from thatpoint on, every thought you

(01:09:02):
have, it's not yours, you'redisconnected, you're the witness
witnessing that thought.
So if you're having a negativethought that you're unlovable,
unworthy, you know, ugly,stupid, whatever it is, you can
go, oh no, no, no.
You can laugh at it and you canreframe it.
And so that's what we actuallydo in week three is we start a
writing exercise to practicereframing them.

(01:09:23):
Because once you get good atcoming up with imaginary reasons
to change those thoughts, nowall of a sudden it just starts
working on a thing.
My brain literally will catch anegative thought and reframe it
before I ever think about it.
Yeah, because it became it'sit's just like driving.
I I programmed my subconsciousmind to catch them and reframe

(01:09:44):
them, but you can't do thatuntil you get separation.

SPEAKER_00 (01:09:47):
Yeah, 100%.
You know, I had a doctor on theshow, he well, he's a
psychologist, Dr.
Eddie O'Connor, and he mentionedhow all animals have a
protective mechanism.
And as humans, ours is worry,right?
It's the mind.
Yep, giving us work trying toprotect us, right?
And it was created that waybecause we needed it in

(01:10:09):
obviously these pure prehistorictimes where we need to be
protected and where worrying wasactually helpful, right?
To have these protectivethoughts.
And now it's not necessarily ashelpful, right?
And so, like you said, we canseparate from these thoughts.
Oh, that's that's almost likesomebody, you know, talk to me,

(01:10:31):
right?
And and also too when we startto detach and take these
ornaments, like you mentioned,off the tree.
Yeah, a lot of times thesethoughts will stop even
bothering us, right?

SPEAKER_02 (01:10:43):
Just like that.
Just like that.

SPEAKER_00 (01:10:45):
It'll stop that stop bothering us.
If we stop to identify withcertain beliefs, a lot of those
thoughts wouldn't won't evenmake sense anymore.
Like, yeah, that's that's yeah,yeah, you can laugh at it.
Mike, tell me this.
You you talked about three, sousually those first three weeks
in your program seem to be themost powerful, right?

(01:11:07):
Those first three weeks, kind ofgetting rid of or taking control
of your thoughts.
Yeah, the emotion.
Yeah.
So, and you mentioned obviouslygratitude, breath work, yep,
meditation.
Is it anything else to helpfolks to take control of their
thoughts, of their emotions?

SPEAKER_02 (01:11:27):
You know, those that those are the manual ones
because you know, after ameditation, you're gonna feel
great, it's gonna calm thesystem down.
The breath work, I highlyrecommend, you know, when you're
driving around in a car, justpractice breathe breathing.
You know, it's like practicingfor the big game.
If you if you practice boxbreathing when it's calm, when
you come into a high pressuresituation, if you just let the

(01:11:49):
emotions overrun you and youdon't catch it before it reaches
a certain point, like you're notyou're not gonna box breathe,
you're not gonna do anything tostop it.
The the trick is to catchsomething before it gets too
heightened.
And so when you startpracticing, I have I have people
basically set a timer threethree times a day, right?
You set one nine, ten o'clock inthe morning, mid-morning.

(01:12:11):
Let's I'm assumed everybody hasthe same work schedule I do,
right?
So you you do the typical nineto five.
So sometime after you get towork, you set a calendar
reminder to go off every day,and then another one sometime
after lunch, and another onesometime after you get home.
And you when it comes on, itjust says now.
What time is it?
The time is now.
So you bring your attention intothe present moment and you use

(01:12:33):
one of five tools that I givethem.
But the most powerful one is isthe box breathing.
And so if you practice threetimes a day for two minutes,
it's six minutes.
I mean, everybody's got sixminutes, right, to to calm your
system down.
But then when the emotions gethigh and you actually use it,
let's just say you you got aboss that triggers you once a

(01:12:55):
week.
If you can use box breathingwhen they trigger you, and let's
just say he triggers you and yougo up to a seven.
Well, then if you use boxbreathing to catch that before
it gets to a seven and calm yoursystem down, the next time your
boss triggers you, it's onlygonna go to a 6.75 because you

(01:13:17):
just told the system I'm incontrol, I don't need to protect
you as much.
I see how strong you are, and soyou're not gonna you're just
gonna naturally start yourability to take control of the
system and not respond in such aquick negative way.
So if you continually do it, ifyou practice, it's one thing
when you're calm and whatever,but if you practice when you're

(01:13:39):
actually agitated, somebody cutsyou off in traffic or whatever
your triggers are.
We all know what triggers us.
Catch that and box breathe inthose moments, and that calms
the whole system down and justtells everybody, I am safe.
You know what's her name?
The most one of the famousself-help folks male robbins.
Mel Robbins, yes, you justpulled it right out.

(01:14:00):
That's that's Oprah's Oprah'slady, right?
Yeah, she basically says thatall problems are coming from
we're not we don't feel safe.
And when you breathe like that,when you calm the system down by
breathing, you're tellingyourself you're safe, and that's
literally what it is.
That guy that was talking aboutyou know how the system is

(01:14:22):
designed to put you on highalert because you need to be
safe.
He's a hundred percent right.
That that is literally whatwe're doing.
We're telling the system we'resafe when we're using box
breathing, and it's it's it'sthe most powerful way to do it
because it slows the the theheart rate down, and in turn,
your brain beats at a higherrate.
After a couple minutes of doingthis, the brain starts the the

(01:14:45):
beat of your brain, the pulse ofyour brain, it starts to slow
down, moves you into a differentphase, and now every the whole
entire system just says, Icouldn't be in this place if I
wasn't safe, and so the wholesystem just relaxes and calms
down.
And so if you just did boxbreathing and a gratitude

(01:15:06):
journal, your entire life willbe different.
Your entire existence will bedifferent because it doesn't
matter if you heal, you're goingto manually shift yourself into
a place of abundance, joy, andpeace just by by doing this.
And the rest of my program, onceyou get to week six, seven, and
eight, we actually teach peoplehow to heal.

(01:15:27):
You go back and and heal fromthe things that haunt us, and
that's that's extremelypowerful.
We got about three weeks mixedin there that is perspective
shifts.
You know, you're an energeticbeing having a human experience,
and you explore all of yourenergy centers in your body, and
it it lets you know that I hey,wait a minute, there's shit
going on inside of me that I hadno idea was real, and and you

(01:15:51):
it's a perspective change.
Learn to love being you is a isis one week, it's a whole
perspective change, and thenauthenticity is another one
because that's a whole notherthing.
If we could go, we could healourselves from everything, but
if you're lying to yourself,you're gonna be miserable.
If you're not being honest, likethe body will physically respond

(01:16:13):
in a negative way if you're notbeing honest with yourself, and
and that's a whole nother thing.
Like you could do everything inmy program, do everything, but
if you don't know how to behonest with yourself, you're
gonna be miserable, whether it'sthe job you're supposed to be
in, or if you're just lying toyourself, period.
Like it, you're gonna bemiserable.

(01:16:33):
So I try to touch on everythingthat I've discovered to be able
to bring peace.
And I'm realizing I'm stilllearning and I could probably
add stuff to my program, but youknow, the the major things that
people can get, and you're gonnahave a joyful life and you are
going to physically change.
I've had people in my programthat were on anxiety meds, the

(01:16:54):
highest level of anxiety medsfor three, four years before my
program.
And within a week and a half,they stopped taking their
anxiety meds and they're donewith them.
They never went back, they neverhad any issues with it.
And all they do in the first twoor three weeks that actually
helps them is the box breathingand and the gratitude journal.
The gratitude journal just setsthe day, it sets the tone and

(01:17:16):
says, today's gonna be today, isa great day to have a great day.
And and your body just respondsand just takes off in that
direction.
So anybody who's struggling, youdo got to heal, and there's all
this stuff that you got to do,and it's scary, and it is what
it is, but do these manualthings that aren't manly, right?
But the bot Navy SEALs are someof the baddest dudes on the

(01:17:39):
planet, and they could do thatstuff.
We should all be able to do it,and that'll that'll calm down
the anger, it'll it'll repairrelationships, like like I was
talking about with my wifebefore.
Like, if I respond in a in a bigbravado macho way whenever
there's something emotionalgoing on, like I I'm not the
best husband, you know, it'sit's the the relationships are

(01:18:01):
gonna be filled with pain andand suffering, even though we
all love each other and we'llbattle through it, but it
doesn't have to be that hard.
And some of my biggest regretswere the were the pain that I
caused to the ones who wereclosest to me because of the way
I responded when I got into anemotional state.
Box breathing will will helpwith all that, it'll build

(01:18:22):
relationships, it'll help thingsbe calmer and smoother, and and
we won't feel the need to justyou know respond with a with a
fist, with ferocity, withemotion.
It'll help us calm our emotionsdown.
So yeah, that's that's prettypowerful stuff.

SPEAKER_00 (01:18:40):
Oh, yeah.
You I mean it your your program,it sounds amazing to kind of go
in first.
It's like here's where we're attoday.
Yeah, right.
Let's let's fix today, and thenlet's go back and fix yesterday
and start to untangle thosethose wires that we have, and
then let's bring it back totoday and to the future, right?

(01:19:03):
So yeah, what else?
What else is going on in yourworld?
And where can people find you?
Where can people continue tofollow your journey?

SPEAKER_02 (01:19:12):
You know, I my program can be found at
learntelovebeing you.com, right?
Pretty simple to find me.
What's going on in my world?
I've got a book coming out onall of this.
It's my journey, you know, a lotof my struggles that we spoke
about on here and a few more,just kind of me really opening
up and showing my scars and andhow I healed from them.
Hopefully, other folks canrelate with.

(01:19:34):
But then you know, the book isis is really just the life's
mission.
You know, I well, I've actuallygot a manifestation program kind
of working on in the background,and one of the most powerful
things that anybody could do tomanifest is to do for others,
right?
You can't manifest anythingthat's not in the greater good

(01:19:56):
of at least two other peopleother than yourself.
And most people don't understandsome of these universal laws,
but I've figured some of themout and I've been using them,
and it's pretty amazing when youstart to.
But this is the goal, the thelife's mission.
If you truly want to be happy,you know, you live in service of
others because we're allconnected, we're all one.
So when I'm being when I'mgiving to the world and I'm

(01:20:17):
trying to figure my my path out,it it's lighting up my world.
So that's that's kind of the thenext phase.
That's what I'm doing with thenext chapter of my life, is is
really trying to figure out away to uh just give back on on
as many levels as I possiblycan.

SPEAKER_00 (01:20:33):
Yeah, I love it.
Well, like I said, you know, inthe summertime when that book's
drop, when that book drops, Iwould love to have you on.
No, I mean we can dive, we coulddive deeper into your story,
right?
We can kind of go deep into itand you know, really kind of
celebrate the book.
So I'm excited for that.
I'm excited for that.
Man, uh Mike, uh just you know,the time went by fast, right?

(01:20:58):
We shared a lot, right?
We shared a lot.
And uh it was a lot of nuggetsthat you shared with us, and you
know, really practical, right?
Really practical and verysimple.
And I hope folks were able tofollow it and you know they can
listen to it a few times tostart to use some things today
that will help their lives.
And so I appreciate you takingthe time and joining us.

SPEAKER_02 (01:21:20):
Oh man, thank you for having me and your your
questions and your dialogue.
And yeah, you're a veryintelligent man, and it this was
a great conversation.

SPEAKER_00 (01:21:29):
Yeah, I love it.

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Rebuilding Yourself from the Inside Out | Mike Wood (EP 147)

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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;}Rebuilding Yourself from the Inside Out | Mike Wood (EP 147)