Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Why does smokers smoke because they're smokers. If you have
a smoker who's quit, you said a smoking Oh do
you want a cigarette?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
No, I've quit, and they have the identity of a
smoker who's quit, there is a ninety percent plus chance
that they will be smoking again with an x amount
of weeks or months. Why because their identities.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I am a.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Smoker who's engaging in the behavior of quitting, which is
counted to my identity as a smoker. An identity will
win over behavior every time, Whereas if you change your
identity to I am a non smoker and somebody offers
you a cigarette, it's effortless. Why because I don't smoke.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. I'm doctor Fleet Maler,
and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of
authentic transformation. In each episode, I'll bring you insights from
leading experts to explore trauma recovery, mindfulnance practices, positive psychology,
and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness and life optimization. This
(00:58):
is a space for real converse stations that inspire meaningful change,
helping you find alignment with the person you are always
meant to be. Let's get started. Hey, friends, his fleet
real quick here before we dive in. If fear or
anxiety has been running the show in your life lately,
like it has for a lot of us, you got
(01:19):
to check out the Rewiring Fear and Anxiety Summit. I've
teamed up with over fifty five leading experts to give
you real, practical tools to break free from stress and
take back control. It's free, it's powerful, and it could
change your life. Head to Rewiringfearanxiety dot com and sign up. Now,
all right, let's get into the show. What if the
(01:40):
biggest limits on your success aren't external but the beliefs
you've unconsciously adopted? Peter said, Serial entrepreneur, best selling offer
and world renowned expert and human behavior joins me for
a profound conversation on the power of belief systems, identity,
and self mastery. We explore how neuroplasticity shapes our success,
(02:01):
why questioning our deepest assumptance is the key to transformation,
and how shifting your self image can elevate your performance
in every area of life. Peter shares insights from decades
of experience working with governments, members of royalty, Google, and
NASA breaking down how our financial, professional, and personal limitations
are often self imposed. Whether you're an entrepreneur, leader, or
(02:24):
someone looking to break through to your next level, this
episode is packed with game changing wisdom. This conversation will
challenge you, inspire you, and if you're willing completely rewire
how you see yourself in the world, let's dive in.
Myw is doctor Fleet mull your co host with this session,
and very happy to be here today with Peter Sage.
Welcome Peter.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
That's thrue pleasure, really glad to be here, Thank you
for the invite.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Today we're focused on rewiring your beliefs, or rewiring our beliefs,
or performance and success. So you've spoken often about the
intersection of neuroplasticity, belief systems and shaping our success, and
so I wonder if you could delve into how rewiring
our neural pathways and neuralplasticity allows us to do that
(03:09):
directly influences our capacity for high performance and success in
our personal and professional lives.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
No, absolutely, and I think one of the first things
to understand is to actually just revisit what the term
belief actually is, because you know, if we're going to
start walking down a corridor. Let's make sure we're all
in the same corridor, right, And so a belief is
essentially a feeling of certainty that you have about something
to be true, or a feeling of certainty about something
you know not to be true. But it is essentially
(03:36):
a feeling of certainty. And when you realize there are
many different types of belief. You can have global beliefs
where you completely use your beliefs to whitewash a category
of people, like all people from this country are fill
in the bank. You know, rich people are fill in
the bank. Well, you can have local beliefs and most
common for most people that are looking to rewire their beliefs,
(03:57):
especially around performance, not so much the external beliefs. It's
the internal beliefs in terning. I mean, what do I
believe about myself? Because that's a whole rabbit hole most
people don't like to go down, or they start to
avoid or get lost. And when you realize that we
all star in a particular movie called the movie of
(04:19):
our life, and I know that. You know, for example,
you star in that movie called the movie of your life.
And I know that for a certainty because you're the
only person that's in every single scene of that movie.
You know, there are no co stars in the movie
of your life. And so if we start to realize
that our entire experience of life, whether we choose to
(04:40):
be the star, create the script that we want to
act out, take the oscar at the end of the performance,
or whether we just bomb and get the raspberry, doesn't
have hardly anything to do with what most people ascribe,
which is the externals. It's got everything to do with
your belief as an actor in that movie, your self worth,
(05:02):
your self belief, your self validation, your confidence, your value structure,
so many different things. But it's all an internal game.
So if we're talking about performance, most people get trapped
in the externals around performance. Oh, I've got to do
better in terms of against that benchmark. The only benchmark
you want to be concerned with is the one in
the mirror. Your biggest obstacles lie there famous Henry Ford quote.
(05:25):
You believe you can, you believe you can't. You're right.
So when it comes to understanding, the first belief that
I invite people to question is the one they're most
certain about. Why is that because once something is locked
in it operates in the background. You know what separates
human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom. We
can't run faster, we don't have sharper teeth, we don't
(05:47):
have claws, we can't out smell. How do we rise
to the top of the food chain. Well, it's because
we have something called a prefrontal cortex, which essentially allows
us to outthink our competitors, not outrun them. And so
when you look at the evolution of the crowning achievement
of human biology, that from part of the brain. It's
pretty valuable real estate, meaning that when we are able
(06:10):
to use critical thinking and reasoning, something that animals can't do,
certainly not to the extent that we can, and you
are forming through those deductions that reasoning certain conclusions that
we then adopt as what we call beliefs. Now, because
that front real estate of the brain is so valuable,
it's also the slowest form of thinking. By the way,
(06:31):
that's why martial artists who are unconsciously competent do well
versus people that know what to do. But they've got
to think about it because it's slow. Now, when somebody
throws a tennis ball at you, you're not expecting. You
don't think about which hand to catch the ball with.
Instinct takes over. And that's kind of where we're heading here,
because that front part of the brain needs to be
(06:53):
kept clear for critical tasks. So if we are supposedly
intelligent and we make the same reasoning the same deductions
over and over again, there's no need to hand it
to the front part of the brain, So it hands
it to the mid brain, and it becomes what we
call a habit. And habits are based upon a lot
(07:15):
of the beliefs that are now unquestioned. They are adopted.
You've no longer pulling the rug up to look what's underneath,
to question if what you put under there is still
viable for you. In this day and age, most people
are running around with belief systems that they had when
they were teenagers, and they're yeah, let's call it close
to our age. So you'd look pretty silly if you
(07:37):
were wearing the same clothes you had as a teenager,
or as a ten year old or a twelve year
old walking around in your fifties sixty seventies. So why
do people do it with beliefs? Because their trained condition
would be a better tip to no longer question it,
and it forms part of who we are in the
autonomic process, and we have a label for that now,
we call it a personality. But you can change beliefs
(08:01):
very quickly. The problem is, when most people's beliefs are ingrained,
the only thing that tends to change them are what
we call a significant emotional event. Now, if you're an
athlete looking to get better performance, if you're a CEO
looking to dominate in industry, you can't afford to wait
for a significant emotional event. You have to be able
(08:21):
to have a process within yourself that says, Okay, I
accept that I have a definition and identity, a sense
of self, but what part of that am I still
taking for granted? I'm a great believer that one of
the most useful skills a person can develop is the
ability to ask quality questions. Why questions are the steering
(08:42):
wheel of the mind. Questions direct focus. Your brain is
like a faithful labrador when it comes to questions. You
throw the stick, It's gonna go fetch it, And a
lot of people are trained to throw lousy sticks. Ah,
why does this happen to me? Why does my life stuck?
Why did I screw up again? Now you throw the stick.
Your brain doesn't care what kind of stick. It is.
(09:03):
A labrador. It's going to bound off and bring you
back the stick, and it's going to say, oh, because
you're a smart because your teacher said you'd never amount
to anything, because your elder brother got all of the attention.
Because because because, and you will eat that and you
will resonate to that level of awareness. And the labrador
gets this moldy, soggy stick out of the puddle and
drops it on your clean, white carpet, and you feel miserable.
(09:25):
So the first thing when it comes to beliefs or
changing beliefs is to learn how to question beliefs, and
most people aren't willing to do that because they're too
busy being addicted to their own sense of self. And
the one area that I see this impact people more
than any others, there's a great example in this cascades
down into all areas of life, specifically high performance. But
(09:48):
if we use this as an example, because I think
a lot of people relate to it, even if you're
not an athlete or a high performance person, let's talk money.
Most people's beliefs around money are massively counterproductive. And why
is that? If you ask somebody what are your beliefs
around money? What do you believe about money? You will
get out of one hundred people a hundred different answers.
There'll be some very common themes you have to work
(10:09):
hard for. It doesn't grow on trees. Only rich people
have it. I'm not smart enough, or I'm unlucky, or
I make it but I can't keep it, or all
of these affirmations, these beliefs just around the topic of money.
And if you ask people quality questions, or if you
invite them to ask themselves a quality question, where did
(10:32):
that belief come from? Now you can parallel this to
all sorts of high performance. Now, let's take money, because
it's a universal Where did that belief come from? Because
you weren't born with it. Money is not innate to
the human experience. I did an experiment recently on social
media where I got five thousand euros in cash with
a big, thick elastic band, and I put it on
(10:52):
a plate, and I took a three dollar Ribbi and
I put it on the other plate, and I tried
to convince my dog that the money was worth more
than the ribbi. Guess which one he went for.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Animals don't understand money, neither does anybody else.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
It's a man made construct. And so you weren't born
with beliefs about money. You were born with beliefs and
preferences about food, and your body will remind you of
those if you go without it for too long. But
money is a great example because the only place in
the universe money means anything is in the mind of
a human. Nobody else has beliefs around it. And you
can scream at my dog all you want, take the
(11:25):
cash because you can buy a lot more ribbuy it
not happening. So if you ask the question, why do
you believe that? And more often than not, there is
a pattern of when we're growing up, we have an experience,
let's call it an emotional event. And as a typical example,
we see mom and dad arguing over money, which is
the second leading cause. If you go to the American
(11:45):
Marriage Housing Association, arguments over money is the number two cause.
Number one is infidelity. Number three is irreconcilable differences whatever,
oh that means. But when it comes to arguments over money,
a lot of kids their first impression of money is
seeing mom and Dad argue over how scarce it is.
So if you ask somebody, do you still believe that?
(12:08):
Or is that belief still true for you? That's the
first point most people intersection with questioning beliefs starts to
arise like, well, hang on a itt well, no, it
may have been true for mom and dad, but yeah,
And then a great follow up question, what other beliefs
would you have to buy into in order to support
(12:28):
that false belief. I'd have to believe that opportunities only
exist for other people. I'd have to believe that you
still have to work forty hours a week in a
factory to get barely along by. I'd have to believe
that I'm not smart enough to figure out how to
generate wealth in other areas. And now you start pulling
the cards away from this deck of this house of
cards and things start to topple, or because you learned
(12:51):
the skill of how to question the limiting beliefs that
are holding you back, and most people just don't do
we fill up with.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
A couple of things there, Peter. So I'm getting the
process of changing our beliefs, transforming our beliefs, and in
the process of rewiring the brain begins with questioning them
to begin with, right, and you're alluding to how we
got them in the first place, off and emotional experiences
in our childhood, the download we get from our parents
and other authority figures and the culture and our family
(13:19):
and so forth. So before we go on further with
how to change all that, it seems to me one
of the and you kind of reference this, one of
the real obstacles to changing our beliefs is the sense
of self identity that's wrapped around those beliefs. Well, that's
just the way I am. I've always been that way.
I hear that continually from people. Right, Well, I want
to change, I like to do this, but that's just
(13:40):
who I am. I don't expect that to change. Right.
They don't have the sense of how malleable our beliefs are,
that their narratives that they're changeable. And the other one.
It's great that you use money as an example, because
I've often heard it said that we all have, you know,
a set of beliefs around money or a blueprint of
a kind of internalized blueprint around money, and even we
may be trying to improve our financial situation when we
(14:04):
start hitting the ceiling of that belief of how much,
you know, we're supposed to be able to have, how
well we're supposed to be able to do, you know,
we'll unconsciously sort of undermine ourselves to get back down
in that bandwidth that fits in with our beliefs. Now,
if we get too low, we may do something to
get busy and get ourselves back to a certain standard,
but we're kind of locked into there by our belief structures.
(14:26):
So I wonder if that resonates with you, and then
we can sort of continue talking about how we begin
the process of changing the beliefs.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Absolutely. I call it the financial thermostat. You have a
certain financial temperature that you're comfortable with, but you also
have a thermostat in the brain that if it gets
too hot, then the air conditioning kicks in. Now you're lazy,
you're not motivated to follow upon the opportunities that are presented.
You are making excuses yourself sabotaging or it gets too cold.
(14:54):
You know, you're a fifty thousand dollars a year person,
and all of a sudden you're now earning twenty thousand
a year. You're going to get off your back. You're
going to start hustling, You're going to start being proactive,
You're gonna start making more because that range, that temperature range,
is where you're comfortable. Now. The question is who gave
you the range of other than you? And you may
have taken some cues, you may have adopted that at
some level, but ultimately you're not born with a banding.
(15:17):
I don't care what your parents would do it. You
still have the ability, you said, to change that. They
are very malable. And it's a point where you talk
about it's just who I am, it's what I do well.
That's like saying, well I'm overweight, it's just who I am.
Or no, you eat too much and you haven't mastered
your relationship to food. It's not who you are. It's
(15:38):
a lack of a discipline or skill or a even
if you have the desire, you may not have a strategy.
So if we peel that back again to certain again,
childhood is a great example because prior to seven years old,
your critical thinking function isn't operating. Your brain will not
operate a beta brave weaned length which required for critical
(16:01):
thinking until you're about seven years old, which is why
Aristotle said, give me the child for seven years, and
I'll give you the man. Prior to that, you'll break
predominantly in alpha and theater. Theater is hypnosis. It's where
we dream. When we dream, we don't have critical thinking.
That's why you can dream and be like, oh, hang on,
there's Uncle Fred. He died five years ago. What's he
doing here? Oh, it must be a dream. We don't
have that conversation. We just talked to Uncle Fred. Exact
(16:22):
critical thinking isn't operating anywhere from four to seven cyclists
per second or four to seven hurts when it comes
to our brain waves. And if you look at evolution,
it makes sense because a child doesn't have enough experience
until they're about seven to start making judgments of their own,
which is why we have mirror neurons to learn from
our environment from people that hopefully know what they're doing. Right.
Good old mom and dad didn't always work out. But
(16:45):
let's do a school example. At Sayes geography class. I
just got back from Egypt two days ago, ten day trip,
amazing trip. Let's say you got little Johnny and he's
in class now, six years old, is in geography, and
the teacher says, hey, Johnny, where's Egypt? Right? And Johnny's
all excited because he knows the answer, and he opens
the drug he says, I know exactly where Egypt is.
It's on page forty seven of the geography book Teachers
(17:06):
like wise Guy, I'll see you after class idiot. Now
at that point, a lot of things are happening inside
Johnny's brain. Very quickly, he just felt the emotion of stupid,
not good enough, embarrassed, emotions that most people do almost
anything to avoid having to feel, especially at that age,
and very quick connections are being made, and based upon
(17:29):
his relationship to those connections will set the template for
who he thinks he is for the rest of his life.
And then forty years later, sits in a session with
you and just says, Oh, it's just who I am,
So let's look at what are the options. Johnny noticed
the rest of the class laughed at him, so he
decides that he's going to become the class clown because
he gets his significance now from throwing the spitballs and
(17:54):
being the wise guy, because that got him some sort
of sense of validation. But raising his hand in an
academic sense didn't cut it, or he may feel so
emotionally bottled up about all of the people laughing at him.
He didn't think they were laughing because it was funny.
He thought they were laughing at him because the teacher
made him look stupid. So what happens He lashes out
(18:14):
and they back down, and now little Johnny links anger
to the restoration of significance, and mister Angry is born.
And twenty five years later, his poor wife is making
excuses for him at dinner pies. Oh he's got a
temperate Okay, just don't he gets triggered really easily. No,
it doesn't get triggered. He's running a pattern that he
developed at six years old that he's never had the
(18:37):
emotional maturity to grow out of. Or maybe that was
so painful that Johnny says, I'm never going to be
subject to not being smart enough again. So he decides
to double down, takes every class he can, goes on
to be an a student, gets every single degree on
the wall or to cover up the internal insecurity of
the fear that he's not enough. And here's the challenge.
(18:59):
No amount of no amount of doctorates, no amount of
MBAs are ever going to fulfill the internal validation that
he needs, using an external stuff to paper over the
cracks of the broken self image. So the only way
Johnny can actually get through that experience and grow from
(19:20):
it is to do the one thing he will refuse
to do, and that is to risk raising his hand
again to answer another question, to be vulnerable enough to
be stupid. Most people will run their entire life away
from that. And you hear it in ways, Oh I
can't get up to sing karaoke, I can't sing, I
can't sing as a classic, because that's like saying dogs
can't bark. For thousands of generations, you were taught through
(19:43):
songs around the campfire, because ninety eight percent of the
world is illiterate. What you're saying is, oh, I don't
want to risk myself being judged by others. It's the
classic shy anyone that's shying for anyone listening here, that's shy.
I don't want to burst your bubble, but I'm gonna
burst your bubble. There is no such thing as shy.
Hi is a softener to cover up a pattern of
(20:05):
what's really going on, which is, please don't let you
discover me, because I'm scared of what you'll see and
I'm scheduled judgement for him. That's shy. Get over it,
put your hand up again, get in the game. Or perfectionists.
You could become a Johnny perfectionist. And what's a perfectionist?
There is no perfectionism. Affectionist is another softness to make
you feel good or altruistic about running the pattern, which
is really called I'm scared of screwing up.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Once we recognize, Peter, that we have inherited and or
developed these beliefs, these self limiting beliefs, and we're running
various emotional patterns, and we realize we have some emotional
patents and beliefs, in habits and behaviors that are getting
in our way that are no longer serving us, and
we would really like to begin to change that. And
you mentioned questioning our beliefs. What else can we do?
(20:48):
I know that you talk a lot about and you
just mentioned they're the process of emotional maturity, which I
think would have something to do with having a greater
awareness around how we function emotionally behaviorally, but then be
able to get more into driver's set. But there's a
kind of reprogramming. It's necessarily there and one questioning beliefs,
possibly deconstructing beliefs looking at the underlying assumptions they're based on.
(21:11):
All of that kind of work. You also mentioned in
dream states and some other brainway states, the critical mind
is not so present. So there's the whole world of
trying to program in new beliefs using affirmations and so
forth when we're in states that are more open and
more receptive. So I'm just curious about what you think
is some of the ideal strategies, especially oriented around our
(21:33):
performance professional performance and our success in life, of beginning
to develop a set of beliefs that are more in
support of our aspirations rather than constantly fighting against these
old ones from our childhood.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Well, one of the first things to look at is
a phrase I learned from Tony Robbins. I worked alongside
Tony as an experienced trainer for fifteen years, and Tony
says something very profound. He said that the strongest force
in the human personality is the need to remain consistent
with how you define yourself, in other words, your identity. Now,
(22:06):
once you have an identity that you buy into, it
governs a lot of automatic behavior it's like, if you
have the identity of as a parent when your kids
are around, and you have that identity, you're going to
act as a parent. When your kids are no longer
around and you're there with your lover, you're not acting
like a parent, You're acting like a partner. And that's
dound of the identity that you're moving into or out
(22:27):
of at that time. There's many different levels of identity,
but when it comes to performance, as just briefly the
letting go of the old, because it's not about fighting it.
The reason most people can't get rid of old beliefs
is because they make the fundamental mistake, the kind of
the rookie error, of thinking they are their beliefs. They
attach their identity to the belief and the first step
(22:47):
to letting go, to unscrewing the rust on the screws,
is to realize it's not me, it's just my beliefs.
Do you create a separation from that label. A great
example is in the medical profession. If you say, oh,
I am a diabetic, I'm like, no, you're not. I am.
I went to my doctor and my a one sees
through the roof and yeah, I need to inject in.
(23:08):
Say I'm a diabetic. Nah, your body is currently suffering
from a condition that they call diabetes. So now you're
separating the disease from self, which creates a gap that
allows you to then look objectively at how you want
to treat the disease. But if you say I am
a after that, your screwed. Nowhere to go. I just do
what that I am as a diabetic. I take in
(23:29):
chilin white. That's what diabetics do. So you undo the
label and realize that you know, so I've got cancer. No,
you don't. What do you mean I do? I've just
come up from my own cologies. Now your body has cancer.
Your sense of identity. What makes you you is invisible.
It's the most incredible part of being a human being
when you realize the two words human relates to physical.
(23:51):
Body being is non physical. You can't put being in
a bottle. And what makes you you is the invisible.
It's your hopes, dreams, values, goals, personality in your beliefs,
and if you take all of that out of you
and put it into somebody else, it's you with a
different body. So the human being is the perfect encapsulation
of physical and non physical in one encapsulation. And if
(24:13):
you combine that the non physical beliefs with the physical body,
you've got nowhere to go, so to say, it's not me,
it's just the beliefs that I have. Now you can
start to open a gap. Now as an athlete's if
you talk about high performance, you can start to say, Okay,
what kind of identity would best serve me as the
person I most want to become. Are you an employee
(24:37):
with hopes of one day starting your own business? Or
are you a dynamic undercover entrepreneur in waiting? Two different identities,
that is, one's going to spot opportunities a lot faster
than the other. Are you a track athlete or let's
say Tiger Woods tig Wards a great example. What made
Tiger Woods different? Yes, his dad give him the initial impetus,
but if you read any of the autobiographies, became clear
(24:59):
why he was going to become who we know him
to be on the course, talking about off the course.
But he could have chosen any identity. He could have
chosen like some of his friends that he wanted to
be a golf professional. He could have chose the identity
I want to be a PGA Tour winner. But he didn't.
He chose a different identity. He said, no, are going
to become the greatest golfer of all time. Now with
(25:20):
that level of identity, when his friends that want to
be professionals quit hitting balls for the day, what do
you think Tiger's still doing? So the first thing to
look at when you want to do performance is what
do you believe about who you are? And rather than
look back over your shoulder at all the failures that
you keep siding to try to put yourself down, ask okay,
what kind of identity would best serve me in terms
(25:40):
of where I want to go? And a great example
here to see the power of this is smoking. Why
does smokers smoke? Because they're smokers. Now, if you have
a smoker who's quit, If you say a smoker, oh,
do you want a cigarette? Oh, I've quit, and they
have the identity of a smoker who's quit, there is
a ninety percent plus chance that they will be smoking
again with an x amount of weeks or months. Why
(26:02):
because their identities. I am a smoker who's engaging in
the behavior of quitting, which is counted to my identity
as a smoker, An identity will win over behavior every time.
Whereas if you change your identity to I am a
non smoker and somebody offers you a cigarette, it's effortless.
Why because I don't smoke? Whereas well, do you want
(26:26):
to see I've quit and you've got this push pulling
willpower going on. So just by shifting your identity in
relation to that old habit, you can increase your chances
of winning exponentially. How does that apply in business? How
does that apply as an athlete? How does that apply
as a high performance parent? You get the idea.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I can attest to that one because I was able
to finally stop smoking forty years ago, and after struggling
for a number of years. It was when I shifted
my identity, you're becoming a smoker, and at that point
it became absolutely effortless, and I've never smoked again. So
that's absolutely to it. I love you're talking about identity
because this is such an efficient use of our time
(27:04):
and energy, our available energy mental, physical, emotional energy, and
willpower and so forth. Because we could try to change
every little belief, every little behavior piece meal, but when
we focus on the identity, that brings a whole set
of beliefs and behaviors along with it. So just like
we talked about that money blueprint before, rather than struggling against,
(27:27):
it's easier just going and change the blueprint. You know,
then your system is cooperating with you to stay in
that new blueprint. Here with identity, if we take on
that identity, it's going to shift things. So in terms
of identities, you know, in the world of affirmation, sometimes
people will say, you know, like I'm a successful entrepreneur,
I'm a sexcit keep repeating that. That may have, you know,
(27:48):
some impact, But what if they say one of those
things between that kind of affirmation and kind of information
would where if someone would say to themselves repeatedly on
a regular basis of the morning something, I'm absolutely committed
to doing every thing I need to do to train
myself to become the successful entrepreneur. I know I can
be something like that where there's a commitment about that
I want to There's a distinction between the power of
(28:09):
kind of programming our mind in those different ways.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
Great topic, and one of the first things that I
will say is that affirmations rarely work for the majority
of people, and sometimes they work, but others kind of
like what they call the law attraction. People can't figure
it out, so it's hazards, so they give up. But
when you start to look at what's really going on,
you have I'm going to simplify things tremendously. Now I'm
a simple guy. You have a thinking center let's call
(28:33):
it the head, and you have a feeling censor, let's
call it the heart. And for an affirmation to have power,
the heart and mind have to be united. Is that
I'm a successful entrepreneur, right, And you say that with
your head and your heart's feeling like yeah. But if
you've seen your bangbalance some of the last two ideas
I tried and bond, there's no congruency. So you've got
to create something that the statement means that your heart
(28:56):
and mind can buy into and doing your best to
become something that's easy because you're not fighting pastoral current
references that run counter to what you're trying to say. Yeah,
you stand in front of the mirror, say oh, I'm wealthy,
unwealthy and wealthy, and yeah, someone comes and takes your furniture.
You're deluding yourself. You stand in front of the mirror
and say, yeah, I was born with the ability to
(29:18):
generate abundance. I know that abundance is my birthright, and
I'm going to do everything I can to attune myself
into that frequency and live life at a level where
I finally deserve what it is that I get. Now,
that's a different you can buy into that. It's not saying, oh,
I'm a millionaire and your credit card debts through the roof,
(29:39):
because then there's no congruency. So yeah, having an alignment,
having an affirmation that is aspirational rather than counter factual,
is a big part of that. As long as you
can buy in set yourself up to win. You don't
say I'm an athlete and you say, oh, I'm an
Olympic Gold. If you're not willing to go to be
Olympic Gold, it's not gonna work. And speaking back to
(30:01):
identity there, but more you've got what I teach once
a Health and Vitality retreat. It's something I'm passionate about.
Health and fitness is something I love you. I'm fifty
two years old. I'm about to go and row across
the Atlantic in a couple of months for raising money
for mental health and all that kind of stuff, so
I keep in shape health and not so much health.
(30:22):
Health is just inherent as part of the body programming.
But vitality is different. You know, that's spark dynamics and
that bounce out of bed early, stay up lately, ever,
vessels of life. So I teach this health and vitalitary istry.
And one of the things that I teach on the retreat.
We do a couple of days physical mastery, then we
do mental emotional mastery. I'm finally energetic, more spiritual side.
(30:42):
But the biggest jump in strength increase and we benchmark,
we take blood work. It's like, you know, this isn't
what we were. It's all is when I get to the
emotional mastery day and people are confronted with the fact
that the mind is either your best or your worst
training partner. And it's not about the new fangled ab
(31:02):
exerciser that you saw at three am on the infomercial.
It's not about the new latest fangle smangled diet plan
or super pill. The biggest differentiated in the results that
you get is who is walking in the gym. What
is the identity you have as you go through that door.
And we teach people how to build the gym identities
(31:22):
out of the archetypes of human personality. You don't want
the lover sitting on the leg press, right, Nor do
you want the magician that's going to talk you out
of why Okay, it hurts and I'll do more tomorrow. No,
you want the warrior. You want somebody that's showing up
for the fight, Somebody that loves the taste of blood
off his own sword. Right. If you pardoner metaphor, right,
someone's going to walk up to that machine, at that
(31:44):
bench press and say I'm back. Who walks in the gym.
The identity you have going in is going to create
your personal bests or it's going to sell you out
on it was a waste of time showing up, same gym,
same training program, body, same everything, different identity. I who
you consciously choose to enter the gym ass.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
You've spoken about a flaw in the personal growth personal
evolution industry as an acronym. I GUESSOP. I don't know
if you call it goop. I wonder if you could
talk about that and how, because there's so many ways,
you know, I mean, I think we all have a
longing to improve ourselves and be our best selves, and
but there's so many things that can get in our way.
We undermine ourselves, We self sabotage ourselves as a constant
(32:29):
world a distraction. There's a lot of misunderstanding and mistaken
beliefs about personal growth. So understanding some of the pitfalls
I think can be very helpful. So I'd love to
hear about this one called goop so well.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
It ties into what I mentioned, what you referenced earlier
about the difference between physical and emotional maturity. See, we
don't get to choose whether we mature physically. It's part
of the rule set. And you can take whatever vitamins
you want and put on whatever fancy creams you want.
I'm pretty sure that you and I look different now
to what we did thirty years ago. Right, I'm gonna
(33:01):
look a little different thirty years from now. That's just
part of the wall set. But emotional maturity is a choice,
And this way we come back to beliefs. There are
a few key beliefs that if you would have just shift,
it would transform your entire experience of who you are
and your relationships to life, and goup forms are part
of that. I'll give you an example well, one of
(33:22):
the greatest days in a human being's life, in my
perception and my belief, on the journey to emotional maturity,
is the day that you finally become okay not being liked.
I suppose how most people spend a lot of their
life running around looking for somewhere else to reattach their
umbilical cord. So when I say be okay not being liked,
(33:44):
I don't mean purposely be disliked. I mean you're not
driven by this really nasty, disgusting, debilitating disease that so
many people suffer from called goot or a good opinion
of other people. To get out of goop. I'll take
you through an awareness I allude right at the beginning
(34:04):
of our conversation today that we star in a movie
called the Movie of our life, and nobody else stars
in our movie. Even if you're a Siamese twin, you're
gonna dream differently, You're going to be in different scenes
to each other. But if you are the star of
the movie of your life, by definition, that means everybody
else only plays one of two roles. You won't have
a handful of supporting cast, which is a spouse. You know, sibling,
(34:27):
a best friend, of a work or what have you.
People that appear regularly in scenes in your life. But
the vast majority of people and people that you suffer
from goop from nothing more than film extras in your movie.
That's not being belittling. Let me give you the definition
of filmmature. A filmmaxter is somebody who you're no longer
thinking about when they're not in your current scene. Person
(34:49):
that serves you a Starbucks, personal put gas in your car,
the person walking down the street when you walk past them.
And we're all thinking, and here's the challenge. Because we're
the star of our movie, we think that every he
sees us as the star.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Of our mood.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
But they don't because they're not starring in our movie.
They're starring in a different movie, their own, which means,
by definition, we only ever play one of two roles
in everybody else's movie. Best a handful of people supporting cast,
but ninety nine point nine percent of people you meet
in your movie throughout your the entire length of your lifetime,
your movie on nothing more. You are nothing more than
a film extra in their movie, which means that most
(35:25):
people don't care enough about you to even bother to
given opinion. Do you know why, Because they're too busy
being worried about what they think you're thinking of them.
So everybody's walking around in this bubble of self importance thinking, oh,
I wonder what people are thinking of me in my
bubble of self importance, not realizing that everybody else is
walking around in their bubble of self importance, thinking and
wonder what people are thinking of me in my bubble
(35:46):
of self importance. Boom, you pop that bubble. You have freedom,
social freedom, goop freedom you no longer Yeah, oh, I
can't go to the supermarket without putting on my lipstick
or my makeup. Why, Oh, because I'll get judge. People
don't care. They're too busy starring in their own movie
being worried about you judging them for their shade of lipstick.
So goop is a when you wake up and realize it.
(36:08):
I'm finally okay not being liked because I realize it
somebody else's projection from their movie. It's not a reflection
of how I'm showing up in mind. That's an empowering
belief to have. There's probably one other in the time
we have that I'd give people to look at. And
this is a game changer. When you finally come to
terms the fact that life is a growth centric experience,
(36:32):
not a comfort centric experience, you will stop fighting the
lessons and challenges that this loving universe is trying to
give you under the guise of what you're labeling as
problems you're running away from. And when you finally come
to terms with that life is growth centric, go to nature.
You take any mammal. Last time I checked, we were
(36:52):
in that category. Mammals, if they perceive an external situation
as a threat, it can lose up to thirty percent
of their muscle strength. If that same mammal perceives the
same external situation as a challenge, it can gain up
to thirty percent of this muscle strength. Cortisol will flood
the muscles and it will stand there and get stronger
rather than flee. And then if it's attacked, it's got
(37:14):
nothing to fight back with. So what's it trying to
teach us? So if we realize that if I see
life as a growth centric experience, let's go to the
athlete in the gym. Let's just say that you're an athlete,
but nobody ever told you you were an athlete, and
you shop at this gym you've been forced to go to,
and there's this psychopath called a personal trainer that's trying
to make you do push ups until you throw up,
(37:35):
run on the treadmill till you can't breathe, and your
mindset is, how can I do as little as possible
to tick the right boxes so I can get out
of there. But let's just say that you knew you're
an athlete and your mission was not I am going
for Olympic gold. How do you show up in the gym.
I'll tell you. If you're not throwing up in thirty minutes,
you want your money back. You've got a whole different
(37:56):
perspective on the challenge in front of you because of
the identity and the mission that you know. You're here now.
You were born an athlete into the gym of life.
And most people bitch about the fact they don't like
the workout and then wonder why the personal trainer is
chasing around trying to force them on the treadmill. You
could chunk it down one more level. Let's go to
the body of the athlete. Now, when you're doing your
(38:17):
barbell curls, and you get to that last burning reb
What is the muscle fiber doing from this it's perspective.
It's sending messages to the brain pain, Stop, what are
you doing? I'm being broken down. You're destroying me here,
I can't handle any more. They're the messages that you're getting.
And if you take the perspective of the muscle fiber,
you're going to sell out. But if you set the
(38:37):
perspective of the athlete, you're proud. You just busted out
not one, but two more reps with everything you got,
and you can't lift your arms for the next ten minutes.
You're walking around with a smile. The question that I
invite everybody to look at is which perspective do you
want to live from? Perspective that life is a growth
centric experience, in which case you will be rewarded, or
the perspective of still thinking that we live under the
(38:59):
illusion that life is a comfort centric experience, in which
case you're going to run from your problems and get
chased by them even faster. Now, don't get me wrong,
a growth centric experience not every single day is the
last burning wreck. But if you don't know how to
take that on from the perspective of the athlete. You're
in for a sorry movie.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Absolutely, And I think that's really a major distinction in
life is to really understand how many levels were a
little bit hardwired to be comfort seeking creatures and that's
counter productive to anything we want to do in life.
And having that focus on growth that we're also hardwire
per growth and something I know you talk about leading
a heart centric life and you mentioned me poor the
(39:37):
importance of connecting the head and the heart, even if
we really want to create affirmations that will really change
our beliefs. And you also mentioned Tony Robbins before that
you worked with him, and one of the things that
Tony Alpin says, I don't know if he originated, but
I always really resonated with this. He says, what really
leads to lasting sense of fulfillment, life, satisfaction, happiness, the
(39:57):
genuine lasting kind is the deeply peld sense that we're growing,
that we're growing, that we know we're going, We deeply
feel we're growing, we're changing, we're growing, we're challenging ourselves,
we're growing. And the other is the deeply peld sense
that we're contributing. So I wonder if you could talk
about that part of the per moment, that would really
complete the cycle of the change in identity, a change
(40:18):
of how we're being to get into this flow that
would really need to optimize and performance and success when
we bring in the contribution factor.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Absolutely, and it's a symbiotic relationship. We have to grow first.
You cannot give that which you don't have. You can't
give from empty. We call out the martyr pat and
it's really a self protection mechanism against the fear of
being judged or rejected, or the fear that you're not enough.
So I will keep giving and giving and giving, and
so there's nothing left hoping that you'll be my friend,
(40:48):
that you won't reject me, that you'll think good of me,
that you'll be nice to me. And we see that
a lot in women, unfortunately, just because of their tendency
to nurture and they want to be the Mars they wanted.
My mother was the same.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Well, society offers that identity to women, right, that's how
you're going to get your needs mad in a world
of caregiving. Why I've don't allow of the training we
actually call that sometimes pathological altruism. People will follow that
course to their own detriment, even.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Absolutely, and then wonder why, you know, if I've only
got two love points in my love bank, but if
I give one of them to you, will you give
me some back? And of course get to empty pretty fast,
And then wonder why they're miserable. So you have to
grow first? Why because you need to mature. You hear
in a growth centric environment and you hit the nail
on the head. The body has a nervous system that
is hardwired for comfort, which is very useful sitting on
(41:34):
an ance nest right or too close to a fire.
But your soul, the thing that makes you you spoke
about earlier, that is hardwired for growth. That we are
in earth school. We're here to learn how to grow
so that we can contribute. And there's no middle ground.
If you take a tree and you see a tree
that's ever been felled, there's rings in that tree that
(41:55):
show the age of the tree. And what you don't
see half way through that ring is where there's a
big gap where it decided to take a couple of
years off from grown. No, it is a continuous but
if you're not growing, you're going backwards. So if we
know that growth is a continual experience. We know that physiologically,
but motionally, mentally, and energetically. We're here to grow up.
(42:18):
We're here to become an elder. We're here to become
somebody that can contribute back to society. And the more
that tree grows, the more shade it can provide, the
more fruit it can provide, the more homes to critters
and insects it can provide. It is growing and contributing.
It's symbiotic. It's the rules of nature. See, animals don't
die of old age in nature. If you figured that out,
(42:40):
the animal equivalent of a retirement hope. When an animal
can no longer contribute, it contributes itself to somebody else's lunch.
The lions go for the old and sick and the young.
But yeah, the old and the sick, and you can't
run away from a lion anymore. Guess what, right? So,
if you realize that being able to grow so that
we can contribute is not some sort of altruistic philosophy
(43:05):
that has its basis in stoism or alters or anything, now,
it's the laws of nature. I didn't make them up.
I just look out of my window. And see it
operating everywhere. And if you want to try to buck
that trend, good luck. You can swim upstream for a while,
but at the end of the day, the current's gonna win.
Growth and contribution is ultimately why we're here, but you
need to get it in the right order. I need
(43:26):
to grow first so that I can contribute. And if
I'm growing selfishly, I just want to acquire lots of money.
I just want to be rich. I want the gold
medal on the track so that I can prove that
I'm the best. That's got a time limit before life
will start giving you some nudges or some slaps if
you're like, nah, I want to be able to grow
my wealth. And you see this with the people that
(43:46):
finally get to the top of success mountain financially, what
do they do. They give most of it away, They
become philanthropic, They become people to get more satisfaction giving
it away than they did actually making it. And so
growth and contribution are inherent. And if your business or
your departments, if you're not associated to it from a
(44:07):
place of how can I add value? How can I
use this as a vehicle to serve to contribute to
give more into the game that I'm taking out of
the game. Then Nature's going to put some pretty tough
walls up. You're going to exhaust yourself banging your head
to try to knock down as soon as you align
with the current of the river, you don't have to
(44:28):
swim very hard to move fight the current. Different story.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
So, as we near the end of our conversation here, Peter,
I'm going to ask you how people can learn more
about your work. But first that one last question. You
know you've worked with a lot of people, a lot
of clients, You do a lot of speaking. Is there
one belief that you run into again and again that
most gets in the way of people's performance and success
in life? You probably alluded to some already, but I
(44:52):
wonder if there's one that is right up there in
the top five or something, or even number one that
really tends to get in the way of people's performance
and success in life.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
There's many, But if I was to pick a major culprit,
what comes up again and again when I ask people
the question, what's the biggest lie you tell yourself? And
consistent answer is I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough.
I don't deserve. You can see where it comes from,
especially with a school system that's designed to break people
that don't fit a certain criteria, and how they can
(45:21):
have it back useless information to questions that are largely
irrelevant in today's world, so they can get a piece
of paper signed by somebody they never met to validate
their intelligence. That's another conversation. But the belief that you
need to do something in order to be worthy of
love is essentially what it comes down to. And the
reality is, if I was to give you one affirmation
(45:43):
to leave with today that could probably make the biggest shift.
It would be this, no matter what I've done, no
matter what I've not done, I'm worthy of love.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Beautiful, and you know I completely agree with you. And
I think getting in touch with that unconditional self worth,
that unconditional which builds on a kind of unconditional confidence,
is really foundational life and one of the ways we discovered.
I mean, I think there's all kinds of contemplative ways
we can discover that, you know, introspective, meditative ways and
so forth, but also by just getting in the game.
(46:11):
When we get in the game, we jump into full
learn how to swim. We get in the game, we
start touching into even it's not dependent then I'm playing
that game, but we touch into something deep in ourselves
that we realize was always there, and that's that unconditional worthiness.
So yeah, I think that's a great place to bring
our conversation to a close here. So, Peter, how do
people find out more about your work?
Speaker 1 (46:32):
My website is petersage dot com. I'm all over social
I to try to give as much as I can. Yeah,
if you've got people that are just seeking some general
furthered insight into some of my philosophy, that's great. My book,
The Inside Track is probably has been very blessed to
have been called by some of the greatest names and
personal growth, from Brian Tracy to Kevin Tradeouja, John Astraft
to John de Martini to Les Brown to one of
(46:54):
the greatest books ever written in terms of demonstrating techniques
on how to live, how conquer adversity under harsh conditions.
So yeah, I'm available to try to help as many
people as I can. I will be gone on the
ocean for two months and there that's how long it's
going to take me to row across the Atlantic and
that's rowing two hours on, two hours off. That's twenty
(47:15):
four to seven for two months.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
I'm kind of astounded. I'm even singer having a conversation
with someone who's about their raw cost the authentic that's
pretty amazing. Will you have a kind of a tender
boat with you? Are you're going to be out there
by yourself.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
It's called the World's Toughest Row. And we're Team Cheerfulness,
taken after the adage cheerfulness in the face of adversity.
So yeah, teencheerfulness dot Com as our website and there's
about thirty boats from yeah, fours five, So I'm in
the pears. So that's myself as a childhood friend. And
somebody has to be rowing at all times otherwise there's
no engine. It's a small boat. You've got solar panels,
(47:49):
you've got a desalinator, powdered food, and you've got to
be self sufficient. The nearest human being is probably in
the International Space Station. The nearest land is five kilometers
under you, and the nearest boat if there's an emergency
is any one's time about four days away.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Wow. It take roughly two months to make the crossing.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Depends on the weather. Everything's weather dependent, and the Atlantic
can kind of make you like a toothpick in a jacuzzi.
It's going to over two months. Has never been a
period of calm for two months. So we're going to
hit a storm. We're going to hit this. It just expects.
It's part of the game, that's part of the gym
workout that if I want to be the athlete that
I want to be, I'm going to have to go
out and deal with Well.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
I certainly commend you on that. So you're certainly walking
to talk anyway. So that's great up. That's inspiring to
our audience, really illuminating in inspiring conversation.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Thank you. I love what you're doing. I love what
you're bringing to the people that I know are going
to benefit and certainly in today's society and today's time
in history, I think we need this more than ever.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Thank you and wish you all the best with that
Alatin crossing either wind, be it your back there, Thank
you be well. Thank you for joining me on the
Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember, a real change happens when we
commit to our growth, face our challenges with compassion, and
stay open to transformation. If you found this episode helpful.
I encourage you to subscribe and help us spread the
(49:08):
message of healing and personal empowerment. Stay grounded, stay present,
and stay true to you. Take care