around here. Okay, awesome. Well, let's dive right in. So what are what are three resources,
three books you recommend for visionaries? Well, I can only tell you what I've read.
My very first book I wrote, I really dove into was Think and Grow It by Napoleon Hill.
Started that when I was 13. I loved how to win friends and influence people.
And also, I think the one of the latest there you go right there. The man, the myth, the legend,
the man who started it all. I was blessed by having that opportunity, it really set my
head in the right direction. And the third book, I think that is really powerful right now for,
you know, in what I do is Automatic Habits by James Clear.
Automatic Habits.
Atomic Habits, excuse me.
Oh, I was gonna say Automatic Habits.
Atomic Habits, excuse me. Oh, I was gonna say that I was like,
that's a new one. Yeah, rendition number two.
Yeah. And it should become Automatic Habits. That's really what your result and your end goal is to
make them automatic. Right. Maybe I could write a book on that. That'd be funny.
True. For sure. There's a lot of paper out there. I'm sure you could easily get started on that.
Awesome. Before we dive into the break, I love to know from your side of things,
as we talk about controlling your emotions and mastering your life, what's one of the first
secrets that people can be paying attention to? You know, recently I started on this new program
and it was really about writing this book. And this is the one I'm finishing this year,
Control Your Emotions, Master Your Life. And it really comes down to three things. And the
word that really hit me from an NLP perspective, Neurolinguistic Programming, was the ability to
act, to take action. And I thought, oh, that's a great acronym for, A is for awareness,
C is for control, understanding what it is and how you move through your environment,
and T is for tasks, exercises, creating good habits, as we were just talking about. So
to answer your question really is becoming about aware. Where are you?
You know, one of the first questions I ask my clients is real simple. I say,
if I was your travel agent, what would be the first question I'd ask you? Where do you want to go?
I know where you want to go.
Right. So with that in mind, we also need to know where you're starting from.
With those two points and destination, then we can create a vehicle to get you there,
whatever that is for people. Sometimes it's therapy, sometimes it's coaching,
sometimes it's learning, as simple as learning to get out of your own way by reading a great book.
Absolutely. Very good. Well, with that acronym, we'll cut to the break. We'll be right back and
we'll dive in deep into Dr. John James Santangelo's vision.
All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live. With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are
building fantastic visions out there. Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome into another episode of
Vision Pros Live. I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I'm excited to have Dr. John James Santangelo on today from the lovely city of Los Angeles or
traffic-polluted, super busy. Just kidding. I love LA. I wish I could be over in California more
often. We're talking about controlling your emotions, mastering your life, and his perspective
from the Neuro-Linguistic Programming Angle, NLP, as it's often called. I like to toy with the idea
of the mumbo jumbo, as Val Kilmer says in The Saint. I really really enjoy the idea of the
mumbo jumbo, as Val Kilmer says in The Saint. I really really do love personal development and
how to dive into different aspects of our brain, our heart, our mind, etc. So while I don't pretend
to know what I don't know, I love to meet people who have studied this information out at length
because it oftentimes gives me one, two, or three new nuggets that I can utilize to maximize how
I can manage my life. If you want to get a better understanding of what I talk about,
you can always go to the website, and take a look at the information that's already there.
We'll get him back on in just a minute. Before we do though, I want to highlight some of our
sponsors. We've got the Wellness Shop 365 with Sean LaChuga. When I met Sean, I really was looking
at this website, and I knew that the website needed a lot of work. But Integrative Health and
a health specialist who's not, who's diving into a territory such as joy, spirituality,
creativity, home environment, relationships. The depth that I've seen from Sean made me
say, man, I really want to support this vision. I want to see where he's going to take this.
So without further ado, we'll move on to Melissa Gray. You guys can always check that out.
We'll have a link for Sean and his program in the show notes. But Melissa Gray also came
across our radar, ended up doing a show episode with us. And I was pretty nervous. I was like,
man, I don't know if I want to put an attorney on my show. They can be kind of difficult
sometimes. But here we found somebody who knows that law doesn't have to be complicated.
She came on with a super nurturer feeling. She's got her strong foundation underneath
her as well with her legal firm. And she's bridging the gap between the super accessible
template version of attorneys through legal zoom, Crocodoc, legal shield programs like
that. And what I would call the much higher riskier traditional retainers. As a business
owner, it is super important that we protect our brands. That also means it's very important
that we put ourselves in a position where we have somebody that can help us in the event
that there's, you know, one of these real life circumstances comes up. If we look for
that person last minute, supply and demand will not be in your favor. You'll need somebody
quickly. You might spend way more than you were anticipating. Restaurant Connect, we
spent $20,000 on a trademark lawsuit. And we won, you know, but did we? $20,000 is a
lot of money to lose for a startup. So if you're in a position where you're not in
need of legal, this would be the best time to reach out to somebody like Melissa, find
out how she works, what she's up to, check out some of her webinars as well that can
help educate you on some of the legal needs that you might be facing in the future. All
without this fear of missing out that so many marketers are striving to leverage too often.
Then there's the water project. I'm super grateful to have access to clean drinking
water every single day. Right now I'm a little bit under the weather. When I say a little
bit, a lot of it, I'm pulling myself out quite a lot to be here on the show today. But I
think it's nothing like these poor kids and these families that there's millions of people
in the world where if they had bronchitis like I do, or they had an illness, they'd
have to walk three, four, five miles just to go find a source of water that may not
even be safe to drink. And what they have to face with that, it's just something I'm
super grateful that I don't. You can see that the way the water project set this up is kind
of like crowdfunding, where you can see how many people in the village you're going to
be able to help affect their lives, what project they're going to be working on, how they're
going to sustain it. And you receive photo evidence and story evidence of exactly where
your money went to, how they went about creating their project, and the generational impact
that you can make on this is absolutely phenomenal. So if you're in a position to give back, fantastic.
If you're not in a position to give back, my request would be to rock the mic just like
I am, or rock the post. Just share the post. You never know who in your circle might be
in a great position to help out. And there are 8 billion people in this world to help.
So if there's another cause that you'd rather see us supporting right now, or that's near
and dear to your heart, don't hesitate to drop that in the comments as well. I'll be
happy to take a look at it and see what I can do to raise awareness and perhaps even
contribute to what that is. So without further ado, Dr. John James Santangelo, welcome to
Vision Pros Live. Let's dive right in.
Hey buddy, good to be back. Absolutely. So as we dive in, we're going to hit the vision
head on first, then we'll circle back to controlling your emotions, mastering your life, and some
principles related to that. So first question's first, what is your vision for those that
you serve? Oh, good question. So recently, it's interesting how life changes, takes you
on a different path sometimes. I got married recently, 5 years ago, and my wife happens
to work in the hospital. She's one of the head respiratory therapists in the COVID unit
there, at least it was years ago when it shut down. Now we're clean. But one of the things
she told me that was really interesting, what she does as a therapist, if your listeners
don't really understand what an RT is, a respiratory therapist is, they're the ones that basically
keep you alive. They put you on the vent, run you oxygen. That's the wonderful side
of her job. And here's the challenging side of her job. She's the one that also has to
pull the plug when the family says, okay, time's been enough. She'll stand around with
the family, hold hands as she pulls the plug or pulls the vent out, shuts the machine off
and watches this person slip away to heaven or be unknown, wherever you want to believe.
And one of the things that was really interesting that she said to me, kind of rocked my world
coming around to your question was, one of the things that people have on their deathbed,
but one of the things that they truly aspire to have or have had or created, however you
want to call it, are great memories of their life. I heard a wonderful quote recently,
it said, what is life? What is success to you? And this wonderful quote really said,
it's enjoying the passage of time. And I thought, wow, that encapsulates who we are and what
we do here on this planet. That's it. You hope in your life that you enjoy the moments
that you create and you create them. You create them. Traffic doesn't create them. Problems
don't create them. Your parents don't create them. You're responsible for every single
moment of time that passes. I love this quote by Wayne Dyer. He says, it's taking responsibility
for your life. Taking responsibility says responding with ability. That's so powerful.
That's cool.
Responding with ability, as we were talking about before, is becoming aware. First is
awareness. Do I want to change? Where am I at? I mean, if you know anything about AA
or you're a drug addict, you've been in some kind of rehab, you understand that's the first
priority of success in any program is discovering who you are and where you stand in the world
right now, which is also your identity, right? And then moving from there. So my vision with
that in mind is I want to work with committed, and I underline that word, committed individuals
that want to step out of their comfort zone and really live that life of passion and joy,
because we all have the possibility of doing that. But how many truly do? That's the challenge
in life, really. You have the opportunity, but very few of us are willing to take it
and to create those amazing memories, because that's all you have to think about today.
One of my original NLP coaches said to me, hey, John, when you wake up in the morning
and you first open your eyes and you know that you're alive and you're aware, how do
you know to be you? I'm like, what? Well, that's just really, that's too deep. How do
you know to be you? That's a profound question. And when I ask it in my NLP training, so maybe
we have hundreds of people working, there are people who really understand the ramification
of this question. How do you know to be you? And the answer is memories. That's it. That's
it. That's it. Your past, which lies behind you, is only based upon the memories you have
of who you are and what you're all about and what you've done. Think about the movie, Jason
Borland.
Or identity.
Jason Borland.
That's what I love that of.
Right?
Or identity.
In the moment, you can remember your name, but you can't remember your past. How unfortunate
is that? If we had to, this is one of the things my other coach says, imagine if you
had to go and learn every single day about who you are and what you're doing. But here's
the crazy part about this. Every single day, you can create a new identity. You can become
more. You can have more. You can do more. And yet we're stuck in that what we call the
98% of what we've done in the past. And they've done studies on this. 98% of your thinking
are the same as yesterday and the same as 10 years ago and the same as pretty much probably
when you were a teenager. 98% of your thinking is repeated daily. So how could you possibly
step into that 2%? That unknown, if you're constantly relishing and some people actually
dive into the quagmire of their past, not to say that all past is bad, but most people
are always focusing on what doesn't work. How are you going to move forward if that's
all your focus? Like driving your car. I say it's like driving your car in your rear view
mirror, looking in your rear view mirror the whole time. Yeah. Some of it's nice, but most
of it's gone. It's over with. And then when I get clients, like we do coaching clients
with celebrities and athletes and millionaires, it's like, where are you starting from? What
is it that you want to create? Most people have no idea. They know what they don't want.
They know what they don't want. They don't know what they do want. And your brain is
only designed for one thing. It only does one thing all day long. It moves you in the
direction of your dominant thoughts. That's it. That's it. So what do you fill your mind
with 51% of the time? If it's garbage, then that's where you're going to end up. If it's
I can't do it, which are beliefs that come from our childhood, I can't do it. I don't
have enough money. I'm not worthy. I'll never have a relationship, right? I can't do that
business. That's too hard. I don't have the right skills. Then why wouldn't life, why
wouldn't the universe, why wouldn't your unconscious mind, which runs 90% of us, give you anything
other than that?
Yeah. So these, you, you, you alluded to something that I want to hit transparently that you've
alluded to professional athletes and celebrities that you help. Who? Where are these people?
Well, I can't, I can't, that's, that's actually, I can't disclose information, but I'll tell
you a really great story about that. That is really probably solidifies what I do and
what I love to do. In the summer of 2001, I got a call from the U S army, just when
I had started my business, my training company, and they said, look, we're working for, we're
looking for an NLP trainer. I'm like, wow, okay, that's kind of cool. I says, can you
put together a syllabus for us on a package? I go, yeah. So it took him about a week, gave
them what they want. Didn't hear from him. This was like in may of that summer, nine
11 that happened, September 11th, literally a month later after that, I got a call from
the U S army counter intelligence team and said, we need you now more than ever. Can
we fly you out? I said, absolutely. So the first week of December, I got to fly out to
Fort Bragg, North Carolina and work with the top intelligence agents in the United States,
teaching them NLP skills. You're going to love this for lie detection. They wanted to,
because they had to do a lot of interrogation and they wanted to learn how people were lying.
And I get that question all the time. As soon as they hear this story, well, how do I tell?
There's eight signals and they're all different. We don't have enough time to go into it, but
most of it is setting a baseline because most people understand when people are honest,
they radiate this energy. But as soon as you ask them a question where they can't answer
it or they don't know the answer or they're lying, especially their energy, their vibration
changes, which then shows up in the body's physiology, right? And there's different ways,
their eye patterns, their verbal stories, right? Their breathing rate, their, the skin
color on their lips changed, their body changes. It's amazing what happens. One of the best
testimonies I ever got from the chief that ran that section, he said, John, by far, one
of the best trainings we've ever had here in the 40 years that I've been here. And so
it's not just who you teach because it's irrelevant, whether it be a celebrity, a millionaire, army
intelligence agents, are you open for it? And can you learn? Because there's never going
to be one thing, not one thing. If you have a secret and go, Oh my God, I have the secret
to life. There's many things. So are you open to learning? That's why podcasts like your
Jackson are so wonderful. When you're interviewing different people, you get different perspectives.
I said to you before, when I was learning NLP, I learned from five or six of the best
instructors all over the world. Cause I didn't just want one perspective of someone. And
I think that's, that's the key of doing anything, right? It's learning from different people.
What NLP was based on was modeling, model success, do what somebody else is doing. I
get this question all the time. I was in the fitness industry for 25 years. How do I lose
weight? My God, losing weight is simple. It really is. Eat 10% less of what you eat now
and you'll lose weight. Real simple. If you want to learn and you don't have a coach like
me or Jackson teaching you or a podcast that you can listen to, go find somebody that's
lost the weight. Go find somebody that's done the work. You want to make money? Don't go
listen to your friend that keeps giving you advice on bad stock picks. Go find a millionaire
or somebody that's living in the house or has the cars and the lifestyle that you want.
You want a great relationship? Go find a couple that has a wonderful, loving, healthy relationship.
Learn what they're doing. Success is not hard. It's one of the things Tony Robbins says,
success leaves clues. Absolutely. I appreciate that your openness on the perspectives. I
would love to have Malcolm Gladwell on this podcast as well. He wrote a phenomenal book.
Just again, these perspectives. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Talking With Strangers.
In it, he says these eight tips that you talked about for detecting a liar are absolute bull
crap. It doesn't actually lead us to understand who's lying and who's not. People have different
physiological reactions to different scenarios based on a lot of what's in their path too.
That's the point for all you listening and all you visionaries. I'm not here to say Malcolm's
right. John's right. I'm here to say there's different perspectives that are out there.
You as a visionary get to decide, do I want to navigate towards the oasis on the other
side of the hill, the desert on the other side of the hill, the mountaintop on the other
side of the hill. There's always options in life for where you go. Thank you for highlighting
the perspective. Absolutely. Thank you. For you, John, what's your vision? Wow. Great
question. What do you see for yourself 20 years from now, 20 days from now? Your call.
From my perspective, like I said before, I just got married. It took me a long time to
find an amazing person that worked for me. I've gone through many relationships probably
like most people. They go through one after the other. Unfortunately, they take their
old self with them to the new relationship until you become the kind of person that you
want to have that that person loves and adores and wants to be in a healthy relationship.
You're still going to find the same searching over and over again. That part of my life,
I'd love to say that I've completed and we work on it every year, my wife and I. Every
January 1st, we go to a wonderful hotel. We get all dressed up. We have brunch and we
set our goals for the new year. To me, that's just everything. We're on the same page. We
have the same vision for the future every single day. I put it up on the fridge when
we're done with her goals and my goals. We talk about them every once in a while ago.
How are you working on that? How are you working on this? My future for my business, which
is what we're talking about for is really helping people. I want to condense everything
down and I'm doing it into an app that they carry around with them because I think, and
you already know this, one of the most powerful tools in the world is our cell phone. It really
is. The app I'm creating is going to have different projects and all my books on there
and different courses that people can attend, starting them from a simple email course that
I'm going to pitch to you at the end, you guys that are listening. It's seven emails
and you get one every other day and it gives you simple exercises that you can do to start
progressing and moving forward. Again, if you're focusing on the past, nothing works.
One of the things that I love, and we do a live training, as I was saying before, a live
12 day NLP certification training. My vision is to drive traffic to people back to the
core values of who they are and what they want, their identity, choosing, taking action,
stepping out of their comfort zone. In fact, I was watching Tony Robbins the last couple
days, he had a three day event and I think he had a couple million people on a Zoom call
for three days with him. The power and the impact that he affects all over the world
is absolutely mind boggling. But he started as an NLP trainer, just like me from the same
people that I've worked with and he's a great marketer. He took that simple model of neuro
linguistic programming and he put it into self development, which was probably the next
level of success for a lot of people that you've even interviewed years ago. Most people
just talk about it. Tony does it because he's got techniques and strategies and tasks and
exercises. And for me, that's what I need. If you listeners, you need something to do
rather than just talk about it. Like I can tell you how to get better. I can tell you
how to change your life. There's plenty of podcasts and books and things out there. Have
you ever been to one before and you go, oh my God, that's great information. Yes. And
then the next day you're like, oh yeah, now what? Right? Because we understand one thing
about the human brain. It's easy to comprehend what to do. It's hard to learn how to do it.
To take action. And that's my vision for the people that want to come to me and want to
learn. Right? I give them the process. I give them strategy. I call them mental recipes,
simple mental recipes that you can do that can move you in the direction of whatever
it is that you desire in life. Yeah. I would say the biggest difference I see in Tony is
has nothing to do with NLP or his tactics or anything. He cares about people. Oh yeah.
And most people miss the reality that he's done so much philanthropy. We talked about
that before. I believe like what you're doing in your business now is what we're truly meant
for. It's one of the things he talked about is community, right? You've got to share it.
You just can't hoard all this information. You become a bigger person, a much enlightened
person when you start sharing it with your community around you. Yeah, definitely. There's
a lot of opportunity and I highlight that. I've seen a lot of people get on stage and
promote the heck out of their service, their product without really connecting with an
audience on the emotional level of like, again, who are we serving? Who is it that we're helping?
It makes me cringe for the business owners because we have a 96% loss rate over 10 years
as business owners. We have a 4% survival rate. And the only way we're going to adjust
that is if we start really unpacking like, okay, what is it that people actually want
from us? But that's an iterative process, right? Constantly discovering, constantly
moving, constantly being willing to learn. Let's talk about your worst leadership experience
ever. Let's say I'm going to do a dark top of this company. Let's give you yours. Yes,
let's talk about my failures. That's right. Let's see it. Or it could be somebody else's
that you've experienced with the goal and mindset, vision pros of we all have the opportunity
to learn how does this apply to me? Yeah, absolutely. That's the, you know, I've heard
that over and over again, is asking better questions of yourself, right? That gets you
out of your stuck states and you've got to ask that question. One of the things that
Richard Bandler, the developer of NLP said years ago, he goes, you can't, you cannot,
it's impossible to move forward without failing. And there's a thousand quotes by different
people because only, and here's the reason why, because a lot of people hear that and
they go, oh, I don't want to fail. What does that mean? I don't get it. What am I? You
can't take a step forward until you know where you've been. Cause you don't know if the direction
you're moving forward is the right one because then every time will be the first step. And
success is not a bunch of small incremental results you produce. Usually they're laden
by massive failures in your past. And there's a, there's been plenty of studies about this
too. In fact, I, who was I just listening to the other day? Brian Tracy, famous trainer.
He always said, statistically speaking, most millionaires have failed 17 times in business
in different businesses before they've succeeded. I got to ask, is there like a base beyond
behind the stat? Like, is there an actual study? Because I don't know. I don't know.
So people fail. Great question. And we can always just pick a number, right? I mean,
you've failed three or four times and made it. That's great. Elon Musk says the same
thing. You can't succeed without failing. He goes SpaceX didn't start from me just
developing a plan and then hiring a bunch of engineers. We've blown up a lot of rockets.
You know what I mean? Life is think about, and this is the analogy I use never, ever,
ever, like you were just saying before, Jackson, never take somebody's perspective on anything,
not even mine, because I only know my failures. I only know what works for me. But I'll give
you an example. There's only three problems in life. Only three. Take a guess what they
are. There's only three. I wouldn't dare. Money. Okay. Right. Now everything goes under
that finances anything, right? Relationships, relationships, right? Especially the relationship
you have with yourself. And which I think is probably the most important is your health.
And Ali Allama made a great quote about this. He goes, most people work their entire life
for making money and striving for success and then spend all that money trying to recover
their health at the end of their life. I think that's so sad. Right. My grandfather, we said
years ago, he goes, save 10% of your income and take care of your health. I didn't know
what the hell he meant. I had no idea. You know, eight, 10 years old. What does that
mean? Now I completely get it. Invest 10% of your income and take care of your body
so you have the energy so you can live the kind of life that you want to live. But come
back to your question. Those three problems, that's all there are in life. That's it. Money,
relationships and health. Usually relationships in the beginning when you start forming relationships,
usually at 12, 13 years old, you get in your first relationship. So coming to your question
is how many of you have failed at a relationship before? Always. Yeah, sure. Right. I know
there's actually a couple of people and my niece is one of them that found her first
boyfriend and married and they have four kids and they're very happy. That's like ridiculously
rare. Ridiculous. Then you find the first boyfriend or girlfriend and you get married
and live happily ever after. That just doesn't happen. Well, 99.9% of us. I'm sure they do.
I'm sure they have their challenges. There's people out there that, hey, most of us, we
go through over and over and over again and we think, we think it's them. We point the
finger and so it didn't work because of them. No, it didn't work because I believe you didn't
choose the right person. And that comes back to awareness and accepting responsibility.
In fact, I was married 10 years ago, my very first wife and it lasted 18 months and I knew
it wasn't going to work. I knew literally the day we were getting married and I did
it anyway. I don't know what, I could give you a thousand reasons, obligation, guilt,
blame, shame, whatever that was. But I knew that when I made the decision to leave that
relationship, it was the best thing in my life. Until this day, people still ask me
what happened and I only say this. I go, it was my fault. It was my fault that relationship
didn't work. I chose the wrong person. Simple as that. Congrats on learning and congrats
on your five-year marriage too. That's exciting. I got to ask you again, what's your worst
leadership experience ever, John?
So coming back to that is because of those three things in life, most of it is not taking
action. And for me, you can call it, we were talking about at the very beginning regret,
looking back going, wow, I wish you would have done this. And the one thing, the one
opportunity that I had, and I look back now and I kicked myself, was to do a live TV show.
And I said, no. And the reason I said no, I could beat myself up now over it because
I felt at that time, at that time, I wasn't ready. And a lot of people will say the same
thing about opportunities that face them. I'm just not ready. But here's the real challenge.
You're never ready. You're never ready ever. You just got to go for it. And you've got
to learn, as we were just saying, you learn from the mistakes. And I look back now and
go, wow, how much farther along would my business have been if I would have taken that opportunity,
fallen on my butt and learn from it? Perfect example, you have interviewed people that
probably are learning for the first time how to do podcasts. Right? Hopefully they learn
going forward. Right? Every experience is something that you can put into your tool
belt, as we call it. Yeah, absolutely. I've had some guests that get off the show and
say, hey, man, I wasn't sure if I had the confidence to do this live. But I'm really
grateful that I did. And I'm happy to hear that. You know, that people are able to put
themselves out there, take this chance, knowing that I'm coming in, again, not as an endorsement,
but as an interviewer that could make this process very difficult or hard with them at
times. So it takes a lot of vulnerability. I appreciate you acknowledging that.
No, dude, I know. I've done hundreds of these over years. And it's an art to be a great
host. It really is. It's not just asking questions. It's also rebutting the question or rebutting
the answer and really digging deeper into how your guest really replies and gives you
the results that you want. Definitely. What's your best leadership experience? What does
that look like? I touched on it a little bit. For me, there's nothing more powerful than
watching someone right in front of me get that aha moment. As one of my instructors
used to say, he goes, you get that steam that's coming out of your ears like, whoa, yes, I
get it. Taking ownership of where they are. And the one thing that I love to do is I love
to teach in person. That's why we do the live training still. I mean, COVID killed a lot
of that, right? A lot of people went to Zoom. We still do live trainings. And I love it.
Sitting in front of somebody and actually watching their body and their physiology and
their language patterns change right in front of themselves as well as me. And one of the
things I'll reiterate again, when I was teaching the US Army counterintelligence lie detection
skills, one of the best compliments I got was this. One of the guys that I was working
with said, we always pair up students together and say, practice this on someone right now
in front of you so that when you go out into the real world, you already have that skill
built in. And that's what you really want to do. Practice, practice, practice. And you
can go back to Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods and so many athletes. Michael Jordan used
to say, I practice in my head 45 minutes before every single game, how the game is going to
go. Tiger Woods said the same thing. I just saw a football player just yesterday say that
about one of the Super Bowl plays. He goes, we watch films and we pretend that this is
how the game unravels. Practice, practice, practice. And I love seeing those faces right
in front of me getting this information. So when one of the counterintelligence team members,
he said, my God, John, when I was practicing on one of the other guys, I could tell he
was lying because the hair was standing up on the back of his head. Now, I'm not going
to get into, as you were just saying, there's ways that we can understand how people and
how their body changes in that. And that's really what NLP is about, is understand the
physiology and how the brain and body work together to produce results. And for me, to
answer that question again is the best experience is to have it right in front of you. When
somebody gets that aha moment. And you know this too, from doing what you do. It's like
all the work that you've done, everything that you've practiced, everything that you've
learned, all the failures, all the mistakes, all the successes come crashing into one another
and go, this is what it was designed to do. This is why I'm here. This is why I've taken
this path in life. And it gives you what we call an NLP evidence procedure. You have evidence
that it's working and you're doing what you're meant to do.
Absolutely. So if this was the last chance you had to share a powerful lesson with visionaries,
what powerful lesson? You know, you were talking about business and business success before,
and I don't know if any of your listeners have ever seen the show, The Prophet. It's
with Marcus Lamonis and he goes in and he fixed small businesses. Every single one of
them, every single business owner starts out with the problems that they have are always
outside of themselves. He talks about the three P's product, process, and people, product,
process and people. You need to fix all three of them to work for any business. But he says
the biggest challenge is the people. And it's usually the CEO or the owner. And one thing
I found working with a lot of companies like this too is, and I'm guilty of this as well
as a business owner. We want to control everything. We want to control every little aspect of
our business. And it gets in our way rather than allowing somebody that's better. That's
one of the things thinking where Rich talks about in the book is delegating responsibility
to other people and letting the best. In fact, that's whether you like them or not, it's
one thing Donald Trump talks about. It's one of the Elon Musk talks about. Hire the best
people, surround yourself with the best people. That's the key. You don't know everything
and you can't know everything and you can't spend that much time knowing and learning
and then executing everything. Right? So for me, the one thing that I, the one, literally
the one thing, and that's why I'm writing this new book is learning about state management.
Because here it is folks, life is only one thing. It's the decisions that you make. That's
it. You make decisions that shapes your life. You make a decision, you move in this direction.
You make a decision. Every decision then, its precursor is the emotional state you are
in when you're making that decision. It's one of the things I ask class. I say, look,
if you're in a negative, crappy, crumpy, icky state, are you going to make a positive decision?
No, of course not. If you're in a positive, empowering state, are you going to make a
more effective decision? Absolutely. Control your emotions, control and master your life.
It's that simple. State management. I can give you an exercise. Nice. Yeah, go ahead.
Whenever you're in a negative state, and it doesn't matter what it is, you can label it
however you choose. It could be just an icky state, I'm just in a pissed off state, I'm
frustrated. Hey, I've worked with people that have wanted to commit suicide as well, taken
to the extreme. You've got to change your emotional state. There's only one way that
you can do that leading into this. You've got to take control of your body. Because
your body from the amygdala is producing these negative and positive feelings. You've got
to take control of the body. Because those are just meaningless emotions. Because what
I'd say to you in one moment could trigger somebody else in another moment, the meaning
that they place on it, the emotion they place on it. You've got to get that feeling out
of your body. Here's how you do it. Whenever you're in a negative state, you've got to
realize, again, awareness is, you've got to shake it off. That means stand up, move around,
throw your shoulders back, take a huge deep breath. Maybe do it three times. Get that
negative feeling out of your body and then immediately ask yourself this question, what
do I want instead? What do I want instead? Because the unconscious mind runs 90% of you
and it loves you so much, it wants to give you the answer. So if you ask a better question
of yourself, what do I want instead? Maybe your unconscious mind will just answer, you
know what, maybe just calm and relaxation. Or you know what, maybe you need to take control
of the situation. Or hey, maybe you need to speak out, maybe you need to speak your heart,
speak your mind, communicate more effectively. When you're able to, in that emotional state,
ask better questions, you can take responsibility and take action based on that specific result.
Okay. So one of the things that you mentioned earlier a couple of times, you said the word
we. So some of the things that we're still doing events in person. Who's we?
Well, the people that I surround myself with, right? I've got a VA, my wife actually helps
at some of the live events. I have a coach, actually I have probably three coaches that
I work with that we're on the same page with. Because I believe that really, again, we talked
about before about success. You can't do it on your own. Surround yourself with people
that are like-minded, have the same energy as you were just saying to one of your VAs
before, that have the same vision and are willing to be and stay committed to your project,
to your vision. And one of the things I want to congratulate you on is your water project.
Absolutely probably the most important thing in life, right? Is water and besides air.
Yeah. It's hard to argue against those. We're always going to have air. That's easy
for all. Water is not so easy. Yeah. No, absolutely. I appreciate that. And
I'm grateful for what the water project's up to. I can't call it mine, but I know what
you meant by that. I find myself doing that too. And I want to take ownership of the opportunity
to give back. So it is a great one. You got a virtual assistant. You've got one to three
coaches and then your wife, she's also involved in your operation in addition to working in
the hospital. She's involved, but she helps when I ask, because she works at the hospital
15, 16 hour days, sometimes three, four days a week. She's very busy. But if I'm having
a live event, she'll usually show up. She'll bring lunch for some of the students. She'll
bring things I need. She'll sit in class. She'll answer questions if somebody has any
questions. And that's supporting me. That's supporting me. I don't need her to be involved
in doing the work. I need her supporting me emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually
in that way.
Yeah, definitely. All right. So controlling emotions, mastering your life. What's something
else you want to share in relation to that process?
One of the things that I get asked probably all the time, and even as a fitness trainer
30, 40 years ago, how do I start? Some people, even though they know how to lose weight,
eat right, exercise. It's not brain surgery. Although they need the push, they need the
support, they need the little bit of information. And so one of the things I tell my clients
and my coaching clients is this. The one thing that you have control over, the one thing
that you have control over is your language. And it starts with the internal language,
how you talk to yourself. And in that seven email free lesson I'll be giving, I'll give
you the URL in a moment. It starts off with obviously becoming aware is one of the things
we were talking about. But here's the biggest challenge in life. If you're talking to yourself
in a negative state most of the time, 95, maybe even 51% of the time, you're going to
move in that direction. So here's three words, three simple words that you can change in
your everyday language, the word but, stop using the word but. It's called a negation.
It negates everything that came before. I'll give you an example. Jackson, I'm so proud
and so honored to be here on your podcast, but you don't even care what comes after that.
All your brain heard was the negation going, oh my God. It's this negative feeling. Yes.
We say use the word and it's called a causal linkage. It links the two thoughts. Jackson,
I love this podcast. I'm so honored to be here and I hope that maybe we can work together
later on in the future. Causal linkage. Second word, try. I love this one. Try. Get rid of
that word completely from your vocabulary. There is no such thing as try. You've heard
in Star Wars, Yoda says there is no try, only do or don't. In NLP we say trying is excusing
failure in advance. It'd be like you asking me, hey, you want to come on the podcast?
I go, oh man, yeah, I definitely will try. You know I'm not going to. No commitment.
You guys want to try to come to the, I got a party going on. You want to come Saturday
night? I'll try to make it. You're not going to make it. You already know in advance. Transmute
that word from out of your system to I will or won't. Yeah. And the third word, real powerful
is the word problem. When we say problem to ourselves and other people, to the unconscious
mind, which develops a feeling, it gets the feeling of it's almost insurmountable. It's
a problem. Change it to the word challenge. That was really weird for me. My coach, my
first NLP trainer said, you use the word problem a lot, John. I go, yeah, doesn't everyone?
Right. Universal qualifier like everybody does. Start using the word challenge. He goes,
it's like a speed bump in your mind. It doesn't feel so big. Right. So, but try and problem.
Start there. Start there if you're looking for answers in anything, whether it be your
business, your relationship, your finances, start there. Change your inner dialogue. I
love it. When we work on the inner, it's amazing what can happen with our outer. The word problem
shifting towards challenge. I'm a huge fan of that opportunity. And that's the other
word that I like to use is opportunity. We often see some of our opportunities as our
greatest problems. When in reality, they're our greatest learning adventures, greatest
chances to improve our life. So this is awesome. Those of you who are listening in, if you
want to learn more about Dr. John James Santangelo, then make sure to check out the links that
are in the landing page. Of course, you're welcome to drop comments or questions, anything
that you'd like to contribute as well. Don't hesitate to do so in the comments. We'll make
sure that we get him tagged on that. Also, if you have your own vision that you'd like
to share, then don't hesitate to reach out. We've got a button on the page that says be
our guest and we'd be happy to hear your vision and see what you're up to and how you're helping
out people in this world. John, thanks for being here today.
Buddy, you are awesome. Thank you for what you do. I really appreciate it. And again,
I'm honored to be here.
Absolutely. Everybody have a fantastic week and we will see you on the next show.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll
invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and
attention. Have an excellent week.