Tell me about your vision. Well, my vision is comes around from my own issues that I was struggling
with when I was a kid, mainly in teenage years and in my 20s. And I struggle a lot with depression
and anxiety. And while I spent time trying to manage it, I guess, deal with it, it gets to a
point where you just think, oh, this is the way it's supposed to be because this is how you feel.
How would you know any different? Sort of like trying to explain the color blue to a blind person.
It's like, well, if you've never experienced color, how do you really experience it? If you've never
really experienced anything but this kind of melancholy, why would you expect anything different?
And it was really with the birth of my son in 2000 that I thought, okay, well, I don't want to
pass this along to him. Or if he ends up having to deal with the same issues,
what could be done about it? And so I really started researching and looking into what could
be done to it. Can you actually change the way your brain works within the world around you?
And what I discovered over years of working on myself in various ways was there are tools,
there are techniques and strategies, skills you can learn that you can literally change
your brain chemistry. You can change the way you feel in your body. And this actually led me to
becoming a hypnotherapist down the line because that was one of the things I was using for myself,
using the power of my own subconscious mind to create healing and just feel better within myself.
And I guess the vision I have is that I like to reach as many people as possible and let them
know you have the power within you to feel better, to create the life that you want.
I don't mean in terms of riches and yachts and sports cars and things, but how you want to feel
within your body. I think we all have a desire to feel good, to feel whatever you want to call it,
happiness or joy or bliss or whatever. And by learning certain skills and strategies and
techniques, you can actually do that. It's sort of like though going to the gym.
You don't get to go to the gym just twice and then you get to be ripped and look like a
Marvel superhero. You have to keep going to the gym. I mean, the Dalai Lama still meditates every
day. The man's 89 years old and he still practices loving kindness and compassion meditation every
day. And you read his books, he talks about the anger and the sorrow and the despair of what's
going on in Tibet. The Chinese government is still bulldozing down his monasteries. They're
still arresting his monks, torturing his monks. So of course he's a human being. He's going to feel
despair and sorrow. I mean, he was exiled out of Tibet in 1958 or 1957 and something like that.
But every day he practices loving kindness and compassion. If anybody was to have it down by now,
you think it'd be that guy. I mean, the guy's not married, the guy has no kids. He has a staff of
people to meet his every need and want. And every day he's practicing loving kindness and compassion.
So if you look at anybody who has mastered anything, whether it's an instrument, athletics,
or something like the Dalai Lama in terms of spirituality, mastering something like loving
kindness and compassion, you notice there's one common denominator and they keep working at it.
And so my vision, and this is probably a super long answer to a short question, but
the vision I have is to let people know that you can have what you want, but just take some effort.
There's a certain amount of relentlessness to this. And just like the Dalai Lama, or look at
anybody who has mastered anything like Yo-Yo Ma, considered the greatest cello player alive.
And the guy still practices three to four hours every day. The guy's 67 years old. Again, if
anybody was to kick back and put their feet up and just phone it in and play Carnegie Hall and
play Mozart night after night, it'd be that guy. But again, he wants to master this music, wants
to master this instrument. And so he practices every day. Dalai Lama practices every day. And so
what do you want in your life? Do you want happiness? Do you want joy? Do you want confidence?
Do you want to feel successful? Do you want to feel like you're worthy? You can have that,
but it does take some effort on your part to practice that. Otherwise, what are you practicing?
You're practicing anxiety, you're practicing depression. That's what I was doing. And I got
really good at it. But when you realize you can practice something else, you realize that the
world opens up to you. Again, it kind of a long answer to a short question, but it comes down to,
you can be the person you want to be, but it does take some effort on your part to do it.
That's incredible. Yeah, I love that vision. And sharing it in parts, because I am starting up my
own company and trying to get out there and trying to talk to people. I have anxiety when it comes to
walking in, knocking on doors, making phone calls to people, because I don't want to sell what I am
or who I am or sell myself to other people. This feels weird. But it's a step in the process you
have to push through. So you just, I've always said that I put on a mask and I keep pushing
through it. Yeah, eventually I'll get more comfortable with that kind of step in the
process. But it's never an easy thing. You want to get good at something, you just keep pushing for
it. Absolutely. But you just had a really great point. You mentioned you put on a mask and that's
a great skill to learn. Just pretend you are that person. Even if you aren't that person yet. And
it's that whole fake it till you make it. I know that's kind of cliched at this point. But if you
could pretend to be that person, you'll actually start wiring that into your brain. And they've
done studies to show that. The piano player study they did back in the 1990s when they wanted to
watch the brain learn something new. And they had the people practicing piano, they had a control
group who didn't do anything. They had a group who pretended to play the piano, not touch it at all.
And what they found is, of course, the people practicing piano actually developed new ideas
in the brain for music. Of course, because they're learning music, they're playing music.
But what's interesting is that people who only pretended, with their imagination,
pretended to play piano also developed the same neural network in the same part of the brain.
They actually wired their brain so it looked like they were learning how to play piano. And so you
can literally become the person. Like I was just saying a minute ago, you can become the person
you want, literally wire that into your system. But it does take some effort. They did spend some
time every day pretending, closing their, you know, sitting recliner on a couch, closing their eyes,
and pretending to play piano. But it literally wired that into their brain and changed who they
were. So again, you can become who you are. And if you need to wear that mask in order to do it,
why not? You know, and you look at any masterful person like Tony Robbins,
he was probably god-awful back in 1980 when he was speaking in front of the, you know,
three or four people. And, you know, but he practiced and he kept going and he pretended
he was the person he wanted to become. And I think that works with pretty much anything.
Absolutely, man. I love this conversation that we're having. I am currently following you on
LinkedIn and Facebook because I found your acinetest.com and I'm like, absolutely, I'm
going to follow this guy along his journey. This is incredible. So why do we need to be
there? So why do leaders hide from funding their vision? I think it's fear. It's fear of failure,
fear of being judged. That takes a lot of guts to get out there. Not only to put yourself out there
and say, this is my idea. Here's how I want to change the world. But then, and will you give me
some money to do that? Because the answer could be no. And it could be a big laugh or it could be an
eye roll. And that's hard to deal with. It's embarrassing. It's humiliating. And you don't
want to do that. There's an actual self-preservation part of the brain that doesn't want you to do that,
doesn't want pain, doesn't want hurt. And, you know, of course, as we grow up and school and bullies
and we've been hurt before, we don't want to experience it again. And so there's actually a
part of the brain, of the subconscious brain, that keeps you from moving into pain. And it's that
thing that, and we want it. We don't want to walk down that dark alley at midnight because it's a
shortcut home. We want to take the lighted streets where there's people around. It's safer. We don't
want to stand too close to the edge of the Grand Canyon. We don't want, or the edge of the Empire
State Building. We don't want to pet the rattlesnake in the middle of the trail. We don't want to touch
the hot pot on the stove. So there's a self-preservation that keeps us alive, obviously.
But there's also, what about the emotional hurt and pain we've had in the past? And so
your subconscious mind wants to keep you from that too. And by putting yourself too far out there,
one of the options is you may get hurt again. And so I think there's some fear of embarrassment,
of fear of failure, fear of being judged, certainly. And in terms of, of course you want to
hide. I mean, when there's a threat, when there's a tornado coming at you, when there's a fight in
the bar or in the street or wherever you want to hide, you want to make yourself smaller. And to
a certain extent, this is where procrastination comes from. Even though the benefit of doing the
project or whatever is doing the report, doing the social media marketing is going to be beneficial
to you, there's some pain to it. Sitting there for a couple of hours, coming up with Instagram
reels or whatever it is. And so you end up with procrastination because it's funner to maybe read
a book or watch TV or go on a walk or something than doing it and sitting in front of the computer
all day long. And so in terms of hiding, there's just a certain amount of self-preservation.
And yes, it is to your benefit to go out there and give your message and even fund your message.
But there's also some pain involved with that because there will be people who will say no.
I mean, look at great example, some of your listeners would probably be familiar with is
the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books that were written by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor
Hanson. It's a big phenomenon in the 90s or early 2000s, whenever that was. And they were rejected
by 157 publishers. And that's got to be painful. Yeah. You know, that they kept going. And
they didn't hide because they believed in what they were working on. It was finally some medical
textbook publisher who was going bankrupt decided to take a shot at it. And they ended up selling
millions upon millions of books. A best-selling book is 100,000 copies. That's a best-selling
book. If you sell 100,000 copies, if you sell 20,000 copies, you'll probably get another book
out of your publisher. You'll get to write another book, let alone 100,000 copies. So when you
are a Stephen King or a J.K. Rowling or something, you're selling millions of books, let alone,
you know, this probably without exaggeration, at least 50, if not 60 volumes of this Chicken
Soup for the Soul series of books, you're selling tens of millions of copies over a decade.
But look at all the failure they had to go through. And once it was, once the publishing
deal was set up, it still took them a year before they started selling books.
With all the marketing they had to do, they had their specific five things every day.
They did five things every day. And back then, they didn't have podcasts and things like that.
They were writing articles and blog posts and interviews on radio shows and things like that.
But between the two of them, they did five things every day to promote the book. So that's
10 things between the two of them. And it still took some 360 days before the book started
selling. And so in terms of hiding, it's a lot of work. And it's a lot of putting yourself out
there. And it's a lot of maybe a lot of notes and a lot of doors shut in your face. And that's got
and you don't want that. So in terms of hiding, in terms of how to go about doing it anyway,
again, I think it's doing the work every day to put yourself in state,
every day to put yourself in state, just like an actor before they go out on stage or an athlete
before they walk up to the starting line or up to home plate or whatever. You want to put yourself
into the zone, so to speak. And if need be, pretend you are that person already. And if you need to
armor yourself or put on the mask, then you need to do that if you need to make that cold call.
But you can do that. You're allowed to do that. I think there's even still a certain authenticity
to putting on a mask or an armor because it's a mask you develop. It's still part of you if you
want to go through the whole Joseph Campbell archetypes and things like that, you're just
putting on the warrior mask, or you're putting on the success mask or the power empowerment mask or
whatever, whatever mask you're putting on, it's still a part of you. It's just your version of
that. And so I think in terms of the word mask, maybe that's even a misnomer because mask implies
you're hiding your identity. I think it's just another part of your identity, the warrior
identity or the empowerment identity that you're now putting out there, which maybe is new or needs
to be tested off. But I think it's that idea of if you need to become...
If you need to become that warrior personality, take 10 minutes, 15 minutes before you make that
series of calls, phone calls or the presentation before the board of directors or the investors,
whether that's sitting in your car or if there's a room you could go to before you do it or maybe
you're doing it on a Zoom call or something, take 15 minutes and put yourself in state, put yourself
in the shoes of the person who's going to be successful in making that presentation.
And the more you practice that, the better you get at it. And when do you stop practicing being
that person? You never look at the Dalai Lama. Ask the Dalai Lama when you stop practicing this
stuff. You just keep going. And you can become, like I say, you can become the person you want to
be. Look at, again, Tony Robbins. When you hear his story at the very beginning, he doesn't sound
like a very confident person or somebody who's even very comfortable in his own shoes or even
in his own skin. And yet look at him even just several years later when he decided to turn his
life around. But that required a lot of work on his part and a certain relentlessness. And even
if you look at his documentary that came out a few years ago, I'm Not Your Guru, that Tony Robbins
documentary, basically just follows him through one of those week-long events in the arenas when
he's talking to 10,000 people. But it shows him in his morning getting up out of bed, and he's doing
the cold plunge and he's jumping on a little trampoline to wake up his adrenal glands. And then
he's doing his meditation work. Then he goes to the event center and talks to his staff and what's
going on and the accountants and the producers who are doing next year's events. And then he goes out
on stage and inspires 10,000 people. And even right before he goes on stage, he still puts himself in
state. And this guy's been doing it for 40 years. The man started in 1980. And he still not only does
his meditation work and his physical work in the mornings, he still puts himself in state before he
walks out on stage. Just as I'm sure Yo-Yo Ma does, just as any athlete does or any actor or any
musician, you're going to put yourself in state. So what about doing that before you walk into that
investment meeting or the board of directors or the Zoom call? What if you spent 10 minutes,
15 minutes doing some sort of meditation work or visualization work or whatever it is for you? And
there's all sorts of different ways of doing it. But finding that way that where you put yourself
into the zone and then walk out on stage or walk into the meeting or the investment group meeting
and then see how well you do. But again, there's that certain relentlessness. Don't wait until it's
five minutes before the meeting to decide you're going to do something about it. You want to
practice just like any athlete's going to practice before they get to the actual event. You want to
practice for the marathon or the 10K or whatever. So practicing leading up to any sort of event
you're doing is going to put you in a more comfortable place, reduce that fear, reduce
that anxiety because you feel more comfortable doing it. And so again, there's, like I said a
couple of times already, there's a certain relentlessness to this work. You don't get to
just decide one day that, yeah, I'm going to go in front of an investment group and ask for a million
dollars for my great idea and hope that it goes well. You need to lead up to that and practice
for that, maybe in front of a group of people. So I think it can be done. And if you need to put
yourself in the warrior mode, put yourself in the archetype of your warrior and empower yourself in
that way. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned into 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
time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.