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 so
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? You want joy? You want
confidence? You want to feel successful? 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, 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 have, 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 just 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 isn't, it's never an easy thing. And so I think that's the thing.
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 know, 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. And 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
neural network in the part of 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, who only 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 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.