I made it up that way.
We did the Route 1.
I had a 6-month-old, a 2-year-old, a 4-year-old.
We hit Disneyland in the entire Route 1, ended up just crossing into the very southern border
of Oregon and went on a hike and found like blackberry bushes and just ate everyone that
we could.
It was such an awesome opportunity.
So I have a very, very fond memory of Oregon, even though we were probably 2 miles across
the border.
What am I missing in Portland?
What do I need to go see?
You know, it's a beautiful city.
There's lots of good restaurants.
We're close to the mountains, close to the ocean, just beautiful country.
You got to come check it out.
Yes, definitely.
For sure, Jeff.
I imagine that that's scary too.
It's impactful from an environment standpoint, right, when you're trying to get centered
and meditate and things like that.
I find it easier in places like that than in New Mexico and the barren wastelands of
New Mexico, maybe because I'm sick of seeing it.
But is there an element of truth to that?
Does environment enhance our ability to lock in and meditate or is that just an excuse
we make us human beings?
You know, definitely being out in nature is very helpful.
You know, being in the distractions of the city where you have all these people, stimulants
going on and the sounds going on, it's nice to be out in a peaceful place.
And something about having all the live trees and the running waters is very peaceful and
soothing as well.
Huge.
Yeah, well, thank you, because I agree.
It's again, it's harder in the desert than it is for me.
I mean, I've seen Rodney, you know, in his Grand Canyon meditations, but there's for
me the trees, the beach, you know, they bring something different to my soul that I don't
get in other environments.
So we'd love to know from you listening in, what environments do you find most conducive
to healthier, happier, more balanced lifestyles and meditation, which we'll probably talk
about quite a bit.
Jeff, what's your favorite environment to meditate in?
You know, for me, it's just the consistent pattern of doing the practice.
I enjoy it pretty much wherever I'm at.
It's always nice to be out in nature where we're out of the city.
I live on the outskirts of the city on a little over seven acres.
I've no neighbors around.
It's pretty quiet out there.
So on nice days, I like just opening up all the doors in the house and having the fresh
air blow in and and doing my morning practice there.
It's pretty nice.
That's awesome.
There's I think there's something about home too, right?
It's you know, at least there should be.
We need to do sometimes we need to make changes to our home environment in order to create
that.
But that's one of the most profound feelings is when your home is safe and not when you
create a haven for yourself and then to be able to center yourself on the present and
enjoy that.
There's there's a rewarding flow that comes from it.
Now I'm I'm no expert in this regard.
There's there's it's probably actually not fair to say this is not my focal point in
life.
And while I'm 36 years old or 36 and 363 days old, you have been practicing the art of
meditation and getting people centered for 36 years.
What if you could give us the gift of one superpower and that experience, what would
it be and what three resources would you also recommend for entrepreneurs, visionary leaders
out there that have helped you along your journey?
When it comes to meditation, I think for a new student or even somebody who's been introduced
to the practice before but maybe doesn't have a lifestyle in the practice yet.
I have three things that I always tell people.
And if you follow these three things, you will be successful with the practice and it'll
help you get where you're looking to go on the shortest possible path.
And the first one is why are you drawn to the practice?
This is what gives you your energy and your spark and your ability to kind of have that
drive on those days when you don't want to do the practice.
And when I say why, you know, I'm thinking about maybe for you, it's you want to stay
healthy into your later years so you can watch your grandkids grow up or stay mobile and
active into your later years or maybe you have a stress disorder or you're dealing with
anxiety or panic attacks and you want to learn how to overcome that practice.
Or maybe you're an athlete and you want to learn how to improve your performance with
the practice.
All of these things can be done with the practice.
But don't just think about, you know, hey, I want to improve my performance on the field.
Think about how is that going to affect my life?
And how am I going to feel if I don't do that and really have some depth in that why?
Because we all face this, you know, maybe it's tomorrow, next week or next month, your
alarm's going to go off and you're going to be, ah, I'll do my practice tomorrow.
You know, and if you have that strong why and that energy to get up and do it, now you
start looking forward to the practice and thinking, I get to do this, not it's something
that I have to do.
And when you can make that mind set shift, you really start to see a lot of benefits
and start to live the practice.
The second thing is the importance of consistency.
You know, the Dalai Lama once said that everybody should meditate for 20 minutes a day unless
you're too busy, then you should meditate for an hour.
And I love that saying in that it's just so important to have this be part of your life.
You know, meditation was meant to be a way of life, not a hobby that we do once in a
while.
And if, say for example, you're dealing with a stress disorder, you can't say, ah, I'm
having a panic attack, it's time to go meditate.
You have to integrate these things into your life so you start recognizing these imbalances
and now you can do something about it with the practice.
It's not a pill you can take after the fact.
And if you start to understand this and integrate this consistency into your day to day life,
you know, that's where you really start to see a lot of change.
And then lastly, the third thing is you need to find a guide.
You know, if you think that you're going to be self-taught in the meditative arts, you're
going to spend years and years and sometimes spending off into directions that aren't going
to help you at all.
You know, I've been studying now for 36 years and I'm still learning all the time.
I'm just a student nowhere near being the master.
And you know, I've had students that come into the academy here that have been self-taught
and they've been training 10, 15, 20 years even.
And sometimes they'll see somebody who's had a guide that's been here at the academy for
six or 12 months and they're further along in their practice because they've had a focused
approach to get to where they need to go.
And so, you know, life is short.
Your time is valuable.
It's easy to find somebody to help point you in the right direction and keep you focused.
So if you do those three things and you stay consistent with that, meditation will be one
of the best things you've ever done for yourself.
Whoa, that's a lot of value.
I'm going to add to some of what you said because one, you were a little bit soft on
that last one, the finding a guide.
And I appreciate that.
You said you can find yourself spinning off.
And one of the things I loved about what you said about being too busy is you said, I'm
having a panic attack now.
I need to go meditate now.
That's like too late.
You know, that principle of how it can hurt.
You also talked about the why and the why nots, the consequences of inaction.
If you don't know how to meditate and you can do wrong practices that lead to worse
possibilities and outcomes.
And I think that's important for people to recognize.
But I want to circle back to one thing you said.
You said you're not the master.
You said you're still learning, right?
But you also talked about finding a guide.
And so the mind kind of says, well, wait a second.
Don't I need to find a master to be the guide?
So talk to me about the difference in those two phrases or the terminologies according
to your definitions.
So you know, I've spent the last 36 years of my life traveling around the world and
I've met some really amazing meditation teachers and I've learned a lot from some really great
people.
You know, a lot of times people will say that, you know, they tried meditation and it just
didn't work for them.
They couldn't quiet their mind.
And somewhere along the way, people got this misconception that in order to benefit from
meditation, you have to be in this blissful state of nirvana and nothing bothers you.
And, you know, training with all of these amazing teachers from all over the world,
I have never met one that doesn't get distracted.
We all do.
It's part of life.
You know, it's just who we are as human beings.
And so I don't feel like you're ever really the master, no matter how much you put into
this practice.
You know, like I said, you know, it's not just a hobby I've been doing for 36 years.
This has been my profession.
I live this for I've been living this for a long time.
And it's such a deep practice that I'm always growing and I'm always learning.
I feel like I'm more a student now than I was 20 years ago.
And I think having that depth of knowledge is helpful for somebody newer coming to the
practice.
And, you know, your goal is finding a guide is finding somebody who has a lot more depth
and knowledge and can point you on the direction and help you not make all the mistakes that
they did.
You know, for me, coming along through the years through the last 36 years, I've made
a lot of mistakes, but there weren't bad.
They were something that helped me find more focus and be more beneficial to my students
because I feel like if I hadn't made some of those mistakes, I wouldn't be able to stop
my students from making those mistakes.
And so if you have somebody that has more time and that can help point you in the direction,
you know, you can save yourself many years of time.
You know, I wish that, you know, 36 years ago, I would have had access to a place like
I'm offering here in Portland because it would have been amazing.
You know, I wouldn't have had to do so much searching.
Exactly.
And that is one of the neat things about your program.
I do love the way that you have your website built out.
And, you know, we'll take a look at the website, the YouTube channel that you have, the depth
of what you're offering is.
I hosted a number of people who are in the healing space, you know, and who are in the
meditation space and creating a balanced life.
But you can you can usually tell the difference, not always, but you can usually tell in 2024
who's got a masterful depth.
I know I use the word that we don't like.
But who's got that dedication of decades behind what they've done based on the materials they
have?
So as we as we get ready to explore what that looks like, the reason why I think this is
so important is finding a guide.
It's so much easier to do in other industries.
Right.
If I need somebody's help for for a medical emergency for my kids, then I can go to my
doctor who's going to refer me to a specialist who's going to refer me to another specialist
who's going to refer me to a specialist.
Right.
So it's a creative command that exists.
And if we need a heart surgeon, they're going to guide us to that heart surgeon.
Right.
If I need a lawyer that I can go to pretty much any law office and they'll tell me, you
know what, this isn't my practice.
This is who you're looking for.
And then thanks to Yelp reviews and beyond, I can find that.
But when it comes to Reiki meditation, you know, being the warrior, spirituality, prayer,
religion, et cetera, all of that kind of gets meshed in to a lump sum situation.
And I'm going to put a little AI AI guide together related to finding a guide.
But my question for you, too, Jeff, is if people are looking for that type of support,
what are the expert level questions that beginners don't know to ask themselves?
And maybe just one or two questions that can help put us in the right direction.
As though I'm coming to you or at least I'm coming to some, I don't know, somebody who
loves meditation out there and I'm like, Hey, where do I go to find a guide?
What questions would help that person figure out who they who they should be going to?
Well, you know, unfortunately, that's a little bit tough these days because of the access
to all of the information that's out there.
You know, when I was coming up, there wasn't YouTube, there wasn't all these resources.
So I couldn't go out and watch 100 different videos and pretend like I know 100 different
things.
I had to go out and see construction.
And when I found something and I had a teacher that gave me something, I treated it like
it was gold and I pounded it into the ground and I did it every day.
And I really tried to see where this was coming from.
Whereas today what happens is, is you get a lot of people that will go out there and
they'll see this practice and this practice and this one and they'll, you know, they'll
be 30 years old and they're doing 100 different things and they're acting like they're the
master of everything.
And not, you know, 30 is great.
I'm not saying anything about the age group, but you can't do this many things in such
a short amount of time and have it with any quality.
And so, you know, part of what you want to do is, you know, how long has somebody been
invested?
How many students have they helped?
What is their philosophy behind the practice?
You know, I truly believe that if anybody follows one stringent practice, I think I
would steer clear of that.
I think that having an understanding of the science behind the practice and understanding
how to build an evolving life practice with meditation.
And when I talk about the meditative arts, I'm not talking about sitting and just breathing
and trying to quiet your mind.
I'm talking about movement practices like Tai Chi, Qi Gong, yoga, sitting meditation,
standing meditation, breath work, all of these things that incorporate the meditative arts.
So you can learn how to build an evolving life practice around your lifestyle to help
point you in any one direction that you want to get from practicing meditation.
Now in the meditative arts, I have broken it down into kind of five paths that you can
follow.
And there is the athletic or the combat side of the practice that helps with your physical
performance and your awareness, your timing and your ability to be more in tune with the
body.
There's the therapeutic side of the practice that is great for keeping your body healthy
and flexible and strong and working through injuries.
There's the medical side of the practice.
You know, all of Chinese medicine is based off a Qi Gong theory, which is a very deep
meditative practice.
Then there is the philosophical side of the training and then lastly, the meditative and
spiritual side of the training, which is what most people think about when they hear the
word meditation.
Now as I've been fortunate enough to have so many students come through the academy
over the years, people come for any one of those five reasons or maybe a combination
of a couple of them.
And you're not going to follow the same path if you're looking to get into the spiritual
side of the practice as if you were going to go into the athletic side of the practice.
Now there's some fundamental principles that will be the same, but your overall daily routines,
your rituals, your active practices, your philosophical practices will adjust depending
on what you're looking to accomplish.
And so having somebody that really understands the layout of what the meditative arts have
to offer and help you kind of narrow in and focus on practices that will help get you
to where you want to go.
That is the kind of questions that I would be asking.
I want to make a joke because it's podcasts, but at the same time, I want to respect the
sacred nature of what you just mapped out for us.
That was beautiful.
It was amazing.
You've already unlocked the doors for me in about seven different ways that I can already
see the opportunity to explore.
And my map for meditation and maximizing meditation is now that much clearer thanks to these pathways
too that you just created.
It makes it that much easier for me to benefit from.
So I want to thank you for that.
My favorite thing that you said in the beginning, I had a feeling this was going to stay true
throughout the whole explanation that I think most people won't catch.
And I'm really grateful that I did.
So I'll circle back to that.
You said most people have not arrived to meditation as a lifestyle yet.
So there's a really big golden nugget right there for all of you listening in.
There's perhaps a lot of wisdom in moving towards understanding that instead of using
it as an insecure or as an app to get you out of a stressful situation, perhaps there's
extreme wisdom in adopting this as a lifestyle.
We'll come back.
We'll talk about a healthier, happier and more balanced lifestyle.
I hope in the meantime that everybody that's listening in takes a chance to start really
understanding where in your life are you at and how do you apply some of the principles
that Jeff just shared with us because you guys can do this on your own.
And my hope is that you also use it to find a guide and maybe Jeff is that guide for all
of us.
We'll see you guys on the other side.
We'll dive into Jeff's vision at large when we come back to Vision Pros Live.
All right.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Callum.
I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
All right.
Welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Callum, founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And I am, oh man, in reverence, happy at peace with the reality that we had Jeff Patterson
on stage today.
He's been practicing the art of meditation as a career, as a focal point of his life
for 36 years.
And the guy resonates that exact reality.
So again, we'll be diving into building a healthier life, becoming happier, creating
more balance.
Now I know the word balance is under attack right now in the market because people love
to use words as buzzwords and then spin it for the sake of an article.
But I'm a huge fan of understanding that what balance is.
I find that people who will turn their back on a virtue just because it's a fad to do
so aren't as centered as well as those who recognize that words aren't evil.
The way we sometimes utilize them or misconstrue them can be.
So have an open mind.
That's my hope for you, is that you will take a look at the rich, good side of what we're
going to be talking about today.
And before we bring Jeff on stage, a couple of resources that are important to us and
that I love being a part of.
One of them is the Hard to Kill Network, hardtokill.org with Dave Morrow, who's got a show, a podcast
titled the same.
Dave's helping 100,000 veterans lose 2 million pounds collectively right now.
He's about to run the 30 the Lean Challenge, a 30 day program to help you maximize your
health, lose weight, get into great shape.
He's expanded this program to citizens or rather, I should say civilians and not just
military personnel.
I finally got myself into shape and got past my mental blocks.
I've been doing 125 pushups per day.
That's after eight years of successfully avoiding every health guru on the planet and keeping
myself skinny fat.
Dave somehow got me motivated.
So again, we're going to be helping 100,000 veterans lose 2 million pounds collectively
and we have a free community to go join and check out what it is that he's up to and how
he's leading this cause.
Then there's Opranales de Trabajo para Latinos.
What did I just say?
It's opportunities for work for Latinos.
We've also now got opportunities for Indians and we've got opportunities for the Philippines.
And what this is, it's our free program to help Latinos and the rest of the world learn
how to become what you call virtual assistants.
The sad reality is I see a lot of business owners out there, a lot of well-meaning entrepreneurs
hire a VA and because they've never been trained in the process of working with team members,
what happens 99% of the time, yes, that means you're likely guilty of doing this, is the
business owner ends up practicing what I call virtual abuse.
You got to care about your people.
You got to take care of them.
You got to train them.
You got to help them be successful so they can provide the types of results that you
want and this program is dedicated to helping do that.
Luis and Cynthia run the podcast as well for opportunities and we're looking to bridge
the economic gap between North America, South America and the rest of the world.
So if you're interested in taking a look at that, please do.
If you are a Latino leader, then come and join us on that show.
You never know how many people you'll inspire to get in the game and say, you know what?
This is a pretty cool program.
Most of the world does not even know that LinkedIn exists, my friends.
They don't know that Canva, Upwork, Fiverr exists.
We're creating awareness for that so that they can level their lives up and we hope
you join us in that process.
Then there's the water project.
The water project we have no affiliation with.
I just chose to pay attention to it.
When I saw it, it didn't emotionally hit me because I've never been thirsty in my life.
But as I started to meditate on this and realized and took walks and thought about it, thought
through, man, what would it be like if my kids like this kid were digging into a dirty
water hole in order to get the water they're going to drink or cook with that night or
bathe themselves with?
I decided, you know what?
I want to talk more about this.
I want to help people understand the value of what's out there.
My hope is you join me on this cause.
Spread the word.
You don't have to donate anything.
You don't have to give it back.
If you're not in a position to do so, then just share it with somebody who you think
or talk about it over a dinner conversation with friends and family.
We have 8 billion people to help in this world.
This is just one way to do so.
If you know of other opportunities out there to help, then do me a favor.
Comment with those opportunities.
We'll be happy to take a look at it.
What strikes me the most about this website is this picture of these kids celebrating
water with the same energy or more than my kids celebrate Christmas Day.
That's a humbling thought.
So again, let's use those humbling thoughts to drive us and motivate us to do more good
in the world, not to fall and sink into despair.
They can get happy about that over water.
I'm sure you and I can get happy about things we have in life and move our lives forward.
So if we can help on that, fantastic.
And without further ado, let me do my best to help you by bringing Jeff Patterson back
on and diving into his vision.
Jeff, welcome back to Vision Pros Live.
Hey, thank you.
Yeah, absolutely.
So Jeff, we're going to be diving in healthier, happier, more balanced lifestyle a little
bit further.
Before we do, though, I guess I want to dive into what's your vision for those that you
serve?
What do you see them accomplishing, escaping, getting to?
I'll let you go whichever direction you want with that.
So in the last 30 years of running my academy here, I've been fortunate to have a lot of
students come in, and some of them are practicing the external arts like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
or Muay Thai.
And as a teacher, it's always been fun to bring a student up in one of those practices
and have them do well in competition and go out and kind of see them grow and become a
better person because of it.
The meditative arts, however, you don't have that competitive side, but you have some amazing
life changes that come from the practice.
I've had people that come in here that are suffering with stress disorders, thinking
about killing themselves, having health issues and illnesses that they're working through,
injuries that they're working through.
And I've heard so many life-changing stories that come with the practice.
And because of that and hearing those hundreds of stories, that's what's made me so passionate
about really wanting to spread the word.
That's why I've written my last couple of books.
That's why I created my online program.
The website that you mentioned earlier, that is solely for this purpose.
It has nothing to do with my academy here.
All of that has been created to try to get this message out and to get more people into
learning how to build an evolving life practice with meditation.
And a lot of people think they don't have time and it's not like you need to retire
to a cave and meditate for the rest of your life.
It's easy to integrate these practices into your lifestyle.
If you could do a simple ritual practice every day, even if it's only 20 minutes, and integrate
some active practices.
And active practices are great because you can do them in as little as 60 seconds or
two minutes.
And they're just a way to stay and keep that awareness available as we go through the day
and help develop a higher level of sensitivity in all that we're doing.
And that's part of what the meditative arts is about is we expand our ability to notice
these shifts and these changes because our awareness is heightened.
Our sensitivity is more in tune.
And that allows us to have a say, if you will, in how our energetic, mental, and emotional
expressions appear in the world.
It's well set and it's neat that you've created a balance, like a harmonic balance.
And I can hear it in your tone.
I can hear it in your cadence of not necessarily a separation between what you provide virtually
and what you provide in person, but you have definitely either done your research or you
got lucky.
Well, you know, whatever people want to define it as, the structure of your website is extremely
intentional and it creates that zen feeling.
The content that you've put out there really helps people understand the value of what
you do.
As somebody who deals with mostly online entities, I say that because most websites do not.
It's a giant mass of verbal vomit that usually drives people away from an experience and
makes it very hard to capture the essence and value of the person you're talking to
because they just kind of slapped everything onto a page, many, many, many different styles
and times.
So for the business owners, the visionaries out there, what type of dedication did you
put into creating the harmonic digital presence of what you offer or did it just come naturally
and was it just an overnight success?
First, I'm not a website designer and I did not design this.
However, I helped create the message and the content of the site.
I had a great team that helped me design the site and that's nothing that I can take credit
for.
Well, sure it is.
You couldn't have done it.
They couldn't have done it without your vision.
So you chose to hire a team and I'm going to steamroll you on that because they literally,
if they had done that without you, it would have never reflected you and your program.
But on the flip side, you had to appreciate the reality that you weren't a website designer.
You had to get your ego out of the way knowing that you could have used Wix or you could
have used Squarespace.
And here's why I hit that, Jeff.
Ninety-six percent of business owners are failing within 10 years.
Four percent are surviving.
They're not thriving.
They're getting their butt kicked every day.
In business, they just happen to have a higher pain tolerance than the 96 percent who gave
up.
And then out of those four percent, there's a few people who really kick butt at it.
And so I want to honor the visionaries who kind of like you did with meditation where
you're like, hey, look, if you're just looking for an instant cure to your anxiety, it ain't
going to work.
If you're just looking to slap together a website, it ain't going to work.
You've got to be able to look at it from a more holistic standpoint the way you just
talked about and kind of downplayed.
But you use some very big wisdom principles to put that together.
I think most people won't hear that if I don't draw attention to it.
So keep going, please.
Well, thank you.
So I think part of when you start talking about meditation, that I think it's something
that's really valuable for your listeners to understand.
If you are taking on a meditation practice, it doesn't matter what it is, whether it's
Tai Chi, Qigong, sitting meditation, standing meditation, yoga.
There's some underlying principles that you need to cultivate that are the foundation
of any practice, no matter what path you follow.
And I call these the five regulations.
And I think that it's worth it to have a basic understanding of these if you're drawn to
the meditative practice.
And they are regulating the body, regulating the breath, regulating the mind, regulating
the energy, and regulating the spirit.
And briefly, I'll kind of talk about what I mean in those five directions.
The first, regulating the body, is the easiest one to see an immediate response from.
And an example would be, think about a time where maybe you're sitting down at your computer
and you've been there for three or four hours and your shoulders are rounded forward and
you're feeling lethargic and maybe your neck's getting sore.
And then another time when the most important person in your world walks in the room and
your body perks up and you feel like you're on top of the world.
Well, 100% of the time, we're in control of this energetic expression.
Now, this is a basic idea and it comes from our skeletal alignment, our muscular tension
and learning how to be aware and control these things.
And then on a little bit of a deeper level in regulating the body, we have exercises
and things that we do to maintain a certain amount of muscle in the body so we stay healthy,
a certain amount of flexibility, making sure that we get enough sleep and our diet is healthy
so we're bringing good nutrients into the body and our energy level is good.
Then we have regulating the breath.
Regulating the breath is an extremely deep topic and it's something that if you take
on a meditation practice, you'll be studying for the rest of your life.
And in fact, in Qigong, they often refer to it as the science of the breath because there's
literally hundreds of different breathing strategies that they do in the practice.
Now, since there's so many of these different breathing strategies, we kind of broadly categorize
them into yin methods and yang methods.
Yin methods are often deeper, more holistic style meditations.
And what I mean by that is if you ever listen to somebody sleep, their natural breathing
pattern is a longer inhale and a shorter exhale.
And this is the body's natural way of bringing your conscious mind into your subconscious
mind, which is where we are when we're sleeping and dreaming.
And so if we want to emulate this style of energetic work in our meditations, we can
do longer inhales, soft retentions at the end of the inhale, shorter exhales to help bring
that energy inward, which is great for reducing stress, dealing with anxiety, with panic attacks,
with boosting our creativity.
There's a lot of reasons why we would do this yin side of the practice.
Then we have the yang side of the practice.
The yang side is more aggressive.
It's kind of like if you ever had to push your car or you pick up something heavy, your
natural instinct is to use tension in the breath, maybe make the breath audible and
exhale with power.
Now when we start understanding how to use the breath as a strategy, and in Chinese philosophy
they call this balancing the con and li or the water and fire.
Now when we're going through the day with emotional ups and downs and we see ourselves
start to get a little bit excited, we can use the yin side of the breath to help bring
us back down.
And we see ourselves starting to feel depleted.
We can use the yang side to help bring us back up.
And now we can find more balance and consistency throughout the day.
Everybody goes through the day with these emotional ups and downs.
Some people are like a roller coaster, others may be a little more balanced.
But understanding how to use this is a real valuable tool.
And then we have regulating the mind.
And we already kind of touched on this a little bit while when you get distracted, say for
example you're doing a sitting practice for 20 minutes and you get distracted 50 times
during that session.
Every time you get distracted, you recognize the imbalance, you use the posture, your breath,
your movement, if it's a movement practice to help bring you back to focus.
And now you just got 50 repetitions of how to recognize a distraction, be off center
and bring yourself back to focus.
So this is not a bad thing.
This is a good thing that you're being in tune and aware of this.
You know, there's this story that I really enjoy about these two older monks and they're
walking down this dirt road after a big rainstorm and everything's muddy, it's a mess everywhere.
They come up to this huge mud puddle.
And on the other side of the puddle is this beautiful little girl standing there in a
white dress and she's crying.
And the older monkey yells across the puddle and says, is everything okay?
Can we help you?
And she says, I need to be somewhere, but if I walk across this puddle, I'm going to
get my dress all dirty.
So the older monkey rolls up his pant legs and he walks across the puddle and picks her
up, puts her on his back and takes her to the other side and sets her down and she's
off on her way.
Well him and the younger monk are walking a couple miles down the road.
And finally, the younger monk is just furious and he says, you know, we're not supposed
to touch girls, but yet you did back there at the puddle.
And the older monk looks down and says, you're still thinking about that girl.
I left her back there at the puddle.
And how many times in life do we have to get two miles down the muddy road before we realize
we got to let that go?
We got to change our focus.
And so when we learn how to recognize these imbalances and be more in tune, it's a lot
easier to make those adjustments before they waste 10 minutes, an hour, two weeks, whatever
that is for you.
And then the fourth regulation is regulating the energy.
And this is an extremely deep topic and something that we could talk about for the next couple
hours.
But briefly, an understanding of it would be if you have reached a competent level in
regulating the body, the breath and the mind, you now have the tools to circulate and lead
the energy in the body.
And that's kind of the basics of what I mean when I say that.
And then the last one is regulating the spirit.
And regulating the spirit is very profound.
And it's something that meditation masters and monks will spend their entire life working
towards reaching that ultimate stage of enlightenment.
And with these five basic regulations, you can see that as we start cultivating these
areas, it influences everything we do in life and really starts to build a strong foundation
that can bring a lot of positive energy in anything we do.
I just want to marinate on that.
We're not going to go into the typical questions that I go into in the show today.
I am going to skip to one though that I don't want to accidentally miss the opportunity
for because the things you've already shared, Jeff, it's just, yeah.
I've learned a lot today.
I might circle back to one of these new things that I just learned.
When you talked about imagining your favorite person walking in, I got some really important
insight for me.
But I hope others, again, have had this experience that have been really listening with their
heart and mind, their soul, as you said, their spirit, their energy, their mind, their breath
and their body throughout this conversation because you've delivered so much value.
To try to box you in a little bit, if this was the last chance you had to share a powerful
lesson with the world, what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
I'm really passionate about a philosophical concept called yielding.
As you noticed, the name of my website and my most recent book is called The Yielding
Warrior.
I think mentioning a little bit about that would be of value to your listeners.
Yielding is something that's been around for generations.
It's used in the meditative arts, the martial arts.
In my most recent book, I break it down into three pillars.
We have physical yielding, mental yielding and emotional yielding.
Physical yielding is the idea that I push you, you push me, whoever's the bigger, stronger
person with the most leverage eventually is going to push the other person over.
But with yielding, instead of us seeing who the bigger meathead is, when you push me,
I get out of the way of that force and now I can respond with less effort.
I'm not trying to butt heads with you and see if I'm bigger and stronger than you.
In athletics, it's obvious how this is beneficial because many times we're coming up against
other athletes that are bigger and stronger than us and if we try to butt heads with them,
we're going to lose.
And so in order to be good at physical yielding, we need to be well-rooted.
The lower part of our body needs to be strong and flexible so we can change our central
equilibrium without getting tight.
The body has to be relaxed.
The breath has to be calm and the mind has to be present.
Now while it may take a lifetime to master these skills, from day one by integrating
a meditative practice into your life, you start to recognize these things inside yourself
and become more in tune and more aware of these things.
Also, you start to see these things more clearly in other people and this is where it starts
to become very interesting because now, say for example, you and I are having a conversation
and by the way, we're moving into what I call mental yielding now.
If you and I are having a conversation and I say something that unsettles you and I pick
up on it right from that first sign of imbalance, it's a lot easier to adjust the conversation
and keep us in a happy place than if I'm not paying attention to that and pretty soon I'm
so far off track, you want to slap me upside the head.
And so learning how to use yielding in all of our interactions is extremely powerful.
One, we're just being more considerate which is something I think everybody could do more
of and two, it allows us to be strategic in all of our interactions which is great for
relationships, for business, for sales, for negotiations.
I mean anything you do, having this higher sense of awareness can really be beneficial.
And then lastly, we have what I call emotional yielding and emotional yielding is very much
like mental yielding but it's with our own interpersonal conflicts.
So you think about when something happens, oftentimes we'll respond and we'll go down
this path and we might get an hour, a day, a week down that road and realize maybe that
wasn't the best choice.
But by having the skills that meditation gives us and being able to stay more present and
more aware and more in tune when these imbalances happen, oftentimes we're able to sit back
and analyze the scenario and make a more educated decision that saves us a lot of heartache
on the other side.
I've been explaining this idea of yielding now for over 30 years.
I've been running this academy for 30 years.
I can't believe it's been that long.
But a lot of times people will tell me, ah, that makes a lot of sense.
In fact, I use yielding all the time.
And while I would agree, I think everybody does some degree of yielding all the time,
whether they recognize it or not.
It's kind of like, you know, if you or I were to walk into a crime scene with a detective
who's been on the job for 30 years, I guarantee you that person would see things about the
series of events and the timeline that I know at least I would have no clue of.
And the meditative arts helps us see things inside of ourselves and inside of other people
that I truly believe without a meditation practice you will never have any clue of.
Powerful, powerful opportunities.
I read this book called Tribal Leadership, and it's one of those business books that
most people ignore and never get to because it's a little bit heavier.
I read the first 50 pages of that book and I had to pause and meditate and consider what
I was learning for the better part of a year because it was just so powerful and there
was so much to grasp and there was life has all sorts of opportunities.
So this would be an experience that you could deem as rookie yielding.
Me going in and the reason why I'm mentioning that is because I'm going to be doing the
same thing with Jeff Patterson.
What I have learned today, the amount that you have.
I named this title, titled the show, A Healthier, Happier, More Balanced Lifestyle with Jeff
Patterson and Jackson Callum because of the amount of life coaches and experts in this
space that I have to share the stage with in order to make sure that they deliver, that
we deliver an amazing show for my guests.
Today I could have left myself off, no problem.
This was absolutely phenomenal, Jeff.
You've given us so much wisdom.
To circle back to my last question, I'm so happy I get to ask this.
It's like that moment where you've got the open questions and answers and you've got
to wait for everybody else.
No, I don't have to wait.
I'm the only guy.
So I get to ask my questions.
So as soon as you talked about imagining your favorite person walk in, I was like, I have
four.
I haven't thought of all my kids and how the energy they bring.
And then I realized like each child of mine brings a different energy or I bring a different
energy out too when I meet those children.
But you said something that rings so true.
I have 100% control over showing up that way for my life, for different areas of my life.
And it reminded me of a spiritual concept that is incredibly important to me as well,
which was also met with a new challenge of, so Jeff, if I could dig deep into that well,
if I were to show up with that type of energy that I have towards my children or towards
my spiritual master mentor, in my case, that would be Jesus Christ.
If I were to show up that way 100% of my day, I don't think I could have as long of a day
because of the amount of energy I would be expelling.
So my guilty side says, oh, well, you're not trying hard enough or you have to always have
it on or you're not being authentic or you're not being your best.
As somebody who's just playing with that concept for the first time, what would you recommend
as a healthy balance in terms of recognizing that, do I have to keep it in fifth gear at
all times or is there a yield concept that goes along with this?
How do we maximize that?
Because it would be so wonderful if my entire day could be driven around how I'd show up
for that favorite person the moment they walk in the room.
But how does that balance with real life?
So I think that's a great question in that the way that I mentioned that earlier could
be maybe misleading in that we don't want to show up in fifth gear all day long because
that could be very draining.
I think that what will help us keep in that positive view is to adapt these practices,
these ritual, these act of these philosophical practices because they help us stay more in
the present moment.
They help us recognize the distractions.
So when we start going down that depleting negative path, we don't have to wait until
it turns into an avalanche.
We can bend over and pick up the pebble before it knocks another rock loose.
And understanding how to do that all day, every day can keep us from reaching those
depleted states.
And being more present leaves us open to experience the great things that can happen every moment.
And that's what will keep us energized and keep us aware of how we're holding our posture
and maintaining our breath and our mental distractions and all of those things kind
of come with that.
So having these tools and this lifestyle that you're integrating by adopting the meditative
practices will help you stay more in that state.
Let me set the record straight.
You did nothing to teach that the wrong way or misconstrue.
What happened is my gluttony, my desire for overindulging with that principle, with that
reality took shape.
And I leaned in towards that saying, oh my gosh, I want to just overconsume that feeling.
And so that's a very, very good reminder that to all things there is a balance and that
there are different things that we need.
You might find the best vitamin for yourself, but you can't just live off of that vitamin.
You might find water very refreshing, but if you don't also have the other elements
that are needed for a healthy body, you can overindulge.
So I already started to.
Thank you for pulling me back.
I'm glad I asked because I guarantee you I would have overdone it.
So those of you listening in, we're going to have in the resources below the show, the
action steps that you can take to get involved with Jeff's program.
I saw that he's got a 14 day trial for $1 on his community program on there.
And I saw the program itself is only $49.
And I believe that was a month membership, I'm assuming.
Yes.
And also one other thing that's available to your clients or your listeners, if they're
interested, I'm offering a free copy of my recent book, Just Pay for Shipping and Handling.
And you can get that at theyieldingwarrior.com forward slash book.
And it's kind of a great way to just understand the philosophy we've been talking about.
That's perfect.
And in a world of force and a world of constant pressure to compete and be the one who is
right about politics and right about the earth and right about everything else, I have a
feeling that's a resource that we could all very much benefit from understanding.
So thank you for letting us know about the offer on the book.
We'll put the link as well in the action steps.
And below that, my friends, we're going to put a little bit different than the resources.
We're going to put those super power steps that Jeff mentioned to us.
And we got one more call to action.
That's in the top right corner.
You're going to see a button that says, be our guest.
If you want to be our guest and come on and share your vision, you don't have to be a
world class master of meditation.
I'm just kidding, Jeff.
But a great teacher and guide of meditation.
You may have a brand new vision that you want to share with us.
Come be our guest and come tell us about it.
As long as you're looking to take care of others, as long as you're looking to help
this world, we love to get to know you and we will see you all on the next episode of
Vision Pros Live.
Take care, everybody.
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 time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.