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Excellent Executive Coaching: Growing Your Business and Enhancing Your Craft.
EEC 365: Living by Your Values is the Key to Success, with Dr. John Demartini
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Dr. John Demartini is a world-leading human behavior specialist, philosopher, international speaker, best-selling author, and the founder of The Demartini Method. Why is positive thinking BS and what should you do instead? How is living with a...
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Foreign.
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By your values. And having a priority mindset is key to success. Let's ask Dr. John DeMartini how he approaches his process for this success. Welcome to the excellent executive coaching podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Katrina. Behold. And today we have Dr. Demartini, John Demartini. Welcome, John.
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Thank you for having me.
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Yes. So let's start with the question that I'm also very curious about. Why positive thinking is BS and what you should do instead.
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Well, positive thinking has a place in life, but by itself it's incomplete. If you're infatuated with somebody and enamored and blind to the downsides, you need a little skepticism. You need to ask what might be the downsides before you get sideswiped by the unexpected. But if you're obviously in a mode where you're seeing only the downsides, you need the upsides. So you need a balance, perspective. You need to be able to see both sides of people. If you are infatuated, you're blind to the downsides. If you're resentful, you're blind to the upsides. If you love somebody, you see both sides. And so I think I'm more of a balanced thinker because many people confuse infatuation with love and they don't realize that the infatuation is not seeing the whole picture. So I'm more of a balanced thinker than I'm just a positive thinker. But positive thinking has a place, but by itself would be incomplete.
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B
Great, I understand. That's clearly expressed. And you say that priority mindset can increase your resilience and adaptability. Can you comment on that?
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Each individual lives by a set of priorities, a set of values, things that are most to least important in their life when they're living by their highest value, the thing that's most important, the thing that's highest in priority, the blood glucose and oxygen goes into the forebrain, the medial prefrontal cortex, where they're more objective and more neutral and less biased, prejudice and polarized. When they do, they have more resilience and adaptability and they're more flexible to whatever the vicissitudes and oscillations that life offers. But if they're not living by priority, they're doing and putting out fires and doing things that are injected from outside sources and they feel like they have to do it and got to do it, then they're going to be in their amygdala, a subcortical area of the brain, a nuclei, and they're going to be more likely to be looking for the prey and avoiding the predator. And they'll be more polarized in their perspective and less resilient because they're going to fear the loss of that which they seek and fear the gain of that which they're trying to avoid. So it's important to fill your day with high priority actions that inspire you so you're more productive, you're more self actualized, you're more space and time horizons grow, you get a bigger vision and you're more resilient and adaptable to whatever happens in your life. Anybody that's done the highest priority things in the day knows when they come home they can handle anything. But when they're doing low priority things and putting out fires all the day, they're a bear when they walk home.
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Granted. So now give us a specific example of how you help your clients get into the priority the court neocare text and not flip back to, you know, the fire extinguishing modus vivendi.
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On my website drdemartini.com there is a free private value determination process that takes about 30 minutes of their time. They go on there and they can take the time to ask 13 questions to themselves to narrow down what their life objectively demonstrates is most important. Because if you ask people what they think is important and priority to their life, most people will tell you what they think it ought to be instead of what it is. As David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, said, there's oughts and is and the oughts are what everybody expects that you're conforming to. And the is is what you're actually living and demonstrating. So finding out what's really priority and then structuring your life by priority and, and filling your day with the highest priority actions and delegating lower priority distractions liberates you to self actualize and build momentum in your life. So it's about prioritizing your life and identifying what's really priority. So the complimentary private evaluation that I have on there, anybody can go to take advantage of and it will be eye opening and it'll help them structure their life more effectively because the majority of people aren't taking time to prioritize their life and they're holding themselves back because they're feeling they have to be motivated to do things instead of spontaneously inspired to act.
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So give us an example of a client where you helped live according to their values.
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Well, I had a woman that was basically pretending thinking that her highest value was her children. But when we actually went and did the value determination process. We found out that she was 14 hours a day at work and another two hours at home thinking about work. She was a single mom in running the business and was focused on business. And she was lying to herself that her kids are the most important thing, but her life wasn't demonstrating it. Your life demonstrates your values. So we've first of all helped her break the illusion and the internal conflict that she was having about I should be home more. I should be doing this because your hierarchy of values is dictating how you perceive, decide, and act. So she was actually acting according to her values, but was injecting her mom's values in and trying to compare herself to her mom instead of who she was and trying to be second at being her mom and not being first to who she was. Once we identified what her values are and gave her permission to be the mother she desired to be, which is being a businesswoman, and then delegated some things to managing the kids and finding high quality people to give them the highest quality results. And then prioritized things at work and delegated more things at work, she was able to spend even more time with her kids and make sure that they were getting what she was hoping for and not lie to herself about they were the most important thing. The reality was her business was. But she didn't want to face that because she was feeling the pressure of society and people that had higher values on family. Everybody around you has a different set of values and they're projecting their values onto you, trying to get you to conform to what their values are. But being honest with yourself and authentic to yourself about what it is and stop trying to be second at being somebody else is liberating. So this lady's life, she was now grateful for herself. She stopped having internal conflict and she gave herself permission to prioritize at work and prioritize at home and got specialists to assist her and made sure she was then able to give quality time not doing trivial things at home with her kids, but actually quality time with her kids that way. But not all day. Some mothers have a value on children and they spend their whole day with the children. This woman was a businesswoman, and children were important, but they weren't the top. But she didn't want to face that because of all the pressure of all the women around her.
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So what are the consequences of not living your values? You say less resilience, internal conflict.
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Internal conflict. Your physiology will create signs and symptoms autonomically and epigenetically that let you know that you will automatically feel fatigued because you're spontaneously inspired in your highest value and you need external motivation to get you to do lower priority things. So you're constantly going and having a brake on instead of just a gas pedal. So there's a lot of friction in your life. And symptoms? I would say that each of the symptoms in our life, physiologically, psychologically, business wise, are feedback mechanisms to get us back into priority and back into authenticity. Our highest value is our ontological identity revolves around it, our teleological purpose revolves around it, and our epistemological area of expertise revolve around it. So sticking to priority liberates and allows you to empower and be authentic in life. So that's very important to identify what the values are and prioritize your life so you can live by them.
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You have a model that's called Demartini model. Can you explain the different sections of your process?
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Well, the Demartini method is something I've been developing for the last 52 years. And what it is is a series of very concise questions that make you conscious of what has been unconscious. So you can be fully conscious of events instead of emotionally reacting. You're proacting and it's assisting you in living congruently according to what you value. And it's a series of very concise questions that help you have reflective awareness instead of deflective awareness. For instance, if you see somebody that you resent, it holds you accountable to look at yourself, of where you're doing, the behavior that you're projecting, and to actually realize that what you resent in others is something you're actually doing, that you're feeling ashamed of, that you're dissociating from and too proud to admit you're doing. And you're judging them. So it holds you accountable to look at where you're doing it. What's the benefit of them doing it? To help you awaken to that and the benefit of what they're doing. So it's seen on the way, not in the way. So instead of building up baggage, you're setting up fuel and getting on forward with what's priority to your life. So it's a very repeatable, duplicatable. I've trained 8,000 facilitators around the world and they're using it around the world for specific objectives and helping people more resourceful.
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Okay, so a lot of coaches will say that they ask questions to make your unconscious conscious. How would you say that you're different?
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The Questions themselves are very concise and they're definitely things that most people, most people are trapped in. A model of trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure. This is the realization that pain and pleasure is part of life and to embrace both of them because you need both support and challenge. You need both the two sides in life to maximize your potential. So it's more of a balance model instead of a positive thinking model. And trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure model instead of putting the light and avoid the shadow, it's embracing both sides of yourself and both sides of the experiences you have in life. So it's not avoidance and seeking, it's integrating and engulfing and embracing both sides of life in yourself, others, and in the events and goals that you have.
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So let's say our listeners want the process. Give them an example of the types of questions you ask. You know, they'll go to the website, of course, and encourage them to do it. But give us an example of the types of questions you ask to make them more conscious and more resourceful.
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Well, there's 80 questions in the entire process because we use it for many applications. But again, let's say you meet somebody that's challenged you and have done an act that you are disliking, avoiding and judging and you may be resentful to this person. The first question you asked is what specific trait action or inaction do you perceive this specific individual displaying or demonstrating that you dislike or despise or want to avoid most? And get really concise on what the actions are? It can't be hearsay, it can't be vague generalities, it can't be how you felt about it. It has to be what they actually did with their actions. And it can't be what we call transcendentals. Transcendentals are things that are more neutral and not polarized. Has to be a polarized thing that activates the amygdala. So we identify what that is. Once we identify that, we then go inside it with reflective awareness and transparency. We now go to a moment where and when you perceive yourself displaying or demonstrating that same specific trait action.
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And now I'm going to another question. Why do these challenges are essential for business growth? I can imagine why it is, but I would like to hear your point of view.
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We have a sympathetic and a parasympathetic part of our autonomic nervous system. One is for rest and digest, one is for fight or flight. If we get nothing but support, we become juvenile dependent. If you take a child and Give it everything it wants, whenever it wants, and has no accountability, no challenges, no responsibilities. It becomes disabled and entitled and it doesn't have its capacity to grow. If it gets challenges, it precociously becomes independent and grows, sometimes too fast. But if you put a perfect balance of support and challenge in place, you maximize your growth. Sometimes it's called the border of order and chaos in some terminologies, but when you put both of them there, the challenge and the support you generate. Creativity, innovation, original thinking, when they get challenged and you also make them resilient and adaptable. And it's like a hermesis. But if you don't get a balance of support and challenge and all you get is support, you make them disabled and you make them juvenile dependent, but you give them challenge and they stand up and they become entrepreneurs and capable of resilience and creativity. So challenge is an absolute, essential component of mastering life. And if you're not filling your day with challenges that inspire you, your day's going to fill up with challenges that don't. So it's important to be targeting and looking for challenges. If you take the most powerful people that have had the biggest influence in the world, you'll find out that they're looking for challenges in society, problems that the world is facing, and they're going after and tackling them and finding solutions and using their creativity and innovation and their genius to find solutions. But people that are avoiding challenges and want an easy life are going to attract challenges that are distractive, that are unfulfilling. And that's the difference between people that are self actualized, they're pursuing challenges that inspire them and they innovate and create and create original genius awakening and they self actualize. And the people that are trying to look for the easy life with their dopamine fixation, those are the people that have distracted lives, unfulfilled and frustrating, and they're depressed in many cases.
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Okay, thank you. So you also mentioned that the attitude of gratitude and how it impacts the neurology of the brain, the endocrinology and physiology. Can you comment on that?
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Because you have a set of priorities and values in your life. When you're living congruently with what you value most, you have the highest degree of gratitude. Some have actually defined the ventral medial prefrontal cortex as the gratitude center. It's the executive functioning center, but it's also called the gratitude center. It's also called the guardian angel because it's the one that gives homeostatic feedback and guidance for self Governance in life. So when you live by priority, you have a higher degree of gratitude than if you're living by lower priority, you have a higher degree of ingratitude. When you're doing a gratitude like that, you're more resilient, more adaptable, more sustainable and fair exchange oriented. Instead of looking narcissistically for immediate gratification and wanting to take without giving. When you're in your amygdala and your subcortical areas, you're more likely to want a pleasure without a pain and you're less likely to have equitable theory. But if we basically get into our highest values and get into our executive function, we're more likely to have, as Stacey Adams called it, equity theory. We're more likely to contribute as equally to others and have sustainable fair exchange in our relationships, in our business, et cetera. So it just compounds gratitude even further because we're now having a viable business, a viable relationship, a viable health. When we are more balanced and oriented and self governed and homeostatic, or at least allostatic, we have the most ability to maximize our physical potential and our vitality. But if we get to a point where we go into the I want something for nothing and go into a self righteous mode, what happens is we automatically raise our blood sugar and increase the probability of diabetic direction. If we go in the opposite, we go into an altruistic mode. We tend to lower our blood sugar and we go into more of a hypoglycemic. So our physiology is giving us feedback to get us back into authenticity, to make sure we have sustainable fair exchange and equity within ourselves and between other people. So the gratitude center of the executive function is basically designed as a feedback to guide us to maximizing our potential as a human being.
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Yes. And how does this impact happiness?
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Well, I don't waste my time pursuing happiness. I take that word out of the vocabulary personally. I wrote a book called Gave Up Happiness. It made me too sad. People are addicted to hedonistic happiness and they're ending up looking for a pleasure without a pain, a positive without a negative, a nice without a mean, a kind without accrual. And they're not prepared for the real world out there. So I'm not interested in that. As Aristotle said, he's not interested in a hedonistic happiness, he's interested in an overall eudaimonia, a well being, a meaningful life. So I don't pursue happiness as a goal. I pursue fulfillment and and meaningfulness. Something that is giving me knowing that I must have challenges and I must have the opposites, the pairs of opposites, a unity of opposites if I want to maximize my growth. The people that I find that are saddest and most depressed are the people that are looking for a one sided happy world. They're looking for a rose tinted glass fantasy land. So I don't pursue happiness, I pursue meaning. And I find that, that like a stoic is way more profound and fulfilling than just the superficial happiness pursuit.
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Great. So that's to the point.
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There's an area in the. If we study psychology, the thing called hedonic adaptation, it basically measures your pleasure in your life and you find out that as you pursue pleasure, there's a paradox of pleasure, it automatically increases the pain. This was written about by Anaxagoras back 2,600 years ago. That the pursuit of pleasure brings on pain and then we get hedonic adaptation. The second we get pleasure, we eventually lose it. And so what happens is we have a set point and a homeostatic set point on pain and pleasure in our life. And people that are striving for one find it futile. And so they have to realize that. So hope, whoever's listening, go and look up hedonic adaptation, hedonic treadmill, hedonic paradox, and also the moral licensing effect to see how the brain homeostates and makes sure that we have a set point of pleasure and pain and happy and sad. So you can understand why I don't waste my time on one sided thinking. I'm interested in helping people embrace both sides of themselves. People are trying to find fulfillment by getting rid of half of themselves. You will not ever find fulfillment trying to get rid of half of yourself. You want to learn how to love both sides of yourself and both sides of experiences and set real objectives. The executive function is designed to transcend fantasies into true objectives so they can be met and fulfilled, not pursuing fantasies that elate and then depress and create bipolar condition. I always define bipolar condition as a byproduct of monopolar addiction, the addiction to a one sided world and trying to avoid half the other side. So I'm not a promoter of a one sided fantasy world.
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Okay, last question. As we're coming to the end of our podcast. What would you say are the advantages or how you can take the best out of crisis?
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Well, a crisis is a perception. I've had the opportunity doing teaching my breakthrough experience program. People come in with all kinds of crises. I mean, they've been going through beatings and rapes and I don't care what it is. Everything that you would imagine be terrible out there. If you run the story and become victim of history, run the story about how terrible it is and focus on that, you're going to stay stuck. And if somebody comes along and supports that illusion and makes you the victim, well, you're going to stay stuck. But if you go and find out, how is this opening doorways, how is this ultimately on the way? And become resilient and allow yourself to see that there's never an event without both sides. And if you don't take the time to find the upsides, the benefits, the advantages, the skills, what it stimulated and what options it's now giving you and how it's helping you become stronger, then you're going to play victim of history all your life. But if you go in and ask, how is this serving you? How is it helping you fulfill yourself and your highest values? What, what you consider your purpose and mission in life? How's it helping you in relationship? How's it helping you in business? If you ask and hold yourself accountable, you will see that this thing is on the way, not in the way. And then the crisis becomes a blessing. And it was sitting there the whole time, but you didn't take the time to look. That's why the quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask. If you ask quality questions that liberate and balance the mind, you liberate yourself from the judgments that hold you back and burden you and become. That keep you in bondage to those emotions. Liberate yourself by asking, how is it on the way? Not in the way. How's it helping me get what I want in life? I mean, I lived on the streets when I was a kid. I was stabbed, I was shot at. I've been through all kinds of things. Not one of those things would I look back and go, oh, my God, I wish it never happened. All of them are blessings. Anything you can't say thank you for is baggage. Anything you can say thank you for is fuel. So if you haven't asked the right question and you're still stuck in playing the victim, ask a new set of questions so you can have a new side of life.
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Great. So tell our listeners where they can get ahold of you. You also mentioned your website. Maybe this is an opportunity to say it again.
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My website is drdemartini.com drdmartini.com okay, thank.
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You very, very much.
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Thank you. Thank you for listening to the excellent executive coaching podcast you can subscribe to all future podcasts @Excellent Executive Coaching.com join us each Wednesday to learn more about the latest trends in leadership techniques and bring your coaching to the next level. To learn more about Dr. Burris CEO mastermind, use the contact form@excellentexecutivecoaching.com.