How to Rewire Your Brain, Let Go of Old Wounds, and Become Who You Were Meant to Be | Nick Ortner - EP 790

Summary

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Passion Struck with John R. Miles

Episode 790 (July 7, 2026)

How to Rewire Your Brain, Let Go of Old Wounds, and Become Who You Were Meant to Be | Nick Ortner

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Episode Overview

In this compelling episode, John R. Miles sits down with Nick Ortner, the founder of The Tapping Solution and New York Times bestselling author, to discuss how we can rewire our brains, release old emotional wounds, and step into our fullest potential. The conversation explores the science and practice of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), or tapping, with practical demonstrations and emotional honesty. Nick shares insights from his new book, "Rewired," and guides John through a live tapping session to help process a long-held fear of public speaking. The episode is an exploration of neuroplasticity, memory, self-identity, and the promise that we are not destined to remain who we've always been.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introduction to Tapping/EFT

• What is Tapping?
  • A mind-body practice involving tapping on meridian points of the body to send calming signals to the brain, particularly to the amygdala — the source of the fight-or-flight response.
  • Grounded in neuroscience; involves both mechanoreceptors and physical signaling.
  • Used to help with stress, trauma, anxiety, and habits we struggle to change.

  "We are literally physically tapping on these spots in our body... What we're doing here is we're bringing it up, we're thinking about it, we are sending that calming signal at the same time. So now we're adding a safety layer to this memory." – Nick Ortner (15:08–18:54)

2. The Science of Neuroplasticity and Memory Reconsolidation

• The brain can change and adapt throughout life — "rewiring" is possible at any age.
• Tapping helps "re-save" memories with new, calmer emotional associations, breaking the patterns that keep us stuck.
• This change is not about erasing memory but reducing its emotional charge and facilitating healthier habits and beliefs.

3. Overcoming Identity and Old Patterns

• We tend to internalize negative experiences until they become part of our identity (“I’m not a good public speaker,” “I procrastinate”).
• The work isn't just about positive thinking but embodying new beliefs and responses.
• Tapping (and related practices) can shift not just states (temporary emotions) but traits (enduring patterns or identity).

4. A Live Tapping Demonstration (Public Speaking Anxiety)

• John shares a significant, shame-filled onstage failure (23:28).
• Nick guides him and listeners through a full tapping round to process and reduce the intensity of the memory:
  • Physical sensations: sweating, panic, shame, embarrassment.
  • Emotional shift: from a 9/10 intensity down to a 3 or 4/10 following the session.

  "We did maybe five or ten minutes and we took a core memory—a defining memory, a painful memory, from a 9 to a 3 or a 4. And you'll often find that it’ll continue to fade." – Nick Ortner (36:05)

5. The Great Forgetting

• Many people have forgotten what it feels like to live calmly, joyfully, and with inner safety.
• Societal systems and early experiences (social media, constant connection, trauma, scarcity) gradually condition us to stress, pain, and numbness as the 'normal' way of being.
• Tapping and intentional practices can help us “remember” how to feel at home in our own bodies and with ourselves.

  "It becomes the new normal. That's what's so hard about it for people, that they don't know any different." – Nick Ortner (44:40)

6. Managing Fear vs. Chasing Dreams

• Negativity bias keeps us focused on what could go wrong, often leading to building lives around avoiding pain rather than pursuing possibility.
• Our brains latch onto painful moments (e.g., a one-star review or a failed talk) more than positive ones as a survival mechanism.
• The cost: restriction of dreams, self-censorship, and stifled living.

  "We do so much managing of how do I build my life in a way that I don't have to face these fears? ...But if you had just been willing to talk to the eight people in the conference room and felt confident enough to share your ideas, then your career would have skyrocketed." – Nick Ortner (51:21–55:45)

7. Emotional Numbness (“Frosted Glass”)

• Emotional shutdown often happens due to chronic overwhelm and micro-traumas.
• Nick relates how tapping can gradually “clear the glass” — rebuilding emotional aliveness bit by bit, just as numbness develops micro step by micro step.

8. Freedom through Rewiring

• In his book, Nick details "the seven freedoms of a rewired life": self-trust, energy, authenticity, feeling at home in your body, reacting from wisdom (not wounds), and more.
• The most universally sought: the freedom to react from wisdom instead of old wounds.

  "That reaction piece... someone says something and it's like 'old wound' is kicking up. Something happens in your life. 'Old wound' kicking up. ...Now someone says something and it used to trigger you ... and now you react with wisdom." – Nick Ortner (67:50)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Nature of Change

“You don’t have to be who you’ve always been. ...Most people are stuck on what to do about it. ...We’ve got to get into our nervous system.”
– Nick Ortner (38:21)

On Internalizing Old Identities

“One thing that stayed with me is how quickly we turn experiences into identities. ...What I appreciated about Nick’s work is that he reminds us that our brains and nervous systems are always learning. … They aren’t permanent.”
– John Miles (75:21)

The Power of the Second Thought

“You don’t have the power of the first thought, but you have the power of the second thought. … You’re not the thoughts you think, you’re the thoughts you believe.”
– Nick Ortner (76:48)

On Tony Robbins and Doing “the Work”

“It really is the arc of being passionate at a young age for something. … I was just doing the work that I thought was right ... Tony noticed, and we became friends, and that’s how he wrote the forward.”
– Nick Ortner (05:42–12:33)

On the Science

“What we’re doing here is we’re bringing it up, … we are sending that calming signal at the same time. So now we’re adding a safety layer to this memory.”
– Nick Ortner (15:08)

Live Tapping Experience

“So we did a couple of tapping rounds there. … Think about that memory again and let’s tune in and see if you can give it a new number.”
– Nick Ortner (33:53–36:05)

On Healing and Wisdom

“If someone’s really angry at someone…And then the sadness lets go and it goes to wisdom. So this isn’t a erase everything. This is: Can we process the things that help us become stronger and heal and grow from?”
– Nick Ortner (56:41)

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Key Timestamps

• 05:36 — Nick Ortner recounts connecting with Tony Robbins, illustrating the power of “just doing the work.”
• 15:08 — Primer on tapping/EFT and its neuroscientific basis.
• 21:25 — John shares his public speaking anxiety; Nick introduces the tapping process.
• 23:28 — John describes the traumatic keynote event.
• 25:55–36:05 — Nick guides John (and listeners) through a live tapping session.
• 44:40 — The “Great Forgetting” — why we lose touch with calm and ease.
• 51:17 — Discussion on how we manage fears instead of chasing our dreams.
• 56:31–58:58 — Realizing the work goes beyond stress relief; it’s about reclaiming the self.
• 61:45–64:33 — On emotional numbness (“frosted glass”) and micro-recoveries.
• 67:50 — Discussion of the “Seven Freedoms” and which resonates most broadly.
• 73:39 — On picking your own “cards” in identity and transformation: “You get to be who you want to be...you get to pick the cards you want.”
• 76:48 — Closing wisdom on the power of the second thought and not internalizing negativity.

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Flow & Tone

The episode is deeply conversational, blending science and practice with personal stories, humor, and moments of vulnerability. Nick Ortner brings warmth, clarity, and encouragement, emphasizing that change is accessible and that healing our pain is not just possible, but can be practical and surprisingly rapid. John R. Miles serves both as interviewer and willing participant, making the abstract tangible through his own lived experience.

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Additional Resources & Next Steps

• Download the Free Companion Guide: theignitedlife.net
• Explore Tapping further: TheTappingSolution.com and the Tapping Solution app (includes free and premium meditations)
• Nick Ortner’s Book "Rewired": Available everywhere (NYT Bestseller as of release)
• Watch the interview and clips: Passion Struck YouTube Channel

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In Summary

Nick Ortner’s conversation with John R. Miles is not just about stress reduction, but a roadmap for releasing the emotional baggage that quietly shapes our lives. Through personal story and evidence-based practice, the episode offers hope: you can rewire your brain, you do not have to be bound by your old wounds, and the life you were meant to live is possible—one intention, one practice, and one memory-rewritten at a time.

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Transcript

[John Miles]

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[Nick Ortner]

You can even see where your data

[John Miles]

was found and removed. And Aura goes beyond data removal. You also get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. Right now you can try Aura free at aura.com hidden that's aura.com hidden Coming up next on Passion Struck, we have

[Nick Ortner]

something called the negativity bias. We all know it. If someone says, john, I could say one mean thing to you today and you will remember it for three years and the next thousand people that talk to you could say nice things and it'll be gone and be like, well, Nick said that one thing. So our brain does latch on to these things. It's in order to keep us safe. I talk to a lot of authors and I joke that you haven't made it as an author until you get a one star review because it means your book hasn't gone out far enough.

[John Miles]

Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week I sit down with change makers, creators, scientists and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection and impact is choosing to live like you.

[Nick Ortner]

Matter Foreign.

[John Miles]

And welcome Back to episode 790 of Passion Struck. This month we're exploring what it means to flourish, how humans become fully alive. Last week we began with Awakening. Whitney Otto helped us think differently about our relationships with our bodies and the stories we carry about ourselves. Suzanne Giesman reminded us that connection and presence matter most when life becomes difficult. And in Friday's episode, I talked about why Flourishing begins with paying attention to the life we're living right now. Instead of waiting for some future version of ourselves to arrive. This week, we're taking the next step. We're talking about rewiring because most of us already know what we'd like to change. We know the habits that get in our way, the fears that keep showing up, and the experiences from years ago that still seem to have a vote and who we are today. The question isn't whether change is possible, it's understanding why some patterns stay with us for decades and what it actually takes to create lasting change. My guest today is Nick Ortner. Nick is the founder of the Tapping Solution, a New York Times bestselling author, and one of the world's leading voices in emotional freedom techniques, or EFT. For nearly 20 years, he's helped millions of people use tapping to reduce stress, process difficult experiences, and break patterns to keep them stuck. His new book is called Rewired, and today's conversation goes far beyond positive thinking or willpower. We talk about the science of neuroplasticity and memory reconsolidation, why the body often remembers experiences long after the mind believes it has moved on, and how tapping creates a practical way to work with old fears, anxieties and limiting beliefs. Nick also leads me through a live tapping experience around one of the most difficult speaking experiences of my life, an experience that kept me off the stage for nearly 18 months, and we explore what it means to release the emotional change we've attached to moments that still shape us years later. If you've ever found yourself saying I know what I should do, so why do I keep doing the opposite? I think you're going to get a lot out of this conversation before we begin. If you're enjoying this flourishing series, please share this episode with someone who might need it. Make sure you're following passionstruck on Apple podcasts or Spotify, and if you haven't left a rating or review, it really helps us reach more people. You can watch the full video version of this conversation along with additional clips on our YouTube channel. And if you'd like to go deeper, you'll find today's companion workbook and reflection [e-mail] now let's dive in with Nick Ortner. Thank you for choosing passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now let that journey begin. I'm absolutely thrilled today to welcome Nick Ortner to Passion Struck Nick. How are you today?

[Nick Ortner]

John I am so excited to be here. I'm great. We started having fun conversations before we started recording and said we got to stop because we have stories to tell. And let's save it for our actual chat today.

[John Miles]

We're here to talk about your brand new book rewired. And I want to start here. I get extremely nervous about asking people for endorsements for my books. How in the heck did you ask Tony Robbins to do the forward and get him to agree?

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah, how did I ask him and get him to agree? I know. All right, you ready for the story?

[John Miles]

I'm ready for the story.

[Nick Ortner]

Tony is such a big part of my life in this arc. I first discovered Tony. Well, my mom bought his tapes off of QVC. Infomercial. It's probably infomercial. The ones that ran 247 and they were in the house. I could see them in a bookcase. And when I was in high school, I picked some up and I started listening and I was probably one of the first door openings to like, oh, I don't have to believe everything. I think I don't have to think the same thoughts that I've thought before. Right. So it's just like opening the door. And then I went to college and went worked after college and life was certainly, it was like good. But I wasn't happy. Things were in the way. I was young and successful, but too many things were broken. And I saw I was walking down the streets of Manhattan and I there was the learning center, these little booklets you could pull out and they had all these classes. And right on the COVID was Tony's face. And it was like, upw, New York, New Jersey was obviously in New Jersey, across the river and come for this three day event. So I said, you know what, I'm going to go. And I showed up. I went by myself and did that weekend. UPW notice so quickly the transformation it made in my life. The simple things, shoulders back and up. Knowing that I could make decisions in my life, knowing that I could be empowered. So he just set off this trajectory of energy and changed my life. And I got super into him. I did Date with Destiny and I went to Fiji for life mastery. I did all the things. And at one of his events, a leadership conference, he came up on stage and he did this little demonstration. He says, I've been doing this tapping thing. And he took us through the process. He handed out flyers because this is 2002 for contact. So it wasn't even go to this website or an app. And it was like, here's a flyer of the tapping process. And I tried the tapping and I had an experience. I go, wow, that really felt different. Something just shifted in my body. And I went home, I started researching it, bought books about it, went online, learned everything I could about this tapping thing and spent the next five years just using it with friends and family. The running joke at the time was, don't say anything is wrong around Nick because he'll make you tap on it. If we were hanging out and you were like, my shoulder hurts. I'd say, oh, well, I just learned this tapping thing. Let's try it. Oh, I feel really stuck in my life. I keep procrastinating, oh, let's try this tapping thing. Then in 2007, after five years of just doing it, I was inspired to make a documentary film about eft. It was right around the time the Secret came out. So I'm sure you remember, and many of our viewers and listeners remember the Secret. And I knew that a bunch of people who were in the Secret, like Jack Canfield and Bob Doyle and Mike Dooley, were into tapping. So I said, okay, I was a 29 year old kid. I'll make the secret part two sort of thing. I'll make a documentary and it'll be just like the Secret. We'll be on Oprah and then be rich forever. I enlisted my younger sister Jessica, and one of my best friends from high school, Nick polizzi. And the three of us, with no filmmaking experience at all, bought $40,000 worth of camera equipment, unpacked boxes in my 500 square foot apartment and said, this looks like a light stand. Is this a light stand or is this a camera stand? Or we had no idea what we were doing, but we somehow pulled it off. And I'm getting too tony. This is just a quick journey through how we got here. We somehow pulled it off. We released this DVD in 2008, sold DVDs for 29.95 to try to make up the $130,000 in debt that I had taken on to make the movie. We did that, we did these online events, the Tapping World Summit, that did really well, built a company around it. I wrote my first book in 2013 called the Tapping Solution, that was a New York Times bestseller. And I was just doing my thing, following my passions, releasing what was in the way at every next step and doing the work, and remained the Tony fan throughout this whole period. And we were in orbitz. Now I'm somewhat known. I have a New York Times bestselling book But I didn't know him and wasn't introduced to him. And in 2013, right around the time the book came out, I had been working on the ground in my hometown of Sandy Hook, Newtown, Connecticut. So this is the site of the Sandy Hook school shootings. A horrible day. It's 10 minutes from where I'm talking to you now. And it was devastating for our community, for me, for the world. And I was here, so I was like, okay, we have to do something here. I have this technique that works really well on trauma, on shock, on all these things. How do we share it with our community? So we started the Tapping Solution foundation at that time and spent the next several years training people in town, working with people in town. The following Tuesday after the shooting, I was in the house of a mother who had lost her son just five days earlier. The most powerful work we've ever done. What I'm proudest of in helping those people. And through that work, I got to know a lot of people. One of them was Scarlett Lewis, who lost her son Jesse. And she says to me, probably about a year after, got to know her and working with her and becoming friends, she said, hey, Tony Robbins is coming into town to meet with us to meet with people who are involved in the shooting. And he's actually bringing in survivors from other shootings so they can get to know each other and fly them all in. He's doing this quietly, no pr, no media. He's just coming to help. And I know you're such a big fan. Do you want to come with me to this thing? So I'm like, yeah, dream come true. I can't believe Tony's coming here. Go to this little Marriott, and we're in a conference room. Everyone's introducing each other and what they've gone through. And I say, I'm here at Scarlet's friend. I've just been helping on the ground, and I've been doing this tapping thing. And Tony knew what it was, and we connected from there, became fast friends. He wrote some endorsements for my previous books. He's actually the only outside investor in the Tapping Solution app, and he has become a friend. All of this to say, I know you asked how I got Tony to endorse it, but it really is the arc of being passionate at a young age for something. Doing the work, following my calling. And then really, what I think is most meaningful for me about my relationship with Tony and is that I met him because I was just doing the work. It wasn't networking, trying to get to him. It wasn't asking him for something. Most people are just out there. Oh, I wish I could get that. And just grabbing. And I want more. I. I was just doing the work that I thought was right to do in my heart to help the people in this community. And without fanfare. And then Tony noticed, and we became friends, and that's how he wrote the forward. So, like I said, long answer to a small question, but it's, to me, a big part of our story and why we do what we do.

[John Miles]

Today, I have the advance reader's copy of the book, and I'm going to have to purchase the actual book because it does not have his forward in it. So I really want to read it.

[Nick Ortner]

I'm happy to send you a copy.

[John Miles]

About. Yeah, it's interesting how much Tony does that people don't even realize he's doing. I had a previous guest on the show, Jan Marie Chen, and she had started this company where they were making portable incubators for third world countries to help save children who couldn't afford the incubators like we have in much of the Western world. And they reached a funding deficit where the whole company was going to go out of business. And Tony came in underneath the covers with Marc Benioff and kind of rescued the company, and they've now given out something like 500,000 incubators around the world. So he's got his finger on a lot of things that people don't realize he's doing outside of the conferences and everything else that he's doing. It's really, really interesting when you start studying them.

[Nick Ortner]

It's not just that public Persona. Just on stage, I got these voice notes from him, which is just the best, right? Cause it's Tony's distinct, clear voice. And to me, it's a dream come true every time one comes in. As part of our partnership with the Tapping Solution app, he has a 2%. We gifted him a 2% ownership of the company, and he donates that it was defeating America into other charities around food hunger. And then we matched that with 3%. So 5% of all profits from the Tapping Solution app go to help feed people. And I was doing this last payout, and I said, hey, I've got this nice check to write to wherever you want from our partnership together. And at first he was going to go one place, and then he sends me a voice note. He goes, no, you know what? I wanted to go over here because there was an opportunity. I forget the numbers. He said something like 18 million potatoes are about to go to waste because they need trucks to go from here to here. And if we can do the trick, trucks from here to here, like all this logistical stuff, then we're going to get meals at this. So it was like a business economics, logistical thing that he had just gotten his hands in. And the reality is that's how impact is made. It's not just about giving a dollar away. Well, what is that dollar going to do and how far is that dollar going to go? And he's just so in the weeds of it. It sounds like the incubator story where he's just finding all these places where he could make amazing impact.

[John Miles]

I love it. Well, for listeners who are not familiar with tapping, what is tapping and what is eft?

[Nick Ortner]

Great question. We call it tapping because we are literally physically tapping on these spots in our body. Now they might be endpoints of meridians. So if you're familiar with acupuncture and acupressure, there's the meridian system in the body. They're also points where we have these mechanoreceptors. So some of the latest research is showing that we're actually creating as simple and silly and sometimes ridiculous as this looks like. Why are we physically tapping on the side of our eye here? We're actually creating an electrical signal. So this is a mechanoreceptor, creates an electrical signal, travels through these afferent nerve pathways in our body to our brain. At the most basic level, what we're doing every time we're tapping, we have anxiety, we have pain, we have resistance to something, we have a craving, our brain is firing. In particular, our amygdala is usually firing the fight or flight or freeze response. And it can be a low grade firing or full on panic and trauma. When we do this tapping, we send this afferent, this signal through these afferent pathways and it basically tells the amygdala to stand down. It's a calming signal to the brain. And we do that while we're either already activated if we're feeling something, or we purposefully activate it. So we think about the thing that someone said to you two weeks ago that is still just, it's stuck in there. And you think about it and you have all these emotions tied around it. You might be angry, you might be anxious, you might be looping. So what's happening in that moment? That memory is coming up and when we think about something, a memory comes up and, and we can edit it at that point. Now most people think that thought run all the same loops, feel all the same anger, sometimes make it even worse. And then they just move on to their life. They resave that memory with all the stuff stuck on it. What we're doing here is we're bringing it up, we're thinking about it, we are sending that calming signal at the same time. So now we're adding a safety layer to this memory. And this process called memory reconsolidation just shows that we can actually resave the memory without everything attached to it. Which is why someone who can have a phobia, a 20 year fear of flying, what's happening there? Every time they think about a plane, you bring up all the memories. Or the one time like all the fears, everything that's attached to it, the body activates, the nervous system activates. Oh my God, I get sweaty. I get this, I get that all these things come from just thinking that thought, from going up on stage, from having to do the difficult thing, from feeling stuck. We send that calming signal while it's all activated, it gets resaved and now someone goes, oh, it's gone. Now you can be someone who doesn't have a fear of flying. Or at the very least, which is also life changing. You can go from an 8 fear of flying to a 4 fear of flying. An 8. You can't get on the plane. A 4. You're on the plane. Are you happy? You'd rather not be on the plane, but you got on the plane and you went and you did the thing you wanted to do. An 8 of fear public speaking or a 10. You're not going out on stage on a 10. You're saying, you know what, you're not signing up. I'm not doing this. I'm not getting up in front of my peers to speak. I have a 10 public speaking phobia. We get you to a six. Oh, okay. Now I can open up to this. I'm not going to love it, but I can have the experience. I can grow from there. I can learn that. I can hopefully make it even better. And these places, these moments in our lives, all these little spots where we feel stuck, where we procrastinate, where we say no to something, where we don't have that confidence when we break them down, they are just one memory, belief system idea after another that we learned at some point in our lives. And we go, well, this is who I am, this is me. I'm someone who has a fear of flying. I'm someone who isn't a good public speaker. I'm someone who procrastinates with having we are getting right to the brain. It's not just a self help tool. It's not a stress relief technique. It does lower stress and cortisol dramatically. But we are editing the files in our brain and resaving it with new information. And that's where the transformation comes from.

[John Miles]

Before we continue, thank you for supporting Passion Struck and for helping us bring these conversations to people around the world. One of the things Nick talks about in this episode is that awareness by itself doesn't create change. Most of us know the habits we'd like to break and the patterns we'd like to leave behind. The challenge is building practices that help us respond differently when those moments show up. That's one of the reasons we created the United Life. It's a place where these conversations move beyond listening and into practice. Every week we provide companion workbooks, reflection prompts, and tools that help you take what you're hearing on the podcast and apply it in your life. You can download today's free companion [e-mail] and if you're enjoying this flourishing series, please subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Spotify, Leave a review and share. Check out the full video interviews on our YouTube channel. Thank you for supporting the show and for supporting the partners who make these conversations possible. You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Now let's get back to my discussion with Nick Ortner. Nick, let's just take this a little bit deeper, if you don't mind. I'm someone who does a lot of public speaking. I actually own a speaker's bureau, but it is something that for me, I'm One of those 10 out of 10 who worry about it. Because when I was younger I had a number of traumatic brain injuries and it's caused me to have sensory processing disorders. So what ends up happening to me is my fear is sometimes my mouth and my brain work at two different speeds. And so what I'm thinking and what I say come out as two different things. And I also have a speech impediment that most of the time I've learned to overcome, but sometimes it comes out. So for those things, I'm always concerned that when I'm on stage these things are going to happen and they have. And I've gotten better at just playing into it so the audience knows what it's happening. But it's always something that before I go on stage I have a lot of anxiety. Is tapping something I could use to

[Nick Ortner]

help deal with that 100. It will completely transform your life, I have no doubt about it. So there's a couple of ways to approach it. One is there's practitioners, there's therapists, there's psychiatrists and psychologists who will work in a one on one session and go deep into that. So that's one approach and that's great for especially the deeper traumas and things like that. In our Tapping solution app, we have a fear of public speaking, tapping, meditation, and there's three versions of it. One is right before you go on there. Right. So it's like, here's the short version. You didn't do all the deep work before you realize that there's this tapping thing. And now you're about to go on stage. Let me do a quick process to just calm my nervous system in that moment. The other one is a go deeper session where, where now we're going to take the time to do some of the things I mentioned about, I talked about. What are the experiences you had from the past that are running every single time? Oh, and I'm sure if I ask you to tune into this fear, there's a couple of moments that stand out more than others. Would you say that's true?

[John Miles]

Yes. Yeah.

[Nick Ortner]

Okay. So those moments and you can just think about them. Right now you are beginning to activate them. You're beginning to recall these memories. Can you give it a number on a scale of 0 to 10 in terms of the intensity of that moment or the emotions that come with it?

[John Miles]

I would say a nine.

[Nick Ortner]

A nine. So right now think about what's happening. We're just. You're just thinking about something and you're at a nine. Any physical things that come with it?

[John Miles]

Sweating.

[Nick Ortner]

Okay.

[John Miles]

Panic.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. So now your nervous system is activated. Right. Your body is fully in, which is crazy if you really stop to think about it. You had a thought. We're here doing a podcast and you have this thought about this thing. You're at a nine and you're sweating. Think about what's embedded in your nervous system and then what are the thoughts that you think? So do you have an image that comes up? There's a one event in particular or is there a couple that come together?

[John Miles]

For me, there's one event where I was hired by a software company to come in and do a keynote to their global sales team and I had one of these moments during it and then lost my complete train of thought and it turned into a complete train wreck and I felt so bad because the head of sales was a personal friend of mine. I felt like I was letting him down. And, man, that event caused me to stop speaking for about 18 months because I could not get it out of my head.

[Nick Ortner]

Yep. Absolutely. And when you talk about it right now, what are the emotions that you feel?

[John Miles]

Man, it was really. I. The emotions I feel are all the people who were just staring at me in that room and how I just wished I was anywhere else but that DC conference room that I was in, because it felt like I had 200 sets of eyes just going right into my soul.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. And what if there was an emotion? Is it shame? Is it fear?

[John Miles]

I guess it was shame because I had prepared for this for so long and I had this great speech I was delivering, and then the whole thing went sideways. And then I would anger at myself for. For letting it happen and not having a better recovery strategy.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. Okay. So think about everything we did, and we're going to work through this. And I took extra time to set it up because it just shows the breadth of these experiences. And look at what happened. You didn't speak for 18 months, and then I'm sure you just powered your way through. Right. Just like the grit inside you. And it probably was difficult, and it's obviously still around, but for a lot of people, they'll just stop. They won't have that grit, and they'll say, well, I'm never doing that again. So then just shut off this part of your life. What if you didn't have to sweat and grit and fight your way through? What if we could let it go? So let's have an experience. And for everyone watching at home, this might be triggering some things within you where you just go, okay, just because John's talking about this event, I'm thinking about that event. And if not, just think about something else that's going on in your life that you want to let go. We'll all just tap together. We'll have an experience. You'll get an experience at home, and then we'll see if we can clear out some of the intensity for you, John, so you don't have to have it weighing down on you. How's that sound?

[John Miles]

Sounds great.

[Nick Ortner]

Okay, you've already brought it up. We have a number that's a nine. We're going to start by tapping on the side of the hand. And if you're listening in the car, don't tap in the car. Pull over, and you're just taking four fingers of one hand and you're doing it on the outside of the other hand. We call it the karate chop point if you're breaking boards. Show me, John. On the. So on the outside of the other hand. I know, sorry. Yeah. So below your pinky. Other side.

[John Miles]

Below the pinky. Okay.

[Nick Ortner]

Below the pinky. Yep. And now up a little bit higher. All right, There we go. You got it. So this is the side of the hand. Okay. We're just tapping gently. And we want to think about the thing that we experience. So sometimes we say things out loud, other times we just think about them. For now, John, either repeat after me, either in your mind or out loud. Even though this thing happened, you can just think it.

[John Miles]

Even though this thing happened.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. Perfect. I choose to relax now.

[John Miles]

I choose to relax now.

[Nick Ortner]

And then still on the side of the hand, even though everyone was looking at me.

[John Miles]

Even though everyone was looking at me.

[Nick Ortner]

And I was so embarrassed.

[John Miles]

And I was so embarrassed.

[Nick Ortner]

I choose to feel safe now.

[John Miles]

I choose to feel safe now.

[Nick Ortner]

And one more time. We're still on the side of the hand. Even though that was so overwhelming.

[John Miles]

Even though that was so overwhelming.

[Nick Ortner]

And I've been carrying it in my body.

[John Miles]

And I've been carrying it in my body.

[Nick Ortner]

I choose to let it go now.

[John Miles]

I choose to let it go now.

[Nick Ortner]

We'll tap through the points. I'll take you through it the first time. It'll be nice and easy. And then we'll go through it again. Inside of the eyebrow. So right where the hair ends and it meets the nose. So, yeah, go there we go a little further in. And you can tap with one hand or both hands. These meridians, these mechanoreceptors run down both sides of the body. And just tapping gently and just tune into this thing that you're working on. So if you're at home, we're saying different words, but just tune into the thing that's bothering you. The pain, the stress, the overwhelm, whatever's going on. And, John, I'm sure you can get there fast when you can see 200 people staring at you. Can you see that now?

[John Miles]

I can see it.

[Nick Ortner]

Okay. And now moving to the side of the eye, and it's not at the temple, it's next to the eye on the bone. Again, one side or both sides, whatever's comfortable for you. And just see those people staring at you and just notice how your body feels. Perfect. We're not doing this to make you suffer. We are bringing up this memory, this thing that is there already, that's running underneath everything. And we're sending this calming signal to the brain under the eye, seeing if we can change the tone and tenor of this memory. And John, just move under the eye. Tapping gently. Perfect. And you can do eyes opened or closed. And we're bringing up the stress, the anxiety, the overwhelm, and just tune into everyone looking at you, the shame that you felt. And we're just tapping gently. And we're breathing gently. You're doing great. Under the nose. Right under the nose, above the lip and that little crease there. Perfect. You're doing great. Tuning into that stressor, the thing that is in your way. Noticing your body, noticing what you're feeling, what emotions are coming up. Noticing a tightness in your chest or your shoulders. Noticing everything that comes with just a thought, Just this thing that happened underneath the mouth. It's above the chin, below the lip. And that little crease there. There we go. Perfect. And John, keep tapping and tell me what's coming up for you right now.

[John Miles]

On the other side of the event.

[Nick Ortner]

So see those people again looking at you. How does it feel when they look at you?

[John Miles]

It doesn't feel as penetrating anymore.

[Nick Ortner]

Collarbone. And tell me more about that event. So they looked at you. It didn't go well. What else do you remember around it? Let me be clear. For the collarbone, you feel for the two little bones of the collarbone. And you can go right below it. All ten fingers of both hands. Perfect. Just tapping gently.

[John Miles]

Yes. Remember afterwards, the embarrassment I felt talking to my friend who had hired me and realizing that he had brought me in to serve his people and to deliver a message that he wanted to build the whole conference, that he had done the whole off site with the team around. And I was supposed to drive that home. And so that's what I felt worse about.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah.

[John Miles]

Was letting him down.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. And what's the emotion around that?

[John Miles]

For me, it was shame, like we talked about, but just a huge impact to my pride.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah.

[John Miles]

Because I knew I was exceptionally good at delivering these messages and I had failed to live up to my expectations of myself.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. Say out loud I let him down.

[John Miles]

I let him down.

[Nick Ortner]

How's that feel when you say that?

[John Miles]

I said it to him. So.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah.

[John Miles]

Feels like release.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah.

[John Miles]

Relief and release.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. Right. Now let's move under the arm. It's three inches underneath the armpit, either side of the body. Right on the bra line. For women. Just tapping gently. Breathing gently now. Right at the top of the head, right on the crown. Tapping gently, Breathing gently. Okay, we'll do one more round now. You Know the points. I want you to just move back to the eyebrow instead of the eyebrow. And John, let's run it again. So we're bringing up these memories. See yourself on stage. Notice when you notice that things are not going well. Notice the tension in your body. Notice the 200 people staring at you and so many of these things when that amygdala is firing, when you're noticing these things, when you're stressed out, it's easy for it to cascade. Now the blood is flowing away from your brain into your arms and legs. You're in fight or flight response. It's hard to come back from that and just see that happening moving to the side of the eye. And just notice that in this moment now, you are safe. See that happening, the eyes looking at you, you realizing it's not going well. And just notice your body letting it go under the eye. Notice your body just releasing the charge of this memory. It still happened. That doesn't change anything. But now you start to realize all the good that came from it, all the pride and how you got back on your feet and how you powered through and how you didn't let this define you.

[John Miles]

Certainly wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now.

[Nick Ortner]

Sure wouldn't. Right? So tune into that pride, that courage, and just let it build within you under the nose. See those 200 people staring at you. And the reality is that's not a memory of failure, that's a turning point. Tune into that pride. Now you see the 200 people and you feel pride about what you made of that moment. Feel that deeply now under the mouth, And feel that strength and courage and everything you learned and how many people you've been able to help from that pain, from that moment of pain. Everything you've built from that feel, that pride. Collarbone. And now maybe it's time to release the shame fully from your body. Just opening up to that possibility. Underneath the arm, letting go even more, feeling strong, grounded and safe. Top of the head, feeling strong, grounded and safe. And you can gently stop tapping and take a breath in and let it go. So we did a couple of tapping rounds there. Experimental. Seeing where we are. Tell me you had that nine before of intensity of the shame of what you felt. Think about that memory again and let's tune in and see if you can give it a new number.

[John Miles]

Yeah, it's reduced till three or four.

[Nick Ortner]

Beautiful. So we did maybe five or ten minutes and we took a core memory, a defining memory, a painful memory, from a 9 to a 3 or a 4. And you'll often find that it'll continue to fade. We're checking in 30 seconds after we stopped tapping. Or you might find, oh, there's some other things. Something else came up tomorrow. You might remember that. Oh, there's this part of this event that I hadn't thought about and I'm still holding onto that. Maybe I can let it go and then tell me how it felt when we tuned into the pride of what you made of this event. What feelings were you feeling then?

[John Miles]

You mean fast forward to now or.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. Just know in that last round of tapping, it felt like it. I felt that pride from you that you were able to really feel proud of yourself for what you made of that experience.

[John Miles]

I think those experiences are training grounds for things you don't want to repeat. And I think it makes you be more intentional to make sure that those patterns don't happen again.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. And what we're trying to do here, this isn't. These are growth opportunities and this isn't erase anything from the past or not learn from it. It's, can we reduce the intensity? Can we. If we had happened to chat the day after this happened, could you reduce the 18 months down to a month of not speaking? Right. And then still learn and grow from it and not have it be so painful?

[John Miles]

I wish I would have done it a long time ago.

[Nick Ortner]

Well, all in good time. You have it now. Yeah.

[John Miles]

So, Nick, I think this is a really good segue. In the introduction of the book you write, you don't have to be who you've always been. And when I think about that experience I went through, you don't have to have the experiences that have caused you to have the emotions that get pent up inside. Why do so many people, so many of my listeners unconsciously believe that their emotional patterns like this experience for me, are permanent parts of who they are?

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah, it's such a great question. I think it's because they can be permanent parts if we don't have a way to change them. Right. To get them out of our nervous system. Some people do it through exercise and some people do it through meditation and some people do it through reading self help books. And those are all paths. Now, I'm very biased here and I believe this is by far the fastest path and the research is bearing that out that we can move. Not only states being like, I'm anxious now and I brought my anxiety down, I'm stressed now and I brought my stress down. But traits. I'm writing a paper right now with one of the top psychiatrists at Harvard that looks at one session that we have in our app. And the session is called you'd are enough. And I know you just had. I was just listening to your podcast this morning to prep and I know you had Blake from Tom's on. I don't know Blake. We have some mutual friends, but his thing is you are enough, like, being enough. So I thought that was pretty, pretty neat that he's focused on that idea. So I'm writing this paper because we have about 500,000 completed sessions of this you are enough session. It's a 16 minute tapping meditation that takes you back in time. The first thing you do, you rate out loud, you say, how true does it feel? I am enough. And so you rate that, then you do the 16 minute thing and then you rate it again. And what we're showing, we have this eight day challenge that over the eight day period, we're starting to change not just the state of feeling better, of lower stress, but the trait that people are saying, I am enough and believing it. And that's the key because we can all go around saying, I'm enough and you are enough and all those things, but until it's embodied, until you believe it, until you say, yeah, this is true, then what's the point of it? So through this work, through experiences similar to what you and I just went through quickly as a demonstration, which is you could have decided from that experience that you're not enough, that you're not a good public speaker, that, like those core experiences will create these things, these beliefs about ourselves. If we can release a charge from it, and if we can rewrite the pattern and if we can learn from it and embody it, not have it be just a logical, well, no, I know I'm enough. Like, it has to be embodied. You have to know it deeply, then we can create that change. And where people get stuck is that they don't have a tool to make those changes. Most people, like your listeners, people who are listening to podcasts like this, they are likely able to identify the places in their life where they don't feel like they're enough or they procrastinate. They're doing the work. A lot of the general population isn't. They just think life happens to them and that is what it is and it's fair or unfair. So people listening now know that. But most people are stuck on what to do about it. Okay, I know I have this fear of flying. I know I eat late at night and I can't stop these cravings. I know that I do this, that the other. What do I do about it? We've got to get into our nervous system. The book is called rewired because we have to rewind. Rewire our nervous system like what we just did. That was 10 minutes of rewiring, like your brain. I'm not saying everything was fixed. We said it was a three to four. It's something to revisit. Is there something left? But parts of your brain change that experience. And you shared it in bits and pieces. Oh, when I see them now, their gaze isn't as penetrating, I think you said. Right. So, like, that memory changed. And we know memory is pliable. We know memory is not reliable. Right. Everyone has a different. Oh, yeah, that happened 20 years ago. No, John said this. No John said that. So our memory's pliable. Might as well make it pliable for the good. Might as well have that memory for you. Of those 200 people looking at you either have no charge or positive charge. And that's what we started to do towards the end, too. Oh, can you link those 200 people looking at you with pride because you're like, oh, yeah, that sucked. And I know it did, because I don't forget that sucked. But look what I did with that sock. And that is rewiring our brain.

[John Miles]

Yes. Neuroplasticity is a real thing.

[Nick Ortner]

It's a real thing, and most people lean into it with just the positive. Like you think positive thoughts, which is great, but the positive thoughts need to be embodied, that you have to believe them to be true. It's really hard. Like running around saying, I'm rich is going to be unlikely to change your behavior. It's when you go, what's in the way? What's the resistance? And we don't live there. We're not like, negative all the time. We go, what's the resistance? What's stopping me right now from doing this thing? I keep mentioning this research inside the app because I've been just diving into so deeply. We have 16 million, 16.6 million measured sessions. We have a motivate me to write session that shows a dramatic drop in this behavioral resistance. So someone wants to write. They know they do. They have this desire, I want to write a book. They have writer's block. Everyone knows about writer's block. And we do this 10 minute tapping thing and something unlocks so all these different places in our life where we feel resistance. There's a past memory, there's a belief, there's a pattern in the nervous system that's getting in the way. What's exciting is we can change that pattern.

[John Miles]

I love it. Nick, one of the concepts and ideas in the book is a powerful one. You call it the Great Forgetting. And I want to bring this up because I have a book coming out in October and I have a concept in there called the Great Erasure. And we're talking about the same thing from two different angles. You write that many people have forgotten what it feels like to wake up, rested, move through life calmly, and feel truly at home in their own skin. And my concept of it is I kind of go through the underlying research that I did on why it's happening, which is, I call it systematic, unmattering being. Our feeling of mattering is being erased by the systems that we interact with every day. When you think of your concept, the Great Forgetting, why do you think humanity has forgotten how we were actually meant to live?

[Nick Ortner]

That's such a great question. Well, I think you answered it because you're so right about the systems of things we interact with. So whether it be, you know, what we deal with, daily social media, the news, the things, the people around us, what we're interacting with, and also for a lot of us, what we grew up with, if you grew up in a house where Tony Robbins was playing through Alexa like 24 7, that'd be a little much. I think even Tony would agree. But let's just say it's on in the morning, right? Or you're in the car. And if you're in that environment, that is going to give you a certain experience. Oh, I can change how I think, oh, I have a choice to be happy today, like, beginning to fill ourselves up with this information. If you're not in that environment, and for some people, it's the complete opposite. And thankfully, I had a great childhood. It wasn't my experience. But if you have an abusive childhood, if there was tremendous financial scarcity, if there was pressures on the family, that's going to completely change the systems that you're interacting with that are telling you the world is dangerous, everything around you is dangerous. Your nervous system has to be on high alert all the time. And then what happens is, and I'm sure this research comes out in your book, that, like, it becomes the new normal. That's what's so hard about it for people, that they don't know any different. And even when we're in this space, how many times have I had the experience where like, oh, wow, my shoulders were up by my ears. I ran around stressed today because I was interacting with all these different things that were stressful. And I had to remember that this isn't my baseline, that I don't have to feel this way, that I can change my state. So we're so disconnected from even that idea. Our body gets used to it. We get addicted to these chemicals. Like we get addicted to cortisol. We get addicted to stress. We get addicted to running a certain way. Some people feel very uncomfortable relaxing, which is crazy when you think about it. If you tell someone who runs 247 and they have a crazy life, okay, just sit gently for. For 30 seconds, it's like the panic kicks in, right? Oh, this feels weird. With our phones. Now, I've heard from a couple of people recently who are trying social media diets and stopping the addiction, putting the phone away, this, that, and the other. And they've described how uncomfortable they feel without the phone close to them. So which is great insight and awareness and crazy that we've become this attached to this device, that when it's not around us, we physically feel uncomfortable, that it's causing anxiety. Now, the good news is that when people power through that or tap through, ideally would be to, like, lower that resistance, then they go, oh, okay, this is what I was supposed to feel. This is the systems that we're interacting with that are telling us we don't matter.

[John Miles]

I love what you just brought up, and I'm going to share just a short story. A friend of ours, I was texting with them about a baseball game and asking him if he was going about a week and a half ago, and he didn't respond to me. He responded to my wife. Miles doesn't answer quick enough. And the truth of the matter is, I am very difficult to get a hold of during the day because I purposely put my phone away from me because I don't want the distraction. And so I will check it a couple times, but hours can go by because I found there was a period in my life where it had been attached to me and it was causing me too many interruptions. And I know for me, when I get interrupted, it takes me like 10, 15, 20 minutes to get back into my work process. So when I am in the peak moments of my day, which for me is my morning period, when I'm most vibrant, I tend to put it away so I can concentrate on and try to get into the flow zone so I can get done what I need to get done.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah.

[John Miles]

But it has become an expectation that, yeah, we need to be available all the time. We need to answer in split seconds. And my answer to that is, no, we don't.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. And it's. Think about it. It's almost like a negative character trait of yours that you're not. Yeah. He doesn't get back to me as if you are doing something wrong because the expectation, like you said, is the immediate response. So, yeah, these phones are difficult and a lot to work through. They have amazing superpowers and it's great and for so many ways, but something that we need to work through. I don't think we have these craving busters in the app. So we've got sugar and alcohol and all these things to help with cravings. The effect size on it, meaning just how well it works, is really strong. It's actually, for whatever reason I have to try to figure it out. It's the highest effect size of anything we have in the app, is actually for cravings. So there's something happening. Meaning if someone's at a seven and maybe for pain relief, they drop to a four. For cravings, they'll drop to a three. So it's doing something with the brain to reduce cravings fast. And I think I need to get a phone craving up there ASAP because a lot of people are struggling with it and, and need something to calm the nervous system when it's feeling that itch.

[John Miles]

Nick, you have a line in the book. We spend more time managing our fears than chasing our dreams. And I want to tell you a story about this and then have you respond, but one of my long term mentors is a woman named Wendy Lawrence. And Wendy was my physics teacher at the Naval Academy and went on to become the first female astronaut for. From the Naval Academy in space. And she tells this message all the time that you're talking about here to kids today is we let our fears all the time get in the way of us chasing our dreams. And she talks about how when she was growing up, there wasn't an opportunity for females to be astronauts because there weren't any examples of that. And as she was going down this path, there were so many times that she had to overcome her fears and obstacles to end up achieving the dream that she always wanted. But she said today what she finds is so many people unwillingly, unknowingly, really build their lives around avoiding fear instead of pursuing the possibility. Why do you think that is happening

[Nick Ortner]

so much?

[John Miles]

And do you. Do you think it's something that's changing or do you think it's always been there.

[Nick Ortner]

It's probably always been there. I think it is a biological impulse for safety that we are scanning for danger and that fight or flight mode gets activated. We have something called the negativity bias. We all know it. If someone says, john, I could say one mean thing to you today and you will remember it for three years and the next thousand people that talk to you could say nice things and they'll be right. It'll be gone. It'd be like, well, Nick said that one thing. So our brain does latch on to these things. It's in order to keep us safe. And I talk to a lot of authors and I joke that you haven't made it as an author until you get a one star review because it means your book hasn't gone out far enough. Right? You're guaranteed to get a one star review. If you sell enough books, someone's going to get mad at you for something. My favorite art when the first one is Amazon shipped it in a bad box. Why are you reading my book when Amazon had a bad shipping experience? My point being we get stuck on these things. We get stuck on these one star reviews. We have this bias in our brain and we have to acknowledge that bias. Go this. My brain is holding onto it. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. Your brain is holding onto it for a reason. In order to keep you safe, in order to see the danger. Because there's a saber tooth tiger around the corner. Once you see one, then every corner you look around, you're going to make sure there's not another saber tooth tiger. But we can change that. We're in control of that. And I think the key thing about the fears versus the dream, it's the word managing the fears. We do so much managing of how do I build my life in a way that I don't have to face these fears? We've been talking a lot about phobias today and fear of public speaking or flying because it's the most visceral showing of that, right? Where it's if someone has a fear of public speaking, they will manage. So that's a fear. They will manage their life to make sure they don't have to public speak if they you have a fear of public speaking and you have a desire to have a successful career. Now you have to manage what having a successful business career is like without speaking in public or with speaking in the right situation. So then you might go, okay, well I'm going to try to do it more by sending emails. I don't want to speak in front of groups. I'm okay one on one. So I'm going to really work, I'm going to manage these fears to try to have the career I want. But it's going to be limited by all these little rules and boxes. It's difficult, it's uncomfortable, it's not fun, and then it's often limiting. Okay, fine, you manage your way there. But if you had just been willing to talk to the eight people in the conference room and felt confident enough to share your ideas, then your career would have skyrocketed. So clearly these are the places that we get stuck. Clearly they're the places that stop us from living the lives that we want. And that's been my experience. When I first made the documentary film, I told you when we started $40,000 worth of camera equipment, no idea what we were doing, we must have filmed 100 hours of footage that was just complete garbage. I don't even know where it is now. It was terrible. We didn't know what we were doing, we couldn't use it. And then time and again through the process, I'm a couple months in going, I've spent $40,000, 50 now flying. What am I doing here? I could have so easily locked up in that moment that I'm a 29 year old kid, I have no experience, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm giving up now. But during those moments I would tap and I would say, even though I don't know what I'm doing, I choose to relax now. Even though just speaking my fears out loud, even though this is going terribly and it's a disaster, I love and accept myself. I would calm my nervous system, move away from that fight or flight mode. The blood literally physically flows back into your brain. You can think clearly and always it would be from fear, from I don't know what I'm doing, from wanting to give up to oh, you know what, not only is that feeling gone, but I've got an idea. And that's the exciting part that when we bring our resources back online, it's not about from fear to negative emotion or no or flat emotion. It's from fear to I've got an idea, I've got the passion, I've got the energy, I know what to do next. So it opens up vistas for us that aren't possible if we're in these stuck resistant negative states.

[John Miles]

Unfortunately, when I was young boy, 7 or 8 years old, I physically watched enter DC10 crash right in front of me. And it. It created a huge fear of flying for me for many years that I was able to get over through therapy. But recently seeing that cargo plane crash last year sent the same thing triggered me again because both of them had to deal with an engine falling off on takeoff. So these things are real. And what I realized as I was reading your book is the book is really a lot more than tapping. It's a book about how so many of us become trapped in versions of ourselves that we never consciously choose.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah.

[John Miles]

When did you first realize that your work wasn't about tapping? But it's so much more than stress relief.

[Nick Ortner]

Oh, it's so much more than stress relief. I think I have to go back to Tony again with his influence of everything I learned from him on human psychology, on creating change, on how we define who we are in our lives, and then just working with, at this point, thousands or tens of thousands of people and seeing the patterns and seeing what they go through and seeing the places that they define themselves and they get stuck and they believe this is who I am, and they don't have a way out. And this is the way out. Tapping is just the vehicle. It happens to shockingly be a vehicle that does. It's almost as if we could type on the computer and edit our brain. Well, we would do that. Great. Hey, delete that memory. Change this, change that. Somehow, I don't know who decided it came packaged in this physically tapping on ourselves, but yes, everything around it, the you are enough session, the tapping is the vehicle to implant that belief. The tapping is also the vehicle to bring up the old memories, to try to learn about ourselves, to understand why we are the way we are, to have insights. And one of the other beautiful things about the process is that we don't go from fear to erasing something we go from. I see it a lot with anger. If someone's really angry at someone, so they start at anger and we do some tapping, and then naturally on their own, they go to sadness. Every single time, anger just lets go and it goes to sadness, and then the sadness lets go and it goes to wisdom. So this isn't a erase everything. This is. Can we process the things that help us become stronger and heal and grow from. But does it not have to be 18 months that you don't get on stage? You probably went through various stages of emotional processing for it. Right. Like along the way, can we condense that time period and get you back on stage? 12 months, six months a year. Can we learn from it? Can we take that anger and feel that sadness, and then from that sadness build that wisdom? And now it's the base of wisdom. Yes, that thing happened. Yes, I was angry. Yes, I was sad. Now there's wisdom.

[John Miles]

Yeah. Even to this day, when I know I'm going to go back into high gear, into public speaking, I go back to Toastmasters or I'll do improv classes, because I find the best way you've got to deal with it is to keep putting yourself in the situation, so you build back that confidence that it's not going to happen. But I'm definitely going to incorporate tapping as well going forward, and that's a

[Nick Ortner]

great strategy of going back into Toastmasters. I'm sorry, what you're trying to do there, you're trying to have positive emotions, positive experiences that you can build up. So now when you go and do it, you have a better experience.

[John Miles]

Yeah. Because one of the things you write about in the book that I think applies to what we did for 10 minutes is it isn't about faking it till you make it.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah.

[John Miles]

What. What was happening to me, because I could feel it as we were doing it, is I could sense a biological. Biological change in my nervous system.

[Nick Ortner]

Yes.

[John Miles]

And to me, that is what triggers lasting emotional change. And the weird thing for people who might not have done this is I was actually feeling an emotional shift in my body as I was doing the exercise and talking about the feelings and that shift, honestly, was that nine going to a three or four? Because I felt the weight coming out of my body. The energy.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah.

[John Miles]

Coming out of me. Which. It's crazy that it can do that. It reminds me going through EMDR therapy.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah.

[John Miles]

It hurts a lot of people so much.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah. People often ask about EMDR and tapping, and I would say, there's cousins, they're in the same family of that emotional process thing. The big difference is that tapping you can do on your own and read the book, use the app, have that experience. And EMDR usually takes a therapist to do, but they both are just wonderful tools.

[John Miles]

One of the things, Nick, I want to make sure I talk about, because it's one of the reasons I started this podcast. I. I had reached a period in my life where emotional numbness had become my reality. And you describe people living in what you call frosted glass, and I would say that is what it felt like to me. It's like I was developing cataracts, and the world just kept getting more shaded and more shaded, and I Could not figure out what was going on, except that my vitality and aliveness and joy and connections were fading. And I didn't know how to describe it, but I've come to realize that it's this emotional numbness.

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah.

[John Miles]

Does that resonate with you as you have talked to many people and worked with them?

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah, I hear it all the time. It's almost the more activated emotions like anxiety and anger, the. I don't want to say one thing is easier than the other, but it's easier to quantify because it is so physical and visceral. I'm really anxious or I'm really angry. The low mood, depression, frosted glass thing that you're talking about is more subtle and maybe you had the experience of not really knowing what was happening, when it was happening, how you got there. For a lot of people, it's not an overnight thing. It's not that they wake up one morning and oh my gosh, they're just depressed. Certainly can happen if you go through a traumatic experience. The loss of a loved one can put you in those states. But so many people just slowly. It's like you said about the cataracts building. Like you didn't wake up one morning with cataracts. It just a little particle after a little particle built in and everything was closing down on you. What's. You know, oftentimes that is just the world being too stimulating. Too many negative experiences, too many negative emotions and the body just shuts down. Right. So the body, the brain, the nervous system just shuts down. It's overwhelmed. Loss of energy that all goes together. Tapping is. Can be quite. In the same way that it's relaxing and stress relieving, it can be activating in a positive way. Right. You have this physical. And a lot of people will feel this physical surge of energy just by going through the points. It's if I want to get some energy, if it's two in the afternoon and you know, too late to have my coffee and just feeling that brain fog and that slump, just one round like activating. So it can be really powerful for people struggling with those states to activate slowly and safely. And in the same way that those cataracts close down and that frosted glass moved in on the life, we just started just starting cleaning the glass a little bit. It's not going to get clear overnight. But can we activate some energy? Can we do one round of tapping? Because that's what happens too. Certainly with depression, low mood. If I said, okay, go see a therapist for an Hour or go do this tapping thing for 20 minutes. It's like the. Oh, my gosh, the energy just isn't there. It's just too much. So start slow. Can you just do one round of tapping today and find a little energy and take one step forward, just building that muscle back up to open up to life. And when we calm the nervous system that is in that shutdown state, there's natural positive consequences from it. Okay. The nervous system feels safe. We start igniting some energy around it, and then we can take those steps forward.

[John Miles]

Yeah, I like how you describe that, because to me, what was happening is I was experiencing thousands of micro over a long period of time. And the only way you can build it back is it's you don't get there in one fell swoop, and you can't build a pack in one fell swoop. And what I love about tapping is there micro practices that you can use on a daily basis to restore those erasures and take your freedom back.

[Nick Ortner]

Maybe it's a longer story, but how you did it then, what were the steps for you to come out of that?

[John Miles]

And I wrote my. My first book about it, Passion Structure. It was six mindset shifts and six behavior shifts that I implemented. And it took me about two, two years to. To do it when I'm still working on it. But it started out with I. I had to go back to. Which is always difficult in therapy. They always want you to go to what is the most traumatic memory that you ever have. And unfortunately, I have a lot of them. You know, seeing a plane crash isn't even come close.

[Nick Ortner]

That's not number one. There's other stuff in there.

[John Miles]

But to me, it was going through CBT and then prolonged exposure therapy and dealing with those. And when I started to deal with those and finding coping mechanisms for them, I realized if I would have done this decades ago, how much different my life would have been. So that's the advice I always give to people. People is don't delay. Deal with the stuff earlier in your life. But once I dealt with that, that's what I try to tell people when I work with them, is you got to find a starting point. And from there it starts opening up other areas of your life that you never expect. And I always describe it that you have to think of your life as many different pillars holding you up. And once you start working on the one that needs the help the most, you'll naturally start working on the others. And then it eventually allows you to rebuild the whole structure and from there you take back what you've lost. So that's what I ended up doing.

[Nick Ortner]

That's beautiful. And you mentioned cbt, which is amazing. We have thousands of therapists now who are CBT trained who just bring tapping in. It's not one or another. So they'll take all the framework from CBT and just add the tool. Add the tool to like you did some EMDR to process that trauma. Add the tool to CBT is great until it's 2 in the morning and you're ruminating about a thought or you can't sleep and your cognitive brain is offline. Right. What is cbt? Cognitive behavioral therapy. Right. So your brain is offline. So that's why some of the leading CBT therapists in the world go, okay, well we need something when the cognitive brain is offline. So this is where the physical tapping comes in, brings the cognitive brain back online. So you have those resources available.

[John Miles]

I love it. Nick, the last thing I wanted to ask you about, because I, I thought this section of the book was incredibly powerful, is you have seven freedoms of a rewired life. Things like self trust, energy, authenticity, feeling at home in your body. I wanted to ask, out of the seven, what freedom do you think people are starving for most right now? Now or just depend on the person?

[Nick Ortner]

Yeah, that's the thing about them. So I tried to write them to be all encompassing of what a well lived life could look like and then also aspirations because we do a lot of work in tapping to just let go. Right. Okay. I have this thing, I have this anger, I want to let go, I have this anxiety, I want to let go. And we can. It's easy to get stuck into all these traumas to. I have to clear out every trauma from my body before I can live a good life. That's not the case. There's an in between thing where you're healing, when you're letting go, when you're reducing anxiety and you're actually going towards something. You're having positive emotions, you're creating things in your life. So the Seven Freedoms was just trying to paint that picture of what it all could be probably on a daily basis. Because I see so many people struggling with this. It's the freedom to react from wisdom instead of old wounds. Right. Like that reaction piece. The someone says something and it's like, old wound is kicking up. Something happens in your life. Old wound kicking up. And that goes to the rewire process of interrupting that thought, recognizing the thought. Okay, old wound, interrupting it with tapping. And then rewiring it. So when you do that enough times, now someone says something and it used to trigger you and send you down a spiral or whatever it was, and now you react with wisdom. So, yeah, that's one of my favorites. And I think something a lot of people struggle with.

[John Miles]

And then lastly, if a listener or a viewer understood that they didn't have to remain who they've always been, how would their lives change after they read Rewire?

[Nick Ortner]

I can only point to the experience that I've had in doing this work for 20 years. Certainly seen thousands and, well, hundreds of thousands or millions of other people do this in our community and who we've worked with in the last 20 years. But for me, it's waking up happy, it's going to bed at peace. It's following work that I'm passionate about. It is not reacting from old wounds. It's recognizing when I do react from an old wound because I'm still doing the work every single day, and I'm still get the triggers, but it's feeling in control of my destiny. And I think that positive control piece is something that just about everyone's missing. We just think we have all these things that happen to us. We have all these stories. It's who I am. It's what life is. It's the hand that I've been dealt, right? How often do we say, well, that's the hand you've been dealt. Okay, well, maybe you can trade in a couple cards here, right? Where maybe you were playing regular poker and you get to get a new hand and hopefully it's better. And actually not hopefully it's better. How about you actually get to look through the deck and pick the cards you want. You're cheating at the game, but this is what it is. It's a good cheat. You get to pick the cards you want. You get to be who you want to be, you get to make decisions about who you are, and you get to know yourself. I know I've talked about Tony so much, but he really is so influential in, in. In my life and the work that we've done. And something that I learned about myself was in relationship to him. So when I first went to these events, when I was first 22, 23 years old, actually 25 was my first event. You get so excited, so passionate. The energy is great. He teaches you all these things and it's very easy to fall into. I want to be just like Tony. Right? He's the leader, right? Oh, my gosh, he's up there doing it. He's so charismatic. I want to be just like him. And then what happened for me time and again would happen to any other human who tries to be someone else. I failed over and over again. Oh, I didn't do my RPM planning the way I said to, or I procrastinated. I bet you Tony doesn't procrastinate. You know, so there was this desire to be like this person who is on another planet to start with. But whatever. The point is, you can't be like someone else. So I was trying to be like him. And it wasn't until I let go of that, got enough clarity about myself, decided who I wanted to be, what are the things that I want to do, what do I enjoy doing and I can say yes to and then say no to other things? And again, full circle moment. I was at his house, probably about 2014, and we were sitting out in this beautiful house overlooking the ocean, and we're talking about things that we might do together with some charity work, with spreading, tapping. And he's sitting there, and he is. As we're talking, he is furiously taking notes, just writing. And I'm looking around and I'm going, I didn't even bring a notebook. This is embarrassing. He's writing like crazy. I'm just talking. I'm not taking notes. And then I had that moment, and I thought to myself, I've never taken notes in my life. In class, I didn't take notes. I'm not a note taker. I'm a lefty. My handwriting, I can't read it half the time after I've written it. I am not a note taker. Tony is a note taker. We're each doing who we are. Be comfortable with it. Enjoy the moment. Who cares about. He's not thinking anything about you. Stop thinking about all these judgments of yourself. Be who you are. And that was a moment when I was able to say, okay, yeah, this work is paying off. I'm here with my mentor, someone that I always admired. We're working together on something. And that all happened not because I was trying to be him or trying to be anyone else on the planet. It's because I cleared up all this crap from my past. I got centered. I got clear on my mission. I did the tapping. I let go of these things, and I could feel in the depth of my soul comfortable with who I was in that moment.

[John Miles]

Thank you for sharing that. And I want to end here. The final note of the manuscript to me was deeply empowering. And talks to what you were just referencing. You and your siblings, right? Your current wiring isn't your destiny. What I want listeners to know is that the book really argues that lasting transformation is not only possible, it's far simpler, more embodied and more accessible than we have been taught to believe. And I think it's a perfect message and why I wanted to have you on the show, Nick. You talked a lot about your other books, your videos, the app. Where is the best place listeners can learn more about all those different things?

[Nick Ortner]

Great. Thank you, John. Yeah. TheTappingsolution.com is our main website. I've mentioned the app. It's free to download. If you just search the tapping solution on any app store, it'll pop up. And I think we have 50 plus free tapping meditations in there. And then there's a premium version that has a thousand more, but there's plenty to experience for free. Thetappingsolution.com app stores and then rewired as wherever books were sold. We were delighted to hit the New York Times bestseller list. And the first week we were released and the book was released and it's already touching lives around the world. I'm grateful to you for having me on and for everyone listening to this message. What you just said is true. You don't have to be who you've always been. We can change our wiring. I think just knowing that, just that as a possibility is so exciting and so empowering. Now you just have to walk through the door and actually create that change.

[John Miles]

Awesome. Nick, thank you so much for joining. It was such an honor to have you.

[Nick Ortner]

Thank you, John.

[John Miles]

That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Nick Ortner. One thing that stayed with me is how quickly we turn experiences into identities. We have a painful moment, a setback or a disappointment, and over time, the story shifts from that happened to me to that's just who I am. I'm not a good speaker. I'm always anxious. I procrastinate. I can't change. What I appreciated about Nick's work is that he reminds us that our brains and nervous systems are always learning. The patterns we've practiced for years are powerful, but they aren't permanent. And sometimes the work isn't about trying harder. It's about finding a different way to process what we've been carrying all along. As we continue our flourishing series, Thursday's conversation builds naturally on what Nick shared. Today I'll be joined by John Gordon. Many of you know John from his books like the Energy Bus, the Carpenter and The Power of Positive Leadership. He's one of the most influential leadership thinkers working today, and his newest book is called the Power of Positive Habits. In our conversation, we talk about why so many people settle for what's comfortable instead of pursuing what they truly want. How a single word can bring clarity and direction to an entire year, and why comparing yourself to someone else's path almost always leaves you discouraged. We also discuss purpose statements, reverse bucket lists, the habits that have shaped John's own life and the lesson that ultimately changed everything for him. It's a conversation about becoming the person you're called to be instead of spending your life wishing you were someone else.

[Nick Ortner]

So here's the thing. Negative thoughts are always coming in. And when they come in, they will tell you things about yourself in your future that just aren't true. Negative thoughts are lies. And so many of us have them. Actually, we all have them. But are those negative thoughts coming from you? And I asked that, knowing the answer is no. Who would ever choose to have a negative thought? Would anyone ever choose a negative thought? You wouldn't. But it comes in. And so when it comes in, you don't have to listen to it. Instead you have to speak truth to it. You don't have the power of the first thought, but you have the power of the second thought. And this is really key to understand. And you're not the thoughts you think, you're the thoughts you believe.

[John Miles]

Today's conversation resonated with you. Share it with someone who's been trying to make a change, break an old pattern, or move beyond a story they've carried for too long. Don't forget to download today's companion workbook and reflection [e-mail] until next time, keep asking yourself, what am I practicing every day that my future yourself will one day call a habit. I'm John Miles, and you've been passion struck.