
David Bayer, entrepreneur and author of A Changed Mind, joins Lewis Howes to unpack the Golden Equation, desire plus non-resistance equals desired result, along with the Two States of Being, the Core Program, and the Whole Human Framework, a twelve-step model for personal growth rooted in Alcoholics Anonymous. Bayer also details his Decision Matrix for rewiring limiting beliefs.
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B
Desire. Plus non resistance equals desired result. So whatever your desire is, if you want to make more money, if you want to heal your chronic health condition, if you want to find your soulmate, it doesn't matter what it is, you can become psychologically and emotionally non resistant to the desire 100% of the time. Consistently and predictably, you will crystallize that desire into your reality.
A
He's an entrepreneur, best selling author, and an expert teaching people how to unlock their potential by helping them raise their frequency. Please welcome David.
B
The moment you have a desire, two things enter your awareness. Number one is of course the thing that you want. But number two is the absence of it. And the brain will give a meaning to the absence of it. Well, it's not there because there's not enough time. Well, it's not there because I'm not good enough. Well, it's not there because money is hard to make. If you can identify what the resistance is and do the inner work to transform it, you now become completely aligned and congruent with the outcome itself.
A
What is the program or the belief that most human beings live by today?
B
Well, I think there are two. So
A
welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring David Bayer in the house. Good to see you, man.
B
Good to see you. Thanks for having me.
A
Welcome to the show. If someone watching or listening right now is feeling stuck in their life, they're feeling like they have a big scarcity wound. They feel like they're just low energy or maybe anxiety consistently in their life. What would you say are three actionable steps they could take right now to get out of that scarcity state and feeling more abundant?
B
I mean, I think the first thing at a root cause level is to get into personal growth, right? Like really start to understand the dynamics of mindset, how you think, your belief systems. Because that malaise and that anxiety and that depression is. It's being driven by one thing, one thing only, which is your thoughts, right? Your thoughts create Your emotions, your emotions produce your results. And so, you know, if, if somebody is feeling stuck in their life, they've, they've got to get into personal growth. Right? And, and that, you know, that's a, that's a process. You normally, you start with the books and you become a card carrying member of personal growth. And then you start going to events and you find the tools that work for you. You start living in a community of people who are focused on their personal growth. But that's really important. I think that's the second thing too is it's counterintuitive. But you know, if, if you want to become abundant and you want to start feeling better, you have to hang out with abundant people or people at least focused on abundance and people who are committed to feeling better. Right. So number one is understand, you know, get into personal growth. Two is surround yourself with other, other people who are, who are headed in the same direction. It's, it's really common sense. I think when we look at any other area of our life, it's like if I want to get good at yoga, I go to the yoga studio and I hang out with yogis. If I want to get good at, you know, recovery, which was part of my story, I want to get sober. You start going to 12 step meetings and you hang out with other people who are trying to get sober. But for the most part we don't really think about that in terms of our emotional states. And frankly, it's not as easy. It's like, you know, there's no personal development store that you walk into. Right. But, but we are seeing more and more emergent communities, your communities that you've built. Community that I built. Right. So I would say that's the second thing. And then the third thing which is really related to getting into personal growth is just begin to audit your belief systems because you are creating your reality. We are creating our reality. We create through the mechanism of our habit of thought or habit of emotion. And those are driven by our beliefs. Right. People call those programs traumas. Um, and so if you want to change your life, if you want to start moving out of scarcity into abundance, you got to take a look at the programs that are driving those emotional states and creating that reality temporarily in your life.
A
What is the program or the belief that most human beings live by today?
B
Well, I think there are two. So let's, let's, let's talk about the, you know, you asked about abundance. I think, I think it's important for someone to answer this. Question, not overthink it, but it's a really simple way of doing an audit or an inventory. And that is, is to answer the question. When I was growing up, money was blank. Right. When I was growing up, money was blank. Do you anything come to mind for you? I know you've obviously changed your money consciousness, but when you were growing up, money was what?
A
Scary to me. Yeah.
B
Was what scary? Scary.
A
Yeah.
B
Right.
A
I didn't understand it. It was scary. It seemed like it was better than me. Yeah, yeah. A lot of the caught it caused tension in the family. Yeah. Like it caused stress.
B
Right. All those things. So if that's what money is, at powerful subconscious levels, your entire system is going to keep you away from money.
A
Yeah.
B
Right. About 70% of people who just heard that question answered scarce. So it's the number one answer. And so for most people when they were growing up, money was scarce. Which is an interesting way to compare pleat the sentence. Because we don't use scarce a lot in our day to day language.
A
But unless it's like there's no food.
B
Correct.
A
Yeah, yeah, correct. Food scarcity.
B
But that's, I mean I've asked that question to tens of thousands of people, whether it's online, offline speaking events, and scarce is far and away the most common response that people have.
A
Which around money.
B
Around money.
A
Yeah.
B
Which explains why we see a handful of people with all of the money in the world and most people are without. Because if your beliefs are creating your reality, that would just make sense. You asked for the belief that most people have that.
A
Belief of the program.
B
Belief of the program. And so it varies. Right. Scarcity is a big one. I would also offer that another really powerful program that, that does vary from person to person, although we see about 18 to 20. It's called the core program. It's really your core trauma. And it's in fact your personality is a compensation mechanism for this early trauma. You actually have become who you are as a way to cope with this trau original trauma. And that is to answer the question. When I was growing up, I never felt blank. Right. When I was growing up, I never felt blank. So for example, my aunts are safe.
A
Never felt safe.
B
When I was growing up, I never felt safe. Which is interesting. I mean I grew up in an upper middle class Orange county family. My parents were not physically abusive, sexually abusive. I didn't experience any type of physical or sexual abuse growing up. But there was this sort of constant hum of like, don't make a mistake, like don't do it wrong. My mom never felt like she was good enough. And so that created this emotional climate where I never felt safe. Right. I always felt like I was going to make a mistake or that I was never good enough. Right. So. So, so that those two. Right. Really drive a lot of human behavior and a lot of what we create in our reality. Yeah.
A
I think that was probably. If I was going to answer that question, it'd probably be the same for me as well. When I was growing up, I never felt safe. Yeah. And safe or maybe, maybe like safe or seen or supported. But I think safe is the core wound.
B
Yeah. And it is for a lot of people. Now how that then compensates into our personality varies. So someone might be a people pleaser.
A
Yeah.
B
Another person might chase success. Another person may actually just be living in depression or anxiety as a result of not feeling safe.
A
Or all of them.
B
Or all of them. Right. Or all of them. And. And so. And this actually isn't a problem. You know, I'm. What we have seen is that whatever happened in terms of the original wound, once transformed, becomes your superpower and your gift. Right.
A
So give me an example.
B
Yeah. So part of my core program is that there's something wrong with me. That's how I felt when I was growing up. I remember when I was in, before fifth grade when my parents moved me into this sort of gifted and talented education program with the other nerds. Like I always felt like I didn't belong in the, in the regular classroom. I always felt like there was something wrong with me. I also grew up with a dad who was, you know, was the best dad he could be. And according to a lot of measuring sticks, a really good dad. My dad was an attorney. He was super smart, critical thinker. We would describe him today as not having a tremendous amount of emotional intelligence. And so he was a great problem finder. But when you're on the receiving end of that, you sort of experience like, I'm never doing it right. There's always a better way to do it. There's something wrong with me.
A
So I grew up with not much affection. Or there's.
B
Right. It's more.
A
Results driven.
B
Results driven. Yeah. It's a great way to describe it. So. So part of my core makeup was there's something wrong with me.
A
And did he say it out loud or was it more just an internal feeling?
B
It was an internal feeling. I didn't have a self awareness until probably my early 30s when I was running a venture backed technology company. I was chasing success. I Was like, everybody expected me to be really successful because I was a bright kid and I felt like I needed to do that in order to be loved. So, like, I was always, you know, kind of good at my career, but as. As that overdeveloped itself within me and as I continued to not realize that below the surface there were these wounds that needed to be healed, I was dealing with it through drug abuse, alcoholism, sex addiction. And so in my early 30s, when I hit my bottom and I got into recovery, I started becoming aware that, wow, in all these different areas of my life, the observation that I'm making subconsciously is there's something wrong with me. So I started becoming aware of it in my early 30s. And then what was also interesting was in my late 30s, I ended up getting a variety of odd health challenges. I think it was in 2016, I ended up discovering I had really high levels of mercury from an all fish diet. And then I started getting mold and mold exposure and like all these things. And my reaction to these health challenges was, there's something wrong with me. So there's something wrong with me was manifesting into my body.
A
And you were, you were reinforcing it and experiencing it by finding evidence, correct? As well.
B
Yeah. That's described as a psycho cybernetic loop. Right. It's like you, you have a belief system and so that's what your brain focuses on. Right. There's that part of the brain, the reticular activating system. You find evidence for it, you ignore all evidence for it, and just continues to build momentum. So how did that transform into my gift? Right was the question. And as I've done personal growth work and healing work, I have come to realize there's not only nothing wrong with me, but that, that I'm really amazing just the way that I am, that I'm loved by a power greater than myself, that there's actually not only nothing wrong with me, but there's nothing wrong with anything that happens in my life. All of it is really designed for my greatest growth, my greatest prosperity, and my greatest evolution. And so I sort of transform this idea that there's something wrong with me to I can accept myself for who I am and I trust life. Right. So I was living in this consistent fear that I wasn't good enough. But as I was forced to confront that, it became the resistance training for a development of an unshakable faith that's been building inside of me. Faith in myself, faith in my higher power, faith in life. And I think that's One of the things that I came here to learn, like, I'm a big believer that we sort of choose what our outcome is as we come in and we're born to parents who will set us up for that journey. There are experiences that are almost predestined in our life that occur. I very much see it as a resistance training module that we go through in order to become the opposite of the environment that we were born into in these original core programs. So we're born into the contraction which some people might describe as the shadow side. And. And at some point, it becomes unbearable.
A
Yes.
B
And we start seeking a solution to it, and we transform that shadow into what some people might describe as the light, which is the expansive energy. And then we ultimately become who we came here to become.
A
Yes. Or we perish.
B
Or we perish.
A
We don't take the. The call to adventure.
B
Correct.
A
We don't go on the journey. We don't do the healing work. We go darker into whatever the addictive abuse it is that we're into.
B
Correct.
A
And we lose ourselves.
B
Correct. Which is also okay. Because we get to the end of this life and we reflect upon it and we learn from that experience, which then motivates a desire for the next life. And we play the game again. Right. Hopefully.
A
Yeah, hopefully.
B
But it would be. It would be. It would be nice. You know, that's kind of like playing Super Mario Brothers and having to do the same level over and over and over again. Right. It would be nice to progress. And we have more access than ever before to this progression technology. Right. Because I think about my parents generation. I mean, they didn't really have. Maybe someone could stumble into a Jim Rohn seminar or, you know, find some new thought movement book. Right. And there are those folks, and you see that their kids have been raised fairly well versus most of us. But I think that's what's so amazing about, you know, what you're doing and the technology that's available and social media and YouTube and all of these things, is that consciousness and the laws by which consciousness functions and how this game works are more available to us than ever before. And that is a part of this awakening that we're seeing, which is occurring simultaneously to this massive breakdown of the old system. Right. These two things are happening simultaneously, which makes this a really exciting time to be alive. 100%. Yeah. 100%.
A
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B
No, clearly.
A
Is that enough?
B
No, clearly the answer is no. And we, you know, from a coaching perspective, you know, those are the huddled masses that end up in our seminars, right? Are, you know, a segment of them are very successful people, high achievers. Right, right. And that'll really mess with your head because when you, when you think that that's actually the solution and then you get there and it's not, you're like,
A
I just spent 20 years chasing this thing.
B
Yes.
A
And I still have an empty hole inside.
B
Correct. I mean, one must imagine it's a terrifying moment, right?
A
Horrific. Yeah. It's like the worst feeling, right?
B
Yeah. Right. And so. And there's an opportunity, which is a lot of what you do, to like, even slow down for a second and go like, well, wait, mo, what are we even talking about with success? What is success? Right. What is greatness? Because there's a good portion of the world that is, you know, measuring it by how much money is in your bank account still. But, but I think we would talk about it in a language of like, you know, being authentic, being vulnerable, being in the service of others, being willing to do the uncomfortable healing work that allows who you truly are to emerge. Right. Like that. That's perhaps the best definition of greatness, is like you actually become who you came here to become. And the beautiful thing is it's not about going out there and trying to figure out how to kludge together who you were meant to become. It's all here. It's right. Which, you know, there's a distinction that we teach that I'm so grateful for because having been in personal growth and healing for the last, I don't know, 15 years and doing all the stuff, reading the books, going to the seminars. You know, I remember walking in the Landmark Forum the first day that I did that, and going to Tony's events And, you know, then getting into meditation and breath work and, you know, dragging my poor wife, who was my girlfriend at that time, to India because I thought, well, maybe, you know, some monks can solve my problem for me. Or doing the ayahuasca or the psilocybin or the therapeutically facilitated mdma. Like the whole thing, all the stuff. Right, the stuff. What I became aware of was a really simple equation for me. And this is what we teach that distills down all of personal growth and success principles into one formula, which is desire plus non resistance equals desired result. So whatever your desire is, if you want to make more money, if you want to heal your chronic health condition, if you want to find your soulmate, if you want to have more intimacy in the relationship that you're actually in, if you want to become Prime Minister of Canada, whatever the desire is, it doesn't matter what it is, if you can become psychologically and emotionally non resistant to the desire 100% of the time, consistently and predictably, you will crystallize that desire into your reality.
A
What does that mean? How do you do that? You have a desire or a dream or a goal.
B
Yeah.
A
And you become non resistant to what?
B
To the desire itself. Because what happens is the moment you have a desire, two things enter your awareness. Number one is of course the thing that you want. But number two is the absence of it.
A
The lack.
B
Yeah, it's not there yet. And the brain will give a meaning to the absence of it. Well, it's not there because there's not enough time. Well, it's not there because I'm not good enough. Well, it's not there because money is hard to make. Well, it's not there because there's something wrong with me. Well, it's not there because other people have it and there's a limited amount of it in the world. There's an explanation that's. We're great explainers. Yeah, Right. And that explanation is actually a limiting belief. And as long as that limiting belief exists, it's not that you can't produce the result because reality is very gracious with us. Like nobody has a perfect mindset. But if you can identify what the resistance is and do the inner work to transform it, you now become completely aligned and congruent with the outcome itself.
A
So give me an example of this around either love or money, or I'll
B
give you a personal example for me.
A
Yeah.
B
I started my podcast back in July 4th. It was the 4th of July in 2023.
A
Okay.
B
And I was recording an episode Every single day. Sorry. Every single week.
A
Every day.
B
Can you imagine? I was recording.
A
That's kind of me
B
like, yes, I can imagine.
A
Almost every day. Yeah.
B
And it was about a year, and it just wasn't performing the way I had expected.
A
Once a week for a year.
B
You're out there. I'm just. I'm putting an episode out there, and I'm like, I don't really understand. I took some Ali Abdaal, you know, YouTube, optim course, and, you know, I'm recording, doing all the best practices, and I'm. And I'm looking at the content, I'm like, it's good content. The hook is good. And I'm looking at other shows, I'm like, I think it's as good. Maybe it's even better than this other stuff. Why isn't it performing?
A
That's all.
B
The Resistance, the Desire was a podcast that reaches a lot of people. The Resistance was, why isn't it reaching more people? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with it? Why isn't it happening sooner?
A
I need to fix something.
B
Maybe it'll never happen. My son was born. And when my son was born, I stopped really paying attention to a lot of other things in my life because my son was here. He's what mattered. And I stopped making the underperformance of my podcast matter because that was the Resistance. One of my mentors said, what you make, matter becomes matter. Right. That's what we do. We're human beings. We are able to take something and create it in nothing and create it into something. And so what I was making matter was the underperformance of my podcast. As soon as I withdrew my attention from the underperformance, in other words, I dropped the Resistance and I redirected my energy over to my son. Within 90 days, my podcast took off. Right. And this is the challenging thing. We're supposed to, as Napoleon Hill talks about, have a burning desire for something, but then not pay attention to the absence of it.
A
And be kind of unattached.
B
And be unattached.
A
Yeah.
B
So now. Which is hard to do when you
A
focus your energy on a desire that you want something.
B
Correct.
A
And in some ways, you should be obsessed about it.
B
Correct.
A
Some ways to be like, I need to master this. I didn't develop consistent habits and actions towards it. I need to, you know, conspire the world and people around me to support me in this in some ways, but also not be attached to result.
B
Correct.
A
And the lacking of the result. Not happening right now.
B
Yeah. It's the challenging art of a human being. It's the challenging. You know, Neville Goddard talks about this, right? He's like, ignore your reality. Right? Have a desire, but then ignore your current situation. Because if you keep paying attention to your current situation, you keep paying attention to the absence of the thing that you want.
A
Yes.
B
And you get locked into the absence of the thing.
A
So what do we do instead? Instead of the focusing on what we are lacking. No matter how hard someone's working, how much they're trying, and it's failing and it's not working yet. The podcast, the relationship, the financial success, the health, whatever it is, how do we detach from the result? Not being in our lives now so that it shows up now?
B
Well, I mean, the first step is understanding what we're talking about. You know, the, the greatest challenge human beings have is that we don't understand how reality works. We don't understand that we are given the right to have a desire and that if we get out of the way 100% of the time, the desire must produce itself. Now, some people will think that that means, okay, Dave, my desire is a million dollar business. And so I'm just going to write it down on a note card or visualize it, and the Amazon delivery guy is going to deliver a million dollar business to my front doorstep while I'm watching Netflix and eating cheesy poofs on the sofa. That's not what I'm saying. So we are meant to take daily consistent action towards the goals that we have. But notice when we start to move into resistance.
A
And what does resistance actually look like? Is it an emotional feeling? Is it a frustration? Is it a thought?
B
It's a great question.
A
Is it a lacking of action? What is that?
B
I have a feeling I'm going to give you three distinctions today. Okay? The first one is desire plus non resistance equals desired result. I would call that the golden equation.
A
Okay?
B
That's how all outcomes are produced. So the question is, well, how do I know when I'm resistance? And for, for that we go to a distinction called the two states of being.
A
Primal versus powerful states.
B
Yeah, right. There's. There are only two states of being. Primal states and powerful states. Primal states are states of being that don't feel good. States like stress, anxiety, overwhelm, anger, jealousy, depression, anxiety, boredom. That's when the sympathetic expression of the nervous system is active. We're in fight or flight. And then there are powerful states of being. States like joy, curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm, peace, calm. Those are states of being to feel good. And that's when the parasympathetic state of the nervous system is active. You are always in one state of being or the other. You're never in two states of being at the same time. And what's interesting is that what determines what state of being you're in is not the experience, it's the meaning you're giving the experience. It's the thoughts that you're having about money, the thoughts you're having about yourself, the thoughts that you're having about life. Why is this important? Because everything that you want to create, all change that you desire. Your vision board, your dreams, your goals, those will be produced from a powerful state of being. That's when you're connected to intuition, inspiration, health, vibrancy, prosperity, abundance, presence, intimacy, connection. It's all in a powerful state. You don't get any of that when you're in a primal state. And so when we are in a primal state, we're in resistance. So if we're playing the game called desire plus non resistance equals desired result, what we start paying much more attention to is what state of being am I in? And a root cause, foundational way of starting to navigate life, which is a practice I'm in. Not all the time, but a lot is noticing when I've moved into a primal state, knowing that the only thing that is moving me into a primal state is my own thoughts and my own beliefs, and then observing those thoughts and beliefs and using whatever tools I have to move back into a powerful state of being. That's the practice. It's wax on, wax off. If you do that consistently, eventually you'll produce the desired result.
A
What is the thing that gets you in a primal state of being the most?
B
Me.
A
Yes.
B
Physical sensations in my body that I don't like. My. My health has been one of my mountains to climb. Like pains or like heart palpitations, aches, pains.
A
So it puts you in more of a fear mind rather than a powerful frame of mind.
B
Correct. It moves me into a primal state. Yeah, but there's plenty of things that move me into a primal state. You know, I have expectations on how my Tuesday is going to go, and it doesn't go that way. You know, somebody doesn't do a thing that they're supposed to be doing, or marketing campaign doesn't work the way I expected it to work, and I move into a primal state. Right. It's, it's.
A
What does that feel like when you go to primal state? Is it a anxiety, is it a depression? Is it I'm not good enough? Is it, something's wrong. What's the sure, it could be anything.
B
Something from frustration. So emotionally, let's back up. Because thoughts generally create emotions. The thought might be, why aren't they doing what they're supposed to be doing? What if this doesn't work out? How come, how come they did it this way? Am I doing something wrong? Right. All of those thoughts are conducive to some sort of what you could call a negative emotion. Right. A primal state. The emotions for me that are habits are frustration, anxiety, some other form of fear, shame and guilt. Right. Those are my go tos. And really what we're talking about in all this work, there's so many ways to describe personal growth, but what we're talking about is building a different neurology. Think about how amazing it is as human beings. We're able to use our minds to reorganize and rewire our nervous systems and our brains. And so every time you, you catch yourself in a primal state and you observe the thought and you. We have a great set of tools, but there's a lot of great teachers out there to sort of interrogate the thought and you actually see that the thought isn't necessarily true. You're building a new nervous system, you're building a new capacity. So many people want to have more in their life, but like, are you capable of handling it right? And so this is, this is a beautiful logical process that whatever you believe, our creator is created for us, which is, you know, we, we, we start to see the deep unreality that we've been living since we adopted those early age programs. And you start to reorient yourself to a proper perception of reality. And the reward for that is you get to create more of what you want to create. But the real reward for that is you start living in joy.
A
Joy, peace, harmony, abundance, freedom, freedom. I think a lot of people don't feel free in their life, you know, and if you grew up not feeling safe, that means you don't have freedom for sure, right?
B
For sure.
A
And at least that was for me, I didn't feel free. And it's like I wanted to create my own sense of peace and freedom.
B
That not feeling safe and not feeling free is pervasive in the nervous systems of human beings. And so, you know, not only do we create our own realities where you end up in a career where you don't feel safe, you end up in a relationship where you don't feel safe, you end up with A bank account where you don't feel safe, you end up in a body where you don't feel safe. Yes, but look at what we're collectively materializing. At a macro level, does the world feel safe?
A
No.
B
No. I mean, you could, you could pick whatever you want. You could pick the war in Iran, you could pick what's happening in Gaza, you could pick the way the government is run, you could pick inflation, you could pick. All of these things are crystallizations of the unsafety that we have not as human beings yet learned to metabolize in our nervous systems. So you don't, you don't. We're not, we're never going to change that out there. Yeah, we will change in here. And as we change in here, those changed people will have new thoughts and new ideas to create a new system, feel safe for everyone. But that's the big mistake right now is every. Everybody. You know, there's a war on terror, there's a war on drugs, there's a war on this, there's a war on that. It's all more resistance. But, but we're told, and by the way, you know my equation is a derivative of the great teachings, right? We're told to be non resistant. Like Christ says, turn the other cheek, right? This. Why? What do you. That doesn't even make any sense. You're telling me when, when I'm confronted by something that I don't like in the world, I'm actually supposed to turn the other cheek, give it my cheek. And if you really look at what I think that teaching is, it's when you notice something in your life that you don't like, or you notice something in the world that you don't like, which would be your enemy. You turn the cheek, which is you turn your attention in the other direction. You use the contraction or the problem in your life as an inspiration for a new desire and a new solution that you can now crystallize into reality, right? It's a beautiful teaching.
A
Yes.
B
But they're all there, right? Whether it's Buddha or Christ or whoever. And you could pick your guy or your gal, right? Non resistance. But now we can see that it makes sense because behavioral psychology tells us what you believe, you think, what you think you feel, what you feel you do. And what you do are the results. And so if you're thinking and feeling resistance, you're going to produce a resistant reality.
A
Yes.
B
Right.
A
So it all starts with a belief. Or does it start with healing the past so you can create new beliefs?
B
My own journey was starting with my beliefs.
A
And you were around 30.
B
In my early 30s.
A
So you were very, you were successful in your career, making money, accomplishing.
B
I wouldn't even call it successful. I would say like, look, if you think a guy running a venture backed technology company is successful, fine. But that same guy was only paying himself $80,000 a year, had $3,000 in his bank account, two homes in foreclosure, and had been single for 10 years. Like how successful is that? Right? But yeah, I guess if you, if you took a quick look. Right. But you know, I, it was the craziest thing. I was at Miami International Airport and I just, I'd gotten about 18 months of sobriety under my belt and I was like, man, if, if I can change this much, like, because I never thought I was going to stop doing drugs and alcohol and sexing and everything that I was doing.
A
And how old were you then?
B
33. 33. Especially pornography.
A
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B
I was like, I don't think there's any way this is going to stop. And it stopped. And it didn't stop because I tried to stop it. It stopped because I was healing myself through the 12 steps of alcoholics Anonymous. It's a phenomenal healing framework. And not only was I looking at my limiting beliefs and my resentments and healing them, but I was also, as I was clearing out, starting to find a relationship with a higher power. I didn't grow up in a family with a higher power, so I had all of that. And I was like, man, if this is possible, like, what else is possible? Like, maybe I could actually become wealthy. Maybe I could actually find a soul mate. Maybe I could actually. And so I was in this inquiry and I went to Miami International Airport. I was flying somewhere and you ever have that experience where, like, there's a book on the bookshelf and it, like, decides it's going to have a relationship with you? Like, you just feel it.
A
Sure.
B
And I walk over and I grab this book and I look at the back cover and it had four statements. It said, life is full of suffering. I was like, okay, I can relate to that. The suffering is going to happen to you. There's a way out of the suffering. And the way out of the suffering is the Eightfold path of virtue. And I was reading the four noble Truths of Buddhism and I turned this book over and it's called Awakening the Buddha Within. It's got Lama Surya Das. I buy the book, I read it cover to cover on the airplane. I was like, holy cow. The message here with this Eightfold path of virtue of Buddha is very Eightfold path of virtue. Eightfold path of virtue. Right? It says eight steps. And I was like, this is almost the same as the 12 steps of alcoholics Anonymous. And I get back to my office and my social media manager at the time left me a book. And I was not a reader, right. So these are miracles. And it was a book called Kingdom Principles by Miles Monroe where he's explaining the teachings of Christ. I'm like, it's the same steps. And so I go to Barnes and Noble and I, I don't think I'd ever been into a bookstore, to be honest with you. I go to the little lady at the front desk and I'm like, do you have a place for people who are like, trying to get their life sorted out or whatever? She's like, oh, the self help section. I'm like, what a wonderfully named section.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
And there was a little book laying on the floor in that section called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I just picked it up. So I, you know, I came into healing through thoughts and beliefs. I think eventually you go back and look at where these beliefs originated and you find forgiveness or you find proper perspective and you heal it. Right. But you don't have to go back there because those things that happen then are showing up in your life right now.
A
Yes.
B
You know, every man you meet is dad and every woman you meet is mom. And those are your conflicts. And you know, if you're living with a chronic health condition or you're living in financial scarcity, your reaction to that reality are the same programs that you had back then. So we can work with the program at any level of the timeline. Right. I do think eventually we end up going back and cleaning up those early misunderstandings. But that, to me, that can be a little bit harder than just working with the raw material as it's showing up on a day to day basis. It's right there for you.
A
Yeah.
B
You know, you don't have to get into a deep hypnosis or get into emdr, all great tools. Right. But like, hey, it's showing up right now with the thing on Tuesday.
A
Yeah, yeah. What would you say then is the number one habit that most people are living and living by on a daily basis that they think is positive but is actually harming them in some way with their energy or their frequency to creating more?
B
Again, it'll vary from person to person, but if we focus that question on high performance, because I know there's a lot of high performers that listen to the show. You're a high performer. It's, it's this, let's look at a bad equation. It's desire plus hustle and grind equals desired result, right? It's desire plus sacrifice your health and relationships for success equals desire and result. And so, and that's reinforced by a lot of hustle culture. I mean, you can throw a stone and find it on YouTube or Instagram. It's like, you know, if, if, if you're not working somewhere, someone is and when you meet them, they will win. And like, I'm like, okay, well maybe, but probably not because Christ said, my yoke is easy, right? So like, there's gotta be an easier way. There's gotta be prosperity and abundance and possibility available for all of us. And so that was a big part of what I'm still down regulating my nervous system towards, right? Is this idea of like, no, I just need to be do more or there's not enough time. People are living in time, scarcity all the time, like you can't even breathe. And so again, going back to what I have come to learn is like, no, I don't need to hustle, grind, I don't need to find more time. I don't need to do anything that would insert itself into that desire. Plus, other than non resistance and everything that shows up in that space, that is not non resistance is the resistance that needs to be worked on.
A
What would you say is the number one limiting belief of most people then?
B
I'm not enough. Yeah, being not good enough. And it makes sense when you look at what happened when we were children. So, you know, you've got beautiful eight month old daughters, I've got a three and a half year old. And what, what I see in my son is his expectation, rightfully so, of unconditional love from me. So we all expected unconditional love from our parents. But I don't care who your parent was, how good they were, and there are plenty that you know, weren't great on paper. But your parents are never going to have unconditional love for you. They're conditional, right? They're. You have the condition of your career, you have the condition of your relationship with your spouse. You have the condition of being a single mom or a single dad. You have the condition of your own trauma. You have the, you have the condition of so many things. So there are always going to be times when a child expects the parent to be present for them and the parent is absent because of conditionality. In that absence, the child subconsciously believes it has something to do with them. And so that is why we find I am not enough or I'm not good enough everywhere because it happened to all of us. But. And this has become one of my passions, like really understanding the structure of reality. The structure, sort of like a metaphysical version of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. Like what's really happening here? Because if reality is loving, how do we explain all of these things that seem to be absent of love?
A
How do you explain it?
B
Well, My own experience and what I've seen consistently with other people is that. That. That not being enough creates a compensation, which we talked about before, that becomes your personality. And so you embark upon this journey with a nervous system that.
A
To prove or to.
B
To prove or to please or to whatever.
A
Yeah.
B
And what's. What seems to happen is that compensation that comes out of feeling like you weren't enough, which is your personality. Works for a while.
A
It's a good strategy.
B
Yeah, it's a strategy and it has strengths, it has gifts. But also remember, it is a neurology, it's a nervous system. And so as it works, it starts to be applied into more and more areas of your life. And what happens is at about 40 years old, there's this emergence of what we would call the core program. It's between 40 and 60, where people would describe it as, I don't understand. The thing that I've always been good at that got me to where I am is starting to be the thing that's suffocating me.
A
It's making me a prisoner.
B
That's the core program. Yeah, it's over development of that neurology. And that will bring you to your knees. So people, people have their long dark night of the soul or they hit their bottom. It doesn't have to be with drugs or alcohol. It's like, I just can't keep pleasing people. I've given no time for myself and so now the aspects of myself or my health are starting to degrade, or someone has built up this personality that is. I'm the one who's able to bring order to chaos. But now there's so much chaos that chaos just beats them down. And in that beat down, which again is a byproduct of this overdeveloped aspect of your nervous system,
A
you
B
are incapable of solving it on your own. So it doesn't matter what great personal development tool that you have, it doesn't matter what pills or potions you take, it doesn't matter what shaman you find with a great playlist, none of it works. Because that is meant to actually bring you back into relationship with the higher power of your own understanding. So that you can finally experience the unconditional love that is there for you but was never meant to be given to you by your parents. And what's beautiful about that is when you reach that inflection point and you start to find that unconditional love, the next natural step is to forgive your parents. Because it was our misunderstanding, understandably so. Right. We were kids trying to survive, but it was our misunderstanding. And so the core program is not actually like. If you think about the super limiting belief that emerges between the ages of 40 and 60, it's not a thing that you're meant to get rid of yourself. You're meant to surrender it to your higher power. And now you get into this concept which I think a lot of people don't understand, which is surrender. And so it requires these pieces. Right? Surrender to what? To who? To a higher power. Well, how do you find that relationship? Well, you hit a bottom and you have nowhere to go other than look up. So this is all this beautiful arc of how every human being's life emerges. And the challenging thing is when you don't understand the arc, it's like trying to fight an invisible boxer in a ring because you have no context for it. And that's why I think so many people who get into personal growth or the work that we teach, they're able to actually start changing. It's not just about going, yeah, okay, my. I know I have my limiting beliefs, but how do I change them? Right. It's not about like, yeah, I understand that forgiveness would be good for me and resentment is bad, but how do I actually forgive? That's the integration piece that I think up until now has been missing in a lot of the historical, motivation and inspirational part of personal growth. Right?
A
Yeah. Because when someone is feeling, typically when someone's feeling pain, resistance, stress, overwhelm, if they don't go to God or a higher power, they go to some other numbing mechanism.
B
Correct.
A
Drugs, porn, sex, alcohol, success, money, whatever it is, workaholicism or whatever it might be. And you realize after five, ten years of doing that strategy to try to numb and feel better, it doesn't work. It's not giving you the peace or the harmony, the results that you want. And it's by going more into that and people are going to let you down and addictions are going to let you down, and all these things are going to let you down from giving you that unconditional love. So that's why we either need to be broken down or we need to create some type of awareness when things are good, before it gets bad to say, oh, I'm not having everything I truly want inside of me. Let me connect to a higher power.
B
Yeah, Amen to that.
A
Yeah.
B
The higher power thing is interesting too, because we have a lot of. There are a lot of people who. It's where I started. I think I probably would have considered myself atheistic and then agnostic. And then I started building relationship with the higher power. And for me, the higher power was the universe. But what I've learned over time, for me, I'm not. Don't have to put this on anyone else, is I was really inspired by the story of David in the Bible. I was like, I want that. I want that personal relationship with God. I want to be able to stand up to the Goliaths of my life and say, you know what? I know who my father is. I know what he does for me. And. And today I'm going to show the whole world that there's a God in my life. Right. I wanted that because prior to that, it was the universe. Like, I was in New Age and Law of Attraction and all that stuff is great. Like, I'm a huge Abraham Hicks fan. Like, all those things are amazing. They're part of the journey. But I felt like there was a difference between having a relationship with the Creator and the created.
A
The universe is created by the Creator.
B
By the Creator. Right. And so I didn't really know where to find that. And I just started, you know. But I had seen in my life that when I ask, I receive. There is. There is this response, not always as quickly as I would like it to be, but. And so I started just really saying, hey, I want to know what it looks like. What can I do? What is available to me to have a personal relationship with God? And.
A
And what showed up for you?
B
Well, we talked about, like, you know, my. My mountain is my body and my health. Right. And so I.
A
50 now. Right.
B
I'm 50. Well, that's not why. But.
A
Yeah, but you're.
B
Yeah.
A
You're starting to feel.
B
Yes. Well, yeah, no, there's.
A
There's. There's a.
B
There's a real thing, which is why, you know, focusing on longevity, like we talked about is so important. But in 2019, I had this Ayahuasca ceremony that I did, and it was probably like my 12th ceremony that I had done. Well, people counted as days, so it was like three or four ceremonies because some of them were many, many days. Right. And it was super intense. And about three weeks later, I Like, lost my sleep. I just couldn't sleep.
A
Oh, man, that's not good.
B
Yeah, it's not good. So my sleep has gotten better over time, but I still wasn't sleeping great. And so I'm in this inquiry of, like, I want to have a personal relationship with God. And I had a week or two where I wasn't sleeping well and my wife was like, why don't you just get up early and journal? And, you know, rather than just go back to bed, I'm like, I don't want to get up at 5 o' clock and journal. Like, that's when I kind of squeeze in a few hours of sleep. Then I had revisited Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi and An Autobiography of a Yogi. Paramahanta wakes up early and he writes. So I was like, okay, I'll wake up early and write. But I was like, no, no, no, that just doesn't sound convenient. Then I. Then I did a breath session, a very deep, transformational breath session remotely with a woman that I work with. And in the breath session at the end, my body sits itself up, my hand comes out with a pen in it, and I start writing. And I was like, okay, three times. I don't need to get struck by lightning. So the next day I get up and I go down into my podcast studio, which is like my man cave, and I just start writing. And it just came out. It started out with dear Father, thank you. And I started. I started thanking God for all the beautiful things in my life. And it was such a unique experience because I've written gratitudes before, but this was like a love letter that had been building up for. For 48 years. And I was just like, thank you for all these beautiful things in my life. And then I started asking for things. And, you know, it's interesting, when my son asked me for something, he's 100% convinced he's going to get it. There's no doubt because I'm his dad and I can deliver on anything, right? He's like, no, I want. And I started writing and I felt this frequency of like, I know who I'm asking, so I know I'm going to get it. There was no doubt, there was no resistance. And then the third piece was. Once I felt that I started asking for other people, I started praying for other people. And so this has become my journaling process. I call it communion journaling. I feel like I'm in a relationship with my higher power when I'm Doing it. Do I do it every day? No. Should I do it more than I do? Yes, but it's there. And so that. That was the answer to the asking that I had. And it has really helped me deepen my relationship with. With my God.
A
What if you ask for something and it's not given to you?
B
You know, there's a great teacher in the early 1920s, I just did an episode about her, Florence Goble Shin. She wrote a book called the Game of Life and how to Play it, one of my top five books. It's a great book. And still alive. No. And she. So she basically says, and I'm not going to do her affirmation justice. I just wanted to give her some credit. But the idea is like, if it's mine, it's mine, and if it's not mine, I don't want it. So if I ask for something now, I may go kicking and screaming for a while, but at some point, I
A
realize it's not for me.
B
It's not for me. And at some point.
A
Why do you have the desire on your heart then, if it's not for you?
B
Well, I think there's two types of desires. I think there's a desire that comes from a head, and I think there's a desire that comes from the heart. For sure. Yeah. I think authentic desires aren't things that we invent, they're transmissions that we receive. And that's part of the discernment that we develop as we do the healing work, is you start to feel the difference. And so, yeah, she has another really wonderful affirmation that says, what's. What was mine from the beginning is mine now and ever shall be mine. So whatever is mine can't be taken away. And whatever isn't mine, I don't need it. Yeah.
A
At the end of the day, it's not yours anymore.
B
Right.
A
You know, whatever you receive, I guess you don't take it with you. I mean.
B
Right.
A
Not that we're aware of. I mean, it's like you can't take the physical things with you.
B
Yeah.
A
So no matter how much money or the relationships you have, like, that stays in this world.
B
Right.
A
Gone.
B
Hopefully what we get to bring is who we've become. Right. Which is why this work is so important.
A
Yeah.
B
Right. Like your essence, your soul, your spirit, so that you can just continue to progress. And I think that makes sense. Like, if you look at a lot of the great teachings and you talk about incarnation and multiple lives, it seems to make sense. In this life, I can See that I've gone through many lives, and each time I've learned and each time I try to get better. And so it would just make sense that I would do that life after life and that we would actually do that as a, as a, as a collective consciousness, as a way of just evolving consciousness.
A
Do you feel like you've had your biggest transformation yet?
B
Never really thought about that.
A
Did you kind of say, like, in your 40s to 60, you go through this big, kind of wake up typically for most people.
B
It's funny, it reminds me of something my friend said where he realized that every time he goes through a transformation, it's a contraction, and then he gets into the expansion, so he's afraid to ask for any more because it's gonna be painful. Contraction. So have I gone through my biggest one yet? I don't, I don't know.
A
Besides death, I guess.
B
Probably. Probably not. I mean, look, drug and alcohol and sex addiction was really challenging. That, that was, that was 30 years of momentum that had been building up. Yeah. Maybe there's something that's going to be 60 or 70 years of momentum that I'm not aware of, but I do feel like, you know, if you think about personal growth is almost like cleansing. That one felt like a pretty big.
A
Yeah.
B
Cathartic type of experience.
A
How long were you addicted to drugs, sex, alcohol?
B
I would, you know, I, I started looking at pornography when I was 13, and then college was, you know, was, Was drugs and alcohol. Drugs for me was marijuana, but it was a cocktail.
A
Yeah.
B
All of it, though. I, I. Sex addiction was a really challenging addiction to overcome. Like, I went to, I went to AA meetings and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Not to take anything away from those programs, but, but the people that I saw in sex addiction recovery, I could see why it was part of my intelligent design, because unlike drugs and alcohol, technically I could like, not call my pot dealer or not go to the bar. But the neurology of sex addiction continues to deepen, even if you fantasize.
A
Oh, yeah. So that you're still living as a sex addict almost by not even having sex.
B
Correct. And. And you're. And you're still deepening those, those neural networks. So it really required a psychological, A level of psychological mastery.
A
Discipline Mastery, awareness. Shifting your attention. Correctly.
B
Correct. And fellowship. I mean, there's no, there's no way, you know, I could have done it without other people. And I think that's a really important part of healing work.
A
Yes.
B
Is being in a community with other folks. You know, you and I talked about the stages that we're at where we don't, you know, don't have aren't spending a lot of time with big groups of friends like we used to. But that's something that I realized recently I really need to get back into is is is fellowship around personal growth. Yeah.
A
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B
Unresolved emotional distress.
A
You know, for anyone who's an alcoholic or sex addict or.
B
Yeah. Porn addict or whatever, it always is, which is, you know, there's a lot of ways to Recover Outside of 12 Step, there's great programs out there. But that's what's so interesting is, like, you don't. The 12 steps aren't about trying to get you to stop drinking or drugging or sexing or eating or whatever it is. The 12 steps are about identifying the underlying root causes, which are the unresolved emotional trauma and transforming them. Right. And so when you do that, then you're no longer using in order to cope.
A
In this 12. The 12 step program, it's with AA, right. 12 step program.
B
It started with Alcoholics Anonymous. Yeah. When you have all these other anonymous groups. Yeah.
A
In the 12 step program, in your mind, what is the one step that if you didn't have the 12 step program wouldn't work? Obviously, you need it all. But if the. What is the one step? Like, okay, if you had these 11, but this one was not there, there. It'd still be. You'd still be an addict.
B
It's not exactly a step. Right. Because. Because there's a step. Which is it admitting we were powerless over our addiction? And powerlessness is a funny thing for people, but it's just. It's just the acknowledgment. It was the acknowledgment that I have a problem.
A
Really?
B
Yeah. The acknowledgment that I have a problem and I've been unable to solve the problem on my own.
A
Do most people feel like they don't have a problem when they're addicted to something?
B
I mean, yeah, I think for the most part that's, you know, they don't
A
think they have a problem.
B
Yeah. And the. The challenge with that is twofold. One, we've normalized drinking. Yeah, man. We've normalized sexual behavior. And to some extent, we've. For me, we normalized cannabis. Right. And so there's this normalization of these.
A
Legalize it.
B
Yeah. There's a normalization of these behaviors. And so that already creates a frame of allowance. And then it's a slippery slope. So you don't notice it's the frog boiling in the pot. Right. So, yeah. The majority of people out there either don't think they have a problem or There are these glimpsing moments, right. Like, if I have a problem, and it's like, ah, nah, it's not really an issue for me. I'm not really an alcoholic. I remember. I remember when I had a conversation with a outpatient treatment group in Winter Park, Florida, and I sat down with the counselor, and he's like, you're an alcoholic. I'm like, come on, man. Like, that doesn't even make any sense. I'm not one of those.
A
Yeah.
B
I'm not an alcohol. I just go out on the weekend and I drink with my friends.
A
Yeah.
B
And then I chase girls and I smoke a little bit of pot. And he's like, cool, stop. And I'm like, well, I can't.
A
He's like, you're an alcoholic.
B
Yeah, you're an alcoholic.
A
Why don't you think you could have stopped?
B
Well, I tried.
A
You did.
B
I had the awareness for years. Right. There was a period of time where it's like, okay, I don't have a problem. Then I knew I had a problem, but I couldn't stop.
A
Really?
B
Yeah. Yeah.
A
Was it just. If you stopped, then what would happen? If you stopped the addiction, what would you have to face?
B
No, I'd stop for a period of time. I'd stop for 30 days, and then something great would happen. So I'd celebrate or something bad would happen. So I'd go cope. It was just. It was. It was well. Well worn into my. Into my nervous system.
A
Wow.
B
Yeah.
A
When was the moment you felt like, this no longer has a hold on me, this addiction? Or is it still like, once you're an alcoholic, you're always an alcoholic?
B
For many people. For many people, it is for. For me, I haven't. I haven't felt that way. I. I don't. You know, I'm. I'm not particularly interested in drinking or smoking pot. Over the last 15 years, since I've been sober, have I done it? Yeah, like, on occasion I've had a glass of wine with my wife or, you know, had a gummy at some event or something. Whatever. It was pornography. I couldn't treat casually for sure. But that was my real addiction. That was my core, was sex addiction. And so, yeah, it's just become a lifestyle. The other thing, too, is, like, when you start allowing God in your life, and then you start getting your mission from God, and then you start seeing what the rewards are for, like, living your mission in the world, even though that has its own challenges and its own insecurities, that brings up. It's like it's just a better game to play. Yes, yeah.
A
Than chasing the high.
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A
When did you feel like you got your calling from God? And how does someone, if they don't know what their purpose is, tap into what their purpose from God really is for them?
B
Okay, two part question. So I, I don't know that I started the, My wife and I started the, the current business. We have the coaching business. That has really been what we've been portraying to the world. We probably started trying to do it in like 2015. We had our first event in 2017 and then we had a business and I knew it was what I was meant to do. I wouldn't describe it as a calling from God yet. The calling from God came in 2021, in late 2021. I had a. Well, I don't even know if I was in my midlife at that point, but I, I had a crisis five years ago. Yeah, I had a chapter.
A
What was the crisis?
B
Yeah, so we, we just moved.
A
You're at 45 then, is that right?
B
Yeah, yeah. Covet had hit. Our business had to pivot to virtual. We were doing a lot of live events financially, the business was starting to contract. My wife was pregnant with my son. We were having a lot of friction. Some of it was chemical, some of it was just where we were in our relationship. We bought the home I told you about in Puerto Rico, but we were remodeling it. So we were living in an apartment in old San Juan with my mother in law.
A
So yeah, you don't have stability. Your correct business isn't stable, you're spending more money than it's coming in.
B
All the stuff, the relationship and I had a bunch of health challenges going on.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
So it's all it was, it was coming from every direction and I, I had this episode where like I felt all that stress in my body. I've tried to walk it off, I tried to breath, work it off and I couldn't shake it off. And so I got in the shower, cold shower and I just started yelling because I needed to get the energy. So yeah, my wife and my mother in law come running in. They're all freaked out. Yeah, you can imagine, right? And so long story short, I had a bunch of really amazing people around me with a lot of different resources. But one of the people was my brother and he said, look, right now your life feels unmanageable. Why don't you go back to where you were able to re establish yourself when things got unmanageable before. And I was like, that's a good idea. So I started going to AA meetings I hadn't been in years. And I called up a buddy of mine and I said, hey, you want to work the 12 steps with me? And he said, sure. Are you drinking again? Are you sexing? I said, no. I realized I'm a chronic worrier, so I want to work the steps around worry. So we work those 12 steps. And man, I worked them seriously. And I saw things I had never seen before.
A
Like what?
B
Resentments that I had, limiting beliefs that I had, doubt that I had in my relationship with my higher power. And I also saw how the 12 steps connected beautifully to the frameworks that I had been building from the golden equation to two states of being to some other ones. And so what came to me was a 12 step structure for personal growth. It's called the Whole Human framework. And so we created this 12 step structure. And I started putting folks who've been in our community for years whose lives had transformed through this 12 step structure. And they were like, holy. Like, this is the most transformative thing that we have ever gone through. It included the core program. That's how I discovered the core program was through this process. So we had people who had. Like, one guy was so funny, he said, look, I've climbed the mountain with T. Harbecker. I've meditated with the Maharishi. I've walked the hot coals with Tony Robbins. He goes, I've done it all. He's like, but this thing is what I've been looking for my whole life. And so as people started going through it, what we found was that they wanted to be in a daily rhythm and a practice around it. And so we created a community called the Whole Human Network. And the network had the opportunity to facilitate the framework for other people. And so it just started growing. And what I saw at the same time, I've sort of been a student of power in the world and how power works, centralized power. I had a lot of young kids who were conspiracy theorists who worked for me, you know, years ago. And then I realized there's nothing conspiracy. They're not making stuff up, right? Like, this is how a lot of the world works. And so I realized that, like, hey, if we want to change the world at a macro level, we need to heal ourselves. And there's two things that are required to create an alternative system for humanity. Number one is we have to liberate our attention. Because if you don't have attention, sovereignty you cannot consciously create. And our attention is being hijacked all the time, intentionally. And in order to prevent the hijacking of your attention, the solution is heal. Because if you can metabolize fear off your nervous system, fear cannot grab you anymore. And now you become an intentional creator. So I was like, okay, if we can do this at scale now, we've got tens or hundreds of millions of people who have liberated attention, who can direct it wherever they want. The second thing is we have to start building the scaffolding of a new system. Regenerative financial system, regenerative healthcare system. A system that is not about extraction. But we're like one plus one equals three. And so that was the vision I had for whole human, that God spoke to me so that through that extraordinary compression and the vision that I've been given, which is what we're focusing on now, we have the coaching company, we have Whole Human. Whole Human is this distributed economy of consciousness where people help other people awaken utilizing this amazing framework and then supporting entrepreneurship in an ecosystem that begins to become a parallel system to the one that's out there right now, that's falling apart. What do people do if. Thank you for letting me share that. I'm obviously in the super enthusiastic about it, but that's God speaking to me. What does someone do if they're wanting to find purpose again? It goes back to the golden equation. Desire plus non resistance equals desired result. What is your desire? My desire is I want to know what I'm here to do. I want to find purpose. I want to know what my gifts are and how to leverage them in the world. I want to become financially abundant. I want to be in service of other people. But it's inherent in all of us. What am I meant to do here? So great desire now be non resistant to it. Well, what does that mean? Well, notice if you start moving into. But what if I don't have a purpose? Well, why haven't I discovered my purpose yet? Well, other people seem to have a purpose. Well, what if my purpose is already taken? What if my purpose is already passed? That's all the inner chatter. That's the limiting beliefs, that is the resistance. So if you have a desire, meaning you ask and you're patient, you'll receive. Mm, it's 100% consistent and predictable. How will it occur for me, David? Well, you'll have some thoughts and ideas. You'll see something on YouTube, somebody will say something to you, an opportunity will show up. You'll have the courage to follow It. It'll be baby steps. It won't show up all at once, right? But hold on to the desire to know your purpose and notice when you become resistant to that desire and use whatever tools you can to drop the resistance. Give it some time, like a dash of patience, and you'll become clear on what your purpose is.
A
How does someone know when they should continue on their purpose versus pivot on their purpose? Because when you are clear on your purpose or you feel called towards something, usually in the beginning, there is some luck, there is some signs and people supporting you, or there is some, oh, I tried this thing and it actually worked to get you going. But then there's usually some type of resistance or obstacle or challenge or hurdle or whatever it is. So how do you know when you're per. You're supposed to continue through the challenges and obstacles and continue the patience of all the challenges and obstacles that may come your way versus this just isn't for me anymore. Let me pivot towards something else.
B
Because also, we change over time, of course, right? So you grow and evolve. And so your purpose, like, look at mine. At first I thought my purpose was building a coaching company, which it still is. Now it's Whole Human, right? And look. And looking at that story, I was running into a lot of friction and resistance with. With the coaching company.
A
So it had to evolve.
B
So it had to evolve. And the answer is step away. The answer is step away. Like, I think we give ourselves a lot more credit for things than we deserve. In other words, you don't pivot. The pivot happens to you. And so how do you allow the pivot to happen to you? It's like, well, like you said, if you're working through the obstacles and it feels exhausting, you step away from the problem, right? And as you step away from the problem, you disentangle yourself from it. You give space for your consciousness to renormalize. And in that space, you'll have new perspectives, new thoughts, new ideas. Now, you may go back to the same obstacles and overcome them. You may move in another direction. Sometimes you move in another direction. Like, I started whole human in 2021. It was too early and I came back to the coaching business. But we're very rigid about these types of inquiries a lot of times too, right? It's like, do I keep doing the obstacles or do I pivot? It's like, relax a little bit, right? Give it some time. You're not going to figure it out today. It may not be this week, but we're Learning. Bruce Lee talks about being like bamboo. Right. Bamboo is strong because it knows when to be rigid, but it also sways in the wind. Right. And so we're learning to do that as human beings because we grew up with so much rigidity. So, you know, there's also that quote from Einstein that people quote all the time. You can't solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it. So you got to step away from your problems. And I would say get into solution frequency. What is solution frequency? Well, it's the beautiful things in your life because at one point in time, the absence of them were problems. Now they've shown up in their solutions. And that's why when you're trying to hammer through an obstacle or you don't know whether or not to pivot and you go for a hike in running canyon, you have clarity. Yes, right. You know, you go play with your furry friend and something hits you. Go get a good workout in and it hits you. But that the other important piece in all of this is man, give it some time. Like, we're all living in so much time. Scarcity. And one of the things we teach entrepreneurs is to stop paying attention to time and start, start inquiring more around what creates timing. Because timing is so much more powerful than time. Meeting the right person, running into the right opportunity, having the right resource show up. We all have 24 hours in a day, but time is a measurement of change. Timing is a measurement of alignment calibration. So if you can become aligned and calibrated, which is living in a powerful state, which is trying to live in non resistant as best as you can. We're not going to do it 24 hours a day. You start to activate timing, the timing of thoughts and ideas and coincidences. So if someone is trying to figure out whether to keep pushing through or whether to pivot, I would say step away and see what happens. And you know what, if you pivot, you can always come back to it. And if you keep pushing through on something, you can always pivot. So we make it a much bigger deal than it is.
A
I love the idea of timing versus being afraid of like time's running out and it's, you know, I guess we're technically, I mean, I'm 43 or 50. It's like, all right, we're, we're getting close to halfway done or who knows, you know, maybe there's more time, but it's not like we're seven years old and we have all of our lives ahead of Us, Right. So we have to start looking at life with a different perspective, I guess, through a different lens. Or how do we not get scarce around time if you feel like it's running out or you don't have your whole, whole life ahead of you. And focus rather on timing. How do you do that when you're not 12 years old?
B
Well, I think there's a couple of things. I was having a conversation with Chat GPT that has all my labs and everything that I was doing, and I said, hey, based on my labs and based on current.
A
How long do I have?
B
Based on current technologies, based on how healthy I am, because I'm actually an incredibly healthy human being. And based on the current technologies that are out there, stem cells, crisper technologies, all the stuff. And what's coming and what's coming. And granted, I can hallucinate.
A
Yeah.
B
I was like, give me an estimate of how long I'll live. So in terms of like, health span, like living well, 125 years. Wow. Okay. So that's my intention. If it's 125 years, I got 75 years to go. But like, I have such insane compounding interest at 50. Like, if you ever look at how compounding interest works, right. If you were to set aside $100,000 a year, which is a lot of money for some people and it's not a lot of money for others, $100,000 a year, and you just put it in some combination of the S&P 500 bitcoin gold, 8% average return, you could have a defensive position. Because the world seems like it's a little bit crazy right now, but if you just get an 8% annualized return at $100,000 a year that you put into that over 40 years, you're worth 22, $24 million. But what's interesting is that if you live 10 more years, it's another $32 million.
A
That's crazy.
B
So I'm just starting a hockey stick. So that excites me. I don't think I can even fathom what I can accomplish. So I could look at it as like, I'm almost halfway through or, we got 75 years, bro. Let's go. So that's the way I look at it. And again, part of it is turning it over to my higher power. Like, it's a very edging, God out type of conversation to have. But it's certainly, I mean, when I turned 50, believe me, I had it with myself of like, like, where am I at? And you know Checking, am I as far along as I wanted to be now? And how much time do I have left? And your mind will do this mental calculation. Right. But the mind doesn't understand the compounding interest. So you know, we just. That's why longevity is so important.
A
Yeah.
B
But I do think it is important to understand that no matter where you are in your life, the accumulation of your lived experience has set you up for such extraordinary growth moving forward. And we don't give credit to that reality.
A
Yeah, you've got an amazing book out called A Changed Mind which is go beyond self awareness, rewire your brain and re engineer your reality. This came out about a few years ago. What is the one thing in this book you feel like if people took away one idea, it would help them more than anything else?
B
I struggled with limiting beliefs for a long time. There were some that I had shifted, but others that I didn't. And I was in this burning desire inquiry of like, man, there's got to be an easier way to shift my beliefs. Like, what is it that I need to know? My wife and I were going for a walk one day and it's a 2 millimeter distinction, so it's easy to miss. But it is just absolutely dramatically changed the way I do my personal growth. And I see feedback from folks who've been in our work that it's this distinction. It's the distinction that beliefs are decisions. So when we were growing up, we came to the conclusion when our little buddy didn't show up at the drinking fountain that we can't trust people. But it was a decision. And as a result of that unconscious decision, it. We've been living in a hallucination ever since. We've only been paying attention to anything that supports that decision and we've been ignoring everything else. And if that's true, then at any point in time I should be able to identify a limiting belief and make a new decision. And so we have this wonderful process in the book called the decision Matrix that helps people identify the limiting belief, make a new decision which is always the opposite of the limiting belief. Then ask a really simple question, which is what evidence do I have for the fact that this new decision is true? And what you'll do is you'll actually source those memories that you've been filtering out. And as you do that, you build evidence for the new belief. And most often by the time you're done with that little process and you look back at the limiting belief, it doesn't even make sense anymore. But, but the Idea that beliefs are decisions, I think demystifies the concept of beliefs because we can get into trauma and this and that and all these things, but ultimately they were unconscious decisions. And as an adult, you have an ability to respond, a responsibility when you find a limiting belief. And that is to make a new, empowered decision.
A
The decision matrix.
B
The decision matrix.
A
That's great, man. So you've always wanted to have a backyard oasis. Here's the thing. If you get smart with your money, you can do things like that. With Empower, you can start making the most of your money so you can go out and live a little bit. Isn't that why we work so hard to have some fun with our money, like treating yourself to something special or spontaneously doing something extra for a loved one? So use empower and get good at money so you can be a little bad. Join their 20 million customers today@empower.com not an Empower client, paid or sponsored. As a loyal listener of this show, you're always challenging yourself to grow, to be better, to keep learning. And Southern New Hampshire University can help. Southern New Hampshire University offers over 200 career focused degree programs online. Plus, Southern New Hampshire University has some of the lowest online tuition rates in the US So balancing school, work and life actually feels achievable and affordable too. Find your degree at snhu. Edu Greatness. That's Snhu. Edu Greatness. I've got a couple final questions for you. This has been really powerful. I want people to check out your work before I ask the final questions. They can go to your podcast called A Change Mind. You're also on YouTube. You've got a great YouTube channel sharing a lot of this information. David Bayer, 33 on Instagram and YouTube and wholehuman.com greatness for anyone here watching or listening, your team's created a free assessment that identifies people's two biggest limiting beliefs and gives you a powerful tool to transform them. So guys, can anyone can check out wholehuman.com greatness to check out the free assessment as well. This question is called the three truths. Imagine you live to 125 healthy whole human life. But it's the last day. Your creator says, time to go here to the next place. And you get to create and manifest anything you want from now until that moment. But for whatever reason, you have to take everything with you. Nothing can be left behind. Your book, your work, your content. No one has access to this information anymore. But on your final day, you get to leave behind three truths. Three things you know to be true or three lessons that you would leave behind. What would those three truths be for you?
B
Oh, man, I've heard you ask this question on so many episodes. Now I have to answer.
A
I gotta answer it.
B
I. I think one truth or encouragement is to believe in the certainty of the goodness of the future. That would be one. The second truth would be that life is always working for your greatest growth, your greatest prosperity and your greatest evolution. And I think the third truth, well, I think Jesus said it best. All things are possible to he that believeth.
A
Yeah, I want to acknowledge you, David, for the journey you've been on. You know, for me, it's like you're 50, you have a child who's three and a half and you've gone through a big transformation in the last five years. You've got a lot of wisdom to share. So I acknowledge you for putting it in the book, for doing the weekly podcast, for sharing this information, and for creating frameworks around the suffering and the pain you've experienced to try to give peace and resolution for people in their lives so they can understand how to go through the process better. And I think when people have gone through enough pain and shame and guilt and beating themselves up and have done the work like yourself and all the different programs, you can take kind of the best of those programs and share what's worked for you. So I want to acknowledge you for doing that work, for suffering for as long as you did and getting through it on the other side, finding more peace and purpose in your life and helping so many people. It's been really cool to connect and hear more about the book, so I appreciate that acknowledgement. Of course, man. Final question. What's your definition of greatness?
B
Greatness is becoming who you came here to be. Living your authentic self.
A
My man. Thanks for being here, brother.
B
Thank you brother. Appreciate it.
A
Yeah, powerful. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links and if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness+channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.
B
Forward.
A
And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.
B
There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still.
A
Not a chance.
B
You're a lifelong learner who's come through this far.
A
Now we're here to help you keep going further. Capella University what can't you do?
B
Visit capella.edu to learn more.
A
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Host: Lewis Howes
Guest: David Bayer
Date: July 15, 2026
In this powerful and deeply insightful episode, Lewis Howes welcomes entrepreneur, coach, and best-selling author David Bayer to explore how to consciously create the life you truly desire. They delve into the psychology of desire, resistance, core wounds, limiting beliefs, the root of addictions, and the role of personal growth and spirituality. Bayer shares practical frameworks—including his "Golden Equation"—and unpacks the transformative process of turning suffering and trauma into purpose and abundance.
Timestamp: 03:12, 23:42
Timestamp: 07:13–10:57
Timestamp: 10:57–16:19
Timestamp: 20:52–23:38
Timestamp: 25:31–27:24
Timestamp: 28:46–33:56
Timestamp: 62:04–66:20
Timestamp: 66:36–73:32
Timestamp: 77:41–80:30
Timestamp: 81:04–82:55
On childhood programming:
On resistance and desire:
On non-resistance:
On overcoming addiction:
On the power of surrender:
On greatness:
| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:12 | The "Golden Equation": Desire + Non Resistance = Desired Result | | 07:13 | Audit of childhood beliefs: Scarcity and not feeling safe | | 10:57 | Transforming core wounds into personal gifts | | 20:52 | Why external success doesn’t equal self-love | | 25:31 | Letting go of resistance—practical podcast growth example | | 28:46 | Two States of Being: Primal vs. Powerful | | 62:04 | Root causes of addiction and the power of the 12 steps | | 66:36 | The evolution of purpose and surrender to life's pivots | | 77:41 | Timing vs. Time: Perspective on age, patience, and alignment | | 81:04 | The Decision Matrix: Beliefs as decisions you can choose anew | | 85:22 | David’s “Three Truths” for life | | 87:02 | Definition of greatness |
Timestamp: 85:33
This episode balances spiritual, scientific, and practical frameworks in a conversational and vulnerable style. Bayer is open about his personal story, blending humility with actionable advice, while Lewis draws out relatable insights and summaries for listeners on any step of their growth journey.
For anyone feeling stuck, craving deeper abundance, or seeking a clear path to manifest their desires, this conversation provides both the mindset shifts and step-by-step frameworks to start making real, lasting changes—from the inside out.