← THE ED MYLETT SHOW
Loading summary
Transcript199 lines
- [00:00]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Ed Mylett
This is the Ed Mylett Show. Hey, everyone. Welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes.
- [00:18]
Interviewer/Host
You'll never miss an episode that way.
- [00:20]
Ed Mylett
Here's our first guest. All right, welcome back to Max out, everybody.
- [00:23]
Co-host/Interviewer
What an honor it is to be with this gentleman here today and to share him with all of you. I guess probably the thing I admire most about him is that he came to this space, I think, similarly to how I did, which is that almost reluctantly, he was a person building businesses and becoming successful in the real world, applying the things he was learning from personal development and making those things a reality in his life. And then after he had business success.
- [00:50]
Ed Mylett
Being sought after enough, he decided to.
- [00:51]
Co-host/Interviewer
Start to teach the things that had helped him become successful. And I love that there's a track record behind the incredible things we're going to cover today. Multiple time New York Times bestseller company called Neurogym that you're going to fall in love with. Everybody. Bunch of different books. His recent one I read in two days called Inner Size. I highly recommend you all get this. Most of you are probably familiar from him for the first time from the Secret. He's one of the stars, if not the star of the Secret. Bunch of different books. The answer, so many great things. And it's an honor to have him today because I consider him on Earth one of, if not the greatest, expert on the brain, on the inner mechanics of the brain, mindset and peak performance. So I know it's what all of you want to talk about. So I have John Assaraf here with me today. John, thanks for being here.
- [01:38]
John Assaraf
Brother Ed, it's so good to be here. And thank you for giving me the honor to be here with you.
- [01:43]
Co-host/Interviewer
Pleasure is mine. As you know, we're going to go right into the good stuff here with this man. There's too much gold there to kind of go to generalities.
- [01:52]
Ed Mylett
Well, we were doing this during the.
- [01:53]
Co-host/Interviewer
COVID pandemic and people will watch at any given time. It could be two or three years from now. But I want to talk about fear to start. A lot of people are afraid right now and whether they've lost a job and they're afraid it's not coming back. They've lost money, their business is going potentially backwards. Maybe they've lost the fitness they achieved and some of the weight they had lost is return possibly. And in Inner Size, you teach these first two exercises and if you could Talk about take six. Calm the circuits. If you would start. We're going right to the good stuff. Plus, everyone's going to want to get the book after we do this, so could you talk about fear and some help that you could provide people in that regard?
- [02:35]
John Assaraf
Sure. If everybody could imagine for a moment you're driving a car and everything is going great, and all of a sudden, a light pops up on your dash. Now, the average person won't take a hammer and hit the light to turn it off. An average person will take a look at. What is that light? Am I low on windshield wiper fluid? Am I low on air in my tires? Is my back trunk open? What's going on? So, just like the signal in a car is meant to make you aware, fear is a trigger in our subconscious mind that real or imagined danger has percolated in our brain. And so, fear. There's nothing wrong with fear. We can actually use fear as fuel. Now, I like to give people visuals. So imagine if you have two parts of your brain, there's many more, but imagine these two. We have the Einstein brain and we have the Frankenstein brain. And when fear gets activated, let's assume that that's our Frankenstein brain going, what if. What if you get hurt? What if you lose money? What if you die? What if you get embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed or judged? And so why does Frankenstein even get activated? Because we're not born with those fears. And so if we're not born with those fears, that means that something in our brain is triggering this reaction automatically, without our thought. And that is what we call is the fear response. And we also know that that FE response causes something called the sympathetic nervous system to activate, which causes us to want to fight, freeze, or run away. That's just the absolute reaction at a biological level of what is happening now. When we want to deactivate that sympathetic nervous system, there's several, what I call our inner sizes that we can do. That actually gives us more control, more power, and the ability to reactivate the Einstein part of the brain. So inner size number one is really, really simple. It's called take six. Calm the circuits. So as soon as you catch yourself in a state of doubt, fear, worry, anxiety, stress, that means that Frankenstein's activated. If you just took six deep breaths in through your nose, as slowly as you could, and then you exhaled as if you're exhaling through a straw in your mouth. If you just did that six times, that very simple inner size would deactivate the Frankenstein brain and allow you to Reactivate your thinking, imagination, Einstein, part of your brain. And then you can do the second inner size which puts you right back in control. And that one I call is Aya A I A which is now a matter of awareness. Awareness of my thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations or the behaviors that I've just taken, or the one I'm afraid to take. And in a pure state of awareness, without judgment, blame, shame, guilt or justification. Let me repeat, without any judgment, blame, shame, guilt or justification of the feeling or the thought of the behavior. Now I'm empowered again because now I can observe. And now in this observational mode I could say, okay, my intention, let's say for the next 10 minutes, well, my intention is to be happy. Great. My intention is to be productive. Great. My intention is to, you know, take action on this one thing that's going to help me towards my goal and dream. So in the awareness and in the intention, then if I say what's one small action step I could take towards what I want instead of what I don't want. So all of a sudden I've interrupted a fear pattern, created this state of awareness, I've set an intention and now I'm taking action towards what I want versus being paralyzed by what I don't want and a fear that may or may not be real. So awareness is what actually gives us choice and choice is what actually gives us freedom if we make the right choices.
- [06:53]
Interviewer/Host
So good.
- [06:53]
Co-host/Interviewer
So guys, the reason I wanted John on was because these are actionable steps that you could take. You need to go get intersize because these are actual exercises that will change your life. And I love how John arrived at this space. I want to go back because we just got pretty heavy there and now.
- [07:09]
Ed Mylett
I want to go to a little.
- [07:10]
Co-host/Interviewer
Bit of a lighter space. But both of you and I have had mentors that have entered our life. We didn't come from perfect families, loving families, both of us, but not perfect families. And by the way, I don't know if that exists.
- [07:21]
John Assaraf
Yeah, I think that, you know, a dysfunction is normal, that's normal. If you had a functional family, that's not normal.
- [07:32]
Co-host/Interviewer
That's not normal. Right. And I guess to the extent that the dysfunction you experience is probably part of these things we have to undo and we'll talk about beliefs in that regard in a minute. But you're this guy, Mr. Brown. I've heard about Mr. Brown for years, but it's hard to imagine a man who's become a multi millionaire. I mean, just so you know, John's built five, six different multimillion dollar companies. One of them is on 4 billion in revenue. He's taken a company public on NASDAQ. He's talking about a very accomplished man here. But Mr. Brown was one of the catalysts for that. John was kind of a screwed up youth there for a while making some bad choices. And you have this moment where you're talking about goals with him and he asked this incredibly powerful question. And I mean honestly I've been in the space 30 years. I've worked on myself a great deal. I understand the mechanics of the mind. But sometimes the most basic things have the most deep impact on us in our lives. When I read this story, I must have told this story probably 35 times the last two weeks to people. So if you'd share that, I'd really appreciate it.
- [08:29]
John Assaraf
So if the person watching or listening can imagine 19 year old kid working in a shipping department of a warehouse hating my job at $1.65 an hour back in 1980, this is April of 1980. On the side I'm selling drugs. On the side I'm doing breaking and entries. On the side I'm part of a small little group of kids who got adepted shoplifting and doing all stupid things as a kid. And I knew that my life was either going to, you know, I'm going to go to jail or the morgue. At that time one of the two is going to happen because we're doing some pretty, pretty heavy stuff. At the time I was just getting more and more and more advanced and more riskier. So my brother, who's a tennis pro and a coach at the time, asked me to come from Montreal to Toronto to meet one of his clients. And his client's name is Mr. Alan Brown. So I took the train 350 miles for lunch with this guy to see my brother for the weekend. And as I went into, I went right from the train station to lunch, my brother introduced me to Mr. Brown and he's cordial, very, very nice man, very kind. He asked me, so what are some of your goals? I said I'd love to buy a car, I'd like to move out of my parents house, I'd like to get a better job because I'm not making enough money doing that. He says, well I understand you're also getting yourself into a lot of trouble. I was like yeah, I am a little embarrassed now that my brother told him all this. And he said listen, what are some of your bigger goals and dreams? I said I don't know what you mean. He said, listen, having food on the table and wanting to buy a car and all that stuff, that's all nice and dandy, but what do you want to do with your life? And I have no idea. I said. And so he gave me this document, this sheet. It was the 1980 goal setting guide. And on it said, at what age do you want to retire? How much net worth do you want to have? How much money do you want to make a year? What kind of lifestyle do you want? What kind of charity, you know, charitable things do you want to do? I'm like, what the f is this? I'm 19 years old. When do I want to retire? I want to get a damn good job. Forget about retire. So I said, listen, take a few minutes and go and write this stuff out. So I sat there and I wrote, I want to retire at age 45. My net worth, I want to be $3 million. I want to make $250,000 a year. I want a Mercedes Benz. I want a house at the beach, and I want to. I just started rifling off this stuff, and I gave him back the document. And he goes, these are some really good ideas you have over here. So where'd you get these ideas? I said, well, I like watching the TV show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and Robin Leach shows all these nice homes, kind of like your lifestyle, Ed. And I said, I want that kind of a lifestyle. And he says, listen, son, he says, all of this is possible. I'm going to ask you one question, and the answer to this one question will determine whether you have it. You don't. In the back of my mind, I'm going, come on, give me a break. One question. I said, sure, Mr. Brown. Fire away. So he says, are you interested in having this kind of lifestyle, achieving these things, or are you committed? And I said, Mr. Brown, what's the difference? And he said to me, said, son, he says, if you're interested, you'll do what's easy and convenient. If you're interested, you'll allow your stories and your excuses and the fact you went to grade 11 and left school and the fact that your father's a cab driver and your mother's a, you know, a seamstress at a store, you'll come up with all of the stories and reasons and excuses why you can't. He says, if you're interested, all of the obstacles will be bigger than your vision and your goals. He said, but if you are committed, you will do whatever it takes. You will upgrade your knowledge. You will upgrade your skills. You'll develop the beliefs and the habits to match the vision and the goals. He said, so, son, which are you? And I said, a little scared. I said, well, Mr. Brown, I'm committed. And he just smiled. He reached out his hand to me, Ed, and he says, in that case, son, I will be your mentor. Oh boy, so good. And I was like, wow, that's great. What does that mean? He goes, well, I will teach you because I've made all of these goals that you want to have. I've already done those 10 times over. He says, the first thing I need you to do, I need you to move from Montreal, where you live now, to Toronto. And I said, move from Montreal to Toronto. I don't have a car. I don't have a job in Toronto. I gave him all these excuses. He said, stop. He says, there you go, already giving me excuses. I said, I know, but this is the truth. You don't know, right? He says, son, he says, here's your first lesson. First you set the goal. You make a commitment to achieve the goal. Then you figure out how you're going to do it. So I said, fine, fine, I'll move to Toronto. And he says to me, great. The second thing I want you to do is on May 5, there's a new real estate class that starts. It's a five week course, nine to five. I want you to enroll in it. It's 500 bucks. I said, excuse me? I said, 500 bucks and you want me to go back to school? I failed English, I failed math. They kicked me out.
- [13:54]
Ed Mylett
I was happy.
- [13:54]
John Assaraf
They were happier. I don't have the money. He says, there you go again. Look how fast you go back to your story. And so I'm like, Mr. Brown, I'm not very smart in school. I didn't do well in school. And I started to give him the story again. He goes, stop it. Are you interested or are you committed? I said, I already said I'm committed. He says, good, then make the decision. We'll figure out all the rest afterwards. Long story short, Ed, I made a commitment. I said, fine, I'll do it. My brother said, I'll lend you 100 bucks. I had $60 in the bank. Me some money. My father lent me some money. May 5, 1980. Okay, 40 years ago, I got my first date in real estate school. Five weeks later, I passed the test. And some people may want, how do you remember these dates so clearly 40 years ago? And the answer was on June 20, 1980. I passed the test on my own. You remember that, Ed? I cheated to get out of high school. One of my friends gave me the answers to all 50 questions on a multiple choice so I could get out of high school. Amazing. Amazing. The first test I passed on my.
- [15:09]
Co-host/Interviewer
Own, and here it is 40 years later, and it affects you right now telling that story.
- [15:14]
John Assaraf
Yeah, it's like it was the first time I felt proud. Wow, brother, that's.
- [15:20]
Co-host/Interviewer
Wow, you guys, 40 years later.
- [15:25]
Ed Mylett
Millions.
- [15:25]
Co-host/Interviewer
Of people helped, and it still affects this man to this day. You should be asking yourselves right now. What a great story, you guys. Are you interested or are you committed?
- [15:35]
Ed Mylett
I made a video today.
- [15:35]
Co-host/Interviewer
It's not going to be out for a couple days, but I made a video there about dreams. And I think people sometimes think I don't have a plan, so it disqualifies me from the dream.
- [15:44]
Ed Mylett
That's not the case.
- [15:45]
Co-host/Interviewer
My biggest dreams, we always want a plan and a strategy. But my biggest dreams, I had no flipping clue how I was going to get to them.
- [15:51]
Ed Mylett
No clue.
- [15:52]
Co-host/Interviewer
And what happened was, though, if I got committed to them instead of interested in them, the people, places, things, situations, circumstances begin to reveal themselves and you find them, you attract them. It's part of the secret that I learned many years ago from some guy, forget his name. Oh, there he's there.
- [16:07]
Ed Mylett
He's in front of me.
- [16:08]
Co-host/Interviewer
So you're 100% right, guys. And so you got to ask yourself, are you interested or are you committed to what your dreams and your goals are? There's this thing you touched on there about beliefs. Another place where I consider you a guru is about the beliefs, the subconscious brain to the subconscious mind. There's a difference between those two things too. Everybody but you have this great thing where you took your real estate agents that were doing a certain level of production and you worked on their subconscious. So tell them a little bit about that and then talk to us about beliefs. How powerful are they? What are they? Why do they matter?
- [16:42]
John Assaraf
So I'll start with the story first and then I'll share beliefs and then what to do. So we have some practical things that you can start doing today. So back in 1987, when I bought the franchising rights for REMAX of Indiana, I had no idea how to build a company. I was 26 years old. But I had another mentor who I invested $75,000 to become his partner. To have the opportunity to learn from this man who at the time was worth prob $100 million and so I was very, very keen on learning. And I didn't know how to build a business, I didn't know anything other than how to sell real estate. And I set a goal to generate $1 billion a year in sales. And I set the goal for five years in the future. Not knowing a billion dollar goal is like mind boggling big for me. And there was an interview the second week I was in Indianapolis. I moved from Toronto to Indianapolis for this opportunity. And I was interviewed by the Indianapolis Business Journal. And I said in the interview, that was a goal for a billion dollars. And the reporter said, are you aware that there's two companies that have been in the state of Indiana for 80 years? 1, 100 years, the other one, and they haven't hit a billion dollars in real estate sales in all of these years. And I said, yeah, I know it's Graves and Tucker and you can let them know that I'll be the first, right? And as I said that, I almost felt like I put my foot right in my mouth because I didn't know how I was going to do it.
- [18:12]
Ed Mylett
Right.
- [18:13]
John Assaraf
Long story short, five, we sold enough franchise, recruit enough agents. We did $1.2 billion and we were stuck, which is a great place to be stuck. And I was asking myself, how is it possible that I'm training these agents with strategies, with tactics, with selling skills, marketing skills? We were like the gurus of here's the books, here's the cassettes, here's the trainers, here's like out of the deep end. And the agents who, for example would make $30,000 a year kept making 30,000 a year. The agents who made 50 kept making 50. The agents who made 100 kept making 100. And so I realized that they weren't missing the skills or the knowledge. There was something else at play. And what helped me from the age of 19 to 27, 28, 30 was every single day. And I still do it today. And I'll share this with you in just a little bit. Every single day I was priming my brain with the beliefs and the self image required to achieve the goals that I wanted. So I got 75 agents together who agreed to pay $3,000 each to be part of an inner game training. Forget the outer game, the inner game training. We worked on affirmations, visualization, mindfulness meditation, listening to our affirmations on our vision on our cassette recorders. We had little cassettes we put in our cars. And so I had them work on their self image and self worth and self Esteem and to develop the beliefs that we were going to imprint or impregnate into their subconscious mind by listening to these audios every single day, twice a day. And while they were driving. And those 75 agents, over six months, increased sales by $100 million.
- [20:04]
Co-host/Interviewer
My gosh.
- [20:05]
John Assaraf
We didn't teach them one thing about selling anymore. We taught them about changing their identity and their belief structure so that it matched the goals they wanted to achieve. And then I said, holy shit, this works even for other people, not just me. So we started to teach that to all of our agents. And we created these cassettes with these recordings on them of the beliefs that we needed them to believe. The self image that they deserved, that they were good enough, that they were smart enough. And we went from 1.2 billion to four and a half billion a year within four years.
- [20:38]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Wow.
- [20:38]
Co-host/Interviewer
And that's my beliefs. And so, guys, that's a ballistic beliefs.
- [20:43]
John Assaraf
And believing in a new self image and identity and a new story.
- [20:47]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Gosh.
- [20:48]
Co-host/Interviewer
So good you're going to tell us about beliefs, what they are.
- [20:52]
John Assaraf
Yeah. So when you were born, were you born with any beliefs? No. Were you born with any habits?
- [20:58]
Co-host/Interviewer
No.
- [20:58]
John Assaraf
Were you born with any fears?
- [21:00]
Interviewer/Host
No.
- [21:01]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
No.
- [21:02]
John Assaraf
So from a neuroscience and neuropsychology perspective, a belief is nothing more than this. Imagine that you're born and your brain is made up of a hundred billion marbles. And every time you have an experience or somebody says something to you, you read something or you watch something, these marbles make these connections. And the connections that are reinforced by go from conscious connections to subconscious connections. And once these subconscious connections are made and reinforced, they run the show 98% of the time. So a belief is nothing more than a reinforced pattern in the brain. And our conscious brain can choose what we want when we're in that part of our brain. But our subconscious mind can't choose its program. From the age of 03 in the imprinting years 3, to about 7 or 8 the modeling years, and then 8 on it's the experiential years. And so if you have these powerful beliefs that you're good enough, you're smart enough, you're worthy to achieve the goals that you have. If you have these powerful leads, you are able to achieve any amount of income you choose, no matter what the amount is. You just need to learn how. So if you have these empowering beliefs, you have brain coherence between conscious and subconscious. What if you said, okay, I want to make, let's just say, $100,000 a year or A million, it doesn't make a difference. And I asked you, what do you need to believe about yourself to achieve this? So I need to believe I'm smart enough. Good. Write down I am smart enough. What else do you need to believe? I need to believe that I am worthy. I need to believe that I deserve this. I need to believe that it's possible. I need to believe you write down five or six or seven beliefs that are just words on a sheet of paper. Now, let me stop for just a moment. I'm going to tell a story and come back to this. I want you to imagine that somebody tapped you on the shoulder sometime today and say, hey, I work with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks in Hollywood, and we have this new script, okay, that if you get really good at this script, where you could read it in front of a camera without the script, we'll pay you 10 million bucks. Now, I want you to imagine you've never seen the script, you don't know how to act. But they said to you, we're going to give you an acting coach. We're going to give you everything you need to memorize the script. We're going to do everything you need to act it perfectly. What would you do to take that script that's on a piece of paper that you've never seen before? What would you do to take that script to make it yours for you to own it? And the answer is, you probably read it like, what once would you read it? Maybe 100 times, 200 times, 500 times? You think you might role play with somebody while you're holding the script in your hand? Do you think you might research the role? Do you think you might take a camera and practice it? And do you think that if you practice it one time, 50 times, 100 times, 500 times, you can finally put the script down and you get in front of the camera and go, boom, here is the script. Do you think you could do that? Well, guess what? A script that's on a piece of paper that you don't believe, with practice, you start to believe. So what happens if you take a belief system and you start to imprint it into your subconscious mind, initially through conscious repetition. But there are ways to access the subconscious mind that we know today that are faster and easier than just doing it consciously. And so you take a vision of you achieving your goals and dreams, you take the beliefs you need, you learn how to manage your emotions a little bit better, and then you develop the habits, which, again, are nothing more than neural patterns. In the brain that have been reinforced. And when you learn how to deactivate the destructive ones and activate constructive ones through space, repetition, and reinforcement, now you are resetting your default way of being. So a belief is nothing more than a reinforced pattern that if you learn how to deactivate it and create a new one, it's like a software upgrade for your brain.
- [25:03]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Wow.
- [25:04]
Ed Mylett
So, guys, what he didn't say.
- [25:06]
Co-host/Interviewer
So good, John. Thank you, guys. This is stuff that you pay thousands of dollars for, but you, by the way, can get in his book and you get here because I know him for free. But guys, what he didn't say his beliefs are necessarily true.
- [25:19]
John Assaraf
No, don't. Truth.
- [25:21]
Co-host/Interviewer
And this is important. You know, I've told you many times, everybody, that your thoughts aren't necessarily true. Your beliefs are not necessarily true. They're patterns reinforced over time. And so if you could create this new script that's reinforced these patterns over time, that's a conscious way of doing it. Give us one key said we know now there's subconscious ways to do it that are faster and more powerful. Give us one that is a new hack to do this.
- [25:45]
John Assaraf
So one that everybody's heard of and very few people do, unless you're a professional athlete, astronaut, or Navy seal. Is visualization. Yes.
- [25:53]
Co-host/Interviewer
Thank you.
- [25:53]
John Assaraf
Simple, simple. I know you had Phil Mickelson on in the past, and I watched him. And if you think about visualization is simulation. Now, here is the difference.
- [26:04]
Co-host/Interviewer
Whoa, that's good. Okay, go ahead.
- [26:06]
John Assaraf
So visualization is simulation. So when we close our eyes, or even if our eyes are open, and we start to use our Einstein brain, the imagination. We now have just activated one of the biggest centers of our brain, the occipital lobe. That's connected to the motor cortex. It's connected to the motivational circuit, the nucleus accumbens. That releases that dopamine. That makes you feel good, that makes you want to take action. So if you visualize yourself achieving the goal, if you visualize yourself behaving in ways that match the new belief, if you even visualize the words, or you take the words on a sheet of paper and you read them, run your right finger across it, run your left finger across it, close your eyes, see it, and feel it. Your brain is creating a mental mind movie with the words. And as it creates a mental movie with the words, that's happening in your subconscious mind. And when you give the subconscious these instructions, a couple things happen because of the way the brain Hierarchy works. Number one, it's survival. But then number two is safety, and then number three is energy conservation. Now, when you do something 20, 30, 40, 50 times, it takes about 66 days to 365 days of repetition to override an old habitual circuit. Not 10 days, not 21 days, 66 to 365. So if you visualize yourself achieving the goal, feeling the success that you want to feel, seeing the belief on the screen of your mind, you are actually creating a neural network through the science of neuroplasticity. And the networks that you reinforce become the most dominant network. And since your brain wants to conserve energy, if you do this on a consistent basis, your brain says, okay, you're doing this so often, let me just make this automatic. Let me set aside the old beliefs, let me replace it with the new beliefs. And now you've deliberately and consciously evolved yourself. Oh, my gosh.
- [28:11]
Co-host/Interviewer
So, guys, it's patterns. John. Thank you, guys. John used a word earlier which was coherence. And it can fly by. But when you've done this hard work, and I say fun work, by the way, on your subconscious brain, your subconscious mind, what happens is now when you set that ambitious goal, there's a coherence between what's lying underneath you and what's on the surface. That's why you know people, you all have someone, you know that boy, when they point their mind at something, it's almost like a weapon. When they point themselves at a dream, they draw it towards them. Part of that's energy, part of that's vibration, but a big part of that is coherence in your brain. And so you've got to do this difficult work that you might think is difficult, which, by the way, is fun, is easy. And it's really just a matter of patterns and taking control of your life, taking control of the things you do. You can literally everybody change your life. You can change the external parts of your life by changing the internal or the inner sizes that he teaches part of your life. That's why I do this show, what we're talking about.
- [29:13]
John Assaraf
Can I just piggyback on something, please? Since you picked up on the word coherence and you mentioned the law of attraction earlier, for the people who think that the law of attraction is, you know, think, believe, and you'll achieve first, I'm going to tell you that's bullshit. So let's call this man. But I want you to think of your brain just a little bit differently and think of it this way. Let's say you love rock and roll and let's Say rock and roll's on station 95.5. If you're on station 92.1, that might be classical. If you're on station 98.7, that might be punk rock. But a 92.5, that's rock and roll. So imagine coherence just means locking your electromagnetic spectrum of your brain. Lock it and load it on exactly what you want. So what is the vision? What's the goal? What are the beliefs, what are the emotions that create coherence? So you're locked and loaded to the frequency of the universe that is matching that goal. Part one, part two is when you get locked and loaded, you've actually activated the Einstein brain connected to the motor cortex, connected to the dopamine release in your body. And when that happens, ok, now you're in coherence. But there's another part that happens in this Einstein part of the brain. That's actually what the latest neuroscientists, psychologists are thinking is connected to this GPS part of our brain, to the frequency of where all of the tools, resources, people are that resonate with that frequency. So we've been evolving for what, two and a half million years since Homo erectus to now 108 billion humans on Earth with a brain that's been changing and growing. And my belief is we're just scratching the proverbial surface. We talk about, you know, a little quantum mechanics or quantum physics with entanglement, how we're all connected, we're all tuning into the frequencies that are us and within us and all around us. Now when we learn to use our brain better, it's just mind boggling how we can achieve goals and dreams that we thought were impossible to achieve before. This is the fun part.
- [31:32]
Co-host/Interviewer
Now that, to me, this is the fun part. And by the way, when you see two people that are vibrating at frequency like this, you get an interview like what you're experiencing right now. Everybody, like, we both have done lots of interviews and we know when we're in the midst of a great one. And everyone, I just want to be clear. Please follow John, please. And if you're listening to this show or watching it, share my show. My gosh, people need to know this. You know, someone you care about or believe in or love that should be hearing these things. Couple more tips and then I want to talk about something pretty serious at the end, if you don't mind because you're just such a pleasure. But one of the ways that you could do some of this work, many of you know about vision Boards and we can have a competent person talk about it. John, I can have you touch on.
- [32:10]
Ed Mylett
That a little bit.
- [32:10]
Co-host/Interviewer
But John goes even deeper into these accomplish boards I think you call them. And he's got a crap board which I've never flipping heard of in my life.
- [32:20]
Ed Mylett
And again guys, you're just not going.
- [32:21]
Co-host/Interviewer
To get this anywhere else. So could you just. These are strategies that are real, that work that we both do. So there are two prolific entrepreneurs who are now in this space that are saying these are the things we do and isn't it ironic that we both do them and we are both addicted to them and we both attribute it to our success. So please talk about that, brother.
- [32:45]
John Assaraf
So I have my vision boards and I actually have my exceptional life blueprint that I have created. It is about 50 pages of my prayers, my rituals for my spiritual growth, health, wealth, my money story, my inner mission, my outer mission, you know, some of the stuff either that I have or that I'm creating. And so I create these visual representations to trigger the biggest part of my brain called the occipital lobe and to activate my memory center. So I have vision boards for what I want to create. So I'm giving my brain the exact instructions so that not only it focuses helping me achieve that. What most people don't understand about vision boards or creating goals in writing that are specific is that your brain is a deletion and distortion tool as well. So if you give your brain the instruction of this is the stuff that's important to me for health, God, spirituality, charity, fun experiences, my children, my mother, my father, myself, whatever it is. And you say, this is what I want to trade my life for. Delete and distort everything else. Now all of a sudden you're using your brain as a deletion and distortion organism in order to be able to help you hyper focus on what you want. So part one is get absolute clarity on what you want. So your brain helps you eliminate what you don't want. Part one, part two, right? Part two is I tend to be a goal seeking guy, right? And I used to not celebrate the small stuff and I used to just like, you know, fuck a bigger goal. Bigger goal, Bigger goal. More bigger, bigger. And somebody says to me like, are you gonna like slow down just to enjoy some of the stuff that you actually have done for yourself and for people in your family. And I was like, well.
- [34:40]
Co-host/Interviewer
Let me.
- [34:40]
John Assaraf
Create an accomplish board.
- [34:42]
Co-host/Interviewer
So good, so good.
- [34:46]
John Assaraf
So accomplish board. You passed that test on your own 40 years ago. Celebrate that you Helped this person who was challenged and celebrate that, you know, you did this for him or for her or for yourself. Celebrate that stuff to remind yourself. Because I'm tough on myself. Like I'm, like I'm, let's come on, let's go. It's a goal, let's go. And sometimes I forget the stuff that I have done, the stuff that I do do that I need to remember. So I created an accomplishment board and a list so I can just go to it when I feel like, holy shit, am I smart enough to achieve that next thing? Am I good enough? What a lot of people don't know, Ed, is when I was a kid, I used to feel like I wasn't smart enough. And when I was a kid, it held me back. And today I still feel like I'm not smart enough. And that fuels me to get smarter. So I use it like I big goals. I go, God, I don't have the skills, I don't have the knowledge. But I can figure it out. I've got contacts, I've got friends and there's books, there's Google, there's, there's YouTube, there's Holy Mackerel, I don't need to have all the specialized knowledge anymore. So I have accomplished where we also, you know, crap board is what conflicts are happening right now. I often say that there's only four things that are holding you back as a human being. Only four. There's not 25, there's four that are the core one is if your vision and goal is bigger than your self image, okay? So if you feel you deserve it, you can have this vision and goal and be excited about it, motivated by it, you will not do what it takes to achieve one. 2. If you have limiting beliefs, if you have a vision and goal, but you have a limiting belief that you're too young, too old, whatever the case is, your limiting beliefs will drive your behavior. 3. Fear. Fear of being embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed or judged. Fear of failure. Fear of disappointment, and we'll talk about disappointment in a moment. Or fear of succeeding and failing again, disappointment. And then the fourth one, by the way, is you're lacking the knowledge and skill required. So that actually sets up a self doubt trigger which activates the Frankenstein brain, which causes you to lose motivation. But most people prefer to master disappointment and comfort zones instead of mastering change. So if I master disappointment, I know what I got, I just have to deal with, okay, this is what I got. And if I master my comfort zone, then at least this is the Devil I know. Yes. Versus mastering change. And we know what's going on in our brain. We know what's happening neurologically, biologically, emotionally, physically. And all of that is a skill. It's just a skill. So why not just master change? Why not become an adaptationist right now in the time that you need it the most in the world? Because if you don't, then you're just going to keep repeating the same patterns that are going to get reinforced, and it makes it harder in three months, six months and six years. So master change now and make that one of your core competencies, and then you master your life.
- [38:03]
Ed Mylett
Oh, my gosh.
- [38:04]
Co-host/Interviewer
You guys. Anybody familiar with my work know how much I love this man and how much we line up on these things Similarly, I love the way that you phrase things. And, guys, one thing about change, one of the reasons we hesitate to change as humans is it's an energy depletion, too. Humans kind of want to conserve energy. You have to realize one thing, everybody. Then we're going to go to one more part, and then I'm going to ask you about grief. But, guys, we love to gravitate towards what we're most familiar with. We create these patterns in our life, and we repeat them over and over and over again. And if you're not conscious of what they are, if you don't create new ones, you're just repeating the same life in a different year over and over. And that script that John talked about, your script is the same as it was five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, with slightly different characters and slightly different dressings in the room.
- [38:53]
Ed Mylett
Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. Welcome back to the show, everybody.
- [39:04]
Interviewer/Host
I'm so excited about today because the woman sitting across from me is the definition of brilliant.
- [39:11]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Oh, you're sweet.
- [39:12]
Interviewer/Host
It's just true. And she is always the smartest person in the room and never feels the need to prove it to you. And that's the real definition of humility and brilliance combined. She's a cognitive neuroscientist and a true mental health expert, and her work's made a huge impact in my life. The last time she was on the show, you guys went crazy because of how detailed her messaging is and her content is. And so, Dr. Caroline Leaf, thank you for being here today.
- [39:39]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Oh, Aid, thank you so much for that lovely introduction. I'm very flattered, very honored. Thank you. And I love talking to you. It's always just. You're an amazing interviewer.
- [39:48]
Interviewer/Host
Thank you.
- [39:48]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Pull the beast out of me.
- [39:50]
Interviewer/Host
Well, I love listening to you. She also has a new book out that you can pre order right now, depending on when you listen to it, but you can order it at any time. But how to help your child clean up their mental A guide to building resilience and managing mental health. You wrote this for how to help your child. But when I'm reading the work, I'm like, this helps humans, right? That's what it's called. So what is something, a strategy? You said awareness of the thought helps it lose its power over you. I'm using my description of it. Right. So I've always said that. Now I know why.
- [40:20]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Yes.
- [40:20]
Interviewer/Host
Okay. What is something, a tactic or a strategy or a technique that somebody can use for their child or themselves that can help this in these 63 days that you would be proposing they do?
- [40:31]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Okay, so what you do is you do the five steps of the neurocycle. Because. Because what I did was strategically look over the years at how can you actually find the signals and do this whole deconstruction reconstruction thing. So you can't do it in one shot. So what you want to do is do a neurocycle which is five steps.
- [40:47]
Interviewer/Host
What are they?
- [40:48]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
And I'll go through those in a moment. But you're going to do five steps in the sequence. The first part of the sequence is the first, more or less three weeks where you go through the five steps in around 15 to 45 minutes, not more and not less. In the second 42 days where you're stabilizing, you just do it in five minutes. So the five steps are basically gathering awareness and notice I say gathering. So it's a very conscious and deliberate. It's not like a mindfulness awareness, which this is beyond that. So when we talk about mindfulness meditation, breathing, decompression, all of those are very important to prepare the brain. So what you would do before you dive into the neuro cycle and you'll see this in my books and in my app about got an app as well called the Neurocycle. There's a two to three minute brain preparation which could be anything from focusing on momentum mori to doing a 310 breathing exercise. So it's something to just get the neurophysiology under control. Then you. Or it could be a meditation, a prayer, whatever. Then you move into the actual work. And I'M about to slip off this chair.
- [41:45]
Ed Mylett
Okay, go ahead.
- [41:46]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
And you move into the. I get so into this, into the work of gather awareness step one. So gathering awareness step is a very specific process. Everything's very layered. Your mind, brain, connection, psychoneurobiology, mind, brain, body. I'm actually a psychoneurobiologist study that connection is very ordered and sequenced and structured. And if you want something to change, you've got to follow the steps of the order. So the neurocycle is a system in that you can put CBT techniques, you can put prayer, you can put whatever works for you, but put them in the right step. So when we gather awareness, we, we, we are gathering like gathering apples off a tree. We're not just randomly looking at things. You're very organized. Okay, what am I going to gather? Awareness of my emotions. I'm feeling depressed, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling frustrated, whatever, just, just label them. What am I? What related to that emotion? What am I doing? What are my behaviors? What am I doing? What am I saying? How am I doing? And saying them. So maybe it's depression and maybe it's withdrawal. Then the third thing is you're going to say, how do I feel in my body when I'm feeling depressed and withdrawing? Maybe cardiovascular issues, heart palpitating. And then fourth category is, how am I looking at life in this moment? As I feel depressed, gut ache and withdrawing, I feel that life sucks. Very simple example. Those are four signals. So you go, step one is to gather those four. Step two is to ask why you're going a little deeper. Why am I feeling these emotions and you're not solving the whole problem. Don't try and solve it in one day. Just go as much as you can handle. It's very draining. So that's why I say limit. So it's why am I having these. Maybe I'm having this depression. I seem to be having it because of it's happening a lot. I'm not sure why, but it's happening five times a day. Or it's feeling what's happening once a week. Oh, if it is once a week, what am I having? The same behaviors. Why am I getting that? Why am I doing that? Withdrawing? How often am I withdrawing? What other things am I doing? Why do I think I'm doing that? So you work through each of those signals and try and get some more. Don't stay too long on those two steps. And then you write. Now you don't journal, you write, you dump. You literally dump what you've gathered awareness of and what you have reflected on. Because the first step was to gather awareness. The second step was to do this reflection thing and then you dump it down on and literally in mind, I'm just write it all over the page. I've developed a system called the metacog. And for kids, it's the bubble cog. And it's basically writing in a way that looks like a tree. So it's starting from the middle and it's working around in circles and branches and colors and arrows. And everything's connected. Everything's either on a line in a bubble. If you don't like doing that, just write any old way. But try to write dimensionally. Don't do it in lines. Try and just put it all over the page. Because it brings in forces the two sides of the brain to work together. Creates a very strong connection between the conscious and the subconscious through the bridge of the subconscious. Yeah. And it starts diving deep. I mean, it's like. I can tell you now that when I worked with patients that were had symptoms of schizophrenia, this is an extreme example. But just to show you how well this works, we would have them just basically metacog out what all these steps I'm going through. And they would have one whole personality on the side and they'd be continuing the same conversation in another hole. So you'd see the shift. And then we could show them, hey, look, look what's going on. And from there we could unpack and find roots and things like that. So it's phenomenal in getting insight. Now you spoke about introspection earlier on. Introspection, insight, it means diving into the depths of the nonconscious. That's the most intelligent part of us.
- [45:06]
Interviewer/Host
So is writing part of step two or is that step three?
- [45:08]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Step three. So writing is step three, sorry. Gather awareness. Step one, reflect. Step two, writing step three. You're bringing order out of chaos. You're getting those three steps are taking a deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, getting, increasing your introspection insight, pulling up things that are associated. Now that is things all over the page. A lot of it won't make sense. Things may shock you that come out day one, not really. But as you progress through the days, more and more will come up. And for example, around day seven, people start saying, oh, I never saw this connection. Day 14, like insight, insight into, oh, that's associated with that. I didn't see that. This is why I'm doing this. So there's tremendous growth. If you don't Force it. You just go through the cycle.
- [45:49]
Interviewer/Host
I don't want to interrupt you, but I want to ask you think during that awareness and the writing and that you are uncovering some of the things that may trigger you as well.
- [45:56]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Totally. So it's step four. Excellent question. Step four is looking at what you've gathered, awareness reflected on and written. What are my triggers? What are the patterns? This has happened. What can I do? So step four is moving towards reconceptualization, reconstruction, healing, putting food on the. The plant, food on the roots to heal them. It's leading to that acceptance. You're not going to know why someone raped a child, why someone did this. That's their story. But that's your story. So you need to find out. I'm not crazy. I don't have a broken brain. I'm not genetically flawed. I don't have a mental illness. I'm showing up like this because of what happened to me. I can't answer why. I have to get to a certain level of acceptance, but at least I know why it's not me. It's because of. And that happens. Helps you heal and move forward. So it's very progressive. It's not walking in circles, round and around and around. You know, this is where you can bring in things like these. Or psychodynamic theory and ac. There's a lot of different therapy techniques that people can bring in experiences from EMDR and into all these. Because this is a system. Yeah, into these spaces.
- [46:57]
Interviewer/Host
What's the fifth step?
- [46:58]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
The fifth step is an action active reach. So you go into. From the triggers and things like that, you want to move towards an antidote for today. An action for today. So what can I do today to. To keep me in a safe space? I've done the work for today. I'm not going to fall back into working on this. Anyway, I've got to get going through the day. And also your brain and mind need a rest. They get tired. So it's an action. It's like a visualization, a statement, a combination, a little prayer, an affirmation. So this is where you would fit an affirmation or a CBT type technique, like maybe a little visualization exercise or so it's something that you do and say maybe something as simple as I can do this, I don't know how and then visualize a rainbow. I mean it could be something as simple as that to an actual little technique or it could be a breathing technique. So it's an action that keeps you going through the day, which helps you focus on the fact that you are moving towards healing. So you're removing energy from this thing because this process has brought this from the non conscious to the conscious and it's weakened these branches in the non conscious, it's strong and driving. When the non conscious and conscious are working together, then this is weakened the protein branches, the chemicals, so I can start restructuring and reorganizing.
- [48:09]
Interviewer/Host
I'm going to tell you what I'm thinking when you're doing this because this applies to two different people. So everybody stay in here. Okay, so those are the five steps to sort of begin to rewire yourself or change your brain. The other part of me listening to this is if you're thinking, I really don't have a lot of these issues of anxiety or worry or depression. I also think that's the formula to create a change. Like if I had a goal and ambition, I'd become aware of what I wanted.
- [48:31]
Ed Mylett
Right.
- [48:32]
Interviewer/Host
I'd have all these reflections about it. I would then write about it. And I like the idea of it not being linear, like a book, but actually all over the place. So there'd be like, that's almost like a dream, personal vision board or dream board that you're doing.
- [48:44]
Ed Mylett
Then I'd think about what were the.
- [48:46]
Interviewer/Host
Triggers I need to create to generate this state? Could be snapping my fingers, it could be seeing something, it could be walking into my office, it could be getting into my car, it could be a particular person. So I'd use that trigger to then create that state. And then obviously the fifth would be what's an action that I can take towards this state?
- [49:02]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
You've got it.
- [49:02]
Interviewer/Host
So that cycle can be used to uncover trauma, reverse trauma, create brain health, but can also be a creative process in order to change your life.
- [49:12]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
So you are brilliant because that's exactly where I started my research 38 years ago with people with traumatic brain injuries and learning disabilities and people that just wanted to improve their life. They just wanted. And it's called brain building. So it's the neuro cycle. And that was the first iteration of this thing to develop brain building. So it was helping kids learn. So getting data in as opposed to deconstructing it was constructing.
- [49:32]
Interviewer/Host
Sure.
- [49:32]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
So it's taking from the knowledge in educating school to learn for an exam or what is the goal in your vision? So that's the brain building aspect of the neuropsych.
- [49:40]
Interviewer/Host
This is huge right here.
- [49:41]
Ed Mylett
I got. I got to tell you something because.
- [49:42]
Interviewer/Host
Everyone always wants to create change. They're like, all right, do I get a vision board out? So this is a five step process.
- [49:48]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
It actually does it.
- [49:49]
Ed Mylett
To actually do it and to do it.
- [49:51]
Interviewer/Host
Reinforcement. And by the way, in 63 days, you're a different human being.
- [49:55]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Totally different.
- [49:55]
Interviewer/Host
I do a thing. You're talking about visualization techniques. I should share this with you and maybe you can speak to why it might work.
- [50:02]
Ed Mylett
Everyone asks me, I don't visualize very well.
- [50:04]
Interviewer/Host
Yes, you do. You just need to get quiet. And it's a muscle you build, you know, when you decide to start visualizing your life, it is difficult. But one thing I've done is I've created, I teach it to a lot of my athletes is I use what I call like a highlight reel technique. So what I actually start with is I start. I've never said this on the show because it's part of my private work, but I want you to speak to it. I actually start by visualizing memories from my life that are highlights. So it could be, for example, you know, the birth of my son, the birth of my daughter, a home run I hit in baseball, an award. I got a sale that I closed that was important. These are things my brain are already familiar with. To your point earlier, it's already been wired. I've already repeated the emotion. It's already in there. And so I see those things and those are easy for me to recall because they're familiar. And then I move to what I want. So my brain, I think, begins to think they're one big highlight reel. Is there any data to prove that that's true? Meaning I'm already visualizing what I've already something I want. I've seen an achievement. I've seen an achievement, and then I see the one that I want to achieve. And for me, my brain more easily sees the future when I start with things that I'm already familiar with in my past. Because I think we do that in reverse. So if we've had a traumatic someone's hurt us in our life, we see this, we repeat it over and over, and then we then regenerate it in our real life with the next relationship and the. And that's why people end up dating the same person over and over again.
- [51:28]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Exactly.
- [51:28]
Interviewer/Host
Right.
- [51:29]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Exactly. Okay, so I'm jumping out of my chair with excitement because you've said exactly the correct thing. So what you've just described, Remember I said a moment ago, I spoke about how I'll recall this conversation because it's a great conversation and I'll pull it that's what we're talking about here. So you are recalling these, you're recalling those and you're using those to unmask your natural resilience. Yes. So I actually call these insurance policies.
- [51:52]
Interviewer/Host
Okay?
- [51:53]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
So they literally. So when I work with a person to actually be able to build their brain, we're building an insurance policy. So you should be spending time on doing exactly that. So as you do that, you activate a whole different way that your energy flows across the two sides of your brain. You go into the highest level of intelligence, you unmask resilience, you increase your wisdom, you tune into the depths of your nonconscious, where intelligence, pretty much your intelligence resides because your conscious is basically a workhorse and it's guided by your non conscious. So what we've got to see is what is dominant in the non conscious. Now your non conscious is a gentle lady, gentleman, and it's basically always looking for the things that are blocking this, growing and keeping you stuck in those. So it's on your side, but you have to tune in to what's coming up. So when you discover, when you want to do something difficult, you first think of something good. What you've done is you've listened to wisdom from your non conscious, which is that process. You've then called those up, you've activated your resilience, you've put yourself in a highly intelligent, wise state. Now you're in a state that's more able to cope with that. So when I work with a patient, for example, I would never start with that. I would say, okay, let's talk about, you know, your favorite moments or your tell me a story about, tell me a great movie, you know, let's talk about a great book, anything. And then we would focus on that. When they were in that state, I knew that I had got the mind brain connection, the psychoneurobiology.
- [53:16]
Interviewer/Host
I feel like thinking about the things that have been positive in my life or experiences creates a neurochemistry to which I can create out.
- [53:23]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
That's exactly what you do, right? Yes, you have, you've changed all the flow. These change, they increase gamma, which is the way that you want to flow. And when your eyes are open, you want, like this, what we call low gamma across the whole brain. And then there's certain other patterns. I won't go into the details and that's got to go into, have a certain beta pattern and so on. Those energy waves, when they are flowing in that state, they activate the different parts of the brain to then be on high alert to respond and do what they designed to do, which then impacts your neurochemistry, then your endocrine system, your cardiac. Everything then comes together and you are in this prime state. You're at HPA axis, is now on high alert, and you now are in the ideal state for solution finding.
- [54:06]
Interviewer/Host
This is so good, you guys. This is why I do the show right here.
- [54:09]
Ed Mylett
So let me just give you this again.
- [54:10]
Interviewer/Host
Step one, gather awareness. Step two, reflect. Step three, write, play, draw. Step four, recheck. Step five, active reach, which is basically what we've been describing here. What about physical movement and brain health? And it's not in here, but I want to ask you about that. I find that my anxiety and depression and concern and worry or angst is often something physically I'm doing. I feel like there's a physical nature to it. And I have found that when I change my physiology, I tend to feel like I've changed. Maybe your physical body is your unconscious mind. I don't know. I'll let you answer this. But when my body begins to move in a certain way, I have found that to be a pathway out of some of the negative emotions that I'm feeling. And I'm wondering, even with children, is part of the mental health issues we're seeing that they're less and less active physically, Meaning a lot more video gaming, right? A lot more stuff on their phone, a lot more stuff on their Mac or their iPad. Whereas when I was a kid, I'm sure mental health issues were very prevalent. But we were outside playing, we were playing football, we were running around, we were running. There was nothing to do inside, right? So we were outdoors. And I know that's not really part of what we're talking about here, but.
- [55:20]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
I'm just saying it is related.
- [55:21]
Ed Mylett
Is it related?
- [55:22]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
No, it's totally related. And part of you'll see in my books, in my NeuroCycle app, where all these steps are, the NeuroCycle app, I literally walk you through the process. And in the children's book, the Active Reaches, I encourage that physical activity. I encourage. And you'll see throughout the actual five steps, you can bring in the physical activity in different ways. So basically your body, your mind stores in three places. Mind which is all around you, these gravitational fields and so on. Brain, the trees, but in the body, in the cells. So therefore, that's how we have body memory. That's how when you have recall something that you get, your body responds as well. So that body response is really important. Like for example, if you're trying to get your children to talk after school and they don't want to talk and let them have a little rest, but go for a walk, start doing something, and the action activates and releases. So it's not that the non conscious is the body, it's that the non conscious is operating the body. It's your driving system. It's mind driving. So your unconscious is the thing that's always using every part of you. Your mind, brain and body are on your side. We have this psychoneurobiological link that is our superpower that literally when we understand how to read it, we can move forward. So you explained, you said if you feel angst, you can feel your body feeling it angst, emotional warning sign, your body feeling it, physical warning signal, you. You probably not totally focused initially on your behaviors and your perspective. Then you move. As you move, you start unlocking and getting an idea of okay, and that's fall under the behavioral signal as well. Then it starts unlocking the others and you start getting into that space where you can work on. On going through this process, and then you can fit movement in any way.
- [57:00]
Interviewer/Host
The reason I feel so big about physical stuff and brain mental health is like, take your spouse for a second. You think about the moments of your life that you feel the most connected. Let's just be honest, some of it can be your sexual time with. Why? What's happening? Something physical is happening between the two of you. When I want to open up and like with my children or something like that, when I really want to get them to talk. You're so brilliant. Because I found, you know, putting them on the couch or sitting on their.
- [57:24]
Ed Mylett
Bed is okay, but if we take.
- [57:27]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
A walk, it's brilliant.
- [57:29]
Interviewer/Host
We take a walk. To your point, we're changing something there. Even laying on the couch with your spouse, watching Netflix, when they're actually touching each other and laying on each other, compared to when they're on one side of the couch and you're on the other, there's a deeper connection when something physical is involved.
- [57:46]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Exactly.
- [57:47]
Interviewer/Host
The other part of it that you write about in the book that I've never really looked at before, and you talk about this particularly with children. The book is written, you know, Dr. Leaf's books have been for everybody. This one's more specifically guided towards children, but really everything in it, parents for children.
- [58:01]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
So to have parents help. Parents help their children.
- [58:02]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah, parents and children. Right.
- [58:04]
Ed Mylett
But sleep.
- [58:05]
Interviewer/Host
So if you have a child or yourself, because I know this is true with me When I'm not sleeping something's not so good with me typically. Right. But it's interesting to me. I never thought about sleep when it came to my children. If they're not sleeping that's probably an indicator of something. So talk about sleep and children and even how it relates to each of us individually.
- [58:22]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Absolutely. Well, what I've tried to do in this book is to try and find the things that I know are hot button topics to try and help parents have a and to teach the neuropsycho in such a way that it's super simple, it's very practical, whatever. So I take areas like trauma, sleep etc and I'm glad you've mentioned the sleep because there's so much scariness around sleep too because you know you go to a doctor, one of the first things they'll say about you is your child sleeping are you sleeping? And they have to sleep or they're going to die. It's not quite that. Quite that extreme. It's very fear mongering. And yes there is a valid point to sleep. Sleep is very important. But how many hours of sleep a person should sleep in a day we don't actually know really. And also people have different patterns of sleep. So this thing that your child must sleep eight hours a day is not necessarily true. Exactly. But if your child isn't sleeping and there is a persistent pattern of nose of bad sleep there's something going on that definitely would be classified under your behaviour warning signals and it's worth investigating. And that's why I actually put sleep neuro cycles into the book on things. There's different ones that you can do because preparing yourself for sleep starts when you wake up in the morning. You know, it's like when you wake up in the morning the first thing is as the chemistry starts readjusting so that you can become conscious at that moment to train yourself to just how, what, what what are my four signals? What am I feeling? Am I complaining? What am I feeling sad? Am I complaining? You know, Quickly assist your quick assessment of your four signals. So it's what are my emotions? What am I, what's my body doing? What are my behaviors in this moment? Like I know I'm lying in bed but am I tense? And what's my perspective? I don't want to do today. If you can catch that takes you those four things can take you 10 seconds and can really already prepare you for a night's sleep. It sets you into, it opens your mind that you can actually then face the day so that's one thing you can do. I've got a whole thing there that you, you can do a sleep neuro cycle for children as they wake up. Then if you see there's a pattern of children not sleeping, it's to find a time during the day that's a good time either early evening when they've been to school, they've had dinner, they've played, that's sort of a good time to kind of work around. But you can find, don't do this when they're exhausted and then you can do a whole neurocycle to try and work through what the cause could be when we don't sleep. The main reason we don't sleep and a lot of people will maybe not agree with me here, but the main reason we don't sleep is because we have unresolved issues that we scared of. For sure. Agree it changes your energy in your brain and your brain all the things, the melatonin and all those things. Because there's so many cases, and I actually give a case in the study in the book of very, you know, quite a traumatic situation of child who was abused physically and sexually from 3 months of age but just could not sleep through the night. And they did everything, all the sleep aids, all the white noise, everything you complete possibly do and not that those don't work, they are definitely going to facilitate and help. But the core issue was the child's abuse and what that the impact of that. Although the child was out of that unsafe environment that you had to deal with what was going on and that child was very young. So once the parent just happened to come across my stuff and do the neurocycle and the child saw the parent doing it and started doing it and within four days this child was sleeping. Now this was an eight year old. They didn't use this book because this book wasn't out yet. The child saw what the mom was doing, saw the change in the mom because if the kids watch us and this was an 8 year old and said I want to do what you're doing. And so she adapted it as best she could and this child started sleeping within four days. So the core issue there was a trauma that was unresolved. And you said it yourself. I know I do. If I've got something that I haven't dealt with or something's worried me or have that phone call, call before bed that said, that's it, my sleep's gone until I've dealt with it.
- [61:50]
Interviewer/Host
Can I give you one? With children That I think is onset. And I know you're such a person of faith, so I'm going to give you what helps me sleep. And it leads to this unresolved stuff. And I just want to say this to everybody. It's prayer. And let me say why. So prayer at night is a chance for me to take my burdens and put them on my higher power, in my case, Jesus. But whatever your faith is, and I know you share my faith, and I wonder how many people are praying with their children at night because this is an opportunity for your children to probably open up. I think it's an opportunity for them to relieve themselves of their burdens. And I have found that when I have really deep, beautiful prayer, even if it's brief, that I sleep better at night because there's a perspective that I get that I'm protected, safe. I really wonder that. The second thing is I want to ask you about both these. So this is for adults, but it also affects our children more and more. Our children are on their screens late at night. I know this is just a brain issue. So I'm not just necessarily trauma, but there's all this data about blue screen time and how it's difficult to sleep. I don't know if it's accurate or not, but I know there's. When you're doing homework, it's stressful. I think people let their children do their homework too late at night, and now that's a problem. Now it's a stressor. Now it's a trauma. Also, they're on their screen.
- [63:07]
Ed Mylett
And a lot of these schools put.
- [63:08]
Interviewer/Host
So much homework on their children. This is being real.
- [63:11]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
It's like a real problem. Yeah, the school system's a problem.
- [63:13]
Interviewer/Host
So when your kids get home from school, wouldn't it be smarter to get them a. To start doing their homework earlier so they're off of their screens and away from stressful stuff before sleep? Also true for you as an adult. And just prayer. I know it's not a major part of what's happening in here, but am I right that both of those things would probably make an impact on sleep? And maybe then they're mental health.
- [63:32]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Absolutely. You know, through prayer. If you look at prayer in terms of any religion or any philosophy or any belief, if people don't even believe in anything, it can be seen as a way of just trying to organize yourself and then believe that it's not just me, there's something more. And we know what's common to all mankind, and that's love. So you know, to talk to a child about loveness. So you could do a loveness neurocycle, you could call it a prayer neurocycle or whatever you want. But you can actually say, okay, well let's look at what are, what am I feeling right now? And why do we think, we feel that you go through the five steps and that's your prayer and you can, your little active reach could maybe be in some quote, a little scripture. It could be a visualization of something, whatever, a beautiful quote or something like that. So that is basically a form of prayer because you're tuning into an unconscious, which is your spirit, which is your wisdom, which is your. And you're teaching a child to do that. So yes, it is a form of unloading your burdens into either you believe it's Jesus, God, love, whatever. I love to talk about godness and loveness because that's something that's relatable to anyone, you know. So you kind of step into that space and there's so much physics behind this too, and quantum physics and science behind how you're collapsing the consciousness. And I mean, it's just. We could talk for another two hours about that. So yes, totally, I do believe that. And it'll set your brain waves to a point where your brain can start shifting into sleep mode which will then have a neurochemical effect on the. It starts the melatonin and those kinds of things and controlling adrenaline. And so it will have, it has. What I've shown with my work is that when you use mind stuff and specifically the tool of the neuropsycho, which is mind management and as I said, you can put whatever you want in that. You are changing your psychoneurobiology. So you're changing cortisol levels, you're changing homocysteine levels, you're changing all the things that can keep you awake, you are getting them to the point with it. You're dropping, changing, getting brain balance with the brain waves, that kind of stuff. So it's real. I mean that's very, very real.
- [65:22]
Interviewer/Host
I don't think I've done an interview in like 45 or 50 minutes with more stuff. We've done thought trees, we've done the neuro cycle, we've done the non conscious mind, we've done, you know, all of these different things here. We've done the highlight reel which I kicked in here today. If, if I was asked you, I get to ask you one more question.
- [65:38]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Did you want me to ask this? Answer the second part of the other Question?
- [65:41]
Interviewer/Host
Yes, yes, yes.
- [65:42]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
What was the second part of the other question?
- [65:44]
Ed Mylett
Second part of the other question was blue skin.
- [65:45]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Oh, yes. Okay. Bullying, social media, all that stuff, it's immersed us in stimulation. So it's good, very good. And bad. All we need to do is teach our kids to manage it. That's the key. It's not going away. So it's not a bad thing if we know how to manage it. So it's just finding what works for you and your family in terms of blue screens and all those things. There's a lot of science that supports and contradicts the concept. Listen, if a person's worked up, doesn't matter what you do about blue screens, they're still going to stay awake. So sometimes people, if they're relaxed enough and they're watching the film or whatever before they go to sleep, it's. It's not going to be an issue. It's very much up to the individual. It's how we are managing. It's what you've got to experiment with your child and with yourself and see what works for you.
- [66:27]
Interviewer/Host
Okay.
- [66:28]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
That's really important. So it's that bi. Individual aspect. But just to bear in mind, if we don't manage the immersion that we live in before, for example, very quick, kids would get bullied at school. That's not anything bullying's been around since.
- [66:39]
Interviewer/Host
The difference is it follows them home.
- [66:40]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Now it's 24. It's the immerse. It's an immersion versus an experience. An immersion experience versus an intermittent experience. And when you have that distinction, that's what. So we have to learn to manage the immersion. So, I mean, I can go for hours about that alone, but that kind of.
- [66:54]
Interviewer/Host
By the way, I would love you.
- [66:54]
Ed Mylett
To stay for hours.
- [66:55]
Interviewer/Host
I would actually love that, you know that unfortunately you have somewhere to go. I can sit here all day.
- [66:59]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
I know I could stay all day chatting to you as well.
- [67:01]
Interviewer/Host
Let me ask you one last question because I think people want to know this. I have a very good friend I've been thinking about the entire interview who has a child that's just really had chronic struggles with mental health issues over and over to the point where they've done cutting and it's gotten really severe. And that child probably, in my opinion, should be more physically active. I know they have prayer in their life that neuro cycle could be a game changer for them. So I can't wait for them to hear this. I really, really believe the neurocycle cycle could be a game changer. And to think that maybe in 63 to certain amount of days, if it's more traumatic, you said a little bit longer, that someone can create positive and or remove negative things in their life.
- [67:37]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Balance the two together.
- [67:39]
Interviewer/Host
When is. I guess the last question I would have for today is because it's worth asking, when is it time for medication with somebody in their brain? Is that something that, you know, you must believe in some cases, if someone's, you know, schizophrenic, that potentially they need medication? Or do you believe medication? Never. When does somebody step and the risks of doing so?
- [67:59]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Okay, so loaded question. First of all, you'll just to quickly refer to your friend's child who's self harming. What is the age? Just very quickly.
- [68:05]
Ed Mylett
Teenager.
- [68:06]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Teenager. Okay. So that what they need, what we all need, is to feel empowered and not to feel that there's something wrong with us. And our current biomedical model will say that you've got a broken brain. And so that creates a sense of hopelessness. We also need to help our children develop psychological immunity. So not just immune system. Like our immune system helps rebuild our immune system. You build your muscles in resistance training. We've got to build our psychological immunity. And what we've taken from our children in a lot of our current models is that ability to say, it's okay to be a mess. Let's work through this mess together. So a huge part of my work in the book that I've just released is about you as a parent, knowing how to manage your own, get your own. They model what they see and model exactly. And then allowing a child a space, no matter what they say to you, no judgment, no compassion, but saying, listen, I see how you're showing up. I validate, I recognize, let's work through this together. Here's a system that's scientific that we can work through together. And the key, Ed, is empowerment. You have to get a person empowered to change their relationship with themselves. And when that happens, that's when the growth comes. The cutting, the self harm, whether whatever it is, alcohol addiction, whatever it may be, is coming from. Yes. The traumas, you can go through all that. I bet you that child probably has had so much therapy that they can tell you why they're doing it to a certain extent. But to get the change in a person's life, it starts with feeling, okay, I am empowered to do this. It's okay to be like this. It's not me. I'm responding to life circumstances. Here's a plan for me to be Able to move forward and be power to actually rewise that my brain and my body do what my mind, I know my wise mind wants it to do. So that's a simple answer to that. Medication is a very complex answer. But I'm going to do the easiest, quickest version up front. I'm not telling anyone to stop their medication immediately because of the withdrawal. Let's make a quick distinction between drugs and medicine. Medicines are aimed to try and fix a problem like insulin for diabetes. We can test for diabetes, we can find. We know there's a biological cause and we've got a drug that's fairly specific to the problem. When it comes to where is a child cutting, which is a behavior depression perspective of life sucks, battling all the things that you describe with your friend's child, which is obviously this is very surface what I'm saying, but that cluster of things, that is not a brain disease, that's going to be fixed by a drug that's not coming from something wrong in the brain and a chemical imbalance, it's coming from some cluster of toxic issues and things that that child does not know how to process. Self cutting, for example, is so much pain inside yourself that it's too much inside. So it's easier to transfer the pain to the cutting so that that pain detracts from the internal pain. And that's an energy that's no energy is lost, it's only transferred. So it's transferred energy. So we must transfer child's energy into being able to, to create safe spaces so that they can talk to us as parents, not just the therapist, but us as parents, caregivers, people that they trust, peers are fantastic for supporting and that will help them sort of transfer their energy. So a drug is something that, like alcohol, cocaine and psychotropics, they fall under the same category. They're not fixing anything, they're not restoring. There are drugs, they are. And a drug is a psychoactive substance. So it changes the state of the brain versus a medicine is trying to fix something. So antidepressants aren't fixing chemical imbalance. That's been disproved. It's a myth. The pillars of psychiatry that are used to say that you've got a chemical imbalance, etc. They're not doing that. What they're doing is they are providing temporary relief. So if someone is in such a bad state, say for example, someone's having very extreme delusions and hallucinations, which is not a disease of schizophrenia, it's schizophrenia symptoms. So instead of saying schizophrenia, bipolar, etc. As a label or diagnosis, which is very unscientific and inaccurate, and does this actually does harm. Research has shown to the person, it doesn't recognize the enormity of what they're going through. It's rather, let's say they describe it as behaviours because of something huge in their life. And let's look at this whole person. They don't need a disease like label and a medication to validate what they're going through. It's valid enough for them to get the support they need. A label and a drug, put it in a little box and make it small. Telling them the story, letting them talk, going through that process gives it the size that it needs, if that makes sense. So the drug. The way I would recommend drugs is to see them as drugs, not medications. And if someone's in an extreme state, temporarily, like you don't, if you have a headache, you take an ibuprofen to relieve the symptoms, but you don't go on ibuprofen chronically. In other words, every day. That's how we should look at these things. So if someone's in a. Yeah, so if someone's in a really bad way, medicine.
- [72:48]
Interviewer/Host
And by the way, she also said in the very beginning that if you're on medication, she's not encouraging you to.
- [72:52]
Ed Mylett
Get off of it.
- [72:53]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
And if people do want to withdraw, I have interviewed top scientists in the world that are drug withdrawal experts and they can go and listen to my podcast and they can search through drug withdrawal and they'll have the top experts with all the resources to guide them through that process.
- [73:06]
Interviewer/Host
What a remarkable conversation. It just flew by.
- [73:09]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
It did.
- [73:09]
Interviewer/Host
It did fly by.
- [73:10]
Ed Mylett
You're brilliant.
- [73:11]
Interviewer/Host
You're exactly how I introduced you.
- [73:13]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
You're very kind.
- [73:14]
Interviewer/Host
I think the neuro cycle can change people's lives. Undoing trauma, undoing negative thoughts, but also creating your life through the neuro cycle. So, guys, I'd pour myself into that. You can get any of Dr. Leaf's books, but right now you got how to help your child clean up their mental mess. Which boy do we need? A guide to building resilience and managing mental health, which all of you and I need.
- [73:36]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
And we have Brainy, which is a toy for the kids that we've created. There's a brainy character throughout the book, Ed, and we've made toys as well.
- [73:41]
Interviewer/Host
So it's really something, both the parent and the child.
- [73:44]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
Yep, the child can hold us up.
- [73:45]
Interviewer/Host
And you're awesome. You guys get the book. Share the episode change people's lives. It's that simple. We're the number one growing show on the planet because y' all share it every single week. Because I get brilliant people to sit across from me and we get the best from them in the hour we spend with them. Thank you.
- [74:02]
Ed Mylett
That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the.
- [74:06]
Co-host/Interviewer
Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify.
- [74:08]
Ed Mylett
Links are in the show notes now on with the show. Welcome back. So good to have you with me here today and I'm honored to spend this brief time with you. I think I have something important to ask you about and for us to visit about today. So let's get right into it. What are your fears costing you? I think it's time to evaluate that like you and I right now. What are your fears costing you? You know, we have these weights that weigh us down in our lives, these burdens, these fears that we have. Do you ever stop to think about what it's actually costing you to have these anchors and these weights wearing you down, these fears? You know, people ask me all the time, ed is making your dreams come true. The work you put in, the sacrifices you made, the people that let you down, all the dark times in your life, all the times you went broke, both financially and emotionally, is it worth it? It's a very interesting question because they always phrase it that way. Is it worth it? Yet in our lives, we spend most of our times evaluating and contemplating what it's going to cost us. So let me say something to you up front. The price you will pay to become the person you're worthy of, the price you will pay to become the real you. The price you will pay to make your dreams come true and your vision a reality, and the people around you blissful and happy. That price, and there's a severe price, is infinitely smaller than the price you're going to pay if you don't, and that others around you will pay. You know, I don't think God gave you another day in your life because you needed it. I think he added another day to your life because somebody needed you. But here's the thing. They need the real you, the authentic you, the one who's playing all out in their life and pursuing their dreams. I can tell you the answer to that question is as good as you think it'll be to make your dreams come true. And dreams that you can't even imagine right now, visions of your life. But maybe even more importantly, as good as you think it would feel to meet the real you, the one you were born to be. And remember this, you were born to do something great with your life, but to finally get introduced or reacquainted or reintroduced to that person. Maybe you years ago knew them very well, that version of you, but things have happened. These anchors, these fears, these toxic relationships, whatever they might be, these disappointments in our life, we've moved so far away from that person that we're capable of becoming that we don't even recognize them anymore. As good as you think it'll be to meet that person for the first time or once again, it's a million times better. Now, here's the hook. You have to start thinking like a rich person. And I don't mean just financially. I mean rich in spirit, rich in emotions, rich in relationships. And for many of you, including me, we want to be rich financially. People ask me all the time, ed, why do you put out all this free content? I mean, you put out the best content in the world. Everybody else charges for inferior content. You put out the best stuff. And I appreciate when people say that, and you don't really charge for it. This is free. I do that because I believe in the law of reciprocity. I also want to make the world better, and I believe I put out enough good stuff. If someday I asked you to come to an event or participate in something, you probably want to come, but I want to pour into you. Because I don't think God gave me another day because I needed it. I think he gave me another day because people need me and they need you. And you need to remember you were born to do something great with your life. My brother, my sister, you were. And I want to remind you of that today. But I think it's time to evaluate what are my fears, my patterns. A toxic person in a relationship that I'm in with right now, that's weighing me down, what's it ultimately costing me? Because it's just your life. That's all we're talking about, is just you, just your life. And by the way, you're not getting out of it alive. You are not getting out of this alive. So all these things that are weighing you down are truly silly, because at the end, we all end up in the same situation where our body eventually ceases to exist and hopefully our soul goes to heaven. But in your case, you got to stop thinking like a poor person. And I. I'm talking to me as much as I am you. Let me tell you what I mean.
- [78:09]
Interviewer/Host
By poor.
- [78:09]
Ed Mylett
Poor in spirit, poor in emotion, and poor financially. See, when I was broke financially, when I would go into a store and I wanted something, I wouldn't get what I wanted. I would get what I could afford. Sound familiar? So I was a guy who had flipped price tags over, oh, it's this, it's this. And I would evaluate what it would cost me, not what it was worth. And so oftentimes in life, people ask me, ed, was it worth it? But in their life, they spend most of the time contemplating the cost. It's going to cost me this, it's going to cost me that. You know, maybe I want to become the person I go to. Cost me losing this person in my life. It'll cost me time. It'll cost me my hobby that I like spending so much time in. It'll cost me pain and emotion and whatever it'll cost me, I'd have to.
- [78:53]
Co-host/Interviewer
Let go of my fears.
- [78:53]
Ed Mylett
I have to let go of my patterns. And these invisible things that weigh us down in our life, they kill us. And so there's a lot of walking dead in the world. There's this old saying that they say it about men, but it's people. Most people die 75 or 80 years old, but they really stopped living at 21 or 22 or 23 years old. We just don't put them into the ground until they're older. Too many people are walking around like this, and maybe you relate to it. Maybe you relate to a percentage of it. These fears, these relationships, these things we worry about, these invisible boogeymen. What are people going to be thinking about me? Do you want to get to the end of your life? And if someone asks you honestly, how did you live your life? Do you want to answer truthfully?
- [79:37]
Interviewer/Host
Scared. I lived. Afraid.
- [79:39]
Ed Mylett
Afraid I wasn't good enough. Afraid I wasn't worth it. Afraid of what other people would think about me. Afraid to lose people around me that didn't even love me or care about me or want me to be my best. I lived my life afraid. Or at the end, you want to say, man, I maxed out my life. I got all the emotions, all the memories, all the achievements, all the richness in every area out of my life, I maxed out my life. Well, I could tell you this. If you hold on to these anchors much longer, it's going to keep costing you. And the longer you do it. See, even these things, sometimes what holds us back is are feeling bad about things we've done in the past that we're not proud of. And we use these memories as weapons against ourselves. We stab ourselves with it over and over or someone who's cheated on us or made a mistake, we use them as weapons against ourselves.
- [80:27]
Co-host/Interviewer
And it.
- [80:28]
Ed Mylett
That's what you need to be asking yourself, whether it's worth it. Is it worth it to make your dreams come true? Is it worth it to change? Is it worth it to grow? You bet it is. A million times better. Because when you make your original dreams come true, you don't understand the ripple effects of all these other things you can't even think about right now that happen when you meet the real you. It's spectacular. You have to remember this. You can't love yourself. Everyone here, man and woman, macho man and every single buddy, listen to this, okay? You can't love yourself if you don't even know yourself. And you can't know yourself if you're not truly being yourself. And these anchors cause us not to be us. I'm personally haunted with the thought of getting to the end of my life and never meeting me, never getting introduced to me. I want to meet that man. I'm interested in who he is, and I want to do the things every single day. Because once I got wealthy and I was rich and I went into a store, I didn't look at price tags anymore.
- [81:27]
Interviewer/Host
I looked at whether it was worth.
- [81:28]
Ed Mylett
It and I got what I wanted. And our lives are a perfect metaphor of that. We're constantly evaluating the cost instead of.
- [81:36]
Interviewer/Host
Whether or not it's worth it. Cost versus worth is a subtle difference.
- [81:40]
Ed Mylett
Is it worth it to change? Is it worth it to let go of these memories? Is it worth it to drop your fears? You will never meet you otherwise. Some of us are held back by crappy programming our parents installed in us when we were young. Remember this. Most things in life are caught, not taught. We catch a way of thinking. We catch a way of having emotions. And we have to ungo. We have to unleash ourselves and let go of those things in our life. So what's the thing for you? What's the thing? Is it a person you need to let go of? Is it a fear you need to let go of? Is it an operating pattern? Is it a memory as a weapon you're using against yourself? Is it just. You're just not sure? You got to remember who the hell you are and if you've never met them. You need to get introduced and you need to get acquainted. Because I could tell you of all the jets and islands and Cool stuff I've accumulated in my life. All the accumulations are wonderful. And I want you to accumulate the things you want that'll provide memories for your family if they matter to you, the donations you can make, the people you can be there for, all the different things you can do when you get financially secure. All those things are incredible, but they don't bring us fulfillment. They can bring us temporary happiness. And there's nothing wrong with temporary happiness, but fulfillment. All of that stuff doesn't add up to meeting you, finally meeting you at some point in your life, don't you want to meet you or get reacquainted because you once knew her, There was a time in your life where you knew her or him. You'll never meet them otherwise. And so I have to tell you something. You have to start. You have to start to make a bold move in your life because you're worth it, your family's worth it, and the world needs you. You were born for a reason. You were born to do something great in small ways and in big ways in your life. And oftentimes in our lives would hold us back. Sometimes is the stories we tell ourselves. See, it's not the events of our lives, circumstances that define us. It's the meaning we take away from those events. And those meanings create an emotion. And that emotion drives our behavior. That emotion of fear, that emotion of anxiety, that emotion of sadness. Or it could be an emotion of bliss, of confidence, of increase of belief, of being guided, of being protected. But you have to ask yourself that question. See, it's not the event, it's the stories we tell ourselves. And listen to me. An emotion cannot exist long term without a story attached to it. You've had a lot of things happen in your life that were emotional, but the story didn't stick or you didn't take away the wrong meaning. And so that emotion doesn't stay. If you're feeling one of those emotions, it's attached to a story. It's a story you're telling yourself. The emotion can't stay without the story. And the story is just the meaning you took from the event. It's just a meaning you took from an event. So sometimes the story you're telling yourself is, I don't want to be alone, so I'm hanging on to this person that still weighs me down. Or where I'm at is good enough. Because I don't want to risk what I've got. And that's a story. Or I've made this mistake before or Someone hurt me. And what it meant was xyz, and you have a feeling about it. These anchors are actually lies we tell ourselves that are anchored in a story that doesn't serve us, that causes an emotion that sticks. So if we change the story, either we take a different meaning from an event and say, could it have meant this? See, when I was a young man with my dad's drinking, I thought this means our family's less than and we're dysfunctional. And all these things I attached to the. To the. The meaning I attached to that story that was happening. And then at one point I realized, no, what was actually happening was God was using that to teach me how to learn to be present with people and read people and be empathetic with people and believe in people, and that God was using that story for me. When my baseball career ended, I was injured. It probably ended a career that would have ended anyway, quite frankly. But I was a pretty good player. And when I got injured, I remember thinking, man, this is my only dream in my entire life, right? God doesn't answer prayers, right? This was my prayer to do this right. The meaning of this is I just was never good enough. The meaning from it was it just wasn't meant to be. I wasn't meant to be somebody. I wasn't meant to do something great with my life. And I attached all these meanings to what was a pretty traumatic event. But I could have attached the meaning of that time, that God's got something bigger in store for me, that there's something bigger and bolder for me, and that Ed Mylett I thought I was, was not going to be a baseball player. But the Ed Milett I thought it was could be this other person who contributes to millions of people's lives. So once I attached a meaning to it that what God really did was I probably would have played three or four or five more years and then been released and then been in my mid to late 20s. And maybe I wouldn't have taken advantage of a lot of the opportunities that came along. So that career ended right when it was supposed to, so that I could start to redirect my life in a direction. And from there I got a job at an orphanage. And that orphanage changed my life. Because of that orphanage, I met these young boys that looked just like me. These boys were all wards of the court. They were taken from their families or their families were incarcerated or dead and had molested them at some point in their life. And so baseball ended. I'm finding myself making $6 an hour at an orphanage. And I'm thinking, God, you took multimillion dollars playing in front of hundreds of thousands of people a year, 50,000 people a night from me, to be with eight children in a cottage making six bucks an hour. And that's exactly what he was doing. Because what I needed to be was I needed to be connected with people. I needed to love people. And what's even crazier about it is the way I connected with those boys is they had grown up with all this pain and suffering and dysfunction in their homes. And that's what I grew up with in a different way, with my father being an alcoholic. When I was young, my career had to end that exact day. It ended so that I would end up in that exact house with those exact boys, and they could have someone who understood them, who could see them and knew who they really were, because I was just like them. I recently said to Jesse Lee on my podcast, I said, all people that go through any pain in their life, especially when they're young, we have different eyes. We just have different eyes. Our eyes just say, please love me, please protect me, please be good to me. Please be kind, please be gentle. Please believe in me. We have these different eyes. And I remember when I walked in there, they had my eyes. Not the same color eyes. My boys were of every ethnicity, every background. We had those eyes. And when I meet someone who's gone through pain in their life, I see those eyes. But I found out something. We don't just have the same eyes. We actually have the same heart. We have the same heart, and every single human being has that heart. It's whether or not they'll unleash it. Unleash the real them, release the real them, or will they continue in their life to suppress the real them and settle for this less than version of them? Because they've created a bunch of stories and a bunch of fears and a bunch of relationships in their life that they hide in these stories, they hide in these emotions, and they never unleash the real them. I figured this out. All I've ever wanted to do is change how I feel. I didn't like how I felt. I wanted to change how I feel so I would accumulate and achieve and do things to change how I feel in my life. And as I've gotten older, I've realized if I can change how I feel, I can get all those things the easy way. And that's what I've started to do in my life, maybe from 40 to right now.
- [89:10]
Interviewer/Host
52 years old.
- [89:11]
Ed Mylett
So I want to challenge you today. Evaluate this thought, evaluate what are your fears costing you? What are these anchors costing you? I want you to really pray about it, really think about if you're on a walk right now, you're driving in your car, just what's it costing me and what would my life look like potentially? And by the way, you don't even really know. Just so you know, it's going to be so much bigger, so much more beautiful, so many small things that are going to happen along the way of you meeting you. And by the way, what's great is you continue to meet new versions of you. See, when you start to live your life without all these fears, without all these people anchoring you down with all these patterns and stories, what's great about it is there's a new you that shows up every couple years and there's this new version of you, an improved version of you every year. One of the things I'm excited about is to meet the 55 year old me. Because I didn't die at 21 or 22 like most people getting around to bury me at 85 or 90. No, no, no, no. I'm reborn all the time. I can't wait to make the 55 year old me. I'm chasing that guy when I get there. I can't wait to meet the 60 year old me. But the 25 year old me was nothing like the 30 year old me. I mean, it was similar character, but different life, different contribution, different thoughts. Too many people are exactly the same person they were two or three years ago. And that's what it's really costing you, isn't it? And the reason you're not happy or as happy as you could be is you know this isn't you. You know this isn't you. You know there's more in you deep down in your heart and your soul and your spirit. The reason you're not happy isn't these other people, isn't your boss, isn't your job, isn't your body, isn't your lack of money, isn't any of it. It's that you know this really isn't you. You know this really isn't you. And it's time you meet him. It's time you meet her. It's time at least you get reacquainted if you once knew them. I want to challenge you to do that today. I want to challenge you to step out and drop whatever that anchor is or multiple anchors or these weapons you're using these mistakes you've made, these choices that you regret, blah blah blah. Stop it. That's not who you are. Your destiny's now. It's in the future. It's moving forward and there's something great waiting for you. And is the price worth it? Absolutely. Is the cost worth it? A thousand percent? Because eventually you start getting what you want, not just what you can afford in your life. And here's the truth. You can't afford to get to the end of this life without meeting you. Because only then will you love you when you're being you. You can meet you. And when you meet you, you can truly love you. It's time for you to step up. Remember once again I'm going to tell you he didn't add another day for.
- [91:47]
Co-host/Interviewer
You because you needed it.
- [91:48]
Ed Mylett
He added another day because some other person and the world needs the real you.
- [92:05]
Dr. Caroline Leaf
It.