The Thoughts You’re Thinking Right Now Are DESTROYING Your Future | Ed Mylett

Key Takeaway

Stop living from your history and memory—start operating from imagination and vision. Your brain has 60,000 thoughts per day, and 90% are repetitive. Break this pattern with 'possibility projection': write out what your finances, health, or relationships could look like in 1 month, 6 months, 1 year. This simple practice forces your brain into future-focused thinking, making you present and intentional instead of trapped in the past.

Episode Overview

Ed Mylett explores why most people unconsciously live through the filter of history and memory rather than vision and imagination, keeping them stuck in repetitive patterns. He shares research showing 90% of our 60,000 daily thoughts are repetitive and 80% are negative, then provides four practical strategies to shift from past-focused to present-and-future-focused living: possibility projection, phone fasting, small box focus, and naming the dummy.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Thoughts You’re Thinking Right Now Are DESTROYING Your Future | Ed Mylett from The Ed Mylett Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hey everyone, welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Hit that like button and be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you never miss my show whether it's Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday. Now on with the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I'm so grateful to be with all of you today. And I think today could be one of these quantum type leaps for so many of you and the way that you view your life. And so what we're going to discuss today is the filter or prism in which the point of view of which you view your life.

And there's really two ways that we look at our lives, the filter we see it through. And I wrote about this in the power of one more in my book. There are certain percentage of people, a very small percentage of people who operate out of their vision and imagination. Their dreams, that's their frame of reference. They're almost like a child in their they dream in their life. They operate out of vision and imagination. They allow that to be the dominant filter and prism in which they see life.

The vast majority of people don't do that. However, most people operate out of history and memory and they wonder why they keep repeating the same life over and over again with a different set of people and maybe a different set of circumstances but the same results, the same emotions. And so the first thing to ask yourself today is which one are you? And it's okay if you're the one that you wouldn't prefer to be. But do you for the most part operate out of your history and your memory and you think a lot about those things?

That's what most people do. Or are you one of the rare few people who operate out of imagination? Because if you can operate out of imagination, see kids teach such a great lesson. Why do most kids operate out of imagination? They're going to be an astronaut or Superman. They pretend. They play games. They have joy. That's what imagination gives us. That's what vision gives us. Memory doesn't do that for us. And so why do kids have that? Because they have no history. They have no memory.

So they forced almost to operate it. At some age, the crime of life, the tragedy is that we begin to operate out of a history and a memory. And often times that history and memory are the things that we least want to repeat. They're some of the most emotional or scarring times in our life. And so most human beings involuntarily go through their entire life operating out of this point of view, out of this filter, unknowingly, unconsciously. They just don't know they're operating this way. And so I want to challenge you today and I'm going to give you some keys to start to operate out of your imagination and your dreams and your vision.

See, because that point of view allows you to be present. There's really three points of reference, isn't there? There's the past, there's the present, and there's the future. And I think the happiest people are present an awful lot of the time, and the m and the rest of the time, or most of that time, they operate out of their vision and their imagination and their dreams. I'm not suggesting that evaluating your past u can't teach you lessons. You can't heal some of it. But spending most of your time there is not something that's productive.

Deepo Chopra has this great quote where he says, "I I use memories, but I don't allow my memories to use me." And too many people are operating out of their memories or using them. It's okay to look back and to heal and to evaluate and to gain wisdom from our past, but that should be a small percentage of our time. We should be fully present and focusing on the future at the same time. And so, how do you do that? Well, we're going to talk about it today a little bit.

I think I can give you some keys. Um, first thing is this. There's there's a term that I want you to understand called cognitive immobility. And what that means is is when you're really mentally trapped in a place from your past. Um, most people have some form of cognitive immobility where they just can't move out of it. And what happens is everything they see currently, they reference to the past. You know, our minds work this way. Even reading, there's a lot of research that says the way that we actually read is our mind actually sees the beginning of letters and it references the past where we've read it and it tells us that's what the word means.

That's why you can read very very quickly. So your mind wants to take something it sees now and reference it to something else. That's really what thinking is. So that's why this takes work. If you're left to your own devices, most of the time what you're going to see will be referenced somewhere in the past. And so that's cognitive immobility. People that I think are happy, that create things, that take a life that's one way and make a new one, have cognitive mobility. They're able to move forward.

They're mobile in their thinking. So, a really good example of being fully present but focusing on the future is actually physical training is working out. I think it's one of the reasons why working out is so powerful because when you're lifting weights or working out, it forces you to be completely present on the task right in front of you because you're lifting heavy things. You have to focus on the present moment or there's actually a threat to you. You could get injured. You could get hurt.

So that's why I think so many people say, "Well, the reason, man, when I work out, I've got all these endorphins flowing and my, you know, my neurobiochemistry is changing." And yeah, that's true. But one of the other reasons is it's a metaphor. It's an example of how to live our lives, which we're fully present in the moment. But one of the reasons we're training is not the pain in the moment. It's the future payoff. So physical training, working out is one of the great models in life.

It forces you to be present. You can't be lifting something heavy or bench pressing or squatting or running and not be present in the moment because you'll trip and fall. You'll drop the weight. There's a threat physically to you to be fully present and focused. But you really aren't doing it for that moment. You're doing it because there's a payoff. Your heart will be stronger. Your cardio will be stronger. Your body will look stronger or better. And so physical training is a great example of how to be fully present but focused on imagination and vision and dream as opposed to history and memory.

When you're working out, you're physical. You're not thinking about your past. It's almost impossible, right? So that's a great metaphor. You know the actually at one time in history nostalgia was considered a mental health condition. So that's how detrimental to some extent focusing on the past can be. Can you imagine that? They actually called nostalgia a mental health challenge. Now it's sort of celebrated. We're always looking back. We're always reminiscing with these phones we have. There's the past is sitting in there all the time, isn't it?

Called photos. We're constantly looking at yesterday, the day before, a year ago, 5 years ago. Your phone will remind you. Memory of a photo two years ago. Social media will give you a reminder of the past. So nostalgia has become such a part of our culture and then we wonder why we're not so mentally healthy. You because when you're in the past you're not present. I have to tell you many of you know that I've been taking a break from social media. I've taken a complete step back.

I've taken a break from a lot of my travel and my speaking. Um a lot of the things that in business that I just I can't functionally do right now because I'm working on my physical health. I'm still running my businesses and I'm still doing coaching and the RT syndicate and speaking to some extent, but I've paired a lot of it back. And one of the things that's happened is I've paired a lot of it back. I found I've really uncovered how not present I was all the time.

I was never present. And so I'm learning, you know, nostalgia is fun, but it's it can actually become a mental health issue. There's this physician back all the way to the 1600s, Johans Hoffer was the guy's name, and he actually talked about nostalgia as an actual disease. It it described anxiety and homesickness and insomnia and other symptoms experienced by these Swiss mercenaries that come back from fighting uh battle. So, you know, this is something to really evaluate. John F. Kennedy, the great president, said, this is in my book, The Power of One More.

I use this quote. that history is a relentless master. It has no present. Only the past rushing into the future. Trying to hold fast is to be swept aside. And so what I'm saying to you is that if you're focused on your past, your future is swept aside. Your life will be swept aside. Your destiny will be swept aside. And so couple more things about this that are important to know. There's some different studies I want to tell you about. Then I'll give you a couple keys, just three or four keys to breaking this pattern so you can shift from being someone who's in the past to someone who's at least in the present and has using imagination as leverage.

There's a research that a guy named Dr. Fred Luskin did at Stanford and he says that basically in his study a human being has about 60,000 thoughts per day. Are you ready for this? 90% of them are repetitive thoughts. I talk about this in both my books. Imagine this that 90% of your day today is exactly the same as the day before internally. 90% of your thoughts are the same every single day. So you have a 10% variability. And by the way, that 10% could be as simple as what direction to take, what to order off of a menu.

So the actual way to change your life if your 90% of your thoughts are the same isn't very easy unless you're intentional about it. Left to our own devices, we're going to repeat the same life over and over again. We're going to have nostalgia. We're going the same 60,000 thoughts. 54,000 of them are the same every single day and we don't have any variability. There's another study uh researched by the National Science Foundation that said 80% of your thoughts are negative. Can you imagine this? So 90% of your thoughts are the same every single day and 80% of those are negative thoughts.

And imagine why human beings are wired for pain, wired for failure, not wired for growth and expansion, not wired for bliss. of those thousands of thoughts, 80% are negative. And in that study, they say 95% of your thoughts are exactly the same as the day before. So I have to tell you, this is so important to be intentional about every single day. Depending on the study, somewhere between 90 and 95% of your thoughts are your same. And everything tells us 80% of them are negative and most of them are nostalgic or pointing a reference to the past in some way.

So the first thing is this. What do we got to be able to do? What are some of the things that you could do to change it? First off is to be intentional that I'm going to begin to operate out of my imagination. Okay, just operate out of it. Now, I'm going to give you four steps before we conclude things today that I think that can help you change these patterns. Number one, you got to decide that you're going to be present and focus on the future.

And I want to teach you a tool called possibility projection. It's something that I did not create. I learned it many years ago back in business. But when I had my sales team, I would draw up what I called possibility projections. You know, if I wrote five sales this month that did this and so and so wrote three and Dave wrote two and and I would possibility project the next month of what it would look like, what the possibilities were, and then I'd project them into the month.

And then I would project what it would mean to me from a financial standpoint or from a growth of my business. And then I started doing that in other areas. I would possibility project my physical training. If I work out this many days a week, do this many reps on this. The I can write up the possibilities that I would do and then project what it would mean to me in a month, in six months, and in a year. Same thing in your family. Same thing with your money.

And so I've become I'm addicted to it. I do it on airplanes all the time where I'm writing and people like, "What are you writing? I'm possibly projecting what my finances will look like this month. I'm possibly projecting my podcast if I could just get so and so as a guest and we record it there." And I possibility project. If we do that, man, this is what the downloads look like. This is what the rankings look. These are the amount of people we could help. This is what the vision and what I'm doing is I'm casting a vision consciously.

You can do that with your family. Over the next three or four months, the spring break's here and we're going to go to this resort or we're going to go to this beach or maybe you can't afford to go anywhere, but we're going to do this activity as a family. And you start building towards this. Hey kids, on spring break, we're going to do these games or we're going to do this prayer work or whatever it might be. we're going to have this and you possibility project.

Have you ever had like a Monday morning and you got a grind of a week ahead, but somehow you got something cool you're going to do on the weekend. We've all had that before. Like there's going to be a concert you're going to or a party or a get together at a park or whatever. And somehow, don't you agree that thing coming on Friday or Saturday gets you through the week, right? or even sometimes the morning, you know, you got a really rough morning, but you know that night there's a game you want to watch on TV or your favorite TV show's coming up.

Just knowing that's coming helps you be more present and go through what you need to go through in the day, in the week. What you've really done is you've possibility projected the TV show that you possibility projected the party that weekend. You possibility project in your life. This forces you into imagination, vision, and dreams. So you already do this from time to time. What if you made possibility projecting, future focusing part of your routine regularly? Family, money, business, life, entertainment, physical, whatever it might be. Possibility projected.

Maybe you're going to train in the gym because you know in six months you're going to do an Iron Man or you're going to do one of these mud runs or you're going to be able to weigh at 180 or you're going to do a bodybuilding contest or you're going to do something, right? So you possibility project, maybe you're going to pick up a sport once you're in different shape. So one of the healthy ways you just change your focus is you create a strategy like the one I'm describing.

So I want you to challenge you to become a possibility projector all the time. By the way, it'll be awkward at first and then in 3 months, 5 months, 6 months, you won't remember your life without doing it. You could possibly reject your day. You could possibly project your week. You could possibly reject your year in every single area. And this focuses you on the future. But what it does is it causes you to do something in the present. Okay? Huge strategy and tactic to switch from history and memory to imagination and dreams.

Number two, go on what I call a phone fast. And this is what I've been doing recently that I'm taking this step back. A phone fast means this, exactly what it sounds like. You put your phone away for periods of time. Now, I want to challenge you. A a great phone fast would be for an entire day. You turn your phone off and you put it away for a day. You know, I think you'll find that the world will be okay without you and that 99.9% of the things that are on that phone you don't have to get to.

When you start getting away from your phone, I really love social media. It's made becoming wealthy much easier. It's made building a brand easier. It's allowed average everyday people like you and me to build extraordinary wealth, the potential of businesses, the access to information and people in an unprecedented way. It's a wonderful part of it. of it. of it. But I actually have begun to believe that social media has more negatives than positives. than positives. than positives. and uh the addiction to grabbing the phone, the responding in a timely manner, taking you off of focus, taking you often times to a reference of the past, um the distraction of it, the stress of it, um the algorithm in our brain that is now wired to be in here, the feeding of the negatives and the toxicity, the comparison.

And so many of us, it's like an unhealthy diet. We eat all day every single day. Imagine if you ate like that. You poured that into your body with never fasting, never cleansing. Strategy number two to become more present in your life and focused on the future is getting off the thing that keeps pulling you into the past. You go, "No, I'm actually getting updated on what's going on in the world today." You're referencing it to the past. That's how your brain works. It's stress. It's toxic.

It's comparison. It's mainly unnecessary. and unhealthy, isn't it? So, take a phone fast. If you could do it for a day, do it. You can do it for a week, do it. Could you at least do it for 3 hours? Could you do it for 6 hours? Could you do it on Sundays? I think if you'll build in a phone fast, you'll find yourself much healthier, much more present. Trust me, much more present, and have a much more compelling future. You'll be much less nostalgic. Your phone's feeding you nostalgic thoughts like what you agree with politically, things that you want to follow, things you've seen before, repetitive messaging just said a different way.

different way. different way. Take a phone fast. Step two. Step three, practice small box focus. What does that mean? Actually train yourself to begin to focus on small, specific things. This changes your brain in the way that it works. And so, I've gotten actually pretty good at this. So, I will take something very small and put all of my attention on it. That may seem silly, but literally often times I'll take a pen like this and I will put all my focus on the top of the pen or on the pen, the point of the pen, and I'll just direct my focus right to that spot.

There's a tree right here in in my uh studio. I'll go outside and I won't focus on the entire tree. I will zoom my focus in on one of the leaves and I will break down that leaf. I'll look at its character. I'll look at the wrinkles on it. I'll look at the how it's different from the other ones and I will focus in on a very small spot. I'll do it with my little doggies. I'll just focus in not just with them being with me and how grateful I am that they're there, but I will focus in my attention on just their precious eyes or I'll hold one of them close to me.

Small box focus. And what that does is it trains your brain to eliminate all the big stuff and narrow in on the full present moment. You can do this just by going outside and picking one cloud in the sky. You can do it in your office by picking one picture to put your focus into. Okay? You can I I'm blessed that I live near the ocean. I will not just look at the vast entire ocean. I'll pick one wave and watch it come on all the way in.

I'll pick small things. You can literally be in a room. There's a chair right here in front of me and with a bunch of squares on it. I'll focus in on one of the squares and just direct my attention to it and see what I can notice about it. See the distinctions in it. And when I do that, I've narrowed my focus down and I begin to build a muscle of what I call small box focus. You can pick anything. You can do it repetitively. Even if you're reading a book, you can focus in on one word and just focus your gaze in on that one word.

What you're doing is you're training your brain to be fully present. Believe it or not, even when you're taking in beauty in the world, when it's the big picture, the big gaze, oftentimes your brain will now gravitate back to the past, back to nostalgia, back to your emotional home. But when you pick something small and specific, it forces you to be present. You can't look at something small and not be present in it. And then what you can do is the contrast. Go from the small gaze to the big gaze.

So, this one wave coming in to the entire ocean. Back to the small wave. The one square on the chair. Back to the entire studio. Back to the small square. Back to the entire studio. Back to the small square. This may seem kind of crazy, but what it's doing is it's training your brain to be fully present in the moment. What you're going to find over time is that this is a muscle you build and you can hold small box focus longer, much longer, and it's training you to be present.

And there'll become peace in it. And you'll find you don't need the ocean or some beautiful sunset necessarily to find peace to empty your mind. It's just being able to get focused in on small things. I know it's probably something you've never heard before, but it's a strategy that I've used very regularly and it's helped me a great deal, especially in this time that I've been taking to my health. The next thing and the last thing is name the dummy. Name the dummy. So, you know that person who starts thinking all those negative thoughts and starts stacking them and you run to that pattern in your head?

Name her. Name him. For me, he's Eddie Spaghetti. So, every time Eddie Spaghetti pops up, he's thinking negative. He's worrying about stuff. He's stacking negative thoughts. He's going to the past. He's comparing. He's beating himself up. He's getting tired. That guy, I've named him. That dumb's name is Eddie Spaghetti. And I go, Eddie Spaghetti showing back up. You can make that name a whole lot more aggressive than that, by the way, for you. But when you name the dummy, it changes your state. It immediately shifts you out of because you realize you are not your thoughts.

You don't have to believe everything you think. In fact, most of the stuff you think isn't true. And happy people, successful people realize they think a lot of stupid things. I'm 53 years old next month. And I can tell you, I've thought a whole bunch of stuff that wasn't true in my life. I have convinced myself of a whole bunch of things that weren't true. I've thought a bunch of stupid things in my life. And I cannot trust my own thoughts because the thoughts aren't mine.

They're from the past. And the past I vision isn't even real. It's my version of the past based on some emotional situation that I've replayed over and over again. And it's probably not even an accurate depiction of what the past is. And so I have stopped doing that. And I've named him when he shows up Eddie Spaghetti. And I call him some worse names than that that I won't say right here on a podcast. But when you name the dummy, the dummy loses power over you.

And it may not work at first, but if you do it over and over again, by the way, it can be anybody. You can go, "There's Slapnuts, right? There's Sammy. There's Sparky. There's Dumb. Whoever it is, you name it whatever you want. For me, because I got to say this out loud sometimes, it's Eddie Spaghetti. And the reason it's Eddie Spaghetti is when I was a little kid, I got teased with that name. And I don't like that guy at all. I don't ever want to be that dude again.

So, I have literally named it this version of me that I can't stand and that I don't like and that I know isn't really me. And so, when he starts showing up, Eddie spaghetti, your meatballs are ready. Right. There's a whole thing that I used to say when I was a kid that I don't ever want to go back to. And so when he shows up, I've named the dummy. And that dummy and he is a dummy and she is or he is a dummy that's feeding you these negative nostalgic weak thoughts.

You call him out by name and over time you actually get a chuckle eventually and it loses a lot of its power over you. So we have the two points of reference we have to do. The four key things I'm just giving you today on top of a whole bunch of other stuff I name in my books is make sure you have possibility projections. Number one. Number two, take a phone fast. Number three, practice small box focus. Focusing in on small things will make you fully present.

On the beach, pick a grain of sand in the beach and focus in on that one grain of sand. On the golf course, don't take in the whole golf course. Focus in right on the golf ball. And then if you can focus in on the T entitalist on that golf ball, you've really got smallbox focus down. It'll also help you play better. And then lastly, fourth, name the dummy. Those are four strategies to move you from nostalgia, the past, history, memory into the present moment, focused on your vision, your imagination, and your dreams.

I want to share something with you because it just happened this weekend. And I just from my folks here too. I think one of mine is that I am present with people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I do observe people. And so it's really interesting because I think that's one of the things that I love about doing the show and and it was fascinating because I never gave any thought as to where that came from because I mean your brain brilliance comes from the fact that you had this damaged brain as a child.

Yet it's one of your great gifts and one of the great things you're intelligent at, one of your your your geniuses. And so this weekend somebody had asked me why do you think like on your show or even we were at a dinner you're so present you're listening where do you think that comes from and I didn't know I didn't I thought about it and I said you know I'm not sure but you know it's interesting my dad was my dad's sober 30 years now but when I was a little boy my dad was had a drinking problem and I never knew as a little boy which dad was going to come through the front door at night and so unlike most kids who would run up and hug dad I would observe dad when he came home and so when dad walk through the front door, I'd look at his physiology.

I'd look at his eyes, his face, his lips. I'd listen to what his first few words were. And I think since I was about a four-year-old little boy, I was sort of through that unfortunate circumstance in my family, I developed this intelligence of being present and really being with someone and and understanding them and connecting with them and seeing where they really were. and it's ended up serving me as a 47y old man with you here today. Isn't that interesting? And so many for some of you listening, I would just say to you that sometimes some of your great genius could be coming from some of what you would think might be some of the more tragic events in your life or difficult events.

Just think about that and the selft talk also you know when I had said I had the you know at age nine a teacher looked at me said that's the boy with the broken brain for the whole class class class you know and parents and adults have to be very careful because your external words become a child's internal words because every single time I did bad on a quiz on a test or not pick for a sports team which was all the time I would say oh cuz I have the broken brain that became my internal conversation and I always tell people when they come to me and they say I'm not smart enough I'm not good enough I have a horrible memory I always say if you fight for your limitation you get to keep them.

If you fight for your limitations, you argue for your limits, they're yours, right? And here's the thing, your brain is like a supercomput. So if you tell yourself you're not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you programmed your supercomput not to. They say the two most powerful words in English language are also the smallest. I am. Because whatever you put after that, complete that sentence with is going to determine your destination, your your destiny. I'm so glad you're saying this because this is typically said by like you know what I mean to motivational people or inspiring people.

Now we've got a brain person science telling you this is a fact. So your identity is this. Let's say at a simple level let's say people want to change their behavior. They want to stop procrastinating but their identity is I'm a procrastinator. Oo that's going to be a tough one. They want to change a behavior like oh I want to stop smoking but their identity is I am a smoker. Wow. That's going to be a challenge, right? So, here's the thing. The reason why I bring these distinctions up is because it takes the the self-loathing or the judgment out of it because you don't have to if you're not good at something, you could say like, oh, you could address the level that that's holding you back.

Finally, below the level of behavior, and this is a big one, is the envir is a level of environment environment because you could the behavior is you want to stop smoking, but the environment is you're around a lot of smokers because it's not here's the thing. The people you spend time with is the people you become. You know this, you teach this because your mirror neurons are always imitating what's around you. And that's the thing. So I want to sensitize you to because often the people that hold us back are the people that love us the most.

You know, cuz you know why? They're like, "Oh, you're going to another event. You're listening to another podcast. Why are you reading another book, spending all that money?" And they have good they could have good intentions, intentions, intentions, right? Because ultimately people are doing things for, you know, generally I believe for good reasons. But they could be sincere, but they could be sincerely wrong. sincerely wrong. And I love the I'm not this yet, right? I also want to just repeat things that just we just you're you say brilliant things one after the other.

And so this idea that as a parent, your external dialogue becomes your child's internal dialogue is just riveting. I mean, it's riveting. And it's also true, I think, of leaders and companies too. Your external dialogue about your company or about that individual can become their internal dialogue. So what you're saying matters so deeply. There there are six primary questions we learned in school. Five W's and one H. Right Right Right now watch this. The identity level answers the question of who. The beliefs and values answers the question of why.

The capabilities answer the question of how you do it. The behavior is the what. And the environment answers the question of when and where. It is fully aligned. And so I feel like we have natural genius in inside of us. And if we when this is aligned with this, when people talk about their mind and their body and their values and the habits, when they're all aligned, things happen naturally and they're not have been forced. And my goal for everybody who's watching and listening to this is that they're smarter than they think.

It's just we weren't taught how to do these things. And when you're in congruence and in alignment, things happen. Your natural superpowers, if you will, will, will, yes, yes, yes, come out come out organically and not forced. Boy, that's man, brother, that's so good. I'm processing all of this with you. Um, they'll be mad at me if I don't ask you a a tactical question. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, can you give them I'm going to get a couple more things, but thank you for taking the extra time.

They'll they'll be I'll get I'll get DMs and emails if I don't ask you tactically ask him a a specific tactic to remember a name. So, I have Max out. Do you do an association when you remember something? I do. I do. Um, really fast. I would say be suave. B Suave. I'll give you really quick. B is believe, right? Believe you can. You're right. So can. Believe you can. You're right. So stop the negative selft talk. Okay, right. So that that that's obvious. The second thing is E is exercise.

We already talked about power of exercise. Practice. Because the bad news is it takes practice to learn someone's name. The good news, not as much as you think. Okay? Okay? Okay? Like I'm really good at names, but after practicing for a couple months, it's just become second nature. Okay? Okay? Okay? Right? Just like parking a car, learning how to type, you do it without thinking. The swab is this. S stands for say the name. When tactically when you meet somebody, you say their name back to them, right?

Because you make sure you observe it correctly. The U is you use the name. Use it three or four times. You talk about that. The A is you ask about a name. This is really great, Ed. When you meet somebody whose name you haven't heard before, you meet someone named Absal or Ritiger. What can you ask about a person's name? You already said this. You already said it's not travel entrepreneurship. What's everyone's favorite subject? It's themselves. So, what can you ask about a person's name? How do you spell it?

Where's it from? You know, what does it mean? I was doing this training at the at the country's largest life insurance company. 100 people in the room. The training director's name was Nanita. And I was like in front of the whole group. I was like, "That's a beautiful name. How do you spell it? Where's it from? What does it mean?" She paused. I was like, "Nita, what does it mean?" She looked at all her co-workers. It says, she said, "It means graceful falling waters." And I was like, "Wow." And then her co-workers gave that kind of reaction, like a novelty.

And I was like, "Wait a second. How long have you worked here?" She was like, you know, x amount of years with these people. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of them good friends are at my wedding. I was like, out of 100, I was like, raise your hand if you knew that's what her name meant. Out of 100 people, how many people raised their hand? Zero. hand? Zero. hand? Zero. Zero. Zero. And talk about like caring. That became like a 10-year client, right? Because that's the power of a name, the emotion, right?

So ask about a person's name. person's name. person's name. And then V and B Suave stands for visualize. And here's a real tactical thing. thing. thing. We tend to be better with faces than names, right? Aren't you? You you meet a lot of people, right? people come and you meet somebody you you say to them I remember your face but I forgot your you never go to someone say the opposite you never go to someone I remember your name but I forgot your face that wouldn't make any sense but here's the reason why for neurological your visual cortex is a lot larger than other parts of your brain so you tend to remember what you see see see now if you tend to remember what there's Chinese proverb that goes what I hear I forget what I see I remember what I do I understand what I hear I forget I heard the name I forgot the name what I see I remember I saw the face I'll remember the face what I do going back to practice and exercise.

I understand. So if you tend to remember what you see, try seeing what you remember. So quick visual aid is this. Play Pictionary. A person's name, for example, is Mark. Take a split second and put a check mark on their forehead. And you're like, Jim, that's so childish. Who are the fastest learners on the planet? Children. Children. Children. Children. Yes. Children. Yes. Children. Yes. How fast can they learn a musical instrument? How fast can they learn another language? Right? They're sponges. And part of how they remember names is they make fun of people.

Like they go to somebody you're like you know they go to someone named Jason and Jason the bas right and all of a sudden like Jason's in therapy for years not knowing you know because he was te but that's how you learn banana fan you learn through through imagery right and they make fun and so that remember more emotion too information you forget information combined with emotion so person's name is Mary imagine meet someone they marry handshake breaks you imagine she's getting married or she's carrying two lambs under her arms and here's the thing it overcomes in business what I call the six-cond rule Six.

Somebody tells you something important in a conversation or their name, you have 6 seconds to do something with it. Otherwise, what happens? It's gone. Out of your working memory, short-term memory, it's gone. So, this helps you to focus uniquely on both the person and also the name. So, if a person's name, so for example, is let's say carol. Imagine they're singing Christmas carols. Yes. Right. A person's name is is Mike. Imagine them jumping on the table, singing on a microphone for a split second. And then when you say goodbye to them 20 minutes later, you're like, "Oh, that guy was sitting on the, you know, karaoke on the microphone, what's his name?" Mike, right?

Because it glues it. And then, by the way, it's it's a short term because once you know the person's name is Ed or Athena or Mike or whatever, what will happen is you just named everybody here. Once once you do that, then the pictures disappear because you know it. You just need something to glue it because there's three parts to your memory. You encode the information, you store the information, then you retrieve the information. But most people can't retrieve it because they're not encoding in a way that makes it memorable.

Go. So you make it visual. You make it fun and interesting. So if person's name is John, you can imagine whatever. whatever. whatever. And then finally, that's the V. The E in swab stands for end. You always end the conversation using their name. Saying goodbye using their name. Because if you could walk into a room of strangers and leave saying goodbye to 20 strangers by name, who are they all going to remember? remember? remember? You. They're gonna and that's a standout skill because it's not just what you know because yes you can learn faster.

It's not only who you know but it's also who knows you. Who knows you and who's going to remember you as a standout skill. standout skill. standout skill. That is awesome. Awesome. And the sixsecond rule. If you don't use it, you lose it. So do something within the first seconds. That is brilliant. There are a few obstacles to effective reading. So let's go through them really quickly. Number one, what keeps you from reading slow is lack of education. You're not born with the ability to read.

Nobody is. And so we learned it through class, through a training, right? But when's the last time you took a class called a reading? Okay. Okay. Okay. How old were you? Probably six. Probably six. Probably six. Six or seven years old. Right. Exactly. So we are still, every single person watching this, for the most part, we're still reading like we're a six or seveny old old old because that's the last time we had training in that one area. Right. The difficulty demand has increased tremendously, but we're still reading like a six-year-old.

So that's number one, get the proper education, lack of education. Number two, lack of focus. We could all relate to this. You read a page in a book, you get to the end, just forget what you just read, course course course because your attention is everywhere. Your mind wanders. You're thinking about the dry cleaning, the clients, everything, the kids. So, here's the thing. Um, you just mentioned that if you read faster, you feel like you wouldn't retain as much and understand as much. It's not. It's It's not because we weren't taught differently, right?

And so, what I would say is the fastest. So, I think it's a it's a myth being spread around by slow readers that if you read faster, you wouldn't understand as much because it's a lie. And and this is interesting because we have online academy, right, about speed reading. reading. reading. And we have students in over 180 countries. So, we have a lot of data and we found the fastest readers actually have the best comprehension because they have the best focus. Okay, Okay, Okay, so here's it.

This is a metaphor. Your brain is this incredible supercomput. But when you read, you feed the supercomput one word. at at at uh time metaphorically you're starving your mind. Okay. Right. And even if we were to talk like that through this convers it would be like 8 days to right and what would happen to people very quickly if they were talking that slow their mind would wander. wander. wander. They would fall asleep. They would think about other things. They would just they do. And isn't that aren't those the same exact things that happen when you read?

Your mind wanders. You fall asleep. you start thinking about other things because if you don't give your brain the stimulus it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere in the form of distraction. distraction. distraction. Got it. Got it. Got it. Third obstacle. This is the big one. Sub vocalization. Sub vocalization. Sub vocalization. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This is the big one by far. We're talking about your inner voice. Sub vocalization means you ever notice when you're reading something, you hear that inner voice inside your head reading along with you.

You hear that? Hopefully, it's your own voice. It's not like somebody else's voice. The reasoning why it keeps you reading slow. Reason why is because if you have to say all the words to understand them, you can only read as fast as you could speak. And that that this this is mind-blowing to me. Sub vocalization, vocal speech, sub like a submarine, inner speech. If you're saying the words to understand what you're reading, you're doing it not right. Because New York City, you don't have to say the word New York City or computer to understand what those just like when you're driving, you see a stop sign, you don't say to yourself, stop.

95% of the words. Do you understand what that stop sign means though? Yes. 95% of words are words you've seen before. You don't have to pronounce the words. You know, leaders are readers, right? You read a lot. Tony Robbins read a lot. You know, like Oprah reads a lot. Bill Gates reads a lot. Like John F. Kennedy, you know, leaders are readers. He was a very fast reader. He was said to have read every morning six newspapers with one cup of coffee. Most people, it's the opposite.

It takes like six cups of coffee to get through like a newspaper, right? And that's the challenge. But he's, you know, let's say, you know, he said to read 800 to a,000 words a minute. But if he could talk at the average talking to about 200 250 words per minute, there are like 700 words per minute. He's not pronouncing, right? You don't have to pronounce words you've seen before. But that's how we were taught as a kid. Like a lot of what accelerated learning is, just like success is unlearning.

Bad habits. When you were a kid, you had to say the words out loud cuz the teacher need to know you're pronouncing the words phonetically correctly. But later on, remember this? Your teacher said, "Read quietly to yourself. Read silently to yourself." And that's when you used to that external voice and you put it internal there and it's been there ever since. Here's here's a good point. When we listen to podcasts or audiobooks, how many people like to listen to it at 1.5 or 2x or 3x and they can understand it too.

You can't talk that fast though. And that's the thing, right? And so that's why that's why that's why sub vocalization is saying basically if you're sub vocalizing your reading speed is limited to your talking speed, not your thinking speed. You could understand so much more, so much faster, but you can't talk that fast. It's a bad habit we picked up as a kid. So we did a whole podcast on how to reduce sub vocalization right and or our programs like over 2130 days we teach people methodically how to do it because there's different than a tip than a than a training of course fourth obstacle I would say and then we go to solution regression it's a very bad habit we picked up as a kid regression is back skipping you ever notice you read something you go back and reread words or you reread a whole line by accident yes you know upwards of 20 25% of time can be spent rereading words so how do you now now now I'm going to give you just one tip on how to overcome come this which will make a big difference.

This tip is going to help you read 25 to 50% faster with better focus. Now that's a huge return because like like on average our online program 300% increase. Welcome back to Max Out with Ed Mlet. Super excited to bring this gentleman to my left here today because if you take his IQ and you take mine and you average them together, you may actually get an average IQ out of the two of us here. So this is Dr. Joe Despensza and Joe is I think he's a peak performance expert is what I would really call you.

I think you help people reach their peak in their ability to perform in their life, but he's really an expert at the mind, body, spirit sort of connection and helping you really be a happier version of yourself. And so we're going to talk about all the details of that today with you. So Joe, thank you for being here. You're welcome and happy to be with you. It's wonderful. And we are at Bulletproof Labs, by the way, in Santa Monica, California, which is one of the most impressive places I have ever been in in my life in terms of the cutting edge of human performance as well.

And so check out Bulletproof Labs when you get an opportunity to do that. So, let's max out our time here together today, though. Okay. So, you say all kinds of things that I'm fascinated with, but I think you're fascinating because you've become this expert in a field that's very unique really to you and the way you explain things. Um, people always want to know how to perform better, how their brain works, and I think you show them how to do it, but also why it works.

And I'm fascinated by that. So, but you didn't start out in this industry, right? So, before we go to all the great stuff, how the heck did you become you? like I've read about you. You you were actually you're a chiropractor prior, correct? Yeah, I started out as a as a chiropractor. So, tell everybody about you just a little bit. Well, uh let's see. Uh I uh got started on this. I think most of the time when uh we wake up, we need a wakeup call.

And I was in uh Palm Springs, California. I was in a triathlon. I was on a biking portion of the race and uh I was making a turn and I was passing two cyclists on the corner and there was a cadet, a police officer kind of pointing at me, waving on to make the turn like this. this. this. Okay. Okay. Okay. And he had his back to the oncoming traffic. So when I made the turn, a four-wheel drive Bronco going about 55 mph uh caught me from behind and catapulted me out of my bike.

Oh my gosh. Anyway, when you land that hard on your rump or on your back, uh the force of that compression takes the columns of the vertebrae and compresses them. So, I had uh broken six vertebrae in my spine and I had bone fragments on my spinal cord and the very top segment, the eighth thoracic vertebrae. I broke uh T8, T9, T10, T11, T12, and L1. And T8 took the compressive force and I flexed. And so when I flexed, it compressed that vertebrae more than 60% and the arch where the sk uh spinal cord passes through broke like a pretzel.

So I had uh multiple compression fractures of my thoracic spine. I had a bone fragments on my cord because when you compress a volume of something, the volume has to go somewhere. So it went back on the cord and the neural arch of the athoracic vertebrae was was compressing the cord as well. Oh my goodness. So anyway, um a typical procedure for something like that is the called the Harrington rod surgery and they cut off the back parts of your verte vertebrae. It's called a laminctomy.

In my case, it would be from the base of my neck to the base of my spine. spine. spine. Got chills. Got chills. Got chills. And uh then they screw in these stainless steel rods and the action of screwing into the the bone causes a canal lever. kind of pulls the column off the cord in some cases. And opens up the the nerve supply. Uh and then they take bone fragments from your hip and they they paste it over the top and they hope for the best.

And so I had four opinions uh from four of the leading surgeons in Southern California and it was unanimous that uh that I needed that procedure. Now I was in a lot of pain. I had some neurological problems and they told me if I didn't have the surgery I would never walk again. Uh, so I decided against the surgery and I thought I didn't want to live handicapped. I didn't want to be in a wheelchair and I didn't want to be addicted addicted addicted uh to pain medication.

So I thought I might as well take a chance here. So I didn't really know what I was doing. doing. doing. You say the chance on what did you know what the alternative was? Well, I think I think that I believed that this voice kept coming up in my head saying the power that made the body heals the body. And and I thought, well, God, this power is an intelligence. An intelligence is consciousness. Consciousness is awareness. Awareness is paying attention. It must be paying attention to me.

Can I ask a question? Did you think this way prior to that incident? Yeah, to some degree. I think I think that most of us are philosophical to some degree. You know, we have a philosophy about life. So, right. So, right. So, right. But when you're initiated, that means you have to initiate that philosophy. So, So, So, love that. love that. love that. I had to take what I knew Mhm. and weigh it against what I didn't know. And I think one of the worst places we are we wind up as human beings is indecision.

is indecision. is indecision. And so I had very very strong authorities telling me you're never going to walk again. You're you have a head injury. I don't know why you're deciding against the surgery. If it was my son, it would be on the operating table. table. table. Anyway, I checked out of the hospital and I began the process. I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't doing anything. uh I was laying face down and I said I'm not going to let any thought slip by my awareness that I don't want to experience and if this intelligence is truly a consciousness I have to be present with it and so what I did was I just start started reconstructing my spine and my mind vertebrae by vertebrae and then you know you'd start I'd start off doing that and the next thing you know I'd start thinking about should I sell my home should I sell my practice and I realized that the template, the design that I wasn't was creating wasn't complete.

So, I'd stop, start all over again, get frustrated, then it would get harder. And it sounds like me when I began meditating. meditating. meditating. Yeah. It's the same thing. Yeah. Because meditation requires being present. And that's a skill. You got to practice it. So, um, I didn't have a teacher at the time. I was just going off my intuition. And it would take me three hours to go through the whole entire process just to complete it. and I'd start all over because I wanted it to be a complete uh model.

So 6 and 1/2 weeks of just a dark night of the soul because I think when we're traumatized or we're under stress, we tend to focus on what we don't want to have happen and what we do want to have happen. And I think in survival, we're always preparing for the worst case scenario. case scenario. case scenario. So it was a battle that I So it was a battle that I couldn't get my mind to do what I wanted to do. the end of six and a half weeks, one day, I went through the whole entire thing without breaking my focus.

And I swear it was like hitting a golf ball right in the sweet spot. It just it just clicked and I clicked. And from that moment on, my body started to heal. That's incredible. That's incredible. That's incredible. I started to have less pain, my neurological symptoms were were diminishing. And the moment I started to correlate the changes that were happening in my body with what I was doing inside of me, I started doing it with more passion and more enthusiasm. Anyway, I was back on my feet in uh 9 and 1/2 weeks.

I was back training again at uh 12 weeks. Come on. on. on. I was back in my practice and um you know, they told me that I would have to wear this body cast for a year, 6 months to a year. And uh well, gosh, I put it on once and took it off and said there's just no way I'm going to wear this. And so, I just made a deal with myself. And the deal was uh in those lonely nights where I couldn't sleep, if uh if I'm ever able to walk again, I'll spend the rest of my life studying the mind body connection and mind over matter.

And pretty much that's what I've been doing. That's amazing. So that's the See, I'm a layman. So I start out introducing you as a peak performance person because I see everything through performance, I guess, right? But that's incredible because the sophisticated version is that you're this you've studied this convergence of like neuroscience, quantum physics, epigenetics, sort of the convergence of that, right? Mhm. What would you say you do? In other words, if someone said to you, because I know we talk a lot about healing, healing, healing, but what would you say?

Someone says, "What do you do?" What would your answer be to that? I get that question every day, every week when I'm on a plane. Someone sits next to me, they go, "So, what do you do?" do?" do?" And then I wind up talking to them for 4 hours. Uh, I I I teach people really a way to live a better life and to to heal themselves of past scars, to provide the tools for them to realize that they're more than they really perceive themselves to be.

And and I believe that your personality creates your personal reality. reality. reality. And can you elaborate on that? I was going to ask you about that. Yeah. So your personality is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel. Mhm. feel. Mhm. feel. Mhm. So the present personality who's watching this show has created the present personal reality called their life. life. life. Means then if you want to change your life, your personal reality, that means fundamentally you have to change your personality.

That means you have to start thinking about what you've been thinking about and change it. You have to begin to become aware of your unconscious habits and behaviors and modify them. Then you have to look at certain emotions that keep you anchored to the past and decide if those emotions belong in your future. your future. your future. And I think after all these years, Ed, I think that most people try to create a new personal reality as the same personality and it doesn't work. You know, you literally have to become someone else.

So the process then most people they're thinking the same thoughts, they're making the same choices, they're demonstrating the same behaviors, they're creating the same experiences that stamp the same networks of neurons into the same patterns all for the familiar feeling that they call themselves. And if you keep doing that over and over again, there's a principle in neuroscience that says that nerve cells that fire together wire together. So people begin to hardwire their brain into very finite signature into these automatic programs. Mhm. Turns out by the time we're 35 years old, we become a set of memorized behaviors, emotional reactions, beliefs, perceptions, unconscious attitudes that function just like a computer program.

So when people want to change, they're using 5% of their conscious mind and they can think positively all they want, but the programs are running subconsciously telling them that they're negative. So, so the only way to do that then is to get into the operating system. And getting into the operating system of of that where those programs exist requires then people beginning to go do some inward work. If you sit down and you disconnect from your outer world, you close your eyes. We play some music in the background.

You sit your body down and not smelling anything or tasting anything or experiencing anything or feeling anything feeling anything feeling anything and you're not thinking about or anticipating the future or remembering the familiar past. That moment, that elegant moment where you fall into the present moment is where the magic happens. happens. happens. And so after looking at enough brain scans in the process of studying the uh transformation, transformation, transformation, yeah, I call that getting beyond yourself because when you disconnect from your present personal reality and personality, now you're ready to create something else.

And so what thoughts do you want to fire and wire in your brain? what behaviors do you want to demonstrate? And the act of rehearsing the behavior the behavior the behavior uh begins to install the neurological hardware in your brain primes it to look like the experience has already happened. happened. happened. Yep. Let's step back for a second. I want to stay on that. I want everyone to be with us. So, a couple things you said cuz you said a ton there, right? And so, this just I want everybody to catch a couple things here.

The a basic thing, a base model is that people don't think about what they think about enough. In other words, just taking a second to think about what you actually think about is a breakthrough experience. Just something that simple, right? And we have, you can correct me, but we have somewhere around 80,000 thoughts a day. Is that about right? And at some point, 70% of them, I just want everybody to understand this, are the same thoughts on every 90% of them. So 90% of those thoughts are the same thoughts on a daily basis.

And we wonder why, if we really are what we think about, why our lives continue to sort of perpetuate themselves over and over again. again. again. You got it. You got And so we have these patterns. You've talked about beginning to consciously choose and decide what these thoughts and behaviors are that you would like. So is there a way specifically maybe one technique you give today outside of some of the seminars and books that we're going to talk about in a minute? But how do you break that pattern?

And how do you become conscious of getting new thoughts that serve you that create that person that you want to be? Look, it's really simple. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um your brain is organized to reflect everything you know in your life. Your brain is a record of the pla past. It's an artifact of everything you've learned and experienced at this mo uh moment. Feelings and emotions are the end product of past experiences. And we can remember experiences better because we remember how they feel. So most people wake up in the morning and they start remembering all their problems.

And those problems are connected to certain people and certain things at certain times and places. The moment they start thinking about those problems, they're thinking in the past. Those problems have an emotion associated with them. And the moment they start feeling those emotions, the body is the unconscious mind doesn't know the difference between an experience that's creating an emotion and the emotion the person's fabricating by thought alone. Now thoughts are the language of the brain and feelings are the language of the body. And how you think and how you feel creates your state of being.

So most people's entire state of being when they start their day is already in the past. the past. the past. So you have a choice. The choice is you're either defined by a vision of the future or you're defined by the memories of the past. past. past. And when you decide to say, "Okay, I'm going to change." And you decide one thing. I'm not going to eat this food. I'm going to wake up earlier. Uh I'm going to do something aerobic. I'm not going to have sugar after 6:00.

Whatever it is a person, whatever choice a person makes, makes, makes, the moment you make a choice to do something differently, and the hardest part about change is not making the same choice as you did the day before, get ready because it's going to feel uncomfortable. It's going to feel unfamiliar. There's going to be some uncertainty and unpredictability and that's the moment the game is on. Yes. Yes. Yes. So then most people their their body has been conditioned emotionally to be the mind. So now the so the the body says, "Wow, uh I'd rather hang on to my guilt than take a chance in possibility.

I'd rather live in fear than trust in the unknown." So So once the person feels uncomfortable, the body goes, "Whoa, wait a second. Uh we're out of the program here." And body starts influencing the mind. So it says, "Start tomorrow. You'll never change. You don't have the money to do this. You're not good enough. Your mother told you you were this. Your father's fault. it's your ex's fault. You know, all of the voices that come up. Now, here's the deal. If you respond to those voices, those same thoughts as if they're true.

By the way, they're always going on behind the scenes of your awareness, but now they're amplified because you're outside your comfort zone. You believe in that thought. That thought's going to lead to the same choice, which is going to lead to the same behavior, which is going to create the same experience and produce the same emotion. And the person's going to say, "This feels right." No, no, no. That feels familiar. Going from the old self to the new self is a neurological, it's a biological, it's a chemical, it's a hormonal, it's a genetic death of the old self.

old self. old self. And people will say to me in that void, in that unknown, I can't predict my future. And I'll say to them, the best way to predict your future is to create it. Not from the known, but from the unknown. unknown. unknown. So close your eyes now and think about that vision. that vision. that vision. Once you start thinking about that vision of your future, you're activating the creative centers in your brain. Mhm. And naturally, you begin to think about putting yourself in the scene.

Yes. Yes. Yes. And the act of doing that, when you're truly passionate and truly present, the moment you're defined by that vision, when the thought in your mind becomes the experience, you begin to feel the emotion of the event before it's made manifest. Now, you're giving your body your body your body a sampling, a taste of the future. And now if a thought and a feeling create a new state of being, you're combining a clear intention with an elevated emotion. And now you're beginning to change your biology.

And you're seeing a whole new landscape that you could never see before cuz you're no longer viewing your future through the lens of the past. I love this. Now this this requires then something really specific because most people will wait for their their their wealth to feel abundance. They'll wait for their success to feel empowered. They'll wait for their new relationship to feel loved. loved. loved. They'll get all these things when Yeah. So, so think about that. The absence of getting those things causes people to live in lack their entire life.

And so, they're waiting for something outside of them to change how they feel inside of them. And if they're not creating a new life, then they're not applying the proper principles. Then they keep all their manifestations, all their dreams at arms length. Think about this. If you get up feeling gratitude, if you get up feeling empowered, if you get up feeling whole, if you get up feeling unlimited, why would you worry about why would you worry about whether it was going to come or not? You would feel like it already happened, right?

right? right? How do you do that when you are stepping into the know? Give you give us one strategy, one thought, one technique that keeps us is it just for me, candidly, for me it's just always been because you're you're explaining to me on a much more deep level things I've understood through my own experience, right? Everyone that's listening to this has had an experience where these formulas, these concepts, and these ideas have worked for you. They have. You've all had an experience like this. For me, it's just being conscious of it.

For me, it's it's literally for me taking control of it and being conscious. But how would you answer that? that? that? Well, I absolutely agree with you, Ed. You're absolutely right. We're wired to create. This isn't something that you have to try to do. You just have to get beyond the memory of your past and all the associations to create a new future. Now theoretically that sounds sounds really easily but everybody's done it at least once in their life. What happened? You get a wild idea.

You get a crazy idea and you think what would it be like to be happy? What would it be like to be in love? What would it be like to be rich? Whatever it is and you all of a sudden you ask that question question question and you turn on the creative center in your brain. That's right. It turns on and then now the frontal lobe is is the is the boss. It's the CEO. It's the symphony leader. And the frontal lobe as an executive has connections to all other parts of the brain.

Now when you ask that question, it's got to answer it. So it's got to look out over the landscape and see what kind of raw materials do I have. Well, you only have a few things. Knowledge you've learned and experiences you had. So it begins to call up different networks of neurons and it begins to seamlessly piece them together and you get a vision in your mind. That's called intent. intent. intent. And if you're passionate, you start to feel the feelings of when it happens. Now you're giving your body that energetic boost.

energetic boost. energetic boost. Now everybody's done this. The moment you've said that, no one can talk you out of it. No person. That's right. No thing, no experience. It's you're possessed by it. So then what happens next? You start writing down writing down writing down Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. all the choices you need to make. All the things you got to do, all the goals and experiences you want in your future. And every time you write one of those goals or experiences down, you start to feel more of those emotions.

And now you're basically assembling more of your future. Now the astute person does something really amazing. They start learning more information. You want to be wealthy, study wealthy people. You want to be healthy, study healthy people. people. people. As you begin to gain more knowledge, you're adding more stitches into the three-dimensional tapestry and you got more raw materials to dream in new ways. Now, Now, Now, here's the part that that is the most important. important. important. Mhm. Take out a piece of paper and say, "What thoughts do I have to stop thinking?

You know, I can't. I'll start tomorrow. I'm too hard. I don't feel like it. I have a headache. I got to go to sleep. I'm tired." List those thoughts and become so conscious of those thoughts that you would never let one of those thoughts slip by your awareness, unchecked by you. Can I say something about that? I want to jump in on that. One of the powers of writing those thoughts down is you completely eliminate and weaken their influence over you. They become minimized when you write them.

They lose their power over you when you grab control of them by writing them down. It's a significantly powerful exercise is to write down those thoughts. Yeah. From a neuroscientific standpoint, what's called metacognition because the moment you can observe the thought and become conscious of it, you're no longer the program. You're consciousness observing the program and you begin to literally objectify your subjective self and now you're pulling out. So then write down the choices you have to stop making. making. making. Mhm. Look at the things you have to stop doing.

Or do you complain? Do you make excuses? Do you blame other people? What do you do? List those things and be really honest with yourself. What experiences do you have to stay away from from certain people at certain times and stay away from them so that you are not in the environment that triggers it? And now here's the most important point. important point. important point. Okay? Okay? Okay? Write down those emotions that keep you anchored to the past because those emotions are literally residue from the past chemically.

So then the moment you start feeling suffering, the moment you start feeling guilt, the moment you start feeling unworthy, the moment you start feeling despair or the moment you start feeling any of those emotions, you're back in your past and you can't see the future. You're you're you're you're you're thinking within those emotional states. And we've looked at enough brain stems to say that when you think within a certain emotion, you're going to make your brain worse. Thoughts are physical. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. What are thoughts when they happen in your body?

The power of this great. The stronger the emotion that you feel from any condition in your environment, the more you pay attention to the cause. So the higher the threshold of the emotion, the more the brain narrows its focus on whatever it is in the environment does it. And the brain takes a snapshot and that's called a memory. So now people think neurologically within the circuits of the past experience and they feel chemically within the boundaries of those emotions. Now you say to the person, well what happened?

happened? happened? Mhm. a person say, "This person did this to me. That person did that, then this happened." And the latest research on memory says that 50% of what you talk about in the past isn't even the truth. That you you you don't have the same brain then. So, you make stuff up, which means now you're reliving a past that you didn't even have just to embellish it to produce the emotions to reaffirm your limited limited state. Welcome back to the show everybody. Hey, I'm excited to spend some time with you today covering something that you all ask about often, which is the topic of visualization.

visualization. visualization. And I think it's a topic that most people don't understand, nor do they take advantage of. One of the key strategies in my entire life of producing the results that I've been blessed to produce has a lot to do. One of the key strategies is visualization, mental rehearsal, and understanding how to do it, understanding the power of it, and the reasons why you should be doing more mental rehearsal, more visualization. You know, I'm blessed that I've had an opportunity to coach a lot of top CEOs, entrepreneurs, entertainers, and yes, a lot of athletes.

And whether that be a in the UFC, in the MMA, or a golfer, baseball player, I get asked often, what do you work on with a lot of these athletes? And although we work on a variety of different things, one of them is visualization because it's really an accepted practice in sports that you visualize things. But most people, you can ask yourself this to begin. How much visualization do you do in a directed intentional way? In other words, you're visualizing things, your problems, your worries, your fears.

You're visualizing an appointment, let's just say. But how often are you doing that proactively? Are you using it as a strategy for peak performance, a strategy for bliss, a strategy to be more productive and serve more people? Mental rehearsal and visualization is one of the greatest gifts you could give yourself and it's a great hack to producing the results that you want because the truth of the matter is you are more than likely producing right now what you've already been visualizing. And so taking control of that and harnessing control of it is a really really big deal.

And why? Because we all have fears. We all have insecurities. These fears and insecurities will find a way to express themselves one way or the other. And so if we can't take control of our fears and our insecurities and we don't build up mental rehearsal and visualizations, the things we want, the things that give us confidence, one or the other are going to end up expressing themselves. That's why it's so important that you really learn to take control of your mental rehearsal and visualization. And why is that the case?

Here's the deal. You move towards what you're most familiar with in your life. Okay? So there's a there's a degree of familiarity in our lives that we move towards what's comfortable, what's safe, what's most familiar to us because it requires the least amount of thinking. Your brain really wants to operate and conserve energy as much as it can. So the more things it can do habitually without having to think, the easier it is on your brain. And so it's constantly trying to get you to move towards what's familiar.

And so if what's most familiar to you is your fears, your worries, your anxieties, your insecurities, you will move towards them. If you wonder whether that's accurate or not, we try to avoid things that are unfamiliar to us. People have asked me, "Oh my gosh, I saw that golfer. He had a putt to win the golf tournament from 5 feet and he missed it." And he missed it for two reasons. Either he was very familiar with the mental rehearsal and the visualization he or she was of missing and they programmed that fear in so they moved towards what was familiar and which was missing the putt or they didn't do any mental rehearsal.

whatsoever. And when they got into that pressure situation, their brain was not familiar with that environment, with that situation. And so it wasn't able to function at its optimal level. And so the reason that we want to make sure that we're doing mental rehearsal and visualization regularly in our life is so that when we get there, we're familiar and we're likely to move towards that result we've already visualized. If we don't, if we only take visualization about our fears and worries, which is what most people do, you will move towards those because you're familiar with them as well.

or the absence of any preparation. When you walk into a meeting to give a prep presentation, you've not mentally rehearsed the result. You've not visualized the result. If you've not done that, you've left it up to your own devices. And more than likely, because you're unfamiliar, your brain cannot perform at its optimal level. So that's why mental rehearsal preparation because your body doesn't know, your subconscious mind does not know the difference between what's real and what's imagined. And so the more you rehearse it, the more your brain believes, your mind believes that you've already done it.

You've already accomplishment. So when you enter the environment, you enter the situation. You will gravitate and more move towards what's most familiar. Think about it this way. How much thinking do you do when you walk into a room full of strangers, strangers, strangers, right? You walk in, you don't know anybody in there. You're pulling up to an event and you don't know a soul. You're going to walk into a room with 50 or 100 people. You're doing some thinking, aren't you? You're thinking about how would I introduce myself?

Is my hair the right way? Did I do my makeup correctly? What's a story that I could tell tonight that's funny? What if they ask me this? Your anxiety and nervousness level goes up. No matter who you are, right? Because of the unknown, the unfamiliar. And so what happens is you just start thinking and going into pattern mode. You're going into mapping mode because where you're going is unfamiliar. Now compare how much thinking you do when you walk into a room like that compared to just walking through your front door to your house where everybody's familiar.

Do you really even have to think about it? When you walk from your kitchen to the living room where your family is, do you do any thinking whatsoever? Does your heart rate go up at all? Is there anything in your body that's changing from a neurobiochemistry standpoint? No. You're almost doing zero thinking because you're familiar with it. And so in life, if you can begin to become that familiar like you are with your own family and friends, with your dreams, your goals, and your ambitions, or maybe it's as simple as just a specific result in one occasion, the more you've done that, the more you're not going to have to think nearly as much and process information.

This is really called mapping. And so life is really better when you don't focus on what's going on around you, but you focus on what's going on inside of you. Okay? So think about that for a second. Life is always better when you don't focus on what's going on around you, but you focus on what's going on inside of you. So, there's this great story that my producer was sharing with me. He's a big soccer fan about Wayne Rooney, who's one of the most legendary players of all time.

And he said he would take his visualization to a level that blew most people's minds. And he would literally get with the equipment manager before a game and ask him, "What uniform are we going to be wearing?" And so, he would get the actual uniform and know what it looked like. He would also want to know what music they were going to be playing when they came out, when they're getting ready to play. He would want to know the exact song. And he would also want to know the weather.

So he would then get back and the night before the games would visualize that uniform, would visualize that music playing, would visualize that weather so that when he got there, it was all familiar to him. You know, a lot of athletes and people ask me, should I only visualize me getting the yes because I'm mapping making the putt, or making the putt, or hitting the shot or having the knockout or closing the sail or, you know, getting whatever it is that you want. Should I only visualize the positive things?

And that's a really interesting thing because the way your brain works, it actually probably serves you most to be always visualizing the positive result. I do think that it's okay sometimes in life to also visualize something that isn't favorable. So in other words, because it's going to happen. So do I let my athletes about 10% of the time I will say, "Okay, let's just let's let's hit a bad shot. We've hit a bad shot. What happens in our body now? We're walking to that shot. How do we deal with it?" And so they now are able to deal with something that's inevitable.

or if it's one of our fighters and I go, "Listen, you just had the first, you know, it was bad round. He got to you. You took a couple shots. Looks like he lost round one. You're sitting on the stool. Bam. How do we shift that and visualize from there?" Because if you don't visualize some of the unforeseen circumstances that take place and your response to it, in my opinion, when that happens and it's unfamiliar territory, you're lost. But if you say, "No, I've been there before.

I've missed this putt before. I've missed a shot before." In sales, it's okay to visualize them not always saying yes, but objecting and giving you a reason for not doing it. They may have a question or a concern, right? So, I don't think it's a negative thing sometimes to I don't want to I don't want to pattern this where it's a pattern I've created, but I think it's okay to in sales visualize getting a no or an objection or in a sport having a failure happen and then from there what you need to visualize so that when the inevitable happens, because life happens, you're going to miss a sale.

You're going to not hit every putt. Not every at bat's going to be a base hit, right? Not every shot's going to be in the basket. And so it's okay to say, "Okay, I just missed the shot. What do I visualize from there?" So we're not really visualizing the miss. We're visualizing it's happened. What feels in my body? I know what that is. Now what do I do? And so because you'll watch in sports, most of the great athletes, it's not that they don't miss. It's what they do after they miss.

It's not in life whether you're going to miss or get rejected or have a difficult circumstance or situation. It's what do you do when it happens? And so I think it's okay that you spend a little bit of time in that zone and then your visualization is your way out of there. So we're not visualizing misses. What I'm suggesting is is that you're visualizing. Okay, I've just missed. Now visualize the way out. Mentally rehearse the way out. I think you can spend a little bit of time on that just like the great Wayne Rooney did.

I'll tell you one more story and I don't know whether this is accurate or not. I don't remember the man's name and I'm sure I'm messing the story up so forgive me. Um, but I think the the premise of the story and the point that it illustrates is valid. And so the story goes, I was told this many years ago that there was evidently a soldier who had spent some time in uh in a P camp and uh when he was there in order to keep himself sane, frankly, he would mentally rehearse and visualize himself playing an entire 18hole golf course round of golf.

And again, this is just a story that I was told. I I hope I'm giving it justice. And uh the point of the story is that it illustrates the power of visualization. And even if I'm off by the facts a little bit, you know, indulge me a little bit here. But he would visualize playing each shot throughout the day, mentally rehearse and visualize it. And and um many years later when he got out of the P camp, he went home, I believe it was to Texas, somewhere in the Midwest, and his body was totally atrophied.

He had no muscle mass left. He had lost considerable weight. He had been obviously hurt and injured and beaten when he was in the camp and one of the first things he asked to do when he got on his feet was to go play golf. And the story goes that he went out in that first round of golf. Shot even par. And afterwards they asked him, "How in the world did you do that? You you've lost 50 lbs. You you've had all these injuries. You've had this terrible uh mental battle you've had to go through." And he goes, "It's easy.

I haven't missed a putt in four years." Because what he had done is mentally rehearsed when he was playing those rounds. making that putt, hitting that shot. Now, whether or not that's an accurate story or not, I don't know. But what I can tell you is that it's illustrative that I've seen something like that in many athletes and many business people's lives where in spite of external circumstances, they've controlled the inside so well that when they, like I've said, they focus on the inside that when these variables happen, which is life, a failure, a setback, an unforeseen situation, that they're comfortable because they haven't missed a putt in years when they visualize their way out of that.

And so inside of you, you can visualize. So give yourself the gift on a more regular basis of mentally rehearsing the meeting you're going to go to. Do it three, four, five, six times and actually sit in that visualization. Ask yourself questions when you visualize. By the way, the way you get better at it is you do more of it. In the beginning when we're visualizing or mentally rehearsing, we're not very good at it because we haven't done it before. We get distracted easily or we don't even realize.

We don't even take control of what we're seeing. But begin to ask yourself when I visualize, do I see it in black or white or color? I mean, make some distinctions about what you're seeing. Can I feel things? Do I smell things? Do I hear things? Can I take this picture that I'm seeing, this result I want to produce, this award I want to win, this, you know, this situation I want to get out of a date that I'm going on, this, you know, potential sale that I've got, this baseball I want to hit, this putter.

When you watch it, start to ask yourself and take a look at what you're seeing. Like, for example, where's the camera? That'd be interesting, huh? Do you see the camera where you're looking at it out there so you see it from your own perspective or do you see it from the person's situation who's watching you? Do you see it from above? Just taking advantage and you go, "Wow, I never thought about that before." Well, think about it. It'll help you take better control. You know, when I work with athletes when they're baseball hitters, I'll often often ask them, I'll say, "Close your eyes and visualize hit a line drive up the middle." And they'll go, "Great.

I did it." And they'll open their eyes. I go, "Okay, good. Where was the camera?" And they're like, "Huh?" I said, 'Where was the camera? I don't know. I said, 'Well, let's close your eyes and do it again.' I said, 'The camera could be a lot of different places. The camera could be you in the batters box and you're seeing out at the pitcher in the field. It could be like you watch baseball on TV because you're familiar with it and it's behind the center field fence looking over the pitcher into the catcher.

It could even be the view you get on deck. But the first thing is to at least see what you see. Now you have a chance to play the video. And so I'll ask them, "Can you see what you see?" Yes. Okay. and they say, "Well, nope. It's for me in the batters box." Awesome. So then we know, and we go much more detail than this, but it's beginning to just see what you see. Hear what you hear or don't hear. Smell what you smell or don't smell.

Right? For the most part, most people can very quickly go, I see things in black and white, or I see them in color. And then just start to take control of what it looks like. And then the only other thing to ask yourself if you want to really reinforce a visualization is you could speed it up a little bit, or you could slow it down. You could zoom in if you wanted to. And the more you just kind of play with your ability to visualize, the more it becomes a muscle.

Zoom in, zoom out, change the color, add some music to it, right? Speed it up, slow it down, and then just repeatedly see something over and over again. It'll serve you. And so, it's something that I teach the athletes that I do. It's not very complicated. It's just basically starting to take control of your mind's eye, of what you think about. You don't have to be very specific with it. It could just be the same thing you see every time. But the more you prepare, you will begin to move towards what you're most familiar with.

And what's great about that is anxiety level goes down. And your brain, your subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between what you're imagining and what's actually happening. And so you actually can get a hit every time you're up to the plate. You can make a putt every single time you stand over it. You can get a yes. And the more specific when you start with a visualization oftentimes in the beginning they'll be very general but the more you get good at it maybe it gets more specific where you can even see when you've helped somebody out in your business them thanking you and the smile on their face maybe you can begin to feel what it feels like with their gratitude right I'll have athletes often I'll say did you make the putt how did it feel fist pump that thing lock it in right so the more you do it the more it grows as something you you build as a habit doesn't need to be any more complicated than that but I'm telling you.

Life is a whole lot better when you focus on what's going on inside of you as opposed to what's going on around you. And the more we just get internal, we begin to, you know, take some measure of control over the mental images we're feeding ourselves, the more we can produce a result that's in congruence with our goals. I think also that if you've had some success too that if it doesn't come with a dose of humility that when you begin to walk into every room and every environment and think you've already figured it out, you already know this stunts growth as well because you're what you're saying is it blunts you taking in new data and new information.

Correct. Correct. You get it. You totally get it. You are denying yourself better data, more data to inform the decisions that happen. So don't do that. Don't do that to yourself. Right. Right. Give us the exercise. We've been building enough. Give us Okay. So this is like this there's I'm going to give you a longer one just to describe the steps and then we'll do like one that you can do anytime all the time. So this is like a basic mindfulness practice and I call it again tied to what we're talking about in the in the book and attention the find your find your flashlight practice.

Great Great Great because oftenimes it's not that we don't um we can't focus. It's that we don't know where we're focusing at any moment. That's true. So the instruction would be and and I guide people to kind of ramp up to about 12 minutes a day that our data suggests is beneficial to do this but to start out like do 30 seconds of this commit to that for a few weeks and see how that goes. So the practice is essentially find a quiet comfortable spot and and take this time seriously even if it's 30 seconds or a minute sit in an upright alert posture like a dignified you know if we do it now it's just like upright alert dignified and first step is just acknowledge notice shine the flood light on your experience that you're breathing right now.

Then what you're going to do is hone in on something that actually you notice is prominent in your experience of breathing. breathing. breathing. So do you notice anything that feels prominent like the coolness of air maybe by your nose or maybe your chest? It's actually the sound I'm making. Okay, great. Yeah, that the the sound that's a great one, too. That's where you're going to hold the point the flashlight. That's your intentional target for this short practice. So direct that flashlight right there. Keep it steady.

You can close your eyes if you want to. Whatever you choose just to limit the sensory input. sensory input. sensory input. And if it hasn't happened yet, it surely will. Your mind will wander. And all you do in that moment is notice it. Ah, the mind has wandered away. Next step, take that flashlight, redirect it back to that same attentional target. and repeat. and repeat. So, it's essentially focus, point that flashlight, notice, use the flood light, redirect, get the juggler to do its job. Oh my goodness.

You know what? Can I ask about that? about that? about that? Yeah, please. Yeah, please. Yeah, please. When I first started this, um, there was like a judgment when I drift away. drift away. drift away. Oh, no. Total win. It's a win. It's actually a win because it gives us a chance to redirect the flashlight. Right. This is so important because I used to I don't know maybe you maybe you're further along than me but in the beginning I was like gosh man I'm gone this for like 24 seconds then I'm out.

But you're actually saying that's actually a gift when we drift away because it allows us to build this flashlight. I'll call it a muscle so to speak. speak. speak. Yeah it absolutely that we're coming back. It's really but it's now I hope it makes sense why I wanted to describe those three systems because we hit all three in this. It does does does and I think it's really important to not think of the wandering as a problem. The wandering. Remember we started out talking about 50% of the time it's the nature of the mind.

I didn't say Ed if you happen to be one of those weird people with mind wanders like us normal people don't have that you have mind wandering. I didn't say that. I said when your mind wanders cuz it's going to wander for sure. Just bring it back. And not doing that with the added story, the added reactivity is so important. You know, I was just thinking of the uh I do I did a lot of work when I was younger and I do now with kids and I have so many parents almost judge their children for their he can't stay focused in the classroom.

He drifts away. And I'm just thinking right now like what a breakthrough this might be for some parents who are listening to this to realize that that's actually everyone is at 50%. Maybe your kid reveals it more than other kids do. Doesn't conceal it as well, right? Maybe it manifests in talking out loud as opposed to scribbling on a sheet of paper. So, it's more apparent. But this is something that even with Do you believe it? Is there a particular age where you believe a child might be able to begin to build this?

I'm calling it building a muscle because everybody can relate to that. Yeah. No, I think it it is it's practice. It's strengthening. So, the first thing to say is that this brain system of attention is one of the slowest to develop. We don't fully develop this capacity till we're about 25. Okay? And one of the reasons is it relies on the frontal loes which are the slowest brain brain region to develop. So you know it does kind of drive me nuts sometimes and I feel for parents when they're when they're when they're but when they're not happy that their children aren't paying attention or their response is pay attention is not going to help at all.

And in fact understanding that that's the thing that is is it's your child is not not paying attention because they don't know that they should often is that they don't know where their attention is. Just like we are saying we don't know. That's good. That's good. So I think that the thing to really and it and by the way yes absolutely there's a huge enterprise of offering mindfulness training in a ch developmentally appropriate manner to children as long as young as preschool. Really Really Really we can do these in very useful ways for children.

But what you're having them cultivate is not just focus focus focus. It's where are you right now? You know where are you in a friendly self-supportive way? And is that where you want to be right now? You know, when you talk to yourself in that manner of like, where am I right now? Is that where I want to be? All of a sudden, the world doesn't feel as dire like, oh, I'm over here. I think I want to be over there instead. I think that's what I should be doing right now is being over there.

there. there. It's a different relationship. And if you the younger that we can get people to start understanding that this is befriending your mind in a way that allows it to be used to your benefit, that's fascinating to me. Punitive to yourself. Yeah. that u I'm just thinking I'm sitting here as a 50-year-old man. I've done different forms of meditation, mindfulness. I'm relatively productive human being and I'm confessing to the audience that often times I'm going 24 seconds and I'm out of my attention where well my attention has changed rather.

So the idea that we're concerned about our 8-year-old who might have the exact same or does have the exact same scenario that I do. I'm just curious, has there been any data? Are kids even more than 50% where their attention moves or would you assume that because those frontal loes aren't as developed or is it pretty much Okay, so here's the tricky part of having assessing that with children by the way. the way. the way. What does it take for you to even know if somebody's on task or off task?

Right? They have to have the awareness in something. It's something called meta awareness. Awareness or attention to your attention that is also a developmentally slow process. So, we're getting a fuzzy read on them. I mean we could take them into the lab and look directly at their performance on tasks and yeah they they mind wander a lot. Uh their attention can be off often you know off task often but I don't think that's uh the thing we want to help cultivate which is the counterintuitive thing and I I mean I refer to it in the book as like a peak mind pivot.

It's like we think that we have if to focus better we think we need to focus on we need to train ourselves to focus and I'm saying no to focus better train your mind to notice when you're not focused. Gosh very good. So, you know, that's a totally different set of you're you're exercising the flood light and the the juggler. The flashlight will do its thing. It knows how to do its thing, but really pay attention to the understanding of where your mind is moment by moment.

I did that during your TED talk. You actually say something similar during your TED talk. And then I thought, well, where am I now? Yeah. now? Yeah. now? Yeah. And then I'm back with you. And then, where am I now? And then I came back with you. with you. with you. And that's it. you know, 24 seconds. If you're truly going 24 seconds, you are, we got to bring you to the lab because that's really good. I made the number up. It's probably more like 2.4 seconds.

I don't know. But I, you know, I actually asked a colleague of mine who'd been practicing mindfulness for 30 years because I was getting in the initial stages when I was just trying to understand what this thing is. I was like, I'm not going very long before my mind wanders. And will that be the thing that will extend as I practice more? That was my thinking. Like that's a reasonable hypothesis. I might if it's you know 5 seconds now maybe it'll be 10 and 15 and each year I might get longer before it wandering and I was very humbled by what he said he said 30 years of practice he said 7 seconds no kidding no kidding no kidding and but you know so at first I'm like oh great what am I even bothering like it's still going to be 7 seconds after 30 years but what he said next really helped helped helped he said you know what has happened is that my mind now instead of being completely lost in a fantasy or a doomsday scenario.

And I love the way it was like almost poetic. He's like, "It's like I'm seeing uh the ripples, you know, the ripples at the distance of the placid lake." And I was like, "Oh, he is really knows his mind." Like he can tell a slight tug. He doesn't have to go full on into, you know, next vacation's been planned while you're trying to do five minutes of a mindfulness practice. That felt so much more like he knows his mind. He knows where it is that with that level of granularity.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in some sense, this is the part that I think is also really interesting, especially as we talk about um athletes and military service members and you know, special operators etc. It's this sense that you develop because you know your mind a sense of when I use the term mental toughness. It's like I know this space. I know the the lake. It may not always be placid. It's usually for me like a rough stormy place, stormy place, stormy place, right? right? right? But I can take anything.

Like my mind is here for it. And frankly, that's developing that same floodike capacity. I am here. I'm present for it. I'm not going to be thrown off. I'm steady in the middle of whatever's going on. on. on. Very good. You know, I uh I think some of the most self-confident people I know are just more self-aware. And I think that's actually what you're describing. There's an awareness of there's an awareness of self. I'm loving this and I want to keep going. So, I want to I want to ask you about you've described things in visual terminology a lot and I'd like to think that I am a visual person also, although I don't know that there's such a thing.

I'm wondering if part of that self-awareness is are some people more predisposed to be kinesthetic or auditory or visual in their um in the deductions they make, in the observations that they make. Uh, and is that something to be cognizant of about yourself when you're in a state of attention that you are not just I I feel like I'm very visual, but maybe every single person is or are there more auditory predisposed people, kinesthetic, visual? kinesthetic, visual? kinesthetic, visual? I mean, the the the jury is out.

Most people say now that like the notion of learning styles or specific modalities is not all that well supported. So, I would say I don't we don't know yet if that's actually the case. But frankly, the bulk of the brain as human beings compared to our little dogs that run around around around so dominant with vision. But you brought up something that I want to actually I want to like kind of ping that because that what you described is not what I'm talking about when I use the term meta awareness.

What you just described very powerful thing to do is something we call metacognition. So both of these are tied to self-awareness but meta awareness is a different thing. So metacognition is essentially knowing your tendencies, knowing your styles, knowing your decision-making capacities, your strengths, your weaknesses. I mean, everything you just described would be really great to know for your metacognitive style, for example. And yes, it can definitely there could be differences, maybe not tactile or or visual, but there are definitely differences in the way people operate metacognitively.

So, you may be a maximizer in your decision-m versus a a satisfier. You know, there's these different orientations, but I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about when I talk about the flood light because remember the flood light system is really about the now and meta awareness is awareness of the moment to moment processes and contents within your mind. So I don't it doesn't really matter for meta from the meta awareness point of view what your tendencies are what is going on right now. Where is your mind right now?

And I think that that um what's important now kind of orientation is so important in performance context because it doesn't matter what you're doing normally like what's going on now. Is it always important to be in the now? In other words, is it bad to be dreaming in the future? Is that a bad or good? I don't even like that terminology, but useful. useful. useful. Yeah. Yeah. Is it useful? Okay. Such a great question. I'm so glad you asked me that because I don't want it to seem like I'm saying always be here right now.

Yeah. No. No. No. No. No. That's not what I'm saying. In fact, this capacity to mentally time travel to just like you did with your what did you have for dinner last night, right? Is so useful for us. In fact, it may be the thing that defines us in our evolutionary advantage as human beings, right? We can displace our ourselves in something called time travel, right? We can rewind the mind. We can fast forward the mind. You you heard about me talking about that a little bit in the TED talk.

But it's not just about time traveling. It's also about mind traveling. Okay. What's that mean? Mind traveling is essentially putting yourself in the shoes and mind of somebody else. So both of those are really really powerful things to do. When we talk about mindfulness, it's really it's a it's a solution to a vulnerability in our capacity to do both of those things. So the problem with time travel though it's extremely useful for productively reflecting or planning it becomes problematic under certain states. And I do think of the athletes like my heart goes go out to them often times when I see mess ups right like you did something you totally messed up and it happens you glitched.

If you can't stop rewinding the mind you are no way going to be able to succeed in the next moment. So how do you get yourself to not rewind? rewind? rewind? Very good. Very good. Very good. Right. So or Amisha that's really good. Yeah. Uh and I think that the other part is you may be in not the uh necessarily the um athletic setting but in our like even during co like if you if you can't stop catastrophizing and worrying about the future the future the future you got it you're stuck.

You're going to be probably have a lot of anxiety. So the reason we want and frankly the same thing goes with mind traveling. If I'm constantly preoccupied about your view of me social anxiety is going to set in. Mhm. So the reason mindfulness became such an important solution for me going back to why we study in my lab is because each of those things ruminating about the past, catastrophizing about the others, overly um caring about the viewpoints of an evaluation on yourself hijack attention. It depletes attention.

Gosh, it's so good. So you describing from a scientific standpoint all the things that people listening to this go like I I know this is true. Yeah. And I think this the rewinding thing, man, it's just huge. So many people are in the rewind and just beating themselves up and repeating the same story over and over again. But the other thing that I've figured out is that often times stress is time travel in the future. future. future. Meaning that Meaning that Meaning that it's not so much the uh the speech you have to give or the sale you have to close or the putt you have to hit that is stressing you out.

It's you projecting into the future the negative result of it. And then on top of that, what other people are going to think or say about you when you miss the putt, when you don't close the sale. Is that not true? Exactly. You describe both the mind travel and the time travel. Right. That's those are the those are what I would really call the kryptonite scenarios. Like you're really what all of that is doing is attention still being used and you're draining it out. You're draining the fuel in spinning in those directions.

those directions. those directions. So how do you you know it's easy to say well don't do that. Get back to here and now. It's easy to say it. is very hard to do because the tendencies are so strong. So you got to train for it just like anything else that's hard to do. You were going to give us one other I think you were going to give us one other one another training. And then by the way, let's get peak mind. Let's get the book so that we all you get the whole thing.

That's the whole idea. But one more of them would be I'm driving in my car and I'm like I want her to give me one more. Well, the car is a perfect example. You didn't even know I was going to go there. This other practice is just called the stop practice. Okay. Literally s t o p. And do it while you're driving. you're driving. you're driving. Do it while you're walking. Do it at any time you want. Stop is stop. Like whatever the progression of your life is in that moment, halt it.

Take a breath. And that's this conscious breath aware that you're doing it. Observe. O Observe. O proceed. B. proceed. B. proceed. B. So it's just it's a mini mindfulness practice. And I really think it's useful because you know where your flashlight is at the end of it. Mhm. I know it's right here, right now. I'm back. back. back. So, use stop signs, use red lights to remind yourself to do that over and over again. again. again. So, good. I'm just thinking of something. When you asked me to do that, I actually did it with you.

And I actually noticed a couple things in my visual space that have been here the entire time that I didn't see. Isn't that interesting? that interesting? that interesting? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Um, Um, and we're going a little bit deeper probably than I should, but I I there's a lot of things that your brain does on habit mode, correct? Like if I'm driving to work and I take the same off-ramp every single day, my think my brain is storing energy by doing something that's habitual. That's how I've always understood it anyways that I'm taking that same off-ramp.

Whether I'm right or wrong, it doesn't matter. Okay. The point that I want to make about that is that is that is that for me, I think for most people being present is even though yes, there's a benefit to being in the future and rewinding, there's a benefit to being reflective and reminiscing in the past and gaining wisdom from it. But for most of us, that's not a struggle for most people. The struggle for most people is being present. Got it. And that's why this is so important what you're teaching here.

And for me, there's so many things in a given day that mindfulness practices make me just aware of being present that I'm curious as to in practical application, how much time a day I know there's no formula, but if you were just saying, "Hey, Ed, I'd recommend to you it's 10 minutes a day. It's five different times a day. It's once a day. Do it at the same time of the day. Doesn't matter when you do it." What would your advice be on just building this practice as the habit aspect?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean the last line of the the title is invest 12 minutes a day. So that gives you a sense of and that number comes out of many studies that have suggested, have suggested, have suggested, you know, if you get to that amount, we tend to see benefits and the more you do from that, the more you benefit. But if you don't quite get to that, it's almost like is is going for a walk in my neighborhood, walking my dog going to build my physical fitness?

Probably not. It's not going to be bad for you, but you're not going to get to that level. So here's my answer to the question of the so the when would be and you can get a deeper understanding of why I say 12 minutes if you read more about it but just know that it comes from a lot I did I just want them research no I know I know but I'm just saying but your question regarding when to do it and the habit issue is the best time to do it is when you're going to do it.

Okay, that's kind of a maybe a copout, but literally the key to anything and you'd probably say the same thing regarding physical excellence, right? The key is advantaging your capacity to create it and incorporate it into daily routine. routine. routine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so what I suggest for people like I just said with when we were doing the the short practice, if you think you can do three minutes, set the goal of a minute and a half and get the win of I did it.

did it. I did it. And yoke it to something that you already do. M you know my recommendation is is something that you know you're going to do every day without exception maybe right after you brush your teeth in the morning or maybe right before you have your cup of coffee sometime that you know you're going to do it and what I would suggest just to play around with when that works for you is to try it at different times of the day. What what many people say when we say try the morning you know just play around with the time of day is like people say things like I love the taste of my coffee so much more it's like I've actually taste it.

Gosh, it's so true. I can't, you know. So, and why are you depriving yourself of that, right? Why are we rushing through? I mean, you're going to have the coffee anyway. Why not have a little bit more pleasure with that experience? experience? experience? So, I have to just say though, I I was going to tell you off camera, but I'm so glad you said this cuz I forgot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is that I just want to give everybody the gift of this that I by the way, I'm nowhere near where you would be or other people.

I don't think there's rankings either, by the way. It's not a judgment thing, but my sensory experiences just in general have been so dramatically increased by this practice. I I and u people always say to me that there's this duality. Maybe one of the reasons they even like me is that maybe I'm sort of like a maybe a masculine dude, but I'm very emotional and very sensitive. I don't know that I've always been that way, but like I do find that I experiences my emotions on a deeper level over the last decade or so.

That my laughter is a little deeper and more joyous. The taste of food is a little bit more pleasurable. My my acknowledgement and noticing beauty around me and the nuances and specificities of it and not just the visual but smells and wind hitting my face. I know this sounds ridiculous to some people. some people. some people. It's just richer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because of this practice, never mind being far more present and productive. And I think also for me peak is such a word that I've used over and over.

When I'm fully present, it appears to me that I've got better access to my vocabulary, better access to insights in reading somebody. Do you would similar experience for you? I mean, for sure. And it can be life-saving in many ways. And actually, you know, you you describe the the plus side. And I want I think it's so it's so great. It's like almost like you mean I can just have more joy by being here more? Yeah, you can. But there's another part that I think is very important in the context of our action and our humanity.

We're also more present to the suffering of other people. people. people. We're also more connected to other people. We also have more sense and respect for the humanity of others around us and for the environment. And I think that at this particular point kind of in our human history consciousness, consciousness, consciousness, we need to be more aware of what is the heck is going on. We have very little time to like try to make things better for our planet for example. And also with all the injustices happening and you know I was talking recently to somebody regarding this notion of burnout and uh you know so many people are feeling so burnt out.

Can mindfulness help with burnout and the answer is yes mindfulness can help with burnout but you know in and actually in the context of a conference I was at with um critical care nurses. Now we know over co that has been a group that has been very very crunched right crunched right crunched right and the the question was can mindfulness help me with burnout and I said yes and they said but then um the system that the organization of the scheduling is the reason I feel burnt out and I was like yes but there's no way you're going to demand change or even conceptualize how to create change if you don't have the capacity to see what's going on.

Yes. Yes. Yes. So just you know use that as the next step to give back to those who may not have this capacity yet. It's like as the more present we are, the more we can enact change and empower other people to do the same. It's so you're so right and I and I know you know you're right, but people have told me that the last 10 years or so I'm just using practical experience for me. You're more patient than you used to be. That's sort of more like the a symptom almost that it's it is more what you have described which is that I um I try to be present with people and see them and hear them and experience them more than fix them like I used to and and uh try to truly empathize and and understand their experience and their reality.

And I I've always felt since I started this like I wish more of I don't care what political party you're part of. wish more political people had that ability for empathy and understanding and just stopped and listened to people and didn't assess it all the time. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that I I attribute some if not most of that to these practices because obviously I'm a performer peak performer expert person supposedly. But it's the it's the other benefits of doing this that have enriched my life far more than the fact that I've made more money cuz I'm more present with people or these other things.

I'm actually curious about this. What about memory? So is it that my memory can be improved because of this because I was actually present in more moments so I have better recall because I my attention was where I was more often or is it that there's something happening in my brain where I'm developing the ability to recall and remember things better. Pretty good question, huh? question, huh? question, huh? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Right. So I'm Cuz is it because you could say, "Well, yeah, your memor is better." Well, maybe that's just because I was more present.

Or is there actually something operating in my brain where I'm where I'm where I'm there's a new milein forming in my brain? I don't know. I'm just Well, first of all, everything this conversation is changing your brain. I mean, I don't just mean because it's some kind of massively transformative thing. Every experience, every experience we have impacts the way our brain functions. So, so there's no like there's no divide between experience and brain changes. They're just happening concurrently, right? right? right? So, yes, it is the case.

So you you you're such a great you have such great intuition about neuroscience. It's awesome. awesome. awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So yes, it is the case that the more we can get the more attentive we are, the more granular fine grain the inputs are for our memory. In fact, attention is the gateway for memory. If you don't pay attention, there's no way that you're going to have the experience of encoding episodes in your life, gaining new information. Now, there are aspects of memory that are outside the scope of something you need attention for after it's well learned.

So for example, um if I if I tell you tell me across the board of a keyboard what the letters are. I mean I couldn't tell you but if you give me a keyboard I can type it. So there's an that's an example of something we call procedural memory which is you actually don't need your attention for that. But for episodes and knowledge you need attention to input the information. You also need your attention to pull it out. So remember we were talking about the flashlight and your dinner meal.

You had to you have to have clarity of directing it to call up the right thing. M so it is both on both ends of that and and frankly there's another thing to think about which is that you call what did you call it mileelin so yes it ends up that long-term memory is a structural change within the brain it's actually becomes like fixed hard in terms of the neural connections that occur that process is helped by having clarity of mind mind mind and actually just kind of to really tie the loose ends of this conversation together we current models suggest maybe that's where all this mind wandering is actually happening happening.

It may be a memory encoding process. The reason the brain pumps out thoughts isn't because it's just trying to mess with us. It's because that's the way episodic memory encoding happens. It's a replay button that just happens by default. And as it keeps replaying, things kind of harden into long-term memory. This is so good. All right. Well, first off, I want everybody to get Peak Mind. I want them to get your book. The reason that I want them to get the book is because I think the application of what you're teaching is different for many different people.

And I love things that have broad application. So I think if you're an athlete, you want to read this book. I think if you're someone who wants to find a little bit more bliss in your life and be more present, I think this is a a book that that you should have. And I think just having an overall understanding of oneself is why I think this work is so fascinating. It's why my audience knows I'm I love every interview that I do. don't talk to people that I don't want to share with the world, but there are certain topics that just fascinate me because I like to understand why some of the things I teach work.

I understand some of it and um you're helping me so much with that.