Transcendence English Transcription Book

TRANSCENDENCE TRANSCRIPT
FULL DOCU-SERIES TRANSCRIPTION
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CONTENTS
Episode One: What’s in our Food 3
Episode Two: Overcoming Fear & Stress 17
Episode Three: Beyond Belief 32
Episode Four: Whose Goals Are We Chasing? 50
Episode Five: The Art of Fulfillment 68

EPISODE ONE:
WHAT’S IN OUR FOOD

Featuring:
Novak Djokovic (ND)
William Davis (WD)
Mark Hyman (MH)
Tom O’Bryan (TO)
Josh Axe (JA)
Vani Hari (VH)
Libby Weaver (LW)
John Robbins (DR)
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(ND): I was four or five years old when the first war that I was living in happened. And
in the next nine and ten years, Serbia has been through a lot of economical trouble. It was
torn by the bombings later on in the 90s, and embargo sanctions, people waiting in line for
just most basic things, most common things like bread and milk. My family fought for a
Euro each day. Going underground into shelters to basically seek for some kind of safety,
cause you never knew what is going to happen next. One of the most dramatic experiences
I’ve had with my family was in ‘99 when we’d been through day and night, two and a half
months of bombing. And it wasn’t easy - not just for us but for entire country. We didn’t
know what tomorrow brings. We didn’t know whether or not we are going to still live
because planes were flying all over our heads. We were waking up every single night for
two months and just praying and hoping that there’s going to be end of that, just behind
a corner, because war never brought good to anybody, whether you’re historically on the
winning or losing side. Nobody has ever touched the tennis racquet Became different, I
didn’t see prior to me in my family, so there was no traditional heritage of that sport.
When I was four years old, to have three tennis courts being built just in front of the
restaurant that my parents were owning. From when I was four to seven, I was mostly
involved in school tennis with kids and just playing around on the court, being in big
groups of children. It was play. It was a game. It was fun. When I was seven, I think that’s
the first time that I really had a clear vision of what I want to achieve and who I want to
become in tennis. I just knew I want to become number one and win Wimbledon, and had
such a clear vision in my mind, even creating this Wimbledon trophy out of some plastic
materials and then just little paper, and just trying to create visions and images in my mind
and create something that would serve as a motivation and inspiration for my life.
I’ve experienced prior to 2010 Australian Open. Many struggles on the court, respiratory
problems, inability to cope with the heat, endurance issues. Even though I was training
hard, I was feeling that I’m losing that kind of fuel in my tank. I was feeling weaker, and
then all of a sudden, the vision became different. I didn’t see the court as wide as it was
at the beginning of the match. I had blurred vision, I couldn’t catch breath after each
point was finished, and in no time he was the winner of the match. And I remember that
between fourth and fifth set I went out to throw up and felt my stomach was aching. I felt
my energy was so low and I was just... my nose was blocked. It was plenty of things going
on and it was not the first time. I didn’t understand that there is this nutrition part that was
blocking me in a way because I wasn’t eating correctly, even though I thought that I was.
Announcer: Tsonga leads by four games to one.
(ND): Coming from the culture where we based a lot on the gluten which is in the wheat,
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and we have bakeries in each corner, so I had breads in different bread baskets each day.
Even eating pizza and I would have a little bread on side, that’s how integrated that kind
of culture of eating was in our region. And also a lot of meat and sugar. Refined sugar. I
didn’t know that that would cause - all of these things would cause - that kind of feeling
of being helpless on the court, and feeling of being powerless. So then I met Dr. Igor
Cetojevic, and he has actually watched that match in Australian Open earlier that year,
and he felt the need to get in touch with me and to help me out. And he received the data
that I have a great sensitivity on gluten, no Celiac disease but great sensitivity, intolerance
to gluten, to dairy products, and obvious to refined sugar. And I had to sit down, rethink,
what is going on?
(WD): If you see an insectivorous toad, a toad that likes to eat insects, he’s happy. If you
see a cow that likes to graze, that’s what it’s adapted to eating - grass and fodder. What if
you gave it instead shellfish to eat? Or something it’s unfamiliar with? It’d probably be
very sick quite quickly. What if you don’t like the fact that lions kill gazelle and wildebeests
and eat their organs and eat their meat to survive, and you made them eat spinach and
kale? You have a dead lion.
Same with humans. We follow an adaptive script and diet, and if you veer off that script,
funny things happen. That funny thing could be called obesity, it could be called type Two
Diabetes, it could be called autoimmune disease, it could be dementia, could be cancer,
it could be your performance would degrade. Could be any number of other hundreds
to thousands of human conditions that are almost unknown in populations that follow
the dietary script to which we’re adapted. And that’s when I started to poke around into
agribusiness and agricultural genetics to see what happened to wheat, in particular? This
applies to more than wheat, but I picked on wheat which is the, I call it the ringleader.
Digging, it became clear that what we’re being sold today as modern wheat is something
entirely different than what it was 40 years ago. So there was a very noble effort, not a
dishonest or evil effort, but a noble effort to increase the yield per acre to help feed the
world’s hungry.
Announcer: And now, a new nationwide wheat breeding program was underway. Use
McFadden’s Hope wheat as the basis for the rust-resistant, high quality wheats we know
today. And so, one more threat to the nation’s bread supply was brought under control.
Once more, science penetrated the secrets of nature.
(WD): But in those efforts, they bred wheat over and over and over again with various
strains. They bred wheat, wheat is a grass. They bred with other wild grasses to extract
certain genetic characteristics. And then they started to subject wheat to other methods,
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such as the methods of mutagenesis, the purposeful induction of mutations using toxic
chemicals, radiation, gamma rays, etc. Problem, you can’t control the mutations you get.
You can’t order up the mutation you want, say, for better pest resistance or a reduced
height. You just get this dozens, perhaps hundreds, of mutations. If they’re not fatal, the
plant survives. But you’ve induced numerous mutations. So wheat is now, was no longer a
four and a half foot, five foot tall, two meter tall traditional plant; it’s an 18 inch tall, short,
thick, stocky, semi-dwarf strain, they call it. So that change in appearance is accompanied
by multiple changes in its genetics, in its biochemistry, and the proteins in particular that
are expressed. And when products made with high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat were put on
store shelves around 1985, the late 80s, that’s when we saw an explosion in numerous
problems. It coincides perfectly with a dramatic increase in calorie intake in Australia, US,
western Europe, UK. It coincides perfectly with an explosion of autoimmune diseases and
in Type Two Diabetes and obesity. Now that doesn’t prove cause and effect, but I’m pretty
well convinced it is probably a cause and effect.
(MH): The wheat we’re eating is not the wheat we ate. It’s not the bread of our ancestors.
It has many more proteins that create inflammation that are gluten proteins. It also has
a much higher starch content. In fact, two tablespoons of sugar raises your blood sugar
less than two slices of whole wheat bread. So we now know that the kind of wheat we’re
eating is very inflammatory, that we know that this can disrupt the gut lining. So looking
at celiac disease - 50 years ago they had blood samples on 10 thousand people looking
at celiac disease, and they compared it to a blood sample of 10 thousand people today,
and there was a real increase of 400% in celiac disease. So this is not a fad. This is a real
phenomena that’s a result of the increased use of antibiotics, the lack of breastfeeding, the
processed food, and the chronic stresses and environmental toxins all colluding to drive
disruptions in the gut function, which allows the gluten to actually break through and create
this systemic inflammation.
(TO): Doctors Hollon and Fasano at Harvard published a study that shows when humans
eat wheat, every human that eats wheat, not just the celiacs, but every human that eats
wheat gets tears in the inside lining of the gut every time they’re exposed to wheat.
(JA): We now know through clinical research, it is an absolute that autoimmune disease
begins in the gut. Just as Hypocrites said over two thousand years ago, all disease begins
in the gut; so does autoimmune disease. So with autoimmune disease, here’s really how it
works. There’s a barrier in between your bloodstream and your intestines, it’s called your
gut lining. And your gut lining has microscopic, these little holes in it. What can happen
over time if somebody has intestinal inflammation, large holes open up in your gut lining.
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(TO): Some cells turn over very quickly, like the inside lining of the gut. Every three to
seven days you have a whole new lining to your gut. It’s like the skin of a snake, just
kinda sheds right off. So you had toast for breakfast, it heals. You have a sandwich for
lunch, it heals. Pasta for dinner, it heals. Croutons on your salad, it heals. A cookie, but it
heals. Day after week after month after year after year after year, until one day you don’t
heal anymore. Now, when you don’t heal, that’s pathogenic intestinal permeability. And
these tears can occur and stay torn when you lose tolerance and you don’t heal anymore
when you’re two years old, 22 years old, 72 years old, it just depends on when you cross
that threshold as to when this happens, but it happens.
(JA): So what can happen now is undigested food particles such as gluten, casein, toxins,
bad bacteria, candida, can leak from the intestines into the bloodstream. Your body says,
“Those shouldn’t be here”. It starts this immune response and if that isn’t corrected over
time, what can happen is it starts autoimmune disease. And it can affect, that systemic
inflammation can affect the joints causing rheumatoid arthritis. It can affect the thyroid
causing Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. It can affect the colon causing things like Crohn’s disease,
or the muscles causing fibromyalgia. So really, all autoimmune disease is first caused by
leaky gut; it starts in the gut lining. I really believe the biggest factors that are causing this
gut reactions are number one, it’s certain foods. Refined grain products. Sugar is a big one.
Sugar feeds candida and yeast in your body which causes this issue. Genetically modified
organisms that are wired with pesticides and viruses which kill off beneficial microbes
in the gut causing leaky gut and autoimmune disease. Also looking at hydrogenated oils.
Artificial sweeteners are a big one. All of these things contribute to leaky gut.
(MH): So if you have any inflammatory condition, or really any chronic condition, gluten
should be at the top of your list in thinking about why. Whether it’s an autoimmune disease,
digestive disorders, depression, neurologic issues, many of these things are driven through
gluten, and by doing an elimination diet you can often see the impact. I mean we’ve seen
athletes like Djokovic, who’s actually accelerated his career by removing inflammatory
foods like gluten and dairy and sugar, and seeing him go from near the bottom of the pile
of professional tennis players to number one and unbeatable.
(ND): I just needed that information about the change of the diet and nutrition, and it’s,
with that change in 2010 and in the years after that, I felt so strong as a tennis player on
the court, and I recovered better. I had more endurance. I had more clarity of mind. All
of a sudden the horizons of life opened up to me. The circumstances in life that I’ve had
after that were phenomenal.
Announcer: Now, it’s championship point.
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There’s a new champion at Wimbledon, Novak Djokovic. He’s the new world number one
in every sense. And he deserves it. After the year that he’s had, he came in here as many
people’s favorite, and now he has proved it.
(ND): It’s really hard to describe this with any words except the best day of my life, the
most special day of my life. This is my favorite tournament, the tournament I always
dreamed of winning. The first tennis tournament that I ever watched in my life. I think
I’m still sleeping, I’m still having my dream.
Announcer: You’ve got the Wimbledon trophy in your hands and two days ago you knew
you’d be the world number one. It hasn’t been a bad few days, has it?
(ND): Couple of good days in the office, yeah.
Announcer: Wimbledon champion, Novak Djokovic!
(WD): I’ve seen this play out many, many, many times. That is, professional athletes,
non-professional athletes, experience dramatic improvement in performance. You’ll run
faster. You’ll run farther. You’ll bike faster. In the case of Novak Djokovic you’ll hit
harder. It’s a wonderful effect.
(TO): If there’s only one thing you could do to have a healthier body is have a healthier gut.
Cause there’s nothing more powerful to protect you than a healthy microbiome. There’s
nothing more powerful to get optimal brain function than having a healthy microbiome.
(MH): The foods that your gut flora like are mostly plant foods. Vegetables, nuts and seeds,
beans, real food. High fiber foods. And even special fibers: things like chia seeds, flax seed,
prebiotic types of foods, artichokes. Various kinds of foods that actually can help fertilize
the healthy bacteria. And the more you eat of those, the more healthy bacteria you have.
The less sugar and processed food you have, the better your bacteria are.
(ND): Regardless of my profession, everybody wants to be healthy, right? Everybody wants

to thrive in well being. Your body is structured in such a complex and intelligent way. It’s
smart enough to heal itself, to run itself, if you are feeding it with the right information.
Through food, through your surroundings, through whatever you do in your life.
(VH): I grew up with two immigrant Indian parents that came to America really trusting
of the American food system and really wanting to be American. And so me and my
brother growing up, we could eat whatever we wanted when we were little. So if I wanted
McDonald’s, I got McDonald’s. If I wanted Wendy’s or Burger King, I would get those
every single day if I wanted. Because it was cheap, it was readily available, and it was
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food that we were eating. And we were. I was a really picky child. I didn’t want to eat the
home-cooked Indian meal my mom was making for herself and my dad. It looked funny.
It smelled funny. I mean if I had known what I know now about all the medicinal curries
and the health qualities of vegetarian cooking, I would be a totally different person. But as
a result of my terrible food habits growing up and my lack of education about nutrition, it
led to a lot of different health issues. And those health issues, overcoming asthma, eczema,
allergies, endometriosis, having my appendix taken out, all of those episodes of being in
and out of hospitals and doctors’ offices really created passion in me to start taking back
control of my health. And when I started to question all the things that I had been taught
about food and started to do my own research into what was truly healthy, my mind was
blown. I found out that the majority of food that I’d been eating for most of my life was
dead, processed food that had been invented in a laboratory full of different chemicals not
even tested for human use. No wonder my body was sick, because it wasn’t getting the
nutrients it needed!
One of my first investigations that I did was to compare products being sold in the United
States to other parts of the world, and we found out that our own American companies were
reformulating our favorite products to be healthier for citizens overseas and not for their
own Americans. And one product was Kraft macaroni and cheese which, in Europe, if a
product has artificial food dyes, it says ‘may cause adverse effects on activity and attention
in children’. Well Kraft foods had figured that out, said, we’re not gonna put a warning
label on our products overseas, we’re just going to take out that artificial food dye. To only
take out artificial food dye for some citizens across the globe and not all citizens across the
globe is completely immoral and unethical. Because if they know that there is an ingredient
that could be risky to children, or could be harmful to children, or contribute to ADHD
or contribute to hyperactivity, I think food corporations have an obligation to make their
products as healthy across the board. And so pointing out that discrepancy opened up a
Pandora’s box of food activism and social media frenzy of moms and dads and everyone
sharing this information so voraciously, to the point where these corporations couldn’t do
anything but listen to us and start to remove some of these chemicals.
(WD): I cringe at the ways that humans have managed to profit from these mistakes. Those
mistakes could be the over-reliance on sugary drinks because of the very poor science
that proved, never did by the way, prove that we need sugars to perform in sports. That’s
simply not true.
(VH): I found out that over 40 years ago, the sports drink industry actually paid scientists
to convince moms and convince the public that their child would not be hydrated enough
during regular sports events, that their child needed this extra nourishment, and that without
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it you were putting your child at risk. That is absolutely false. The majority of children out
there who do sports activities need one thing, and that is water.
(MH): It’s frightening. I mean Pepsi makes Gatorade. And they market it as a health
drink or as a sports drink or a hydration drink, and there’s a few electrolytes in there, but
it’s high fructose corn syrup. It’s dye. Some of them have trans fats in them. It’s pretty
frightening when you look at the composition of these sports drinks and actually what
they’re doing to our kids.
(VH): Sports drinks full of artificial food dye; artificial food dye that’s linked to hyperactivity
in children. Hyperactivity that’s now leading to more increases in ADHD. I can’t tell you
how many parents I have spoken to and have received letters from, when they remove
these artificial food dyes from their child’s diet, how much their attention improves, how
much they get better at school. A lot of their allergies go away. Their skin issues go away,
because these artificial food dyes not only are linked to hyperactivity, they’re linked to all
sorts of different allergies in kids as well as in lab rats.
(LW): So there’s incredible technology now being developed where you can swallow a
camera that’s actually the size of a little tiny vitamin capsule and it gives you about 15 hours
of footage from inside the digestive system. And what the researchers did was they gave
one group of people a homemade meal. They actually made noodles from scratch - just
from flour and water - and served it in a broth made from water and vegetables and salt and
pepper. And then the other group, they were given bought noodles from the supermarket
that come with the sachet that you add hot water to, and that was served with a blue drink,
a blue sports drink. And then they swallowed these cameras to give the visuals of what
then went on. And four hours after they swallowed the real food meal, all that was left was
white fluff in the digestive system. And that’s how it’s supposed to be - really well broken
down by that stage. But for the people who had the bought food meal, four hours after they
ate it and swallowed the camera, you could still see the teeth marks in the noodles. So what
that suggests is, if you have food in your digestive system for four hours exposed to all of
your digestive enzymes and it hasn’t been broken down, it suggests that maybe there are
substances in some of these processed foods that we have no ability to break down. But
then further to that, the blue drink had actually dyed the noodles blue, and that’s because
the dye in the blue drink was derived from petroleum, and we have no ability inside of us
to break down petrol. So a number of artificial substances and colors and sweeteners are
created synthetically, and some of the substances that they’re derived from, I have concerns
about whether they even belong in the human body.
(MH): There’s basically tens of teaspoons of sugar in those that is driving so much of the
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disease we see in America. Why are kids overweight. Why are kids struggling in school.
Why are kids having health issues, academic issues, depression issues? It’s really driven
from the food they’re eating. And these sports drinks seem like they’re health food, but
they’re actually one of the worst things on the market.
(VH): We’ve been hoodwinked about sugar. We’ve had companies who rely on sugar like
the big soda companies, paying scientists to say that saturated fat was making us unhealthy,
causing heart disease, causing obesity, and not actual sugar. And so our eye has been off
the ball for many, many years having a different villain, but really the villain has been
sugar. To think that sugar is being added to 80% of processed foods on the market, and
knowing that that sugar is directly related to diabetes, heart disease, obesity, autoimmune
disorders, all sorts of diseases, we have an obligation to do something to educate the public
about the dangers of sugar.
(MH): The biggest threat facing us today is invisible: it’s food injustice. It’s a result of
the food policies from our government that are promoting the production and the growing
of food commodities that drive disease. In our allowing food marketing to kids. In our
having subsidizations of sugar and processed food, and food stamps that buy four billion
dollar’s worth of soda a year for the poor. There’s so many examples of ways in which
our food policies are driving disease. They’re driving poverty. They’re driving violence.
They’re driving the destruction of our environment, and they’re even driving damage to our
economy. And I think if we actually, as a society, step up and go, “Hey wait a minute, we’re
not going to take it anymore”. We have to look at the ways in which the food industry is
driving behaviors and driving behaviors to the production of food and the marketing of food
and the food policies that are promoting these things. I think it can begin to turn the tide
and get people to understand that we need to create a movement to stop the food injustice
that’s harming our communities, our families, and even our social fabric and our economy.
Announcer: Brian Poole in coverage, and Brady lays it out perfectly.
(JA): You look at Tom Brady - his age at being a quarterback and this effective - we’ve
never seen it before. And so for somebody who’s actually living what he’s preaching, I
think it says a lot.
Tom Brady: The fact that they can sell that, to kids, that’s poison for kids, but they keep
doing it. That’s just America, and that’s what we’ve been conditioned to. So we believe
that Frosted Flakes are actually food.
(VH): When Tom Brady said that Frosted Flakes wasn’t fit for children and that Coca-
Cola was poison, I screamed from the rooftops. I was like, finally, an athlete sticking up
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for children. And we need more role models and more athletes to take that plunge and to
be that courageous. Because I tell you, it is important for the overall health of this world
that we get the true message about food out to our children.
(MH): This whole idea that sugar is okay and carbs are okay and fat is bad came out of the
60s. And it wasn’t by accident, there was a movement by the sugar industry and the lobby
to actually vilify fat and to exonerate sugar. And they hired two scientists from Harvard,
paid them the equivalent of 50 thousand dollars in today’s dollars to write a review of the
research of the time because sugar was being implicated in heart disease. And they wanted
to discredit that theory, and based on that article published in The New England Journal in
1967, science for hire, they were actually able to catalyze this movement of low fat, high
carbs that’s driven our obesity epidemic. And if you look at the obesity rates after the dietary
guidelines came in in 1980, it’s a hockey stick up in obesity and diabetes. There’s been a
seven-fold increase in the rate of diabetes since 1980 around the world. And it’s because
of the plethora of sugar. Now we have about 152 pounds of sugar per person consumed
in America, per year, and about 146 pounds of flour. That’s about a pound a day of sugar
and flour for every man, woman and child, and our bodies are just not adapted to that.
(MH): We know that there are really clear policies that change behavior. Michael Bloomberg
tried to address this in New York City with taxing large cities. He tried to get a sugar tax,
he couldn’t pass it through. Philadelphia’s passed a sugar tax. Berkeley passed a sugar
tax. Mexico has passed a sugar tax. And we know that those are effective in reducing
obesity and preventing disease. So we actually have evidence that these work, and that at
scale, they can have an impact on choices. Just like we tax smoking. In fact, sugar is the
new tobacco.
Announcer: Welcome back to Sky News, coverage of the budget of 2016 and the chancellor
announcing a levy on companies that produce sugary, fizzy drinks. Something we weren’t
expecting took us all by surprise, but did it come as a surprise to you?
Jamie Oliver: Yeah, 100%. This is a profound moment. This, I believe, will travel to
Canada, Australia. We want to get prime ministers to start doing stuff that actually affects
child health. I think today’s profound; it’s about getting your hands around big business
and caring like a parent, not a politician. Yeah.
Announcer: Jamie Oliver, there we are. The fist bump there for victory in Jamie’s campaign
for a sugar tax.
(LW): The human body’s so extraordinary. We’re actually made up of about 50 trillion
cells, which is a number that can so easily go over our heads with its enormity, so let me
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use time as an example to demonstrate the enormity of that. So one million seconds ago
was 12 days ago; one billions seconds ago was 32 years ago; but one trillion seconds ago
was 32 thousand years ago. Now you have about 50 trillion cells that make you up, so the
best way to picture that is 50 trillion tiny little circles, and they all want to talk to each
other. But the only way they can communicate is when there are nutrients present. And I
have grave concerns that there are just too many people not getting the nutrients that are
essential for very basic cell-to-cell communication. We are essentially the health of our
cells.
(WD): The things that really pack a wallop in restoring health all make evolutionary or
adaptive sense. What if we revert back to those foods? What did humans eat for the first
99.6% of our time on earth? We gathered plants, fruit of course, digging the dirt with our
sticks and stones for underground tubers and roots. Berries, nuts, shellfish, fish of course,
eggs, poultry, the things that humans instinctively regard as food. If we could return to
a diet like that, we return to the health of primitive people. Which is, there’s a common
fiction that primitive people die young. That can be true from injury and infection, but
they don’t die of diabetes, heart disease, dementia and cancer.
(JR): If you look at our past, we were hunter gatherers, or gatherer hunters, depending on
the ecosystem that our ancestors lived in. We ate what the environment provided. If we
lived near a lake, we ate fish. If we lived near the ocean we were probably fishermen. If
we lived in the tropics, we ate what was growing there. If we lived in the far north, we
hunted. But we ate seeds, we ate insects, we ate nuts, we ate plants, mostly. We had a very
high fibrous diet because the original plants were much more high in fiber than plants are
today. And the animal products we ate were mostly insects and grubs and things like that,
but if we were able to catch or kill a larger animal, those were wild animals. And they
were very low in fat.
Today though, animals are living in feedlots. They’re living in factory farms. They are
not allowed to move. They don’t develop muscle tissue. They’re very high in fat and it’s
mostly storage fats, highly saturated fats. The animals are so miserable. In order to keep
these animals alive under these conditions, these conditions are so unnatural they have to
inject them with antibiotics, or feed them antibiotics. Oftentimes use hormones as well,
and other chemicals - insecticides to kill the flies that are around. When people say oh,
but our ancestors ate meat, and then they go down to the butcher or to McDonald’s and
buy that, they don’t realize how different, metabolically, nutritionally, energetically, that
meat that they’re buying is from the meat they’re talking about our ancestors having eaten.
Because what our ancestors ate were wild animals.
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(JA): There’s grass-fed organic beef, and there’s grain-fed GMO conventional beef. There’s
good wheat and there’s bad wheat. So I really think there’s a difference between the
products, and I think if we’re looking at an ancient einkorn wheat that’s sprouted and
then slow cooked for a long period of time, like it was done in the Bible, like it was
done in Chinese medicine, like it’s done in the Middle East still today, if it’s properly
prepared, I believe it could be easy to digest. There’s studies showing that lacto-fermented,
so fermented grains in gluten, actually may not affect celiacs like other types of grain.
So I actually truly believe that the biggest thing is that we’re not preparing our foods
properly.
(JR): What you want to eat, though, is as many plants as possible. As many fruits and
vegetables and seeds and nuts as you can. Some people do well with whole grains. Some
people want to be vegans and eat no animal products. Some people want to eat some
animal products. There’s lots of variation here on what’s a healthy diet.
But if someone wants to eat animal products as part of their diet, the most ethical, and
the healthiest, is wild fish. Particularly fish that is low mercury, that is high in Omega-3
fatty acids - wild salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel. These are fish that are low in heavy
metals, low in contaminants, low in pesticide residues, and are high in the types of fats
that our bodies need to thrive and our brains need to thrive.
I think it’s a marvelous thing that the food choices that are healthiest for us personally, that
give us the most strength, the most vitality, the strongest immune systems and therefore
the least susceptibility to pathogens and infectious diseases, the strongest respiratory
system, and so we can breathe deeply with life and enjoy the beauty of simply breathing.
The same food choices that are so much healthier for us are also kinder to the animals and
don’t cause the same kind of environmental distress and damage.
(MH): Most people don’t understand that what you put at the end of your fork is more
powerful than any drug you’ll find in a pill bottle. That food is not just like medicine, it
is medicine. Food is a better drug than most drugs. It works faster, better, and is cheaper
than any drug on the market, and it has no side effects except good ones.
(LW): Now, because of incredible advances in the world, we are living a lot longer. Our
life expectancy has almost doubled since 1900. However, a big question to ponder is, are
we living too short and dying too long? So we still want to be able to bend over and do up
our own shoelaces in the second half of our life. You don’t want your tummy to have gotten
so big that you can no longer reach your feet, or your spine to have become so inflexible
that you can no longer get to your toes. When you talk to people who can no longer put
on their own shoes, they regret their choices in the first half of their life very much. So the
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choices we make today don’t just impact how we feel and function today, they’re going to
impact what that entire future looks like. And the power to change that is in your hands,
and in your hands only. No one else can do it for you. It’s just that you have to believe that
you’re worth taking care of.
(JA): In terms of the industry today, we’re in a really unique place. We have more toxic
processed food than ever in the history of the world. At the same time, we actually have
more access to the world’s super foods than ever before.
(MH): So essentially what I recommend to people is eat foods that don’t have nutrition
fact labels, that don’t have ingredient lists, and that don’t have a barcode, because they’re
just food. An avocado doesn’t have an ingredient level. An almond doesn’t have a nutrition
facts label and eggs don’t have a barcode, they’re just food. So it’s really not complicated.
I do programs in large churches and I make it very simple. I say, leave the food that man
made, eat the food that God made. And any kindergarten kid can understand that.
(LW): But what I’ve seen in my clinical practice over nearly 20 years is that there are many
people who benefit enormously with their physical health, with their happiness, with their
performance, with their strength, just with how robust they feel in life when they make a
change to how they eat that actually serves their own individual needs.
(VH): When you’re on the diet that’s ideal for you, eating becomes effortless. It becomes
a way of life. Your cravings are stabilized, your body is full of energy, your reliance on
outside prescription drugs starts to diminish, your reliance on outside therapy start to
diminish and you realize you can get just about everything you need from food. And until
you get to that point, I say keep experimenting.
(WD): You can find incredible health that, even to this day, I’m astounded at the conditions
that reverse with this lifestyle. Every day it doesn’t cease to amaze me, and that’s what
I do with my day, I talk to people who have done this. And they even look different. So
there’s an actual transformation in appearance, and thankfully it provides this kind of
anti-aging or youth preserving effect and typically, they look 10, 20 years younger. It’s a
wonderful effect.
(ND): Of course everybody’s different but one thing is for sure, the living foods, the
organic foods, non-processed foods are the best thing that you can fuel your body with.
(JR): This is what we’re meant to eat. This is how we’re meant to live so that we can thrive
and others can thrive. So that we can thrive and we don’t destroy the world in the process.
Then we want to live with respect for ourselves and others because it feels so good.
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Closing Music:
♪ Going back to where our story all began ♪

♪ Do you want to hear the journey of this man ♪
♪ So maybe maybe you’re gonna call me crazy ♪
♪ A feeling I know it can’t be wrong ♪
♪ So one day, you’re gonna be my lover ♪
♪ Everybody run for cover ♪
♪ The ceiling’s coming down ♪
♪ And one day, we’re gonna be forever ♪
♪ Everybody said we’d never ♪
♪ So stop, I’m gonna be there for you now ♪
♪ Don’t run, gonna be there for you now ♪
♪ You ♪
♪ Always you ♪
♪ Always you. ♪
♪ I’ll walk you through the sunshine and the rain ♪
♪ I believe that second chances come again ♪
♪ So maybe, maybe, no longer call us crazy ♪
♪ A feeling I know it wasn’t wrong ♪
♪ You ♪
♪ Always you ♪
♪ Always you ♪
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EPISODE TWO:
OVERCOMING FEAR & STRESS

Featuring:
Chris Wark (CW)
Bruce Lipton (BL)
Libby Weaver (LW)
Joe Dispenza (JD)
Mark Hyman (MH)
Wim Hof (WH)
Ocean Ramsey (OR)
Josh Axe (JA)
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(CW): When I was 26, I got a huge wake up call: it was stage three colon cancer. At that
time I was a real estate entrepreneur. I was just working really hard to build a business.
I was just basically going 90 miles an hour. The first thing that happens when you’re
diagnosed with cancer is fear. It’s a huge stress and fear bomb. I mean, this is how fast the
cancer industry moves. Patients, they get a diagnosis. It’s a whirlwind, like, what, I have
cancer now, what’s going on? Oh, and you’re going to need to be in surgery tomorrow.
We gotta get this out of you right away before it spreads and kills you. That’s what they
told me. So I have surgery to take out 1/3 of my large intestine and they take out the
tumor and they realize that is spread to my lymph nodes and it’s worse than we thought.
It’s stage three C, not stage two, and things were looking worse and worse. It was just
sort of like more bad news. Like, now you need chemo - you need nine to 12 months of
chemotherapy. The idea of chemotherapy didn’t make sense to me. Even though I’d never
had any friends or family members go through cancer, just the idea of poisoning myself
back to health, or that you’re going to poison me back to health. I’m going to get really
really sick, but then somehow it’s going to make me better. I couldn’t make sense of it. I
didn’t know what to do though. And my wife and I go home. We pray about it. I’m like,
“God, if there’s another way, just show me. I don’t know what to do.” And I get a book
that comes to me from a man in Alaska who knew my dad. It was written by a man who had
healed his own colon cancer. And I’m reading this book and I’m like, “This is it. I asked
for something and this book came. This is it. I’m just going to believe this is the answer
to my prayer.” The next thing that happened was I had all these family members start to
call me and tell me that I was making a mistake. All of a sudden the fear is back, right?
The fear, the doubt the anxiety - it’s all back and present. And so in order to appease the
people around me, I agreed to go see an oncologist. And we go to the clinic and it’s full of
people. They’re all twice my age, three times my age. I was just like, “What am I doing
here?” I don’t even belong here, you know? And the TV is on and out comes Jack Lalanne.
Jack Lalanne is on the morning show in the tiny little window of time that I’m sitting in
the oncologist’s waiting room. And he comes out, he starts going off about nutrition and
the natural therapies in healing and the reasons why we’re all sick because we’re eating all
this junk food and processed food, and if man made it, don’t eat it. I’m like, “Man, I can’t
believe this is like happening’.” Like, he’s on the TV right now, this is not a coincidence.
This cannot be a coincidence. So we go back and see the oncologist and he gives me this
really standard pitch. You got stage three colon cancer, you’ve got about a 60% chance of
living five years with treatment. And I’m thinking, you know, 60% chance of living five
years, that’s barely better than a coin toss. What if he’s wrong? What if it’s worse? We
asked him about alternative therapies and he said, he was like, “No, there are none. And if
you don’t do chemotherapy, you’re insane.” At that moment, just a tidal wave of fear just
18
smashed me, like smashed me on the rocks.
(BL): My research back in 1967 was cloning stem cells, which are embryonic cells. I
put one stem cell in a dish by itself. It divides every 10 or 12 hours. So first there’s one,
two, four, doubling, doubling. And after a week, 50,000 cells in the Petri dish. The most
important point is, all the cells are genetically identical because they came from one
parent. So I have 50,000 genetically identical cells. I split them up into three different
Petri dishes, but I change the culture medium. That’s the environment in which cells live.
It’s the equivalent of blood. So in environment A, the cells were muscle. In environment
B, genetically identical cells in a different environment formed bone. And in environment
C, the cells formed fat cells. So the fate of the cells, muscle, bone, fat, wasn’t based on
genetics. They all had the same genes. It was based on the environment. So you say, “Okay,
cells in a plastic Petri dish, culture environment, what the heck does that have to do with
me?” When you look in the mirror and see yourself, you see one human looking back and
I go, “Oh, one organism.” I go, “Misperception. A human is comprised of 50 trillion cells.
The cells are the living entity.” When I say the word Bruce, that is a word that is covering
a community of 50 trillion individual sentient cells. So the point is simple and kind of
funny. A human being is a skin covered Petri dish. It doesn’t make a difference for the cell
if it’s in a plastic dish or the skin dish. The fate of the cell is not controlled by the genes,
it’s controlled by the composition of the culture medium. In your skin-covered Petri dish,
the culture medium’s called blood, and the brain is the chemist that determines what is the
composition of that blood. What chemistry should the brain put into the blood? And I go,
“It’s based on the perception of the mind.” If I open my eyes and I see someone I love, the
brain releases chemistry related to love, which is dopamine, pleasure, oxytocin, bonding to
the one I love. Vasopressin, a chemical in my blood that causes my cells to become more
attractive to my mate, and growth hormone is released when you’re in love, and that by
the name causes you to become healthy. So I’m saying when the mind perceives love, the
chemistry from that brain is chemistry that enhances your vitality. That’s why when people
are in love, they glow. The same person, if they open their eyes and see something that
scares them, will not release the same chemistry as in love. If you’re afraid, you release
stress hormones and inflammatory agents that affect the immune system. So I say, “Oh
my goodness. If I open up my eyes and I see something that scares me, then cortisone
and norepinephrine and inflammatory agents called cytokines are released into the culture
medium, a different composition of culture medium.”
(CW): I’m sitting there, and I’m in this hyper-fear-anxiety situation and he’s belittling
me and just talking down to me and just kind of essentially saying, “If you don’t do what
I’m telling you to do, you’re going to die.” Something he said just kind of pokes through.
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He says, “blah blah blah, and I’m not telling you this cause I need your business.” And
I was like, “Wait a minute! This guy... this sounds like a sales pitch.” I was in sales and
this guy’s doing the push-away technique on me right now. So even though I had these
little epiphanies and was getting these clues at our meeting, the fear was so strong and so
powerful and the anxiety, that like a robot, I basically finished our meeting and walked
straight to the desk and made an appointment to start chemo. And so I made a fear-based
decision. I’m afraid I’m going to die, so okay, I guess I’ve got to do chemo if I want to
live. I just so desperately wanted an option that wasn’t scary. I didn’t have one.
(BL): When we are in fear, stress, the stress hormones shut down the immune system.
It’s so effective at shutting down the immune system that doctors use stress hormones
therapeutically, meaning if I want to transplant a foreign organ into a recipient, I don’t want
the recipient’s immune system to reject that organ. I give the recipient stress hormones
before transplanting the organ because it’s so effective in shutting down the immune system
it allows the organ to take hold before the immune system activates. Well if you’re using
stress hormones therapeutically to shut down the immune system, what does that mean for
the average person who is now living in stress 24/7? And the answer is, we are inhibiting
our immune system every day. That immune system’s responsible for preventing cancer
because every day, normal people create cancer cell, but a healthy immune system will
always get rid of it.
(LW): But if we look at people’s everyday lives and we look at what leads people to make
stress hormones today, it’s not the tiger coming out of the jungle at us, or someone from
another tribe chasing us with their spear. It’s not those usually, thankfully, those physical
threats to our life. What leads us to make things like adrenaline and cortisol today -
block your ears - is caffeine and our perception of pressure and urgency. Now I choose
those words very carefully because we can tend to forget that pressure and urgency is a
perception. We actually choose to see our day like that. And what so many people have
done is made their email inbox full of stress and pressure and urgency. When we wake
up in the morning and we see our day as difficult or we see it that everything is urgent,
when maybe in reality two things are actually urgent, we put ourselves into what’s called
sympathetic nervous system dominance, which is essentially the fight-or-flight response
and it’s adrenaline driving that. So it changes our biochemistry on the inside because it
literally thinks our life is in danger. So it prepares us to get away. So the first thing it
does is elevate our blood pressure, which is an ongoing problem for so many adults in the
Western world. It changes where our blood supply is directed. So normally blood supply
is fantastic to our digestive system, but it gets diverted away to the periphery - to the arms
and the legs - to power us to get out of danger.
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(JD): So we have three types of stress: physical, chemical, and emotional. Physical stress,
of course, is trauma, injuries, accidents, falls. Chemical stress is flus, bacterial infections,
blood sugar levels, hangovers. Emotional stress: family tragedies, second mortgages, single
parenting, 401Ks. All of those things knock the brain and body out of balance. And so then
it’s a combination of all those things with chronic conditions. And so when we talk about
anxiety and depression, anxiety and depression on a functional brain scan looks exactly
the same. Anxiety is when we are knocked out of balance. And when we are knocked
out of homeostasis, or we’re knocked out of balance, we turn on what’s called the stress
response. And when the stress response is turned on, we mobilize enormous amounts of the
body’s resources for some threat in our external environment. We turn on that sympathetic
nervous system, or the fight-or-flight nervous system. When we begin to mobilize all that
energy, of course it gives the body a rush of adrenaline.
(LW): Which changes the fuel that your body perceives it is safe to use. So in any given
moment, the body is making a decision which fuel to use and it can only use glucose or fat,
or a combination of both. And when your body is on red alert, thinking it’s got to get out
of danger quickly, it needs a fast-burning fuel to power it to do that. So take a wild guess
between glucose and fat, which is the preferred fuel source? In that moment, it’s glucose.
So I have literally met thousands of people in the almost 20 years that I’ve been working
with people one-on-one, who have lost the ability to effectively use their body fat as a fuel
because they’re always relying on their glucose because of stress hormone production. That’s
essentially phase one of stress, which is high adrenaline. But because with high adrenaline,
it creates a lot of inflammation in the body. Now the body knows that inflammation is the
beginning of most degenerative disease. So it’s trying to keep you alive, so it needs to
dampen down that inflammation. And because, historically, adrenaline production was short
lived. We escaped from the danger. We won the fight. Whatever happened, happened,
but it was short lived. And now that you’ve been making adrenaline for the last year or
decade, the body says, well I can’t sustain this level of inflammation. I now need to go into
the second phase of stress, which is when your cortisol starts to elevate. But when we’re
producing excessive amounts of cortisol, its job is to slow your metabolism down to get
you through a famine. And so your clothes get tighter. And what’s most people’s response
when their clothes get tighter? They think, “Oh, I better go on a diet.” And if you go on a
diet, you tend to eat less, which just confirms to your body what it perceives is true, which
is that there’s no food left in the world and so it slows your metabolism even further.
(BL): The immune system is suppressed because the energy used by the immune system
is so great that it will interfere with us avoiding that sabre tooth tiger. Think about it. When
a person’s sick, they have so little energy they can’t get out of bed sometimes. And I say,
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“Yeah, the immune system uses a lot of energy.”
(JD): If you’re tapping the body’s resources for some external threat, for the short term
that’s great. When the stress is over, the body returns back to homeostasis and of course
the body builds its resources again. But if you keep turning on that stress response and
you can’t turn it off, and you’re mobilizing all this energy for some threat in your external
environment, there’s no energy in your internal environment for growth and repair. There’s
no energy for long term building projects. It’s like there’s a war out there and you’re sending
all the troops out and there’s no homeland security. And when that happens, melatonin
levels go down of course, which means you’re not going to want to sleep, because if there’s
a predator out there, why would you be vulnerable in the middle of the night? You gotta
stay awake. So the survival gene switches on and we get in trouble. And so if it’s not a
predator that’s in the cave or outside the cave waiting for you, which was highly adaptive
thousands of years ago, but what if it’s your coworker that’s sitting at the cubicle next
to you who you resent and despise? Well, that primitive nervous system that was once
adaptive is now very maladaptive.
(BL): Today’s world is 24/7/365 stress. Our biology was never designed to be in perpetual
stress. I say, “Why is it a problem?” Stress hormones are shutting down the immune
system. Fear is the primary source of the stress hormones. So fear is the cause of today’s
healthcare crisis.
(JD): When you’re living in stress, the unknown is a very scary place. So people cling to
their fear. They cling to their guilt. They cling to their sadness. They would rather hold
on to that than take a chance on possibility, because in survival or in stress, it’s not a time
to create. It’s not a time to imagine. It’s not a time to learn. It’s not a time to open your
heart. It’s not a time to go within. It’s not a time to sit still. It’s a time to run, to fight,
or to hide. And when that primitive nervous system is activated, all of your attention is
on your outer world, where the danger is a person, thing, place. We focus on matter. We
narrow our focus on things and people. We put our attention on our environment. And
when we’re living by the hormones of stress, our attention is on time. We obsess about
time, the body, the environment, and time.
(BL): Stress results in illness. How much illness? Over 90% of illness on this planet
today is based on lifestyle and stress, and not genetics. A small percent of the population
can claim, “My ill health is because I have bad genes.” Yeah, but what about the 90% of
the population that is causing the healthcare crisis? It had nothing to do with the genes
and everything to do with lifestyle and behavior. Relevance? Those are things we can
control.
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(LW): Stress is really the achiever’s word for fear. When people share with me what they’re
stressed about, if I pull the curtains back on that, what I’ll actually see is what they’re
frightened of. They’re frightened of letting people down. They’re frightened of how other
people see them. So if we can actually, in those moments where we feel really worked up
and really stressed, if we can pause there and think, “What am I really worried about?”
It’s not actually about running late or it’s not actually about not replying to that email
promptly. It’s nearly always about how we perceive people are going to see us.
(JD): Now when you turn on the stress response and you can’t turn it off, now you’re
headed for disease because no organism can live in emergency mode for extended periods of
time. Chronic conditions require a lifestyle change. A person has to begin to make different
choices. They have to change the way they think. They have to change the way they feel.
And that requires them becoming conscious of how unconscious they were. The fact that
we can turn on the stress response just by thought alone, and it’s a scientific fact that the
long term effects of the hormones of stress down-regulate genes that create disease. By
the very nature of those chemicals, our thoughts can make us sick. So the question is, if
our thoughts can make us sick, is it possible that our thoughts can make us well?
(CW): Maybe this is why I’m sick, because I have so much negativity swirling around
in my mind and it’s translating into my body and it’s suppressing me and it’s making me
sick. The chemo appointment shows up. The day arrives. And every day approaching
that day I got more and more stressed and nervous and like, “What am I going to do?”
And finally the day arrives and I’m just like, “I can’t do it.” I just could not see myself
doing it. So I didn’t go - just no show. And they badgered me and called my house and
left messages on my answering machine and sent me a certified letter. I mean, they were
really trying to get me into treatment and eventually left me alone. And so I was willing
to change. That’s really the bottom line. I was willing to change everything, break all my
bad habits, and break all my bad thought habits, which are the hardest to break, right? So
I just got busy doing it. To me it was - at that time - it was life or death. I took massive
action, and I committed to a raw food diet. Then I just had this amazing turn around in
my energy levels and life was good, I was just feeling great. And the farther away I got
from the cancer industry, the more confident I got and the less fear I had and the more of
an adventure it became. I don’t know what’s coming next, I just need to enjoy everyday.
And every time fear would creep in, I would have to immediately catch it. Catch myself
in those fear moments because with cancer, every single day you’re wondering, “Am I
getting better or worse?” But I realized that I had to get control of my thoughts and my
emotions; that I couldn’t let my emotions rule me and I couldn’t let fear take over. And
so catching myself thinking negatively and changing the way I thought, plus gratitude, is
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the way I dealt with fear.
(OR): I’ve dedicated my life to helping to get people to overcome their fear, to change
that fear to fascination. I work in the field in marine research. So that puts me in close
proximity to whales, dolphins, and especially sharks. Sharks are the focus of my work,
both in research and my passion in conversation. I feel so lucky to get to spend time with
over 30 species of sharks around the world. I actually work with great white sharks every
single year. I’ve been very fortunate to dive with a lot of great white sharks. And it’s so
neat to get to not only inspire people to become involved in conservation and change their
perception of sharks, but also to watch them overcome their fear. A lot of people have
a fear of sharks and that comes from a lack of understanding and a lack of information.
For some people, fear is a big burden, and fear is very blinding for people. People have
negative thoughts that come into their mind, but it’s up to you to make a choice whether
you want to hold on to those and believe them or not. So anything that you’re doing in
your life that’s not serving you, try to be more aware of that habit. Because everybody’s
going to go through stuff. But it’s those people that are stronger mentally, that choose to
be stronger mentally, that are going to overcome those obstacles, take it as a challenge,
integrate (it) into their lives and just make them stronger.
(BL): We buy fear because of people’s programs that tell us we should be afraid. We watch
the TV, we read the news, and fear is everywhere, Be afraid of these people. Be afraid
of criminals. Be afraid of terrorists. Be afraid, be afraid. We are being programmed to
be afraid. In the first days after 9/11, George Bush was on the television every day telling
the world, Be afraid, be very afraid. Whoever these people are, we don’t know who they
are, where they’re coming from. We don’t know where they’re coming from. Where are
they going to hit next? We don’t know, but be afraid. He said that for three days in a row.
On the fourth day, he changed his message. On the fourth day he said, Hey, America’s
open for business. And the reason why he had to say that was for three days of fear, he
shut down the growth not just of the bodies of the people in the country, he shut down the
growth of the entire country, which is a living system, and put everybody in fear. What
was the consequence? People were so afraid that they handed over the powers and said,
“Do whatever you need to do.” In stress, the hormones shut down the blood vessels in
conscious brain and push up into reaction, which is as fast as anything we can do, but it
makes us less intelligent. So fear not only dilapidates our health system, but it creates a less
intelligent population. British parliamentarian Tony Benn said, “Governments do not want
a healthy, intelligent population because they’re difficult to control.” And the fact is, we
have become powerless in our own world because of the fear and giving away our power.
(JA): A lot of people don’t realize that certain emotions actually cause disease in specific
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organs. This has been known in Chinese Medicine for thousands of years. Emotions of fear
affect the reproductive organs, the kidneys, and adrenals. Think about this, if somebody
has fear, like a child gets really scared, they can wet themselves. Why does that happen?
Fear directly affects the bladder and the kidneys, causing that to happen. If somebody is
experiencing the emotions of frustration and anger, it’s toxic to the liver. It’s somebody’s
experiencing emotions of grief and sadness and depression, maybe they lost a spouse or
went through a divorce, or had a trying time in their life, that affects the colon and the
lungs, which is your immune system. If somebody has anxiety and nervousness, it affects
the heart, the small intestine, and the nervous system. And if somebody is a big worrier,
it affects the spleen, the pancreas, as well as the stomach. And so specific emotions drive
disease in specific organs. And I can tell you from working with thousands of patients,
taking care of the emotional aspect of health is just as important, if not more important,
than changing the diet.
(CW): Because when you are stressed, whether you’re in a state of chronic worry and
anxiety or fear, or resentment, or bitterness, or unforgiveness, jealousy, envy - if you’re
entertaining those emotions every day, multiple, all of them, some of them, whatever, then
you stay in a state of chronic stress. And it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not like, “Oh, I
got in a car wreck and it was really stressful.” Like, “Oh no, I got cancer.” It’s not like that.
It’s people that are living in this state of chronic stress for years usually, could be even a
decade of a really difficult marriage, an abusive relationship, an abusive work environment,
they go through a really bad lawsuit, they lose their business, they have a death in the
family or multiple deaths in the family of loved ones or friends, they’re teetering on the
brink of disease for years. And then oftentimes there’s one traumatic event that pushes them
over the edge. So they’ve got chronic stress for years and then bam, someone important
to them dies or their career is over for some reason, or they lose their home, bankruptcy,
and that’s what we call the stress trigger or the cancer trigger. It’s just like the straw that
broke the camel’s back.
(JD): And cancer, of course, then every time a person hears the word cancer and they’re
given that diagnosis, the first emotion that they feel is fear. So they get the diagnosis of
fear. All of a sudden their body’s altered internally. They’re looking at the doctor. They’re
taking a snapshot of that moment. They’re creating a long-term memory. Every time they
think about what the doctor said, they’re conditioning their body to become the mind of fear.
So then people then, when they hear the voodoo curse, when they get the death sentence,
three months to live, six months to live, nine months to live, 12 months to live, that
information goes right in, and it begins to program their autonomic nervous system to that
outcome. Now there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is, is then the person is at
25
war with themselves because they’re waiting for the diagnosis to change, to feel the relief
from the fear and emptiness that they’re experiencing.
(CW): And cancer patients can get PTSD just from the diagnosis, right? It’s that stressful.
It’s that traumatic. It’s that powerful, right? They have symptoms of PTSD cause it’s such
a scary just bomb in their life. And guess what happens? Well all that stress has been
contributing to their disease, now they get a stress bomb, and their immune system goes
even lower, right? And they become even weaker. And that’s scary, and it’s something that
no one is talking about.
(LW): When we’re always in that stressed out place, you can go into adrenal fatigue, which
is when the adrenal glands can no longer sustain that level of cortisol output. When you
wake up in the morning, you feel like you’ve been hit by a bus. The fatigue is deep and
relentless. So the consequences of being intensely busy and perceiving all that pressure and
urgency in our lives, the long term consequences of that are deeply concerning to me. And
it also doesn’t have to be that way because if we pause for a minute and consider what the
real currency of health is, I believe it’s energy. But when we stop and think about energy,
when we don’t have energy, everything is more difficult. When you’re tired, it impacts
the foods that you choose, whether you get off the couch and go for a walk or not, the
jobs that you would apply for, the friends that you make, your self-talk, and the way you
speak to everyone you love in the world. On a physical level, when we’re in sympathetic
nervous system dominance, when we’re in that red zone, in that fight-or-flight response,
the only thing science currently knows that will get us out of that is to extend the length
of our exhalation. So the other arm of the nervous system is called the parasympathetic
nervous system. It’s the rest, digest, repair, reproduce arm of the nervous system. And from
that place, our body is able to work so incredibly efficiently. We’re able to use our body
fat effectively as a fuel, and it’s simply because it’s getting the message via the nervous
system that it is safe. We need to become breath aware. So essentially what I mean by that
is we need to diaphragmatically breathe. So when you breathe in through your nostrils,
with the inhalation, your tummy starts to stick out, and then there’s a gentle pause at the
end of that inhalation, and then you slowly exhale, again, through your nostrils, and your
belly comes back in towards your spine. And if you can really slow that style of breathing
down, your body gets the message via your nervous system that you’re safe.
(JD): The heart starts getting very orderly and very rhythmic, and it sends a very strong
signal to the brain. And the person starts to relax. They start to feel safe. Everything changes
because they start to change their breathing.
(LW): Obviously, we all have to breathe, but it’s reminding ourselves to become breath-
26
aware through potentially busy days. So you might start with a breath-focused practice,
whether it’s yoga, meditation, pilates, tai chi. If none of those things appeal, it might just
be going to the window or going outside, placing your hands on top of your tummy and
thinking of the things you’re grateful for. It might be every time you’re stopped at red
traffic lights, instead of checking social media or sending emails, you actually breathe
diaphragmatically. When you boil the kettle first thing in the morning to make warm water
and lemon juice, of course, you stand there and breathe diaphragmatically. So just taking
those micropauses throughout the day to check in with your breath and just commit to
becoming more breath aware. The more time we spend in that diaphragmatic breathing
place, the more supported our nervous system is going to be.
(MH): We now know that the effect of stress on the body is profound, and even if you
eat perfectly, if you’re chronically stressed, you can create depressed immune function.
You can cause gut disruption - a leaky gut. You can cause depression. You can create
inflammation in the body. And so techniques that help the body to reset and restore are
critical. It’s one of the key foundational principles of functional medicine. So in my practice,
I often recommend people learn various techniques that work for them, whether it’s yoga,
whether it’s meditation or prayer or nature experiences. Personally, I find meditation very
powerful. I think that literature on it is profound in terms of optimizing gene expression,
regulating immune system, affecting the brain structure, increasing neuroplasticity (the
connection between brain cells), creating new brain cells, increasing stem cell production
in the body. So we know it’s not just this Eastern hokey pokey thing. It actually has real
biological effects that transform your health every day. And for me, it’s one of the most
powerful things I’ve begun to do as a practice, because other than food as medicine and
exercise, it’s probably one of the more important levers I found to create my own health
and to actually help my patients.
(BL): Interesting point, Dean Ornish, a physician in San Francisco, wonderful study, he
worked with prostate cancer patients. What he did was he split his patients into two groups.
Before the 90-day experiment, they read the genetics of both populations. And then, one
group got regular, conventional pharmaceutical treatment. The second group was the
experimental group. And what did he do? He taught them stress reduction techniques. He
taught them how to meditate, and he taught them how to have a better diet. After 90 days,
they read the genes of both groups. The group that got the conventional treatment, the genes
essentially stayed the same as they were for 90 days. But the group that changed lifestyle,
500 genes changed their function in 90 days. Most of the genes were contributing to the
cancer. Just changing lifestyle, just changing diet rewrote the genetics of that individual
and took them toward health.
27
(CW): There’s so much we can do to reduce stress. And when you start identifying all the
things that we’re doing in the modern society, just what our daily routines look like, so
much of our daily routine is stress promoting. But there’s so many easy changes you can
make, right? Getting more sleep, exercising, eating a plant-based diet, spending time with
your loved ones, right? Breathing fresh air, getting sunshine, connecting with the earth,
like all these things are not hard. Most of them don’t cost anything. And they have such a
deeply profound and measurable affect on the human body and on our stress.
(WH): The trauma of my birth. They never expected me to come. I’m one of a twin, and
they didn’t know somebody was in there. So I stayed in far too long, and I almost suffocated.
And I was born in a hallway, in a cold hallway. That makes a psychic imprint on the baby
who has no reference of consciousness and what is happening, just surviving. So it always
haunted me within. When I became an adolescent, I began to get much more into esoteric
disciplines and look in practices, philosophies because I couldn’t find the match which
was going on in the depth of my psyche. And then I found the water, the cold water. And
the water, cold water, is direct. It brought me right in there in that area where trauma is
chemically stored, and it made me feel just good. For the first time, I knew this is it. Then
I began to become aware that breathing makes a big difference when you’re in ice water.
It made me become aware that if I was breathing more profound, I was able to stay much
longer in that cold environment. A couple of months later, because I felt so good and began
to explore just by feeling, I can do more. Profound breathing. I was able just to do with 25
deep breaths to stay five to seven minutes under the ice. Stayed there five tranquility, deep
tranquility. The cold made me learn to tap in deeper by deeper breathing, very controlled.
Then I did it at home separate from the cold, and I saw all these lights. All, again, these
sort of sensations. Deep sensations began to happen. And it made me able to do challenges
beyond belief. Suddenly, I could stay a whole night sitting outside in freezing temperatures
in shorts, having control all over. That means a physiologic control by the mind, by your
will. I knew that I talked about it, but nobody was able to understand for real what I was
doing. On television I talked about it, and they said, “He’s crazy.” Africa’s highest point.
World’s highest freestanding mountain. The world’s largest volcanoes. Welcome!
The scientists began to become interested. They saw this on television. “Hey, what this
man is doing is not possible. Human physiology is not capable of doing these things.”
They began to test me in thermophysiological experiments, and they saw incredible things,
data they never saw before.
Man being two hours in the ice and not decreasing the core body temperature? That’s
outside of our will, the autonomic nervous system, and that’s not possible, to stay, say, two
hours with no core body temperature decrease. By breathing and believing. Now, believe.
28
You believe is something abstract. It’s shown that in an experiment standing before an
ice tank, I was able just by standing, thinking, motionless to increase metabolic activity
300%. That’s like running, but now, I was motionless. And it makes me able to stay like
for two hours just because I think. That’s my believing that I’m able to stay in the ice for
two hours and have no core body temperature decrease. So they tested me in the immune
system experiment. They injected me with an E. coli bacteria. And normally, you get sick
for three to six hours, headaches and all over agony, can’t control shivering and fever,
and all that. But not me. Within a quarter of an hour, I had it completely under control.
And it showed in the blood analyzed later that I was suppressing the cytokines. Those are
inflammatory markers in the blood, which is the immune system, and directly got the E.
coli bacteria specifically out of my body like neutralized.
But once again, they said, “Yeah, but that’s you. You are the exception.” So I told him,
“No. It’s not about me. It’s about everybody. Anybody can do this. It is just learning how to
expose gradually back toward this depth of physiology. Let me have a group of 18 persons,
test subjects, come with me.” “And how many time do you need with them? A year? 1½
year, to be a little bit close to the result you have given?” I said, “No, 10 days.” And it
became four days. And in four days, without prior experience in the cold, they were able
to endure five hours on the top of a mountain in shorts in freezing temperatures, minus
27.
That’s the capability of a human to endure. They learned how to control the body by
breathing and believing. If you are able to do that, and you get an injection with E. coli
bacteria or virus or anything like that, then you are able to steer directly the adrenaline
and to attack the intruder, the danger, to fend off danger. And anybody can do this just
by breathing and believing. Many literature has been written on breathwork and by the
nose, (speaking foreign language), chakra breathing, and kundalini, and (speaking foreign
language), and you have to do it like this and then four seconds like that, and then breathe
in like that. Just use any hole, get it in, breathe. Become lightheaded, make the difference,
feel different. The only thing you are doing, then, is bringing in oxygen, getting out the
carbon dioxide. It begins to roam freely throughout the body and gets naturally to its destiny,
which is the cell, any cell. And you can feel it. You become lightheaded at a certain moment,
loose in the body, tingling. That’s just oxygen. It enables you to reconnect with the immune
system. Suddenly feel the power that you are able, just by breathing and believing, to
prevent from disease, to become stronger in performance, to gain confidence and trust that
you are in charge of your own mood, health, strength. Just do it 20 minutes and boom. And
the transportation system, which is the vascular system, just take a cold shower. You’ve got
to clean up anyway. So you take a nice warm one, hot as you wish, but end cold like half
29
a minute to a minute. That’s all. That’s just to ignite, to stimulate this beautiful vascular
system who wants to work with you, but it needs some activation. And it’s done by a little
bit of cold. So only those two already enable you to go far deeper in your physiology.
Then, little by little, you find out you are able to do so much more. Then little by little, the
confidence into inside of your own body and mind is grown automatically, naturally. We
want to bring back the belief, the belief of mother nature within. It’s there. It’s there for
everybody, and it showed. All these 18 persons, 12 of them randomly selected. They were
exposed with the bacteria. All, they had control within a quarter of hour over the bacteria
injected reacting on the immune system. All of them, 100%. What consequences will this
give for healthcare? You should be able to control your mood, which is hormonal, your
strength, which is hormonal, adrenaline, cortisol, epinephrine, and your health, which is
the immune system. And yes, we are the first ones in scientific history to show that we are
able to go back to the depth of our physiology far more than scientifically stated. We are
the first one to show the autonomic nervous system can be influenced deeply to prevent
from disease, prevent from depression, to have a lot more control over your life, happiness,
strength, and health. Those are the most important assets of life, not money, not greedy for
power, not politics, not possession. No, happiness, strength, health.
(CW): I did get well, and my wife and I started a family. I have two girls that are eight
and 11 years old now, and I’m 39. It’s been 13 years since I was diagnosed, still cancer
free. But that’s the power of my choices, not just to change my diet, but also I changed
the way I thought. I changed my attitude, my emotions. I started to choose positivity. I
chose gratitude. I stopped being bitter and envy and jealous of people, and I realized I’m so
blessed to have what I have. All of those things created health in my body. And so I sit here
now, 13 years later, in the best shape of my life, the best health of my life. So here I am.
Closing Music:
♪ Going back to where the story all began ♪
♪ So maybe maybe you’re gonna call me crazy ♪
♪ Feeling and know it can be wrong ♪
♪ So one day you’re gonna be my lover ♪
♪ Ceiling’s coming down ♪
30
♪ Don’t worry, I’m gonna be there for you now ♪
♪ Ooooh ♪
♪ Always you ♪
♪ Always you ♪
♪ I’ll walk through the sunshine and rain ♪
♪ I believe in second chances over again ♪
♪ So maybe maybe you know I’m gonna call us crazy ♪
♪ The feeling I know it wasn’t wrong ♪
♪ Don’t worry, I’m gonna be there for you now ♪
♪ Oooh ♪
♪ Always you ♪
♪ Always you ♪
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EPISODE THREE:
BEYOND BELIEF
Featuring:
Jim Kwik (JK)
Bruce Lipton (BL)
Libby Weaver (LW)
Vishen Lakhiani (VL)
Marie Forleo (MF)
Joe Dispenza (JD)
Jon Gabriel (JG)
Mark Hyman (MH)
Brendon Burchard (BB)
Gabrielle Bernstein (GB)
Stig Severinsen (SS)
32
(JK): One incident in your life can change everything. I was in kindergarten, and there was
this noise outside the window, and the teachers says, “Wow, there are firetrucks outside.”
And I remember I just lit up because I felt like they were real-life superheroes. I couldn’t
see outside the window, and all the kids started grabbing their chairs, and I grabbed my
chair and I was so excited, and I bring over to the window sill, and there’s this big iron-
grate radiator dividing the window. I remember when I finally got to see my heroes that my
face lit up. About a split second after that, one of the other children grabbed my chair and
I went face first, head first, right into the radiator. I was bleeding, and I was rushed to the
hospital. My mother said I was never the same after that. I had these learning difficulties.
Very challenged focus. My concentration was really compromised. I had a very poor
memory. I couldn’t retain information. I wouldn’t be able to read like the other kids. And
then I didn’t know what was wrong with me. It actually took me an extra three to four years
just to learn how to read, and I actually taught myself how to read by reading comic books
late at night. And my favorite superheroes growing up actually were the X-Men because
they didn’t fit in. They were the mutants. They were the outcasts. And I felt growing up
with these learning challenges that I didn’t fit in, and I felt like I was one of those people
without the superpowers. And when I found out the X-Men School for the Gifted run by
Professor X, Charles Xavier, actually resided right there in Westchester, New York, and
that’s where I lived. And so I remember, every weekend, when I was about eight or nine
years old, I would ride my bicycle around my neighborhood and I wanted to find that
school because I wanted to run away. I wanted to run away to find my school, to find my
superpowers, to find my super friends. And really, I remember a defining moment when
I was nine years old. I remember that a teacher was talking to another adult, thinking I
wasn’t paying attention, or maybe thinking that I wasn’t smart enough to understand what
she was saying, and she pointed right at me and said, “That is the boy with the broken
brain.” And I remember how hard that hit me. Children understand more than you think
that they understand and I remember always referring back to that moment all through
school whenever I didn’t do well. I was like, “Oh, it’s because I’m broken. It’s because
I’m different. It’s ‘cause my mind doesn’t work like everybody else’s does.” So all of high
school was this, was my struggles. I would work so much harder than everybody else, and I
always thought it was unfair because my grades didn’t reflect that, but I was lucky enough
to get into a university. And I remember freshman year, I took all these classes, ready to
achieve, and I actually did worse, and things got even more difficult for me. And I was
ready to quit school because I didn’t have the money as it was to go to college, and I didn’t
want to waste that and waste time, and so, when I told that to my friend, my friend was
like, “Jim, before you quit school and tell your parents that you’re leaving, why don’t you
come with me this weekend? I’m going to visit my family this weekend. Just get some time
33
away, get some perspective.” So I agree to go there, and I remember right before dinner,
his father is walking me around his property. And they’re pretty well-to-do. And he asked
me this very innocent question, which is the worst question that you could as me at this
me. He says, “Jim, how’s school?” It just hits me. I start crying and bawling, right in front
of this complete stranger, and I tell him my whole story. How I had a brain injury and I
don’t learn like everybody else. And I’m the boy with the broken brain, and school is just
not for me. And then he says, “Jim, stop for a minute.” And he looks me right in the eyes to
ask me this question. He says, “Jim, why are you in school? Why are you in school? What
do you want to be? What do you want to do? What do you want to have? What do you
want to share?” And honestly, I’ve never thought about that before. I start to answer him
and he says, “Stop.” And he pulls out from his back pocket a diary, like a journal, and he
tears out a few sheets, and he hands them to me, and he makes me write down my answers.
My answers of who I want to be, what I want to do, what I want to have, what I want to
share with the world. And I don’t know how much time went by, but when I was done, I
start folding up the sheets of paper to put in my pocket and he grabs them right out of my
hand. And I’m freaking out because I wasn’t expecting anyone to see my dreams and my
fantasies, my goals. And he starts reading them to himself. When he’s done, I don’t know
how much time went by, but he looks at me, he says, “Jim, you are this close to every
single thing on that list.” And I’m just thinking... he spreads his fingers about a foot apart,
and I’m thinking, “There’s no way. Give me 10 lifetimes, I’m not going to crack that list.”
And he takes his fingers and he puts them to the side of my head, my temple, right here,
meaning that between my ears is the key. It’s my mind, it’s my brain. And he walks me
to a room of his home, and it’s wall to wall, ceiling to floor, covered in books. And I start
looking at the titles of these books, and they’re these biographies of incredible men and
women throughout history, and some very early personal growth books. Norman Vincent
Peale. The Power of Positive Thinking. The Magic of Thinking Big, Psycho-Cybernetics,
Think and Grow Rich. All these books on mindset, the power of the mind. And he says,
“Jim, I want you to read one of these books a week.” And I’m thinking, “Have you not
heard anything I’ve said? I’ve all of these learning difficulties, all these learning problems,
I have so much schoolwork to do. We have midterms.” And he says, “Stop.” He’s like,
“Jim, don’t let school get in the way of your education”. But I said, “That’s really good
insight, but I really can’t do it. I don’t want to promise this and break my promise.” And a
very smart man, what he does is he reaches into his pocket and he pulls out my goals, my
dreams, my bucket list, if you will. And this time, he starts reading every single one of my
goals, all my dreams, out loud. And something about hearing your dreams coming from a
stranger’s voice, chanted out into the universe, it shook my heart, it shook my spirit, my
soul, something fierce. So I commit to reading one book a week with that leverage and
34
motivation. And fast forward, now I’m at school, and I have a pile of books that I have to
read for school, and a pile of books that I want to read, that I promised to read for my life.
And I can’t even keep up with one of those piles. A mug of tea, and on it had a drawing of
an incredible genius named Albert Einstein. And it had a quote there that said, “ The same
level of thinking that’s created the problem won’t solve the problem.” And it made me
ask a new question. It made me ask this question like, “What’s my problem?” And I came
up with this answer saying, “Well, I’m a real, slow learner. I learn very slowly. I have a
very slow brain.” Well, how do I think differently about it? Well, maybe I can learn how
to learn faster. Learn how to learn. And another part of me woke up thinking there has to
be a better way.
(BL): People have seen the movie The Matrix, and they say, “Oh, that’s a science fiction
movie” and I go, “No, The Matrix is a documentary. We’ve all been programmed.“ For
400 years the Jesuits have said, “Give me a child until it’s seven, and I will show you the
man.” What people didn’t understand they were saying is, If I get to program the first seven
years, I will determine the outcome of that individual’s life. Very simple understanding,
if you go to an Apple store and you buy an iPod, and you take it out of the store and you
push play on the iPod, nothing plays. And then you’re now upset about the fact that you just
spent all this money and your iPod doesn’t work. And then some little seven-year-old kid
next to you looks up and goes, “Hey, hey mister? Unless you download something first, it
will not work.” The idea’s exactly the same. The mind has a conscious creative mind, but
a subconscious program mind. The conscious mind does not go into full operation until
after age seven. The first seven years, the mind is in a lower vibrational state called theta.
The relevance of theta is that it represents imagination, which is what kids under seven live
in. Half the world is imagination. The mother says, “Give me the broom.” The child says,
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, this is a horse.” So to the child, the broom in the
imagination state of theta actually is the horse. So theta is imagination. More important,
theta is hypnosis. The relevance about that is if you think of all the rules an individual must
learn to become a functional member of a family in a community, thousands of rules. I say,
“Well, how do you teach an infant thousands of rules?” And the idea is well, you can’t give
‘em a book, and you can’t teach ‘em in a school. So basically, what we have to understand
is this; nature created the first seven years of download hypnosis to observe other people,
the parents, the siblings and the community. Observe their behavior and directly download
their behavior as the foundational download of behavior.
(LW): ‘Cause when we’re babies, we believe in our autonomic nervous system, the part
that we can’t govern with our thoughts, the part we can’t instruct. We believe it deeply
in that autonomic nervous system that love is essential for our survival, because as small
35
human babies, it is. Someone has to care enough about us to give us food and clothing and
shelter. We can’t get those things on our own. Other animal species can do from day one by
themselves, but we can’t. So it is there in our DNA from the day we are born that love is
essential for our survival, but we know as adults that a life with love in it is delicious and
soul nourishing. But we can actually live without it, because we can obtain our own food
and clothing and shelter. But for most people, they live their whole life believing that love
is still essential for survival, and it drives their behavior hugely. And here’s the best way
I’ve come to be able to explain that so far. When we are little, from an emotional maturation
perspective, we are what’s called egocentric. So you believe that the way the people are in
your environment, you believe they are the way they are because of you. So when they’re
happy, you link it in your mind immediately. Not consciously. It’s wired in your nervous
system immediately. That’s because I just told a joke, that’s because I just did a beautiful
finger painting, and so parts of your personalIty are born from that. The observations you
make on people’s faces that light them up, you link it to your own behavior. However,
sadly, the same thing also happens when the people in your environment are dissatisfied
or unhappy. You link it to you. So before the seven, every single human has created the
belief in their own deficiency. And we do it to make sense of our environment. Let’s say
normally when your dad comes home from work, the first thing he does is picks you up
and plays with you. You love it, you look forward to it, and then one day, he doesn’t do
that, and you’re sent to your room, and you can hear he and your mother having an intense
conversation in the kitchen. There’s raised voices, there’s fists banging on the table and
you don’t understand it, other than that it feels yucky in your nervous system. Your brain
in that moment is looking for an explanation for this scenario because it’s brand new, and
it’s uncomfortable for you. And we can’t look into their world and see that dad’s behaving
with such intensity because he was just made redundant, and now he doesn’t know how on
earth he’s going to pay for your education. So the expression with intensity is actually out
of deep love and care for you. You can’t see that when you’re egocentric. All you know is
that it feels uncomfortable. And the only way your brain can make sense of what’s going
on is to begin to believe there’s something wrong with you.
(VL): When we are children, we have this thing in our head that I call the meaning-
making machine. And a meaning-making machine tries to grant meaning to everything that
happens in our lives. Our mom or our dad yell at us or send us to a corner. And we may
not necessarily get the meaning that they are trying to install in us. They may simply be
trying to make us more disciplined. We may take on our own meanings. Mom wants me
in a corner because I’m not important to her. Dad asks me to be quiet because he doesn’t
want to hear what I have to say, because what I say isn’t important. Mom doesn’t want to
talk to me today because she doesn’t love me. See kids don’t have adult brains. They are
36
children. But this meaning-making machine creates these meanings that stick with them,
infuse into them, and stay with them into adulthood. Some of the most common meanings,
according to psychologists and therapist like Marisa Peer of Shelly Lefkoe are the ideas
that I am not good enough. I am not important. I am not loved. What I have to say is not
important. And these things hold us back in life.
(LW): But the trick is is that we’re not to see our brain as a meaning-maker. We’re not
taught to see that nothing in the world has meaning unless we give it meaning. So because
we don’t understand that, and we’re not aware that we’ve just created a belief, what then
happens is you go looking for evidence of your beliefs everywhere. There’s a part of our
brain called the reticular activating system that hunts those things down. So if you think
that people can’t be trusted, you will look for evidence of how that is true everywhere, and
you’ll miss all the examples of how it’s not true. If you believe that there aren’t enough
hours in the day, that will be your experience. You’ll live your life with such intensity there
aren’t enough hours in the day, whereas the person who sits at the desk beside you, they
might have 50 more things on their to-do list each day, but they cruise through the day,
and they get more done, and that’s because they believe that the important things always
get done. So your beliefs create your experience.
(BL): The hardest part about the programming is it occurs before your mind actually enters
into consciousness. So the question becomes, very seriously, “What are my programs?”
And then why it becomes a question is you are not even conscious when the programs
are downloaded. So you say, “Well, I don’t know what my programs are. I don’t know
what I learned when I was one year old.” So the exciting part about it is that science has
recognized that 95% of our life comes from subconscious programs. So the simple truth
is this, you look at your life and it is a printout of your programs. So it’s simple. You
don’t have to know who said what, who did what. That’s blaming the messenger over the
message. The message is what did you learn, program. And I say, “Yeah, but the program
is what you’re playing 95% of the time, so therefore look at your life.” And it comes down
to simple, and it goes like this. The things that you like that come into your life come in
because you have programs to accept those. The other part, though, is anything that you
work hard at, struggle over, sweat over, what you put a lot of effort into. Question why
are you working so hard to make these things manifest. The answer inevitably is your
programs and your subconscious do not support that end. So the simple point is you want
to know your programming, look at your life.
(MF): So when it comes to understanding whether or not we have limiting beliefs, one
clue is to see if there’s a recurring pattern in your life. If there’s something that you say
that you want, but it’s not a reality for you, and it’s been true for years and years and years,
37
or even months and months and months, and you’ve been working on it, that’s probably
a clue that there could be a limiting belief under there that you need to investigate, and
then consciously work on changing. So I think, when it comes to limiting beliefs, if there’s
any area in your life that consistently creates a lot of pain, a lot of stress, a lot of struggle
or anxiety, a good place to peek around to say, “Well, what do I believe about this? Do I
believe that it’s possible to resolve? Do I believe I’m worthy of having this resolved?” I
think investigating it on that level from a place of curiosity is step one because if you’re
not aware of the belief, it’s hard to change it.
(JK): For me, where it really showed up was my learning. I had these learning difficulties.
So I think. “How am I going to learn how to learn?” Well maybe school. So I pick up a
course bulletin, looking at all the classes for next semester, and I look at all these hundreds
of classes, and all of them are classes on what to learn. Math and history and science and
Spanish. But there were zero classes on how to learn, how to think for yourself, how to
be creative, how to solve problems, how to actively listen, how to concentrate and focus,
how to read faster, how to remember things. Socrates says, “There is no learning without
remembering.” So I put my studies aside, and I make studying my studies. And I wanted
to really solve this riddle about how does my brain work so I could work my brain. How
does my memory work so I could work my memory. And I just starting studying positive
psychology and adult learning theory, and multiple intelligences. Anything I can get my
hands on and how to unlock this gift. And an amazing thing happened. About two months
in this process, a light switch flipped on, and I started to understand things in a different
way. I started to have better focus, better concentration. I started to read faster, I started
to be able to think more clearly. I had this new life inside of my mind, and my grades
improved. But not only that, but my life started to elevate and improve. And at that moment,
I realized something. I realized that if knowledge is power, learning is your superpower.
I talk about superheroes, going back to the comic books and my reading disability. But
really, modern-day superheroes - I’m not talking about superpowers that allow you to jump,
leap tall buildings and shoot lasers out of your eyes - I mean modern-day superpowers,
like your ability to think clearly, your ability to have a proper mindset and your ability
to engineer your habits, your ability to manage your own attitude, your ability to learn
faster, to focus, to concentrate. Those are the things that I really get excited about, that
when people step into that better version of themselves, the version that they know could
be inside of them, I want to decode that. So when people want to make a change or they
want to create a transformation in their life, most people look at this level of behavior, the
behavior. They want to be able to stop smoking, or they want to be able to meditate, or
they want to be able to journal and make it a habit, and not self-sabotage, or not put it off,
or not procrastinate. Usually, though, they try to force it on the behavioral level. But there
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are other levels also. It’s this level of beliefs and values. And what is that? That basically
says that if you want to do this behavior of, let’s say remembering people’s names, because
a lot of people have trouble remember names, yes, maybe you have the capabilities, but
if you don’t have the belief that you could do it, maybe you have a belief like you’re too
old. Maybe you have a belief like, “Oh, I’m not smart enough.” Or a belief that I’m just
not good at remembering names. That would keep you from doing the behavior. The
other part of it is, besides belief, are values. These are the values, these are the things that
you hold most important. And if you don’t think that it’s important to remember people’s
names, the value will keep you from doing the actual behavior. Now, above beliefs and
values is another level. This is the level of identity. And the level of identity is the level of
“I am”. They say these are the most powerful two words in the language because anything
that comes after that becomes your destiny. And here’s the thing, someone can create a
behavior or say, I want to stop smoking, I want to stop smoking. But if their identity is that
of a smoker, they won’t make that change. Somebody here could say, “Oh, I want to be
able to remember things better.” That’s the behavior. But their identity is, “I’m a forgetful
person”. That will keep them from making that transformation. I always tell people this is
that if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. I remember one day our office
gets a call from 20th Century Fox, and they wanted me to do a very special training for
the chairman of Fox and the executive team. And I remember going there, and I was so
excited because when I was going through the hallway to the boardroom, all these movie
posters were there like Star Wars and Avatar, and all the classics. And it made me feel
like I was a child again. That nine-year-old boy. And I gave one of my very best trainings
for their executive team and when I was done, the chairman of Fox said, “Jim, thank you
so much.” And he gave me this wonderful tour of the Fox lot. And I remember going on
this tour, and out of the corner of my eyes, I see this Wolverine poster, and I am such a
big Hugh Jackman, Wolverine fan. And I said, “I can’t wait for that movie to come out.”
And the chairman picked up his phone, and then five minutes later, I’m in the Fox theater
watching Wolverine fight all these super ninjas. It was the best Friday afternoon ever. And
when he comes to get me afterwards, he says, “How was the movie?”. And because I’m
still in that childlike mode, I just say, “Oh, you don’t know this.” I tell him my whole story.
And he’s like, “Jim, I didn’t know you liked superheroes. How would like to go on set?”
I was like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “We have another 30 days of filming the new
X-Men movie in Montreal. How would you like to go?” And I’ve never been on a film set
before, and I’m acting like I’m nine years old and thinking, “Yes, I want to go. Please take
me.” And I was like, “What can I do for you?” And he says, “Jim, do the same thing you
did for us. Share with them your superpowers. Teach them how to speed read scripts, how
to memorize their lines, how to be focused on set.” And I said, “I can absolutely do that.”
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So the next morning, we’re on what they call the X-Jet. Waiting on the plane is the entire
cast of X-Men. I just flip out. Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and I don’t even see Hugh
Jackman and Patrick Stewart. I see Wolverine and Professor X. And I’m sitting in between
Jennifer Lawrence and Halle Berry, and I’m sharing them my brain tips for learning faster
and achieving more. And when we get on set, it’s an incredible coincidence that the scene
that they were filming takes place in the X-Men School for the Gifted. And I’m there as
a nine-year-old boy seeing my superheroes come to life right in front of me. When I go
home, there’s a package waiting for me and it’s the size of a television set. And I open it
up, and it’s this photograph of me and the entire cast of the X-Men. But even better than
that is the note from the chairman. It says this, “Jim, thank you so much for sharing your
superpowers with all of us. I know you’ve been looking for your superhero school since
you were a child. Here’s your class photo.” As I look at my life from where it began, from
immigrant parents to having my head injury, to being made fun of, to go through all the
bullying, to feel like I’m not enough, to not knowing how to read, to searching for my
superhero school as a child, to being labeled the boy with the broken brain - when we take
responsibility for our lot in life, we have great power to change our lives and the lives of
everyone around us. Change our brain, we change our life. Change our brain, we could
change the world.
(BL): Biology’s been telling us for 100 years about the power of the mind. It’s called the
placebo effect.
(JD): It’s fascinating that you can give someone a sugar pill, a saline injection, or perform
some false surgery or treatment, and a certain percentage of those people will accept,
believe and surrender to the thought, without any analysis, that they’re getting the real
substance or treatment. And they begin to program their autonomic nervous system to make
the exact pharmacy of chemicals equal to the substance or treatment they think they’re
getting. So the fundamental question is, is it the inert substance, the placebo, that’s doing
the healing or is it the body’s innate capacity to heal by thought alone. Blue pills work
better than red pills. If you name a drug something that a person can’t pronounce, they’ll
give their power away to the drug and it’ll work even better. They’ll be intimidated by it.
If you charge more for a medication, it will work better. And if the doctor’s enthusiastic
about it, it’ll work even better.
(JG): There’s some amazing studies that have come out about the power of belief, and
they’ve come out from the oddest place. And that is from pharmaceutical companies using
placebos and trying to beat the placebo for whatever drug they have. And what they’re
finding is not how powerful their drug is, but how powerful beliefs are. For example,
there have been studies where they’re testing the effectiveness of an antidepressant. Now
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the antidepressant is supposed to raise dopamine levels. So they have one group where
they give them the antidepressant, and another group where it’s a placebo. It means that
they’re just giving them a sugar pill. Not only are those people no longer depressed, their
dopamine levels rise. In other words, the actual thought that - just from the power of
belief - they thought a specific neurotransmitter would get elevated and they were able to
elevate a specific neurotransmitter simply by the power of their belief. There was another
study with chemotherapy. They were trying to test the effectiveness of chemotherapy
and they have one group that had the chemotherapy. Another group thought they were
getting chemotherapy but weren’t. The group that thought they were getting chemotherapy,
30% of them lost their hair. They lost their hair because they thought they were getting
chemotherapy. With the power of our beliefs, we have the power to lose hair simply because
we think that we’re supposed to. We have the power to raise dopamine levels, to heal
surgery. All of these different things we can do with the power of our mind.
(BL): So the belief I’m going to get cured led to the cure. Now people understand that, and
they go, “Yes, I understand placebo effect. That’s positive thinking.” I go, “Well, that’s
actually what it is, positive result.” What I need people to understand more importantly
is this: we don’t talk about what is the concept of negative thinking. I go, “Oh. Negative
thinking is equally powerful in controlling your biology as positive thinking, but it works
in the opposite direction.” Well, a positive thinking placebo effect can cure you of disease.
A negative belief called the nocebo effect can cause disease. So, the fact is, we are very
powerful. It’s only our belief that is undermining our biology.
(JD): I think for some of us to wake up, we need a wake up call. And in 1986, I got the call.
I was in a triathlon in Palm Springs, California. And I was on the biking portion of the race.
And I was making a turn, and there was a police officer on the corner, and he was pointing
to me to make the turn but he had his back to the oncoming traffic. So I was passing two
cyclists on the corner, and when I made the turn, a four-wheel drive vehicle going pretty
fast catapulted me out of my bike. When I landed, I broke six vertebrae in my spine, and
the arch that the spinal cord passed through had broken like a pretzel. So I had multiple
compression fractures. I had bone fragments on the spinal cord and I was in a little bit of
trouble. And I had four opinions from four of the leading surgeons in Southern California.
They told me that I’d probably never walk again. They told me that I would have to live
in body cast for a year, and that I’d be handicapped in some way. Typical surgery for that
type of injury is called a Harrington rod surgery, and in my case, it was from the base of my
neck to the base of my spine. They were going to fuse my entire spine. I wasn’t so quick
to make that decision because I thought that I would spending the rest of my life in pain,
or at least on medications or partially handicapped. I decided against the surgery, and of
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course, when you go against convention like that, you’re always considered foolhardy and
insane. But I was willing to weigh what I knew in my studies against what I didn’t and see
if I could heal myself without having any surgical intervention. Of course, they thought I
had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or I hit my head and that I was not making any sense
or I wasn’t being reasonable. But I just had this thought. I’m not going anywhere, I’m not
doing anything. I’m laying face down, and I just thought, the power that made the body
heals the body. Maybe I could give it a plan, give it a template, give it a design. And when
I was happy with that design, I knew that I couldn’t do the healing, so I would surrender
my creation to a greater mind, and just see what the autonomic nervous system could do.
So, it sounds really easy, but I think that when we’re in crisis or trauma, we tend to focus
on what we don’t want to have happen instead of what we do want to have happen. So
I made a deal with myself that I was going to reconstruct my entire spine and I wasn’t
going to let any thought slip by my awareness that I didn’t want to experience. And so I
went through about six or seven weeks of total hell because I couldn’t get my mind to do
what I wanted it to do. I’d start off reconstructing the vertebrae in my spine and then the
next thing you know, I’d be thinking about living the rest of my life in a wheelchair. And
I’d become conscious that I was focusing on what I didn’t want to have happen instead
of what I did want to have happen. Then I’d start from the very beginning again, and I’d
reconstruct my spine, and then I’d be thinking about should I sell my home? Should I
sell my practice? And all the people in my life were telling me to sell everything. But if
I accepted the belief on some level that I would be to walk again, I should never sell my
home, and shouldn’t sell my practice.
(BB): What we’re thinking about when we’re trapped in fear is this statement, “What if,”
followed by a negative statement. “What if I lose respect? What if people make fun of me?
What if I fail? What if it’s not as good as I promised?” So it’s always what if followed by a
negative statement. And you have to teach people, well first, pursue that. Ask the question
and really consider it. What happens if those things? What’s the worst-case scenario?
But then we have to teach them to flip it and say, “Well, what if,” followed by a positive
statement. What if you don’t lose anything, but you gain the things you really want in your
life? What if the process doesn’t terrorize you and make you awful? What if you could
enjoy the process? What if that process could make you stronger and better and capable?
What if instead of, “Oh, it’s going to turn out terrible,” what if it turns out great and I finally
get what I’ve always wanted? Most anxiety, if it’s not a physiological problem or torment,
it’s really coming from the mind. What if followed by a negative statement. But if we start
asking what if this amazing thing could happen? Then we start to find hope. We start to
find willpower. We start to find motivation. We start to find a morning that’s brighter than
yesterday, and that’s people needed to get over the idea that fear is keeping them down.
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Your mind is keeping you down. Fear is just usually poor management of our mind.
(JD): And that was the switch for me, because from that moment on, my body started to
respond to my mind very quickly and I was back on my feet in a little less than 10 weeks. I
was back training at 12 weeks. And to this day, I really have no pain in my spine, and I just
made a deal with myself in those lonely nights. I thought if I’m ever able to walk again, I
promise myself that I’ll spend the rest of my life studying the mind-body connection and
mind over matter, and that’s what I’ve been doing since 1986.
(BL): The whole idea that belief is controlling us is the most important fact of science
that we’re beginning to recognize for the simple reason a belief is connected to chemistry.
The chemistry of the brain is a translation of a belief. And so the relevance is if you have
a negative belief, than the chemistry that comes from that brain is not going to be positive
and support your health. It’s actually going to put you in a protection mode, which in fact
walls you off from health. Once you start to recognize that, you start to see how powerful
belief is, it overrides the system, and how specific the belief is. We have to let people know
how powerful they are because their thoughts are going to take whatever that belief is and
manifest it to become a reality. If you believe you’re going to have cancer, you can create
cancer. In fact, less than 10% of cancer is based on heredity. 90% of cancer is based on
lifestyle and belief.
(MH): I think most people don’t realize that thoughts are things. They have a powerful
impact on our biology and our lives, and that how you direct your attention and your mind
determines the course of your health and the course of your life.
(GB): We all have fear-based limiting belief systems that have been ingrained in us since
childhood. Belief systems of “I’m not good enough”, or belief systems of “Who am I to
be great?” or “Who am I to earn money?”, or how could I possibly do that thing I’ve been
dreaming of. And these belief systems are stifling us, and keeping us small, and blocking
us from really living at our highest potential in our highest service and in our highest joy.
Truly. So the first step to really healing those belief systems is to witness them, to witness
them without any judgment. Witness our judgment of ourselves without judgment. And
to be really conscious of what are these belief systems, how are they making us feel. We
can ask ourselves those questions. What is my limiting belief? How is it making me feel?
And then in going so far to say what experience from my past is causing me to believe
this now? Because all of it comes from a root-cause condition. It comes from a moment
in time when we separated from love, and then we have that experience of separation and
then we continue to build up a world that is a false belief system of fear; a false system of
inadequacy and feelings of not being good enough.
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(MF): I think one of the other most powerful ways that we can change limiting beliefs is
through finding evidence to the contrary. So actively looking for what else might be true.
In the example of limiting money beliefs, well, if you’re struggling with money but other
people aren’t, recognizing okay, well, maybe they figured out something that I haven’t
yet. So let me go collect all the evidence of other people that disprove this limiting belief.
Could be the same thing around health. Actively, proactively searching out and creating a
whole stack of evidence to the contrary is, I think, how we can also start to begin to change
some of those negative beliefs.
(JD): The word that’s used in science is called mental rehearsal, and mental rehearsal,
there’s two types of mental rehearsal. There’s what’s called internal mental imaging,
which means you’re in the scene as the first person experiencing it, and then there’s called
external mental imaging, which is you’re observing yourself in the scene. Turns out that
when you are actually in the first person and not the third person, that action of rehearsing
what you’re doing produces the strong biological change.
(JG): So there’s been some really cool studies with visualization. There’s an Australian
researcher, Allen Richardson, he took three groups of basketball players. One group did free
throws for 20 minutes every day for 20 days. One group imagined doing the free throws
for 20 minutes every day, for 20 days. And another group did nothing. So the group that
did free throws every day got 24% better, the group that didn’t, they didn’t get any better.
The group that imagined doing free throws got 23% better, just by imagining. They didn’t
shoot a single hoop, and they got 23% better.
(JD): So what’s the relevance? Number one, when you’re truly focused and you’re truly
paying attention, your brain does not know the difference between what’s going on out
there and what’s going on in here. So the thought becomes the experience. Now from a
biological standpoint, our brains are a record of the past. They’re an artifact of everything
we’ve learned and experienced to this moment. When we prime the brain to change its
circuitry before the experience, now the brain is no longer a record of the past, it’s now a
map to the future. And so, as we warm up those brain circuits, it’s more easy for us to slip
into a supernatural behavior.
(JK): So, for example, Roger Bannister. What did Roger Bannister do in 1954? He broke
the four-minute mile. Throughout human history, no one could run a mile in less than four
minutes because the belief back then was the human heart wasn’t able to sustain a sub
four-minute mile. It would explode in your chest and you would die.
Announcer: Could he do it now? Yes, lengthening his amazing stride, this was Bannister’s
answer. Watch his final 300-yard dash, first passing Chataway, then on, battling against
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unfavorable conditions, a cross wind and a sodden track.
(JK): But the interesting thing was he would actually visualize himself crossing the finish
line and in his mind, he would see the clock and it says 3:59, because he knows that it
has to happen in here before it happens out there. Now that was an interesting part, but
the other part that I found interesting was what happened after that. Nobody could run a
sub four-minute mile. All of a sudden, one person does it, what happens over the next few
years? Dozens and dozens of people start running a sub four-minute mile. Now was there
a big advancement in shoe technology, training methodology, nutritional supplementation?
No. Where was the change? A change in belief. Because all the sudden, one person could
do it, then it gave permission for everybody else. It shook up that limiting belief.
Announcer: It’s going to be very close. Burrell wins it.
(JG): Nine-time gold medal sprinter Carl Lewis uses visualization. Tiger Woods, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Muhammad Ali, tennis legend Billie Jean King, Michael Jordan. All the
greats in every area of sport, they all use visualization. Tiger Woods’ father taught him how
to use visualization. He says that every time before he hits the ball, he visualizes where
he wants it to go. Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he was a bodybuilder, he’d visualize
himself up on stage winning the Mr. Olympia, the Mr. Universe. When he was an actor,
he visualized being an actor and just crushing it. When he was in politics, he used it. In
everything he did, he used visualization. And that’s why he’s always been successful with
the things that he’s been focused on, because he’s using this power. There’s the story of
Jim Carrey where he was a starving actor and he wrote a check for himself for $10 million.
He dated it three years in the future, and it said, For acting services rendered. Three years
later, he got a check for $10 million for the movie Dumb and Dumber, exactly three years
to the day. It’s unbelievable.
(GB): Well manifesting’s all about aligning with the energy of joy. So if a visualization
makes you feel good, then you’re manifesting. If visualizing something that you don’t have
doesn’t make you feel good, makes you feel lack or insecurity or as though something’s
missing, then that wouldn’t be the tool to use because it’s all about feeling good. So that’s
why visualization works for so many people because holding that image, that makes
you ignite a feeling. And it’s that feeling that is magnetic. It’s that feeling that puts you
into alignment with God, with the universe, with source. In that space of alignment, you
become what I call a super attractor. You start to magnetize towards you what you desire.
You start to become a match for the things that you think about. But as long as you’re in
a presence of joy. You’re a match for the things you think about even when you’re not in
the presence of joy, but those are the things you don’t want. So, if it’s visualization that
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makes you feel good and it gives you, again empowers you and it lights you up to see. I
visualized myself standing next to Oprah Winfrey a decade before I did. But it made me
feel good. I could feel the feeling of being interviewed by Oprah. Or holding that baby
in your arms. Or having that abundance. So making sure that that feels good. If there’s
anything about that visualization that doesn’t feel good, then we want to find another tool.
(JG): So, visualization is using the language of symbols. And to me, symbols are the
universal form of communication. If you want to communicate with someone that doesn’t
speak your language, you’re going to use symbols. For example, if you had just landed in
China and you want to know where the bathroom is, you’re going to look for a symbol.
You’re going to look for a symbol of the men’s room or the women’s room, and that’s how
you know where the bathroom is. That’s how you communicate with someone that doesn’t
speak your language. And the interesting thing about the body, we see the body mostly
as a machine. But the body isn’t really a machine. The body is living consciousness. We
just don’t know how to communicate with it. It doesn’t speak English. We can’t say to it,
“I want to lose weight because in six months I want to look good for my wedding.” The
body doesn’t understand a wedding. It doesn’t understand six months. It doesn’t understand
English. And one of the biggest problems that we all have, that we don’t even know we
have, is we don’t know how to communicate with our own animal brain, our own physical
consciousness brain. But when you use symbols, you’re bridging that gap. So when you
make a vivid image of exactly the way you’d like to look, or if you’re doing sports, a vivid
image of exactly the way you’d like your body to perform, you’re communicating to your
body. And all the changes are taking place. The neuronal changes, the hormonal changes.
Everything is changing because you’ve now been able to communicate with your body. At a
certain point, I decided to apply visualization to my weight loss, and when I did, everything
changed. I was over 400 pounds. I had a vivid image of how I wanted to look. I imagined
myself with tight skin and stomach muscles and looking great, and every night as I went
to sleep, I’d have this image and things started to change. I wasn’t as hungry during the
day. I wasn’t craving junk food. I started finding people that could help me, and programs.
Everything started to work after that. And over a two-and-a-half year period, I lost all the
weight that I’d gained. I lost 220 pounds, and I looked exactly the way I had imagined
myself looking, down to a T. And that’s why visualization’s so powerful.
(SS): Visualization is a huge contributor to a lot of the success I’ve had in my life. Becoming
a four-time freediving world champion, I realized that you didn’t have a big impact because
it’s a very small sport. I think the most important message from my freediving records is
the fact that it’s a metaphor. It’s a metaphor for a huge challenge. You’re cold. You have
doubt. You’re tired. Your body is going crazy ‘cause you can’t breathe. You go against
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the strongest reflex of life which is breathing. Without stress, there is no life. So meaning
that without resistance, without difficulties, there is no growth. I did 250 feet under ice
in Speedos, and in that, I reached my goal of getting the message out that breathing
breathwork and linking it with your mind really can have a tremendous impact on both
your performance but also your daily health. When you know how to control your mind
and use visualization imagery, breathwork, eating healthy, surrounding yourself with people
that believe in you and support you, you can take it to the next level. The most difficult
thing about holding your breath is not lacking oxygen, but to fight the urge to breathe.
Being uncomfortable in life doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed. So the metaphor is to
show people that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I guess, literally, when I dive under
the ice, you’re there, but then the light shines down from that hole, 250 feet ahead of you,
and it welcomes you. A big part of my job is to break those limiting beliefs. And I guess
that’s what it’s all about when you want to break limits. You want to change the mindset
of people. Scientists or athletes or everyday people, you want to change their mindset. For
me, holding my breath for 22 minutes was a dream. It was fantasy. So before I do that, I
become the 22 minutes. If I’m like, “Ah, maybe it can happen someday,” no. It will not
happen. Not ‘til my subconscious mind accepts that it will become a reality, a physical
reality, I cannot manifest this dream I have in real life.
(SS): So when I do my dives, or my performances, it’s just a manifestation of a long journey,

of a dream. And for all the dives I do and all the visualization, all the work I do, I always
connect it with breathwork because then you have like doubled up on the efficiency. When
you link the breathing to all the positive reinforcement, all the happy thoughts, basically, all
the winning thoughts, then every time you breathe on a more conscious level, you ignite that
power of possibility. And especially when the breathing becomes also on the subconscious
level so strong that it leads your movement, it leads your thoughts in that direction.
(JG): So you know as kids, we are normally in this deep state of dream state, this alpha
and the theta state. We get into it real easy. And then we unlearn that because teacher says,
“Stop dreaming, stay focused.” So we lose that.
(JK): A lot of literature, culture, art was created in dreaming states. So for example, Mary
Shelley came up with Frankenstein in her dreams. Paul McCartney came up with Yesterday
in his dream. Elias Howe created the sewing machine in his dream. The periodic table came
to a chemist in his dream. So many times, you’ll come up with answers, you’ll come up
with solutions, you’ll come up with inventions, works of art in your dreams.
(JG): Learning how to get back into that dream state is the key to being successful in
visualization. So the first step in visualization is you want to know how to relax yourself.
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So, you can breathe deep, do just a simple meditation. At a certain point, you’re going
to feel really relaxed and you’re not fidgeting anymore. Then you’re in a deeper state.
Maybe your mind’s not fidgeting either. That’s the time to do visualization, and when you
do it then, it just imprints. You just get it. So then you want to imagine or feel. You don’t
have to see it. A lot of times when you first learn visualization, you can’t see it. It’s a skill
that you get better and better at over time, but you can feel it. You can feel what it feels
to run faster than the other guy or to have the weight melting off your body, or to achieve
whatever athletic performance. You can feel what it feels like. You can hear the crowd
shouting. You can feel the wind on your face as you’re running by. And you can imagine
different things. And when an athlete does visualization, the muscles, neurons, nerves,
they’re all firing in the exact same coordinated sequence as they would actually do in the
sport. To me, visualization is the creative principle of life. And I think we’ve just all lost
that. I think in indigenous cultures all around the world, they all use visualization. And as
a kid, we used dream, we used imagination, we used that creative faculty. And I think it
is the creative faculty of life. It is the way to set the dials of the automatic pilot, if you’re
in a plane. It’s like setting the dials of your life and you visual where you want to be.
You’re setting the dials. When you visualize how you want your day to be, how you want
to perform in sports, how healthy you want to be, you’re using that creative principle. We
don’t know that, we haven’t tapped into that. But it’s ours. We lost it somewhere along the
way, but it belongs to all of us.
(JK): Compare your life to an egg, that if an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends.
But if it’s broken by an inside force, life begins. All great things begin on the inside. You
have genius inside of you. You have greatness inside of you. Now’s the time to unlock it.
Closing Music:
♪ So maybe, maybe you’re gonna call me crazy ♪
♪ A feeling, I know it can be wrong ♪
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♪ So stop, let it be that for you now ♪
♪ Don’t go, I’m gonna be there for you now ♪
♪ Oh, oh ♪
♪ Oh, I do ♪
♪ Oh, I do ♪
♪ I walk through the sunshine in the rain ♪
♪ I believe in second chances come again ♪
♪ So maybe, maybe no longer call us crazy ♪
♪ So stop, gonna be there for you now ♪
♪ Don’t go, I’m gonna be there for you now ♪
♪ Oh, oh ♪
♪ Oh, I do ♪
♪ Oh, I do ♪  
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EPISODE FOUR:
WHOSE GOALS ARE
WE CHASING?
Featuring:
Rich Roll (RR)
Philip McKernan (PM)
Marie Forleo (MF)
Lewis Howes (LH)
Jim Kwik (JK)
Koya Webb (KW)
Stig Severinsen (SS)
Dean Karnazes (DK)
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(RR): I was a corporate lawyer working 60 to 80 hour weeks for many years. I had spent
the better part for my life chasing that American dream without ever really thinking about
what I wanted to do with my life. And I wasn’t taking care of myself physically. I’d become
a junk food addict. I was not exercising at all. I was 50 pounds overweight and I have a
history of addiction and alcoholism. I was also very depressed. And it all caught up to me
shortly before my 40th birthday. Late one evening as I was making my way up a simple
flight of stairs I literally had to pause, I was so winded. I had tightness in my chest and
shortness of breath and sweat on my brow, and really like fear in my heart that I was on
the precipice of having a heart incident. My whole life my mother would say, “You’ve
got to watch what you eat and be careful.” But it became very crystal clear to me in that
moment, not only that I needed to change how I was living, how I was behaving, how
I was prioritizing my time and my energy, but also that I wanted to make that change. I
had a willingness to take a leap of faith and try something different. The first thing that I
did was a seven day fruit and vegetable juice cleanse, which was crazy at the time. It was
so out of left field from anything I’d ever experienced. I’d never gone a single day in my
entire life without eating solid food. But I knew that that was something that would kind of
shock me out of my habits. It didn’t have to do with detoxing or any of that. I just needed
to do something extreme to kind of reframe my relationship with food. And it was very
effective in that regard. Over that seven day period I can remember lying on the couch
being listless and sweating, and thinking, how am I going to make it through the day? But
the remarkable thing is that at the end of that one week period I felt completely revitalized.
I had a resurgence of vitality and energy and mental clarity that I hadn’t experienced since
I was a young person. And I had all this energy for the first time in as long as I could
remember. So the impulse to actually move myself physically occurred to me, which is
something I hadn’t felt in a while also. And so I started exercising again, first very casually.
But I realized very quickly that I enjoyed that, and it was a big part of what I was about
as a child and something I loved very much and had really lost touch with. But I think
what it evolved into was this pursuit of trying to unlock hidden potential. In a very short
period of time after changing my relationship with food I had completely transformed. I
lost 50 pounds. I looked different. I felt different. It was quite radical, and yet the changes
that I made were relatively simple. And the thought occurred to me, if I could change this
drastically, this dramatically, in such a short period of time, what are the other areas of my
life that I’m overlooking where I’m sitting on top of mountains of potential that I’m just
not consciously aware of? And that’s what lured me into the world of triathlon initially,
and ultimately into ultra-endurance athletics because I was a swimmer in college, so I
had that background, and I knew how to train and push myself. And as I sort of got fitter
and more invested in this food adventure that I was on, I started getting more interested
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in fitness in general. And I had unfinished business as a competitive swimmer and I never
felt like I achieved my potential as an athlete. And so here I was at 40, 41 years old having
this kind of renaissance experience and thinking, well, maybe I can be competitive again.
Let’s give this a go. And I read this article about this crazy race, Ultraman, which is a
double Ironman distance triathlon that circumnavigates the entire Big Island of Hawaii
over three days. It’s 320 miles. It’s absolutely bananas. It was like a light switch went off
in my mind and I thought, that’s the race for me. It made no sense. It’s not logical at all.
It was more like this bizarre calling that I felt, like, it just felt right. I was like, that’s what
I’m doing. And I could see myself in my mind lining up at the start line. Like I knew it
was going to happen. It was like a foregone conclusion, despite the fact that it made no
sense whatsoever. And I had one goal, and that goal was, don’t die.
(VL): We don’t set goals or define success based on our own self-identity, but based on
what I call the culturescape. The culturescape is that tangled web of rituals, habits, beliefs,
mythologies, practices that our culture, our religions, our countries through schooling,
through education, through media infuse in us in terms of what is the right way to function
in the world. Now post-World War II the culturescape was really about rebuilding, about
being safe. But in today’s world we are safe. And so in today’s world, the millennial
generation, the big thing that they want to pursue is self-discovery, is creation. The problem
is the culturescape keeps engulfing us and telling us that we need a college degree, we
need to get a good career, we need to work the nine-to-five so we can make partner in
that law firm, so we can have 2.5 cars in a garage, a wife and two kids, so that someday
when we are 60 we can finally retire and see the world. But the thing is, those rules don’t
apply anymore. The culturescape was designed to keep us safe, but it was never designed
to keep us happy.
(BB): We were taught in the 80s and the 90s, which was basically consumerism, which
was lean on other things, which was attain power, money, wealth, status and you’ll feel
good. But you have an entire economy now that’s chugged along pretty well for decade
after decade after decade. You’ve got a lot of comfort, especially in the United States and
the Western worlds now. We haven’t solved all the problems. There’s still a lot of people
living in just abject poverty. But as more and more of the world reaches middle class, they
fought to get there, and then they kind of look around and go, is this it? I still don’t feel
good. I still feel like I did when I was broke. I still feel like I did when I was struggling.
And people are having trouble connecting with themselves.
(RR): As Henry David Thoreau said so eloquently, I truly believe the mass of men lead lives
of quiet desperation. And what is considered resignation is confirmed desperation. I think
it was true in his time. I think it’s probably more true now. There are so many people who
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are dissatisfied with their lives. They’re living their lives reactively, compulsively, and not
mindfully or consciously. And it’s really not even their own fault. Like we are living all in
this system that’s set up to drive us onto career paths that we’re not consciously choosing
for ourselves or that are out of alignment with who we truly are.
(PM): But we take goals that belong to society. We take goals that belong to our parents. We
take goals that we think, and justify and rationalize, that we need in order to be happy. And
I found myself reaching the pinnacle of these mountains, the mountain being a metaphor
for life. So I’d reach this pinnacle and I’d stand on the top of this mountain, look around
and go, I thought it would feel different. I thought I’d be happier. I thought I’d be more
content. And then I’d look across the horizon and I’d see another mountain in the distance
and go, ah, here’s the problem. I climbed the wrong mountain. Now when I climb that
mountain in the distance, then I’ll be happy. And I’ll come down off this mountain and
I’d cross the valley, and again, this valley represented years of my life in some cases, and
I’d climb another mountain which represented another business, another financial goal,
another material goal, or even a relationship goal. I’d get to the top of that and the same
pattern followed me. Why don’t I just stop and ask myself, why, when I achieve something,
is it not enough?
(VL): Hunter S. Thompson, the American writer, in 1953 was asked to write a letter to a
friend. His friend was asking for advice. Hunter says, the danger with goal setting is very
often the goals that you set are not your goals. They are the culturescape’s definition of
how you are meant to be safe in the world. But that is one of the surest paths to misery, to
waking up one day at the age of 40 going, what the hell happened to my life? And so we
always have to question.
(MF): One of the keys to setting goals that are really going to be incredible for you is,
do they excite you? You know, if you look at them on that piece of paper, does it bring
you to life? Does it bring you joy? Does it make you have those little mixes of fear and
anticipation and you’re like you can’t wait to dive into them? If not, something’s probably
wrong. So if we’re setting goals out of fear or a place of pain, that’s not necessarily bad.
We can either change our lives from a space of inspiration or desperation. And so many
of us hit a pain point where we’re suffering, we’re depressed, we have hit this place in our
lives, whether it’s emotionally, in a relationship, financially, in our careers where something
is not working and we find ourselves feeling like we’re beating our head against a wall.
If you’re setting a goal out of “I can’t take this pain anymore”, that’s not necessarily bad,
cause we have to start where we are. But when you’re looking at your goals, if they don’t
make you want to jump out of bed, stay up all night, just get so fired up about figuring out
how to bring them into the world, then I think it’s time for some reevaluation.
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(LH): I think a lot of people set goals based on what their family or their peers want them to
do. And that’s good if it’s also what you want to do. But a lot of times people chase things
that they don’t fully love, and so they’re living someone else’s life. So then you got to figure
out what are the things that bring you the most joy, the most passion, the most meaning.
(RR): For me it was simple as I just love jumping into a swimming pool in the morning, or
I love the feeling of how the sun hits my shoulder on a trail run at dawn. Those were things
I wanted to have more of in my life. Very simple, basic, ultimately quite primal instincts.
2008 was my first Ultraman. And I was very conservative in my approach and very conscious
that I was a newcomer in this sport. But I ended up being the second fasted American. I
think I was 11th overall that year, far exceeding my expectations and the expectations of
everyone else involved in the event. So I thought, what would happen if I trained a whole
year and went back to that race, like, fully prepared with some experience? So in 2009,
that’s what I did. I was the fastest American that year and was 6th overall. Ultraman was
really driven by this question, this quest that I was on, which was to determine the outer
limits of my capabilities, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. What am I truly
capable of if I really put it on the line and test myself?
(LH): When I was a kid I was watching sports with my dad on the couch, and we see
these All-Americans who are greatest in the country. And I said, “That’s what I want to
be. I want to be one of the greatest in the country.” That was the dream. And I actually
achieved that dream of being All-American in two sports. But then ultimately it’s the goal,
get paid to do what you love, and that was to be a professional football player. I did it for
a little bit until I got injured. I broke my wrist diving into a wall playing arena football
and snapped my wrist. So over the next year and a half I was on my sister’s couch, six
months in a full arm cast. I didn’t have a college degree at the time. I didn’t really go to
school to learn anything except for to play sports, so I didn’t have any other skills. This
was in the height of the economic challenge in the US in 2008, 2009, where people with
degrees weren’t getting jobs. I really didn’t know what to do next. My whole identity was
wrapped around in being an athlete, and now I couldn’t do that anymore. Your friends
no longer want to hang out with you. You’re not getting acknowledged. So for me it
was extremely depressing for many months. It’s really challenging when you lose your
identity, especially as an athlete. This is the way you’ve been praised. This is the way
you’ve been acknowledged your entire life as being this good or great athlete known for
this one thing that you can do. So when you can no longer do the one thing that everyone
praises you and acknowledges you for, then you don’t get acknowledgement anymore.
So I’m just thinking, well who am I? Why am I here? What’s my purpose? And that’s the
challenge, is rediscovering and reinventing my purpose once I lost my dream. So I had to
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learn about just how to become a better human being and not rely on my athletic abilities.
In my first half of my life I really was committed to my dreams in order to prove people
wrong. I wanted to be a professional athlete because people said I couldn’t do it. Because
kids picked on me. Because I was picked last on the dodgeball game. Because I didn’t
have many friends growing up in elementary school. So I said, “I’m going to do this to
prove everyone wrong about me, and to prove to them how good I am.” So for the first
half of my life I was driven by a negative fuel around this goal. And that negative drive
was so powerful that it helped me to achieve my goal. I was so focused, I knew exactly
what I wanted. But the energy behind it was negative. It was to prove five people wrong
who doubted me. And so when I achieved my goal, I remember feeling so empty inside.
It’s like okay, I had the goal, I had the structure, I had the game plan, the daily actions, all
the things we talk about, and it happened. Why am I still not happy? Why am I unfulfilled?
Why was I actually angrier after I achieved it than ever before? I was so disciplined for 15
years of my life and now I got exactly what I wanted, and I wasn’t happy. And I reflected
on this and said, “Well, maybe my goal’s just not big enough. I need to go after a bigger
goal.” And so I kept going after these unrealistic goals in business, in life. But it was all
based on this negative fuel of proving people wrong.
(PM): So often when someone sets out to achieve something significant that they’ve set out,
and even though they have this inkling in their soul that this is not me anymore, this is not
aligned to who I am, they’ve set it out as an intention to the world so they can’t let it go. So
we just stubbornly move towards the edge of the cliff, which represents an emotional crisis,
a breakdown, a slap in the face, whatever you want to call it. The question I always ask is,
“Who are you seeking validation from?” And if you sit with that question and honestly
answer that, truthfully look in the mirror and really answer that question and sit with that
question, I have never found a human being that’s not seeking validation from somebody
else. And typically it’s those closest to us. So if we think about humans, a lot of humans
care deeply what other people think. You bring that back to your own home, your family,
your mother, your father typically, you can multiply that by 1,000. And when you look
at that and then you basically look at the goals and dreams that you’ve set for yourself,
what you’ll find is often you’re waiting, you’re trying to achieve something cause you
want to get that approval, that validation from your dad, from your mother. I have literally
worked with athletes who have gone to the pinnacle of their career. They have gone to the
Olympics. They have gone to the World Cup soccer. And their single motivation when you
get to the core was they wanted their father, in most cases, some cases their mother, to turn
around and say, “I am proud of you. I love you.” And they have spent 10 and 15 and 20
years trying to achieve a pinnacle of this sport for no other reason than seeking validation
from the person that has been closest to them most of their lives.
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(LH): And I realized I was trying to prove people wrong still. And that’s when I shifted to
say, “I’m not going to try to prove people wrong anymore. I’m going to try to lift others
up and prove people right and live a life of service and impact people.” And that’s when
I felt at peace about my goal setting.
(VL): Michael Beckwith taught me a model which is really interesting. It’s called Kensho
versus Satori. When you’re living life, moving towards a particular purpose, there are two
very important things to understand. Life helps us grow, and correct, and evolve through
Kensho, which is growth by pain, or Satori, which is growth by insight. Every now and
then you’ll have a Satori moment, a sudden awakening, a eureka moment, an insight
that helps you move forward. But for most people, that isn’t really going to be as easy.
Most of us grow through Kensho. Kensho is growth from pain. You fall sick and end
up hospitalized, but you emerge with newfound respect for your body and making new
choices on how you’re going to treat your health. You start a business and it fails and it’s
painful, but that’s Kensho, because now you know what not to do in your next business.
A relationship dissolves and you experience heartbreak. But that’s Kensho, because now
you know the man or woman you need to evolve to to create even better relationships. So
when you see life as Satori moments, sudden awakenings, and Kensho, growth through
pain, fear dissolves. Because you know that even when something bad happens to you it’s
simply a friendly universe giving you a lesson or fine-tuning and tweaking your direction
so you can get to your purpose even faster.
(JK): When we have difficult times that difficulty could either define us, it could diminish
us, or it could develop us. We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress. But we don’t hear a lot
about this other area of study called post-traumatic growth. This is where you come through
difficulty, you come through adversary, and on the other side you would never wish those
situations for anybody, but you also wouldn’t change it for yourself. That because you
went through those challenging times, it changed you, that you found a deeper meaning,
you found a new strength, you found your mission, you found your purpose going through
those difficult times. I don’t know a lot of people in life that have a strength that had easy
lives, really easy lives, you know, because through our struggles we find sometimes our
superpowers.
(DK): I had pretty much followed the prescription for happiness. I went to graduate school,
I got a business degree, an MBA. I had a cush corporate job, all the perks. I had stock
options, company car. These things are supposed to bring you happiness, and I thought that
would be the case with me, and I wasn’t happy. I was young, I was successful, and I was
miserable. I didn’t like being a business guy. It wasn’t who I was. I was in a nightclub on
my 30th birthday getting drunk with my buddies. And at 11 o’clock at night I had a midlife
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crisis, an epiphany if you will, and I said, “You know, I don’t like the course my life is
going down and I’m going to change it right now. I’m going to become a runner again.” I
used to love to run when I was a kid but I hadn’t run in over a decade. And I just saw that
I would either pursue a life of kind of quiet desperation or I would do what I really wanted
to do, and that was exploration and run and just see the world. And I had no idea how I
was going to pay for it all, but I thought, you know, it just feels better doing this. So I left
the nightclub. I walked right out of the bar, 11 o’clock at night, and said, “I’m leaving.
I’m running 30 miles right now.” Three sheets to the wind, I just took off, started running
south from San Francisco. I knew if I made it to a town called Half Moon Bay that was 30
miles away. About 15 miles into it I sobered up and I thought, what the hell am I doing?
But it just felt right, so I kept going. And that night forever changed the direction of my
life. I’m a prolific runner and I love running in extreme conditions, as well as running
extreme distances. So I’ve run across Death Valley in the middle of summer where it’s
over 130 degrees Fahrenheit. I’ve run a marathon to the South Pole. I’ve run across the
Gobi, across the Atacama Desert. I ran across the ancient Silk Road from Uzbekistan to
Kyrgyzstan to Kazakhstan. I’ve run on all seven continents twice now. I wanted to run a
marathon every state of the union, and my kids only had 50 days off for summer break.
So yeah, 50 marathons, 50 states, 50 consecutive days. Running and physical endurance
is the way I kind of manifest that striving to be the best that I can be, to reach my, as the
Greeks say, the arete, the perfect alignment of mind, body, and spirit. So other people can
achieve their bestness through following their own passion. Running isn’t for everyone.
I’d like to tell people, “You know, if it’s basket weaving you love, throw your heart and
your passion into basket weaving and you’ll make a go of it.” I mean, people are like, how
am I ever going to make a living doing this? It’s ridiculous. You’ll figure out a way. If you
follow what you are truly happy about, and I tell people, “Script your perfect life.” Just
take a pen and a sheet of paper, not a computer, and just freeform just in one paragraph
describe what your day would look like if you were living the perfect life. Dream, make
it outrageous. And then you have kind of a blueprint of where you want to go. You really
need to look inward, and that requires quiet reflection, which is hard to find in our modern
day, right? I mean, you’re constantly bombarded with noise and distractions.
(BB): I can tell if somebody is trapped in conformity by looking at their first 60 minutes
this morning. That’s how I know. Are you really living your life? Let’s gauge it. If you
wake up and you do what 86% of smartphone owners do, they grab their phone. It’s right
next to the bed. They grab their phone, they look at it, and they go into the social media,
they go into their email, they go into their text, their voice message, their games, and
they’re starting their day in reaction. If you’re living a conforming life, it means you’re
waking up and you are a consumer. That’s how you know. You’re waking up, your mind
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is not directing the day, you’re not planning, you’re not asking what you want. People
who wake up and they check their inboxes are a great example. The inbox is nothing but
a convenient organizing system of other people’s agendas. So you wake up, you check
in. It’s all these people asking you for something. And now it’s the world directing your
attention and your day.
(MF): One of the biggest things we have to look at is how addicted we are to our screens
and how much that we’ve given control over to technology. You know, thinking about
how often we’re looking at our phones, how many times, I think it’s up to 150 per day at
a minimum that people are picking up their phones and checking on them. And all we’re
doing is giving away our time, our power, and our attention. There’s no connection in there
with a real human being. There’s no connection with nature. We’re losing connection with
our own body, our vessel, all of the wisdom inside that tells us whether or not we’re on
track or we’re off track because again we’re screen sucking so much of the time. So I think
that apart from materialism, I think so much of the problem, at least right now and it’ll
probably continue, is how much time we’re spending looking at our phones and looking
at screens. We weren’t designed to live this way. So many of us live these sedentary lives.
We’re staring at a screen what, eight, nine, 12 hours a day spending hardly any time in
nature, very little time with our loved ones. Even when we are having a dinner, right, how
many times are kids either on their iPads or looking at phones, and everybody’s checking
texts and Instagram and all social media. All of that is leaving us feeling so empty. And
what we’re doing is reaching for things, whether it’s material things, or food, or anything
else to try and fill up these holes because we’re lacking presence, and we’re lacking
connection, and we’re lacking the sense that we actually matter. It’s like we have so much
happening, so much wisdom in these bodies. All of our intuition lives in there. All of our
creativity lives in our body. And if we deaden it because we’re living from the neck up
and we’re constantly just in these screens, we’re missing out on the joy and the beauty
and the passion and the energy of what this life is about. So part of what we need to do is
understand that we’re in control, not these phones.
(BB): We did this study in High Performance Academy where we said you cannot
check your email or any social media for the first 60 minutes of your day. We increased
productivity in people’s self-reported productivity over the course of seven days by 30%.
And it held for 90 days. Imagine if you got 30% more productivity each day. Well the
way you do it, stop conforming to what the world is throwing at you. Don’t wake up and
go into reaction mode. Wake up and say, “What do I want this day to be about?” Wake up
and set some good intentions for yourself. Wake up and move your body to open up some
health, open up some breath, open up some endorphins. Sit down with a piece of paper
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and say, “Okay, what are my main projects today? Who do I need to reach out to and ask
questions of?” So it’s like, first plan your day, ask what you want of it, before you go and
say what does everybody else need?
(VL): Our culturescape has taught us an if/then version of happiness. If I get this job,
then I will be happy. If I get this girl, then I will be happy. The problem with that is that
happiness, you see, is not a byproduct of getting something. Happiness is a state of being.
And happiness is not what you get from achieving your goal. Happiness is rocket fuel
towards your goal. Happiness moves you towards your goals. Happiness increases your
productivity. Doctors who are primed to be happy are 19% better at performing diagnoses.
Salespeople who are more optimistic are 50% better than pessimistic salespeople. Students
do better in their tests when they are primed to be happy. So the trick, the real trick to
success in life, is not to not set goals. It’s to have these goals, but to untangle your
happiness from these goals; to be happy before you attain them. To use that happiness as
a fuel so that day to day as you’re pursuing these goals, which can get tricky, which can
get challenging, that happiness is like your ally that moves you along, that helps dampen
the downsides of occasional obstacles or failure, that carries you forward, that puts you
in an optimistic level of mind so you attract the right people, you can work with the right
people to pursue your goal.
(LH): So I think all of us get to think about what is the thing that brings us the most joy, the
most passion, the most excitement for life. Because that is going to fuel our actions when
we go through adversity, challenges, struggle, stress, depression, cause we’re all going to
face challenges. So what’s the fuel that’s going to get us through those challenges of life?
And I think our why and our vision support us in having that fuel.
(KW): I grew up in a trailer. My mom and dad, four kids. We had a lot of canned food like
hotdogs, smoked sausages. I grew up on powdered milk and a lot of processed food. And
I always felt like a little bit left out, a little bit different because we didn’t have much. And
the kids would make fun of me, and my clothes, and being skinny, and just everything.
I was very much bullied a lot at a young age. I wasn’t used to being around people. All
I knew was I wanted to get out of the country. I wanted to be a part of the in-crowd. I
didn’t want to be like the country girl with the Helping Hand clothes and hair was always
messed up. I didn’t know what to do, so I turned to sports. And at first I tried to trial for
cheerleading. Didn’t make the team. But I tried out for basketball. I was so clumsy, I had
a growth spurt. Didn’t make the basketball team. So I remember thinking, now what can I
do? Who do I have to be? Because as I was I didn’t feel accepted, I didn’t feel loved. And
so I started to run. And I said, “I know, I can get on the track team”, cause I would run
and catch the bus and I’d get close to beating my brothers and I was really fast. So didn’t
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make the cheerleading team. Didn’t make the basketball. So I went out for track and field
and I made the track and field team. When I started getting on the track and field team and
getting these accolades and getting faster and faster, I found my sense of purpose. It was
like, “Oh, I’m important because I can run fast and people are nice to me or kind to me. My
mom and dad cheer for me.” And so that was my first feeling of being accepted. When I
went through college, my first year, I was training so hard I wasn’t getting enough sleep.
I graduate with a 3.8, but all those studies left me not getting enough sleep, not getting
enough recovery time. We were supposed to get in the cold whirlpool, rehab our body,
go swimming, things to counterbalance all of the things we were doing on the track. And
I would skip those things to study. And so eventually my sophomore year I got a stress
fracture in my lower back. And it was the most devastating thing that had happened to
me because I was slated to win the conference the next year and all of a sudden my coach
is like, “I’m sorry, you’re out for the season”. And I’m just like, it was just like in shock.
I didn’t believe it and I got really sad, I was crying in classes. And my teacher sent me
to the counselor. And the counselor was like, “I think you should try yoga.” And at the
time I didn’t know what yoga was. I just thought yoga was Buddha and it was separate
from Christianity and I couldn’t do it. But she’s like, “No, it’s just stretching.” And I was
like, okay, well I don’t have a choice. I got kicked out of class. I’ve got to go do this yoga
stretching thing. And so I went to class and I remember trying to do a headstand and I felt
like my brain was going to ooze out the top of my skull. It was just like, I am not made for
this. This is painful and this is not me. And I remember my teacher seeing me struggle.
She came over to me and she looked at me and she was like, “I just want you to breathe.”
I took a big inhale with her. And we exhaled together, and for that moment I felt spirit.
And eventually after a year of swimming and biking and meditation and yoga I came
back to win the conference meet in college, and I led Wichita State to its first women’s
championship. And it was because of yoga. And so, of course, I was like, “Yay! Win.”
So I moved to California to train in San Diego, which is close to the Olympic Training
Center. Because if I’m so close - I’ve only had one year - if I could do all of that in one
year what can I do if I had a really great coach and really great training? And I came out
here and I did. Every time I stepped on the track I got better and better and better. But
again, I wasn’t taking care of myself. I became a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness. I
was working from five a.m. to 10. And then I’d run track from 11 to about three. And then
I would go back and work from five to 10 again. I had a full list of clients, getting great
results with them. But I was getting very little sleep, and of course, very little recovery.
So what happens? Injured again. This time I pulled my hamstring. So here I am injured
again. And so where do I turn? Yoga, meditation. This time it healed me again and this
time I was like, “You know what? There is something to this. This is amazing.” And it
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was like, “I can’t let this go again. I need to commit to this as a lifestyle and not just come
in and out of it.” And so I decided to sign up for my first yoga teacher training. And not
just any yoga teacher training. I signed up for Ashtanga, which is the hardest form of yoga
you’ll possibly do. And in that 30 days I completely changed my life. I had visions. I felt
so connected. I saw my purpose. I saw me making a difference in people’s lives. I didn’t
know how. I didn’t know I would be doing what I’m doing today. But I knew that I was
going to be doing something great just using my life and my voice. And in that moment I
made a commitment to do yoga daily.
(VL): The last time I checked, which was 2015, there were 1,400 different studies on the
power of meditation. Everything from helping reduce the onset of heart disease, to helping
improve your skin, to improving productivity, to improving compassion and empathy. So
meditation is one of those powerful tools that any human being can bring in their life to
improve their functioning in the world. The thing is, we don’t know why meditation works.
Nobody has yet figured out the exact reasons why meditation causes all of these feelings.
There are theories, but no one has really boiled it down. But just because we don’t know
why it works doesn’t mean we can’t use it. I mean, for the longest time human beings had
no idea what the sun was. Ancient cultures thought it was a god or a giant fireball, but we
could still use the sun for agriculture, for navigation, for warmth, for direction, for heat.
And likewise, we don’t know why meditation works. But 1,400 studies have now shown
that meditation pretty much enhances so many multiple dimensions of human living that
every single human being should be making this part of their daily practice.
(MF): I know so many people that meditate, from sports stars to high performers on every
level. And everyone has their own flavor and their own style. Some people, it’s a form of
visualization and some people it’s just a form of concentration.
(BB): Everyone has to find their own practice. But what we know without any doubt is that
all of the science of both mindfulness and mediation is proving over and over again we can
decrease our stress by will, by going into a meditative state. We can improve our overall
health by will, by going into a meditative state. We can improve our daily productivity,
our creativity, our resilience, our relationships. Every facet of our life we can improve by
meditation. But meditation doesn’t just happen. You have to take the time and go in that
place.
(GB): So there’s tools out there. But the first step is to really give yourself permission to
slow down, giving yourself permission to do nothing. And that nothingness can come on
your meditation pillow or that nothingness can come even if you give yourself five minutes
in the morning to sit with your tea and look out the window with no device near you at all,
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with no to-do list in your mind but to do nothing.
(BB): I do it when I’m in a taxi cab. Instead of talking with the cab driver, I’m like, “Well
he can talk with the next five people, don’t need to talk to me.” I close my eyes, I meditate.
I also have transition meditations, what I think is the most important thing today. Because
people are trying to do so many things. Transition meditation means okay, let’s say I have
two big activities. I’ve got to check my inbox and then I have to create a presentation.
Well, I don’t just do my email and then jump in and start creating that. Instead, as soon
as I’m done with the email, I get up. I’ll go walk around. I’ll get some water. I’ll come
back down. I’ll sit, and I’ll just do a quick two or three-minute meditation. Then I’ll start
the presentation. So I can tell people, “Hey, if you’re a dad or you’re a mom and you’re
coming home from work and your spouse or the kids are in the house, don’t take that
long commute where you’re frustrated and you’re giving the bird to everybody who cuts
you off, and then you go in the house with that energy of the day. Pull up to your house,
turn the engine off, close your eyes, and let yourself turn off for a minute. Take a five,
10, 15 minute meditation. Then get up. Then go into the house.” That transition from
the commute to going into the house gives you time to reset, to have some intention, and
to go in the house as a better mom, better dad, a better caregiver, a better lover. Because
if we just keep going from one thing to another thing to another thing to another thing to
another thing, not only does that lead to burnout, it makes us miss life. It makes us lack
the ability to bring good energy into a moment. And so I tell people, find your moments in
between everything. There’s nothing, if I have a full day of calls and then I got to go meet
my wife, I’m going to meditate between those two. I have to, otherwise she’s going to get
Brendon who just did the calls guy. I don’t want her to have that guy. I want her to have
her husband. And the only way I can show up for her is the transition meditation.
(MF): And as a human being is very driven, who is very type A, who works and puts
effort into everything, it’s a really wonderful counterbalance. And I also loved that it’s not
necessarily attached to any particular religion and that it’s really open for all of us. I found
that I can use all of my kind of Type A, driven, get it done-ness in the rest of my life and
have this really beautiful, simple, straightforward practice to help me dip down into this
infinite intelligence, this cosmic consciousness, that I think many of us have experienced
or felt at different times in our life, whether we’re with a loved one or we’re witnessing
the beauty of a flower, or even in profound sadness when we feel this level of connection,
of oneness with everyone and everything. And when I come out of my meditation I find
myself feeling a level of energy and charge that frankly I haven’t been able to access
through any other method.
(RR): You have to be an active, consistent meditator. Meditation is absolutely crucial. It
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allows you to gain the upper hand and the control over that thinking brain and that idle
chatter, and allows you to be fully immersed in that present moment. And as an athlete,
that’s key. Like if you’re, you can’t enter that flow state that you hear about if you’re
entertaining thought. You have to be fully present in what you’re doing. And what happens
when you are consistently meditating is that you develop this acumen. It’s like push-ups
for the brain, and you then are the master of the brain rather than being its slave.
(JK): When you meditate you go into this brainwave state called alpha. Alpha state is
the state of a relaxed awareness. And relaxed awareness is where you could train yourself
actually to learn a language faster, to be able to learn rapidly because your conscious mind
is actually set aside and you just absorb information faster.
(SS): And we can see the brain opens in so many new areas when we reach that state,
meaning that you tap into different things that were not accessible before. And when you
then start to connect those areas and those thoughts and basically that network of trillions
of nervous cells, you can develop intuition.
(MF): Intuition is just our internal wisdom. It’s this natural knowing that each of us have
that often times we’re never listening to. One of the benefits that I had was my mom trained
me ever since I was little to listen to this still, small voice inside and she said you will
always know the right move to make if you tap inside and you listen. There will always
be an answer. So I heard this message over and over again, so whenever in my adult life
I’m wondering which way to go, I get quiet and I pay attention to what’s happening on
the inside.
(PM): Intuition is something that’s been undervalued for many, many years. I think people
are starting to really appreciate and respect the fact that it has huge value and not just in our
personal lives. People think about intuition as just, “Oh, it’s some fluffy kind of personal
concept thing and it just works in my personal life.” It’s got a massive application in
business. How many of us have got into a relationship that we know in our heart and soul,
we know it’s not aligned, whether it’s in business or it’s in a personal relationship. We
do it anyway and it goes south. We get screwed eventually. And sometimes we blame the
person and sometimes we get angry. But if we looked in the mirror and said, “Okay. Did
you really know that that was in alignment or not?” And often the case is we absolutely did.
And I think sometimes we’re absorbing so much information that we’re not giving it time
to go from information to knowledge, knowledge to wisdom, and wisdom to awareness,
because I’m too busy running to the next book and the next book and the next book, and
I’m absorbing so much information that I’m not allowing it to translate into awareness and
understanding. So to me intuition is one of those things that’s been suppressed. It’s been
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blocked. And I would encourage anybody in the world if they want to get in touch with
more intuition, if they want to increase their intuition, if they want to uncover more of it,
don’t go looking for it externally. Ask yourself, “Wwhy isn’t it? Why aren’t I in touch with
it? What’s blocking it?” Intuition has just been blocked. It’s already there. We all have it.
(GB): I believe that there is a tremendous amount of guidance that I don’t see with my
physical eye. And I believe that my primary job is to just be in alignment with that source.
And as I align, I can hear that guidance. I can allow that guidance to show up in my
life, open invisible doors, write through me, speak through me, just move through me in
magnificent ways. And trust me, there’s plenty of things I get hung up about, things that
are out of my control. But I continue to come back to that space of surrender because as
a human I’m having a human experience of wanting and trying to control timing of things
that are completely out of my hands. But those are momentary lapses. And I’ve transformed
that fear into faith and I’ve chosen to allow that faith muscle to be stronger. So it’s not that
I measure my spiritual success based on how perfectly aligned I am. I really measure it
based on how quickly I come back to alignment.
(KW): Take care of yourself. Like a lot of people go hard at their career, go hard at
parenting. And without taking care of yourself you really can’t take care of others. The
more you take care of yourself, the more energy you’re going to have to pour into others.
Fill your cup and then serve others from the overflow. That’s something one of my favorite
speakers always says, just Lisa Nichols. She’s just like, “You’re supposed to serve from
your saucer.” Meditation and yoga, all that together, was making me a stronger person.
Every day I felt stronger and stronger. Some of the things that I experienced when I was
younger I started to release and let go through practicing more and more yoga. And it’s
like the more yoga that I practiced, the more I was able to release the past and step into
my strength as a person, as a teacher, and as a leader.
(RR): Pay attention to that little voice there and bring expression to that in your own life.
And in so doing, to perhaps connect with yourself more deeply and ultimately express a
more authentic version of who you are.
(DK): We’re all interconnected. And to contribute your utmost to society, to humanity,
I think you need to pursue what it is that’s uniquely within you. And I just think that this
is the best course for humanity. If everyone was to do that, I think the world would be a
happier place.
(RR): I think that we are, all of us without exception, sitting on top of mountains of untapped
human potential just waiting to be unlocked and unleashed. And I was lucky enough to wake
up at 40 and embark upon this journey. And my responsibility with what I’ve experienced
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is to share with others in hopes that I can help to activate and catalyze their version of what
I’ve experienced. Of course, not everyone wants to be an ultra-endurance athlete. It’s not
about that. My hope is that people can look at those experiences and my story and draw
inspiration from that to then examine their own lives under a microscope to better identify
what it is within them that has gone unaddressed for too long.
(LH): Your dreams matter because you matter. So follow your dreams cause that’s the
thing that brings us the most joy - when we have something to look forward to, when we
have something we want to chase. It gives us a purpose, a reason, and a meaning to get up
every single day and make a difference.
(RR): What is it about you that makes you uniquely you? What gets you out of bed in the
morning excited about your life? And I’m not suspecting that everybody’s going to have
an answer to that immediately. But I think exploration of that inquiry is the path forward
to ultimately living a more purposeful, meaningful life. Because if you can identify that
thing, and it can be as silly as I like making paper mache birds, or I want to tell jokes on
stage, or I want to learn how to play the guitar. It doesn’t have that thing of, well, I’m just
going to quit my job overnight. But I think the more you can invest yourself in that journey
of trying to identify what it is that you are here to do, that is the path forward. And I think
if you commit yourself fully to that you will be amazed at what transpires over time.
Closing Music:
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♪ You ♪
♪ Always you, always you ♪
♪ And one day we’re gonna be forever ♪
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♪ You ♪
♪ You ♪
♪ You ♪
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EPISODE FIVE:
THE ART OF FULFILLMENT
Featuring:
John Robbins (JR)
Marie Forleo (MF)
Philip McKernan (PM)
Sean Stephenson (SS)
Rich Roll (RR)
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(JR): My dad and my uncle had founded Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors which became, in my
childhood, the world’s largest ice cream company. It was a multi-billion dollar company.
I loved eating ice cream. What kid doesn’t? And we had unlimited amounts. We had an
ice cream cone shaped swimming pool in our backyard. I swam in it. I had ice cream for
breakfast, sometimes. I wasn’t well. I was ill. I was frail. I actually had polio when I was
six and I was in a wheelchair. The doctor said I would be in a wheelchair the rest of my
life. But then I started to regain some feeling in my legs and some movement. More in
the right leg than the left. And I could kind of get around. When I was 21, my left leg was
three inches shorter than my right one. I couldn’t put any weight on it. It was very gimpy.
The doctor said, “Well that’s it. our growing years are over now. You’re going to have
to live with this.” And I remember thinking when I heard that, I don’t think you know as
much as you think you know. I’m not accepting that prognosis. I’m an only son. So my
dad had groomed me to succeed. That was his plan. And my dad was used to getting what
he wanted. He was a doer. He knew how to manifest stuff and he did. He built this empire,
this ice cream empire. Worked 80 hours a week. And so I didn’t really have a relationship
with him much other than through the business. But I started working at Baskin-Robbins
when I was five years old. I mean all I did then was sweep the floor and empty the waste
baskets. But he wanted me to learn the business from the inside out and so as, as I got
older, he would give me age-appropriate jobs. I worked in the factory where ice cream was
manufactured. I worked in the franchising where the stores were located and sold. I worked
in advertising and marketing. I worked in all the departments of the business. And that
was my relationship to my dad was we would drive together to the office and we’d drive
home. We’d talk about the business. I hardly knew him other than that, ‘cause that’s what
his life was all about and that’s what he wanted with me. He didn’t have much interest in
anything about my feelings or thoughts other than what did I think about the next flavor.
And I actually liked it. He was really good at what he did. He was really focused. His ability
to concentrate was amazing. Kind of yogic in a way. Although not; didn’t have the values
of caring for others although he wanted to make people happy. And he thought ice cream
did. I was a product of the 60s. I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Martin Luther King.
I marched with him. I went to Alabama and Mississippi to be with him and participate
in the Civil Rights movement. I was a kid from the north. I was a white kid. But to me
that was history happening. To me that was an opportunity to, to be part of something. To
witness something that was of immense significance. To me the racism in our society was
abhorrent. My dad thought, “You’re trying to rock the boat. They have their own culture
in the South. You shouldn’t go down there. You should leave them alone. They don’t want
you.” And then there was the war in Vietnam and I thought it was a ridiculously stupid
idea, the war. And cruel. I opposed the war. I protested it. My dad was in favor of it. So we
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had our differences. And he would say, “Well you could take stores throughout the world
and you could build the company even bigger.” And I was thinking, “Yeah, so what?”
Why would I? Yes, I could. You know, you’ve built something powerful, big, strong. I
could continue that. But my uncle, his business partner, my dad’s brother in-law, died of a
heart attack at the age of 54. He was a very big guy. He ate a lot of ice cream. And when
he died I asked my dad, “Do you think there could be a connection between the amount of
ice cream that Bert Baskin ate and his fatal heart attack?” And my dad said, “No, his ticker
just got tired and stopped working.” And then he looked at me in a certain way. And if I
could translate that look it said, “Don’t ever mention that again.” And I started to think that
my uncle’s death and some other things that I saw - I was starting to think, “I don’t think I
want to do what my dad has planned for me.” Even though I was enjoying working with
him and the company was an extravagant success, and there was really unlimited amounts
of ice cream and almost unlimited amounts of money, actually, coming in. But I made a
decision. And it was a decision that defined my life ever since, which was to walk away
from Baskin-Robbins and the opportunity to run the company with my dad, eventually to
inherit it. And I also chose, out of integrity, to walk away from the money. So I told my
dad, “Because I’m not going to do what you want me to do, what you’ve planned for me
to do, I think it’s honorable and respectful to you and to me to not have any access to your
money which has come from the company.” My dad thought I was crazy.
(PM): I had met so many people that have come to me 10 years, 15, 20 years, arguably
you could say too late, to discover that what they’ve set out to achieve wasn’t really a part
of who they are. Often people are saying to me, “How do I find my passion? How do I
find my purpose?” Number one is we should refrain from the word ‘find’ and say how do
we uncover it. Because finding almost illustrates that it’s under the bed or it’s over behind
the counter or it’s in a book somewhere. And ultimately it’s within ourselves. So if you
think about that you say, “Well okay, if I understand who I am, therefore what I’m here
to do starts to become very evident in time.” But you want to understand your patterns.
You want to understand self-sabotage. You want to understand who you are at the core.
Go back. Go back and really do a deep dive in your story. It can be incredibly cathartic,
incredibly therapeutic. It can be incredibly profound. And what you’ll find is insights into
what I call your gift. Everyone has a gift. People call it a purpose. Some people call it a
passion. And we’ve all got a gift within us. It doesn’t need to be necessarily found, it needs
to be uncovered. And the greatest clues, I believe, in terms of what your gift is, what you’re
here to do, is in your story.
(MF): So many people that have passed before us have been generous enough to give us
wisdom. One of my favorite books is by Bronnie Ware, The Five Regrets of the Dying.
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And the number one regret that over hundreds of beautiful souls that she’s helped pass to
the other side, it was this: I wish I had lived a life true to myself and not the life that others
had expected of me. And I feel like when it comes to understanding that each of us have
a gift that we were put on this earth for a reason, that there never will be another one of
us - understanding that now is the time to take whatever it is that are our passions and our
quirks and our visions and bring them out into the world because we will never be here
again. And if we look at that as something exciting, that we have this limited amount of
time. We’re here to express our joy, express our love, to make a difference, to contribute
to others. All of a sudden it becomes less something to fear and more of something that’s
this motivating, inspiring truth.
(BB): What holds people back is first and foremost the desire for comfort and ease. That’s
it. They say, “Well, I want to be great but I’m really comfortable here.” I understand this.
I’m not scared every day. Or, “I just, I don’t want to go through that struggle.” I think the
most important thing reaching the next level in our life is to honor the struggle. That process
is going to bring hardship. It’s going to bring frustration. It’s going to bring the unknown.
It’s going to bring people making fun of you. And instead of saying, “Oh, I’m so scared,”
honor it. Go “That’s part of the process. That’s going to make me smarter, wiser, better,
more kind, more capable, more confident, to go through the muck.” I work with a lot of
green berets and very elite military levels, right? And they have this great saying. They
say they have to embrace the suck. You know? You have to know this is going to suck a
little bit. All right, let’s go at it, guys. We know it’s going to suck. Just knowing that and
allowing that is really important. And now this person who has a lot of potential, a lot of
greatness who could go to this next level, they don’t because they’re not listening to that
inside restlessness. That inside thing that says, “Come on, man.” That inside thing that
says, “We’ve got to change this.” That inside thing that is scary sometimes because it says,
“We’ve got to blow all this up cause it’s wrong for us.” Sometimes it feels irresponsible
to listen to that voice and very responsible that listens to the person that says, “Now
be careful.” But if you always listen to that person or that side of you, then winning is
certainty. Because past the comfort zone is a lot of unknown, is a lot of fears. And there’s
only three psychological mechanisms that create fear. Number one is called loss pain. Loss
pain means if I do that then I’m going to lose something I like over here. If I go to change
my diet, then I lose the foods I love. If I quit this job, then I lose those coworkers I do like;
I lose my health insurance. So people don’t change because they’re scared they’re going
to lose something. Lose something tangible. Lose something intangible. Sometimes they
feel like I’m going to lose respect. And loss pain terrorizes people. So they stay stuck.
Cause you know what? I know this. I don’t know that. And I don’t want to lose the things
I’m already certain about in life. The second thing that people fear is called hardship pain.
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The process of changing will bring doubt, uncertainty, discomfort. It will bring hardship
to me where I’m going to have to stretch and learn and retool new things. People don’t
quit the job because they go, “Ugh, I’m going to have to create a resumé. I’m going to
have to go interview. I’m going to have to put myself out there again.” People don’t go
dating because they say those same things. You know today? People don’t go and try to
change because they say, “Ugh, if I want to lose weight I’m going to have to learn to cook
new things. I’m going to have to change my schedule to go to the gym now. It’s going to
hurt. I’m going to be sore all the time. You know, I don’t want to do that.” That’s process
pain. And the last one is called outcome pain. Outcome pain is, “I’m scared that if I go
through all that, I put myself out there, I try, I endure the hardship, the grass won’t be
greener on the other side. I tried all of this work. I did all the things you told me, only to
be disappointed.” They’re terrified of disappointment. It’s psychological warfare in their
mind going, “If I do that it might not turn out well. And then what happens? Well then I
lose something. What happens if I lose something?” Then it becomes hard. And they get
trapped in the spinning loop of fear of loss, hardship and outcome that they didn’t want.
(VL): What helps mitigate fear and move fear away is often living on purpose. You see,
people who live on purpose understand this rule: that there is no good or no bad that
happens to you in the world. Nothing is good, nothing is bad. Everything is just so. The
only question you want to ask yourself is, “Am I aligned with my purpose? Is what I’m
doing true to my purpose?” Now the thing is, we are not only sentient. We don’t know
if any action we are taking is always the right action. But the point is, we take it anyway.
(JR): After I left Baskin-Robbins my wife and I moved to a little island off the coast of
British Columbia, built a one room log cabin. It’s all we could afford. And we lived there
for 10 years. And we grew our own food. We were novices, we made a lot of mistakes.
It was rugged. But we were trying to weave ourselves back into the web of life and send
our roots down into the natural world. I had grown up in what I flippantly called an air
conditioned nightmare. In my family of origin, roughing it meant room service was late.
But now we were really roughing it. We were living very, very simply. And it was beautiful
and it was tough. I eventually wrote Diet For A New America and I sent it to my dad. By
that time we had, we weren’t talking too much. It was a lot of distance. I had made my
decision, my choice. And he was hurt. I tried to do it with as much respect for him as I
possibly could but in essence I was rejecting his life’s work. And that was a sad thing.
He was angry about it. So we didn’t talk too much. But I thought he might want to know
that I had published a book. And so I sent him a copy. He didn’t open it. My dad, at that
time, had become very ill. He had diabetes. He had high, very high, blood pressure. He
had heart disease. He was overweight. His diabetes was so severe that the prognosis was
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a possible amputation of a foot or even a leg and blindness. And his blood pressure was so
out of control he had to take 10 what he called ‘horse pills’ every day. I don’t know what
they were but he’d been told he had to take them for the rest of his life. My dad went to his
cardiologist and the cardiologist leveled with him and said, “Mr. Robbins, you’re a very
sick man right now. And the best we can do for you is try to juggle your medications, try
to control some of the side effects that you’re experiencing and that are distressing you.
And try to make your few remaining years a little more comfortable.” And my dad was
scared. And then he said, “On the other hand, if you were willing to change your lifestyle
and what you eat, there might be a different prognosis for you.” And my dad said, “Well,
what do you mean?” And the physician handed him a copy of Diet For A New America, my
book, not knowing that the John Robbins who’d written it was the son of his patient, Irv
Robbins, the owner and founder of Baskin-Robbins. And my dad, of course knew, cause
I had sent him already a copy of the book, but he didn’t tell him. But he went home and
now because the book had been blessed by the high priest of Western medicine, he began
to read it. I’m sure you read the copy that doctor gave him, not the copy I’d sent him that
was autographed. But he read it and he started to make changes. Small ones at first. But
he got results. And then he made more changes, more results. More changes, more results.
Fast forward two years, he’s off all the medications he’d been on. His diabetes has gone into
complete remission. He doesn’t need insulin anymore, he doesn’t need even the diabetic
pills anymore. His circulation to his legs and feet is restored and to his eyes is restored.
He’s lost the weight that he needed to lose. His golf game has improved by eight strokes.
And he’s thrilled. And the doctor’s thrilled. And he calls me up and says, “Johnny, you’re
not going to believe what’s happened.” I said, “Okay, what’s happened?” He said, “It’s
unbelievable.” I said, “All right, what’s unbelievable?” “It’s really not possible, but it’s
happened.” “What, Dad?” “Well it turns out you were right”. And you know, honestly,
that, my dad who had achieved this phenomenal business success, who could say to his
son that rejected his life work, that you might have been right about anything... I respect
that, enormously. Because that’s of the heart. That takes something. This is a man who had
it all. He was a billionaire. And yet he could say to his son who walked away from it all
that you might have been right. I mean, to me, I’ll always live with that joy. After that we
had to reproach mom. We had to talk about a lot of things. It was a reconciliation between
us and our relationship got completely renewed. The connection was there. The love was
there. The respect was there, both ways, reciprocal, moving. And we were connected again
and he lived another 20 years, most of them very healthy ones. When the prognosis had
been he was on his deathbed. You know, I disappointed him so much by making a choice
that I felt was for integrity, but from his point of view it was a slap in the face. And that,
in the end, I was able to give him something perhaps more valuable than had I done the
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obvious thing. And since then I’ve written other books and I’ve sold millions of copies of
them and many, many people write me and told me that their lives had been changed in
similar ways to my dad’s. And that is so much more rewarding and fulfilling for me. I think
we really need to redefine success in a way that includes our hearts and includes our love
and includes our compassion and it includes our caring for one another. I think we know
when we’re a success, when our hearts are strong and we live with them, in a way. So our
life reflects our hearts. We make choices that express our love, our caring. And then that
becomes the defining aspect of who we are.
(MF): I grew up in New Jersey in a very blue collar family. My parents got divorced and
there were all these issues that happened throughout growing up. I was actually the first
in my family to go to college. I studied business and when I graduated from college the
only job that really interested me was something that was active. So I got myself a job on
the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. So you’re standing all day long and people
are screaming and yelling and it’s a very exciting, energetic place to work. Everyone
was making millions of dollars but while they were rich financially, they were spiritually
bankrupt. And I started hearing this small voice inside that said, “This isn’t what you’re
supposed to do. This is not where you’re supposed to be.” And I tried to silence that voice
because I had debt. Feeling like I should be doing something else but I didn’t know what
that was was creating a lot of stress and anxiety in my life and one day I was on the floor
of The Exchange and I started getting a panic attack. I remember telling my boss at the
time like, “I’m going to go run out and get a cup of coffee.” And I left the floor and instead
of going to get coffee, I ran to a church. And I sat myself down on the steps of Trinity
Church outside The Exchange and I just started crying because I didn’t know what else to
do. I felt all of this pressure and fear and uncertainty and self doubt thinking like I have
this job, I’m getting a steady paycheck, I should be so grateful to have this position and all
I want to do is quit. And I thought I was going to be a disappointment to my parents and
to my friends and to everyone. And I remember calling my dad on his cell phone and just
bawling my eyes out and saying, “Dad, I don’t want to disappoint you, but I can’t do this
anymore. And I don’t know what the hell I want to do but I’ve got to do something else.”
And he said something to me that forever changed my life. And he said, “You know, Ree,
you’ve worked since you were nine years old. You started babysitting and selling ice cream
and working at the beach and you’d always worked.” He’s like, “I’m not worrying about
you paying your bills, “ he goes, “But you have to find something that you love because
once you find that, it’s never going to feel like work again. So as long as it takes you to
try every different thing you could possibly imagine, you have to keep searching until you
find it. So if you need to quit, I’m not going to be disappointed. But you have to do this
and you have to find something you love.” And when I hung up from my dad, I remember
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within like the next week I quit my job and I went on an odyssey to find what I was meant
to do in the world. My first step was really doing a bit of an excavation and asking myself,
“Well, what am I really interested in? What have I always been good at? What sounds
exciting to me?” because again, I felt paralyzed because the thing that I had just spent four
years studying, the kind of epitome of the job, that wasn’t it. So looking inside, I really
had two clues. One was that I was very interested in the world of business. My dad was
a small business owner so I understood what that was like growing up with him. And the
other was art and creativity. I had always drawn and done fine art and considered being an
animator for Disney or a fashion designer. So I was like okay, well how do I mesh these two
passions around business and small business and something around making money, but it
also has to be creative. And the idea that came to me was magazine publishing. And I got
into the ad sales department of a magazine called Gourmet which was part of Conde Nast,
that very big magazine publishing company and I remember starting and being so excited.
I’m like, “Oh, this has gotta be it.” And I was thrilled to be able to learn the business. I
had a great boss and I had a great publisher. And they were just these powerful, strong,
intelligent women. But about six months in, I started hearing that voice again. Said, “Marie,
this isn’t it.” And I was like, “Oh no, not this again. No, not this again.” I was like, “Wait,
this has to be it.” And at this point, I have to tell you, I really started to feel a sense of
panic. I started to feel broken. I knew I had a ton of potential in me. I knew I was a hard
worker. I knew I wanted to contribute to the world. But I didn’t seem to fit into the regular
corporate structure. So one day I was on the internet, probably when I shouldn’t have been,
and I stumbled upon this article about a new profession at the time called coaching. Now
this is back in 1999. This is well before coaching was anything in the mainstream. And I
remember reading this article and something in my heart lit up like nothing ever before. It
really was one of those moments where it feels like the clouds parted and the angels were
singing and sunbeams were just shooting down. And something in my soul, something in
my being, felt like this was right. This was something that was more exciting. There was
something aligned. I had to pursue it even though it didn’t make sense. So I signed up for
a three year coach training program and I started to do my studies at night while I kept my
magazine job during the day. A few months in, I get a call from the HR department. They
wanted to offer me a promotion at Vogue Magazine. This was my fork in the road. Do you
take this promotion, which is more money and more prestige, a steady paycheck, health
benefits, all of the things that one should want when you’re getting started in your career?
Or do you quit and do this weird thing that no one has ever heard of called coaching and
start your own business which you have no idea how to do and you’re carrying thousands
and thousands of dollars in debt from college and you have to take care of yourself? So
of course, I quit. And I started bartending and waiting tables and doing every odd job I
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possibly could. And I started working on my business during the day and just hustling my
buns off on nights and weekends to fund this brand new business.
So over the years, I recognized that one of my greatest abilities was to be able to communicate
with people. I love teaching on video. I had a part of my career in health and fitness where
I was teaching hip hop and I was the Nike League dance-off lead and I was creating all
these fitness videos. And one of the things that I loved about that was just being able to
talk to people straight through camera and show them how to do things and have them go
from feeling insecure and afraid and a lot of self doubt, to this other place of like, “Oh my
goodness, I can do this.” And I feel like that’s one of my super powers that helps people
really take what it is that they want to do in this world and bring it to life. You know, if
there’s a change they want to make in their health, or in their relationships, or in their
financial life, or in their mental or emotional health, or they want to take this idea they
have for a business and grow it or their existing business and take it to new heights, a lot
of it comes from really simple tools and the application of those tools consistently. And
so many of us don’t have voices of encouragement. So I think when any of us are feeling
lost, or feeling stuck or feeling like gosh, nothing’s working right now, I think one of the
best things we can do - and it’s so counterintuitive - is we have to celebrate. We have to
celebrate the fact that we’re in a tough spot. Why? Because we’re about to have some kind
of breakthrough. Something in our life is not working and we’ve gotten ourselves to the
point that we’re willing to take action, to do something about it. So that means change is
on the horizon. So again, I know it’s a little counterintuitive but please, take a minute to
celebrate cause something’s off track and you’re going to get it right back on track. The
next thing we’ve got to do is start where we are. Oftentimes we think we have to change
everything, but really what we have to change is our attitude and how we’re showing up.
So can you start with the little things. You know, in the morning, can you make your bed
with enthusiasm and passion? Can you be the best damn bed maker ever? Can you brush
your teeth like you really mean it? Can you start talking with your family like they’re the
best family ever? Can you show up at work and actually give your excellence and your
best and your heart and soul? Can you go into that grocery store? Can you put a smile
on somebody’s face? I know these things may sound trite or insignificant but they’re not.
Because you can’t be miserable throughout your whole day, right? 80, 90% of your day
complaining, stuck, nothing’s working, and then expect to have some big breakthrough.
Whereas if you practice in the small moments, I’m going to show up and I’m going to
look for some answers. I’m going to show up and I’m going to be this person who’s open
to new ideas. I’m going to show up and I’m actually going to put a smile on someone
else’s face. I’m going to take the attention off myself and how I might think that there’s
something wrong with me and in that putting my attention on someone else, I might
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actually discover new answers or new possibilities. So I think when we’re stuck, I think
when we’re finding ourselves in a bit of pain or we’re feeling like nothing’s working, first
to celebrate and then to start changing how we’re showing up in the micro-moments can
create a big trajectory change.
(SS): When I was born, the doctors in the delivery room told my parents that I wouldn’t
survive my first 24 hours of life. My whole childhood I was riddled with physical abuse,
but not by the hands of any other human, but my genetics. Something as simple as sneezing
would break ribs. Putting on a pair of pants too quickly I could snap a femur. The physical
pain was nowhere near as abrasive as the emotional trauma of what it caused me to miss
out on. Pain and emotional upset followed me my entire childhood. And it all kind of
shifted when I was in fourth grade. I was out in my wheelchair and as I’m rolling around I
catch my left leg on the corner of the door. And I bent it back and I snapped it at the femur.
Between hearing the sound of the snap and feeling the pain, and even though it’s a fraction
of a second it feels like an eternity because you visualize everything you’re going to miss
out on, I thought, “Well why did I have to go through this? What did I ever do to deserve
this?” I was furious. My mom, she comes running in the room. She looked in my eyes and
she said, “Sweety, this is going to be a gift or a burden in your life.” First of all, I thought
she was crazy. I mean, you and I have had gifts, right? They come on our birthday and we
open them up with joy and excitement. But in fourth grade, such a young, impressionable
age, I got clarity on my life. I realized that I loved my life amidst all that pain. And maybe
there was a bigger, grander purpose to why I was in this container. Maybe the reason was
to teach the rest of the human race how to love their lives amidst their pain.
(VL): So there are many different ideas and models to help you find your purpose. One
of the best models I’ve learned comes from a writer called Amir Ahmad Nasr who was a
Sudanese refugee in Canada. And I was talking to Amir and he showed me how often the
pain that we go through during our childhood, during our growth periods, is really a sign
of what a greater purpose is. So think back of that pain that you went through as a child,
and I don’t know what that was for you, but in that pain are the clues to what your purpose
is.
(SS): Knowing the purpose to your pain doesn’t make the pain go away. But it gives
you fuel to keep pushing forward and not want to quit, not want to check out, not want to
numb yourself. I’m on this planet to look human beings in the eye and say, “I know it’s
painful. I wish it didn’t have to be painful. But you have a choice. Are you going to see it
as a gift or a burden?”
(MF): The fulfillment and meaning, it really is a choice. It’s a choice that we get to make
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in each moment. What are we going to make this mean? How are we going to choose to
have this event, this circumstance, this moment be joyous? You know, are we going to be
sitting back and our energy going, “I wish this was different.”? There’s no way it can be
different so that’s useless. Or are we going to engage with our full enthusiasm and our joy?
Are we going to show up in each moment like we’re really meant to be there? And when
we do that and train ourselves to do that consistently, all of a sudden joy and meaning and
fulfillment becomes a habit. It becomes a way of living. It becomes a way that we engage
with the world around us so it’s less of something that we’re looking for and it’s more of
something that we bring to everywhere we show up.
(SS): Some things don’t make sense in the moment. But I believe over the course of our
lives, we can see the greater picture. And whenever something is unfair or upsetting to me,
I just know okay, wait, I’m too zoomed in. I zoom out. I’m going to see that this is, this is
not happening to me but for me. There’s two ways to feel good. You can gratify yourself
which is pleasure now, pain later. And then there’s fulfillment which is effort now, pleasure
later. And you know, whenever you are growing your mind, your body, your spirit and or
you’re giving back to your planet and others, that’s so fulfilling. I’ve been a therapist for 16
years and I’ve never had somebody sit down on my couch and say, “Sean, every morning
I do my self-care rituals, I kiss my kids goodbye, I then spend five hours in the homeless
shelter feeding them and I knit blankets for children over in Africa and gosh, I just want
to kill myself.” I’ve never had it happen once. And I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but
I’ve never seen it. When a human being is growing their mind, body and spirit and they’re
giving back to the planet and humanity at large, it’s so darn fulfilling.
(VL): Now there are three types of pursuits that bring us fulfillment. And I’m really
looking at this from the point of view that we are souls here in a meat body on a giant rock
hurtling through space having a human experience. So the three things are this: the first is
human experiences. And experiences are not necessarily things that money can buy. An
experience could be a kiss with someone you really love. It could be holding a child, your
child, in your arms. It could be an extreme sport, or eating a food that you so enjoy, or
laughing with friends. You do not need money for many of these experiences. And so the
first question you want to ask yourself is not what goals do I want in life, because goals may
not necessarily lead to happiness or fulfillment. The first question you want to ask yourself
is, “What experiences do I want?” But there’s a second question. The second thing that
causes our souls to get fulfilled is growth. I believe that one of the reasons we are here is
to grow and evolve. So the second question you want to ask yourself is, “How am I going
to grow?” And this is where you want to actually make a list of all the opportunities and
ways you want to grow as a human being. It could be learning a new language. It could be
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learning a new skill. It could be learning public speaking, learning to be a better parent. It
could be learning mindfulness or meditation or creative visualization or harnessing your
intuition. But we gain fulfillment from growth. But there is a third question. That third
question is, “Look, if I was a human being who had all of these beautiful experiences, who
has grown in all of these amazing ways, how can I give back to the world?” And giving
back a contribution is the third step to fulfillment. You want to be happy? Make other
people happy. Contribution is where you make a list of all the ways you can contribute
to pushing humanity forward. Whether it’s charitable giving or raising spectacular kids,
or volunteering, or starting a company, or building something that can actually make an
impact in the world. Contribution is that third step. So really, the path to fulfillment, ask
yourself the three most important questions. What experiences do I want in life? How do
I want to grow? And how do I want to contribute?
(BB): Even if you don’t resonate with those questions, they’re not exactly yours, figure
out your questions. Figure out, at the end of my life, how would I evaluate my life? What
questions would I ask to know whether or not I lived a good life? Because if you find out
what those questions are, just make them up. Decide, okay, I might ask, “Am I a good
mom?: I might ask, “Did I follow my passion?” I might ask, “Did I honor the gifts that
God gave me?” Find out what questions you’re going to ask and once you know what
those questions are, then you can live each day intentionally so you’re happy with the
answers at the end.
(SS): You know, I’m a big believer, and this may sound more delusional, that having a
dream is more important than achieving a dream. Because achievement is not what keeps
us inspired. It’s behind us. Hope is what keeps us inspired. Heading towards something is
far more powerful than having something behind you. I think the goal is to be an unrealistic
human being and when you’re unrealistic you can create incredible possibilities. Jeff Bezos,
right? Elon Musk. The late Steve Jobs. The late Walt Disney. Mother Teresa. Mahatma
Gandhi. Martin Luther King. All these individuals are incredibly unrealistic. Martin Luther
King was saying one day we will drink out of the same fountain and it will be no big deal.
That was unrealistic at the time. And so unrealistic people chart the course for the rest of
the human race.
(BB): Your obligation, your responsibility, is to live your mission and your purpose. That
you were given this unique soul, this unique gift, this unique container that’s unique out
of seven billion people, and you’re being asked. People say, “Well, what’s my purpose?”
I say, “Well, let’s take a look. What’s your purpose? What do you know to be true?” Well,
we know for sure that you’re unique. Out of seven billion people, you cannot line up a
genetic exact match. We just know that by science. We know that by spirit as well. You’re
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unique. So part of your purpose, live that uniqueness. Don’t conform, be you. Share with
the world what you really think, what you really feel. What do you really want? Contribute
things that pull at your heart because maybe that’s a part of you that’s like there’s some
kind of thing that’s being called and you’re supposed to listen because only you got that
gift. You got that message. You’re supposed to do that.
(MF): There never has been and there never will be another you. So to understand what a
miracle you are on this earth, in this moment, right now, and to be able to use your heart
and your skills and your perspective and your unique story to connect with other humans
and to make a difference in their life, that’s all you’re here to do. And it doesn’t have to be a
grand expression. You don’t have to be a billionaire. You don’t have to change anything.
(RR): If you can take control of your own path and then devote yourself in service to the
betterment of other human beings, you will find more fulfillment, more purpose, more
contentment and more happiness than you can possibly imagine. And that will be your
gift to humanity and to the planet that we all share.
(JR): And if we can learn, again, where our hearts are, find them. And let them teach us
and show us and guide us and live according to what is in our hearts and souls, that we
have come to this earth to share, to give. Then we are playing the part we are here to play.
And yes, you and I are each one seven billionth of humanity and you can think of it that
way, that’s just a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket, but if there’s enough drops, it ceases to be a
bucket. It becomes the tide of history turning. It becomes something that is unstoppable.
It becomes something that is good and wholesome and beautiful and powerful beyond
measure. And that is the power that Gandhi called Satyagraha - the power of love force,
caring. The power of spirit. And it is greater when we create it together. And I think it’s up
to each of us to find our calling, to find our spirit, to find our integrity and to live it. And
when we do, we’re playing the part in the greater healing of what we’re meant to play.
(MF): You just have to show up and be willing to show up every single day and realize
that you do make a difference and the difference that you make is up to you.
Closing Music:
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♪ You ♪
♪ The ceiling’s coming down ♪ ♪ Going back to where the story all began ♪
81
♪ You ♪
♪ You ♪
82
♪ You ♪

♪ You ♪
♪ You ♪
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TRANSCENDENCE TRANSCRIPT

FULL DOCU-SERIES TRANSCRIPTION

Episode Two: Overcoming Fear & Stress 17

Episode Three: Beyond Belief 32

Episode Four: Whose Goals Are We Chasing? 50

Episode Five: The Art of Fulfillment 68

WHAT’S IN OUR FOOD

Novak Djokovic (ND)

William Davis (WD)

Mark Hyman (MH)

Tom O’Bryan (TO)

Josh Axe (JA)

Vani Hari (VH)

Libby Weaver (LW)

John Robbins (DR)

Announcer: Tsonga leads by four games to one.

Announcer: Now, it’s championship point.

(ND): Couple of good days in the office, yeah.

Announcer: Wimbledon champion, Novak Djokovic!

(ND): Regardless of my profession, everybody wants to be healthy, right? Everybody wants

Announcer: Brian Poole in coverage, and Brady lays it out perfectly.

♪ Going back to where our story all began ♪

OVERCOMING FEAR & STRESS

Chris Wark (CW)

Bruce Lipton (BL)

Libby Weaver (LW)

Joe Dispenza (JD)

Mark Hyman (MH)

Wim Hof (WH)

Ocean Ramsey (OR)

Josh Axe (JA)

smashed me, like smashed me on the rocks.

“Yeah, the immune system uses a lot of energy.”

the way I dealt with fear.

♪ Going back to where the story all began ♪

♪ Do you want to hear the journey of this man ♪

♪ So maybe maybe you’re gonna call me crazy ♪

♪ Feeling and know it can be wrong ♪

♪ So one day you’re gonna be my lover ♪

♪ Everybody run for cover ♪

♪ Ceiling’s coming down ♪

♪ And one day, we’re gonna be forever ♪

♪ Everybody said we’d never ♪

♪ The ceiling’s coming down ♪

♪ So stop, I’m gonna be there for you now ♪

♪ Don’t worry, I’m gonna be there for you now ♪

♪ I’ll walk through the sunshine and rain ♪

♪ I believe in second chances over again ♪

♪ So maybe maybe you know I’m gonna call us crazy ♪

♪ The feeling I know it wasn’t wrong ♪

♪ So one day you’re gonna be my lover ♪

♪ Everybody run for cover ♪

♪ The ceiling’s coming down ♪

♪ And one day, we’re gonna be forever ♪

♪ Everybody said we’d never ♪

♪ Ceiling’s coming down ♪

♪ So stop, I’m gonna be there for you now ♪

♪ Don’t worry, I’m gonna be there for you now ♪

Jim Kwik (JK)

Bruce Lipton (BL)

Libby Weaver (LW)

Vishen Lakhiani (VL)

Marie Forleo (MF)

Joe Dispenza (JD)

Jon Gabriel (JG)

Mark Hyman (MH)

Brendon Burchard (BB)