I think discipline is a key to everything because
I'll tell you like you can give somebody the solution I do it all the time we've come up with
a solution to the problem give them a routine give them a process of strategy and then they don't
stick with it and they're like oh man I'm back here again it's like well you didn't follow
through it's important to have spontaneity in your life you don't want to become rigid but I'm
disciplined for the fact that I'm doing the things I know will perf
orm will provide me with the best
output the best outcome and they also move you out of emotional thinking into the ability to where
I can go execute at a higher level [Music] okay hi Brett thank you so much for joining me and and
for showing up today can you please just give us a bit more insight into yourself what brings you
here uh at this point in your life and tell us a bit about your work yeah thank you Mike real uh
real great to be on the show thanks for having me um you know just a
little quick background on me
basically I have been a life coach and business coach for over two decades it's 24 years this
year which is pretty incredible um but to put it simply to make it easy because you know it's
like what does a life coach do right um I really look at myself as like a Peak Performance coach
the reason I say that is I think it helps people understand what I'm really specializing in doing
which is helping people to several things but most importantly understand what you
need to do to be
performing at your best in your life and not just in general but I work with clients in each area of
their life so it's a really holis istic approach so we're looking at your career your relationships
your health and fitness your personal growth your spirituality and your hobbies because I found
after doing this so long that a lot of people would come to me for business coaching and they
would just focus on their business and that'd be going great and we'd scale their comp
any and then
their health was falling apart uh or they had no more relationship you know they're get an argument
with their partner and things are falling apart it's like this doesn't work so I help people
really create design what I call the ideal you which is a map of your life how you want it to
be so you have a Clear Vision for the future that you're inspired by you can see all the benefits
from you can step into that reality and see how that provides you with fulfillment and excitement
but then each day we focus on Peak performances how do you show up each day how do you show up to
be the best version of you each day and that's the key because you know the goal could be two years
three years down the road you want to make sure that every day of the journey is fulfilling that
keeps you the healthiest mind body and spirit and performing at your best yeah great thank you and
it's not always the case but often times people like yourself get to these places as a result of
th
eir own Journeys and their own kind of ways of figuring these things out yourself but can you
however much you want to share can you kind of help us understand how you personally got here
like through your own Journey sure yeah you know when it's uh it's it's a long one I could I could
make a Trilogy or a three-part Trilogy with all the episodes before right but um to put it simply
I say that you know number one the thing that really got me here was I I believe what I'm doing
is my calling
I really do and we hear people say that but I've heard people say that thought in the
past you're like oh it's kind of strange I'm like oh man but I really feel called to do this now
like stuff that sometimes I don't want to do right you're like oh I'm tired and it's like no get up
and do this thing you're being called to do it or you try to shut the door on it just keep showing
back up like okay I get it God this is my path so I do feel blessed that I'm doing what I was meant
to be doing h
ere that I've always had this kind of in me and there's always been a sort of a version
of who I am that just evolved and layers have peeled off and there's been refinement but so I've
always been very faithful been a very spiritual person so I've always felt this this connection
to God and felt this desire to help people and to be a better to have integrity to work through
life with Integrity luckily I was blessed with two amazing parents they're my best friends they're
incredible people s
o as a child you know when things would happen like there'd be a an incident
at a school or somebody like a president get shot or some War something break out we sat down as a
family and said let's talk about this how do this make you feel what is you know what is that like
um what are your feelings on it gave me a voice and so for a very young age I felt it was okay
to express my feelings and I felt it was okay to understand what was going on and communicate
what I felt and instead of it b
eing reactionary we talked about it and would talk through how can you
how's that benefit you how's that good for other people I think that was a real blessing so it gave
me confidence it gave me a voice at a young age So based on that I started going um you know just
I was very into entertainment when I was younger probably because the confidence made me want to do
that you know and so like I love doing theater and doing plays and doing commercials and television
all this kind of stuff and
I thought I was going to go that route and I really thought that was my
interest at the same time I was really learning a lot about psychology and behavior and I was
starting to work with companies and doing things and doing sales and training development and the
funny thing was they merged but what I realized was the reason I liked the entertainment I it was
fun when you're you know your kid and stuff you're doing it's a great time but really I liked the
psychology it was somebody would g
ive me a role and say figure out why this person acted like
this it was really I do now it's like somebody comes to me and they're the character right but it
was just I was getting a character with like you know a two-dimensional character in a book or in
a play rather than a real person and so I started to realize like oh my passion is deciphering and
figuring out reverse engineering why this person behave this way or why this happened this way so
I got really interested and dug into psych
ology and all the different things that have to do with
behavior and communication I love communication because it's really how we how we translate what's
happening in our own personal worlds and so that was kind of like what led me into this process but
then my own personal Journey you know I've gone through things I've had I was married and went
through a divorce um I've had I've lost my brother a couple years ago lost my grandmother a couple
years ago had many great people around me I wa
s my ex-wife actually when I met her we were I was 18
years old and she was 17 her twin sister had just died a year before and it just crushed her family
and I remember at 18 years old stepping into this family and becoming the counselor for them because
I would want to see her and the family be fighting and I would like we're not gonna go out on a date
I'm not gonna pick you up and go somewhere unless your family sits down and talks I would sit there
at 18 years old with this family and co
unsel them and um you know and it's just been it's been
a process of just moving myself out of the way continually working on bettering myself always
finding a way to take ownership for the things mistakes I made and learned from them and being
objective to look at other people and empathize with them and not judge anybody but say let me
understand where they're coming from and how can I either create an impact in their life or how
can I get out of the way so it's not about me and that Jour
ney went through working with people
in insurance companies and restaurants and uh mortgage companies and doing sales training and
call centers and development stuff like that and as I went through the process I realized quickly
this it's not about a product it's always about the person it's always about like what's going on
here because somebody could be selling Insurance someplace and they'll wake up in the morning they
like yeah I'm going to sell insurance you know they may enjoy it but
they're probably waking up
because it's going to pay their college bills or this going to pay for their mom's Medical bills
and so I really just started understanding about getting to the heart of the person and that when
you do that the real key is then figure out what their passions are in life what are their dreams
and how do you tap them into uh an existence and a daily habit a routine that allows them to stay
focused on that not get overwhelmed by the stress of Life yeah wow thank you
that's that's um
insightful uh for for without using too many other words and can you maybe just share a bit
about how your own so I often think when people like yourself that do the work that you do if
everyone could do it in some sense you wouldn't have a job so sometimes it sounds like this was
somewhat true for you like you had that innate I guess capacity or gift to kind of do these kind of
things and maybe how do you how do you cultivate that yourself on a daily basis like how do you
take care of Your Mind Body Spirit on a daily basis I always think it's very helpful for people
to hear how other people do it yeah great question well you know I'll tell you this like you know uh
I think if I were to distill it back I think that the confidence my family put in me first is what
gave me gave me the persistence and the resilience to develop discipline in myself I think discipline
is a key to everything because I'll tell you like you can give somebody the solution I do it all
the time we've come up with a solution to the problem give them a routine give them a process
strategy and they don't stick with it and they're like oh man I'm back here again it's like well
you didn't follow through you know we gave you something said stick with it for 30 days you did
it for like four and you fell off and then didn't go back and so the discipline is the real key
and so I would say for me the factor one of the things I'm most grateful about is my passion and
my discipline
my discipline is incredible if I find out something is good for me or I can change
something I do it and it's done forever I'll cut it out immediately and never touch it again or
I'll start it today and do it forever and so um I have a very disciplined daily routine now I do
say this it's important to have spot in your life you don't want to become rigid but I'm disciplined
for the fact that I'm doing the things I know will perform will provide me with the best output
the best outcome and u
m they also move you out of emotional thinking into the ability to where I
can go execute at a higher level if I'm changing my routine and I'm stressed I'm worried all the
time and trying to figure out what I'm doing and questioning things it's a lot of bandwidth it
just wears you down and then there's not much left to do the creation the inspiration the work
you really want to do so for me I'm so disciplined because I know like when I keep this like this
run this this way this moves us out
of the way the fuel is saved and now I really got a big tank to
work on things so I get up every morning at 5:30 in the morning I I've gotten up early my whole
life um I love to get up and watch the sunrise so I get up and watch the sunrise every morning
first thing I do is I sit down and I do um I first sit down and observe myself so I take a couple
minutes and I just sit in peace I have like a little Temple here I come to that's like my place
of Serenity and I just observe where my think
ing is where my breathing is and then I actually do
some breath work I'll do several you know 10 15 minutes of breath work and kind of regulate myself
through it then I'll do some meditation and then I have a process a daily routine that I teach my
clients that I call qp1 or Quantum programming it's a process of programming your mind every day
to how you want to be basically checking the boxes to make sure it's like checking all systems all
systems go right on a plane before you take off or
something so I run through my passions which
are the most important things to me in my life to remind me who I am what I'm doing how I want to do
it to be most fulfilled and I really meditate into those things so that it can touch me and it sets
the course and it sets kind of like it inspires me and gets me in the right mindset it activates
everything that's important go through a list of affirmations you know refining myself and focusing
on who and what and how I need to do things in orde
r to to achieve that reality and then I go
through a list of gratitudes so I move out of the headiness and the ego and move into my heart
and remember to go out in the day being grateful and grounded and thankful for the opportunities I
have and the people that have done so much to get me where I am then after that yeah head right in
it it's cold plunge time three minutes freezing cold um and honestly I love it I'm addicted to
it now I know you hear about this all the time so crazy but it's
you know I'm like everybody else I
get up and there's mornings where I'm like I don't want to do it I woke up a couple days ago and
I woke up and I was like ah stretch I was like nope I'm not doing this today I like I want to go
back to bed I'm tired I was like nope you know you got to do this doesn't matter what you're feeling
because you know I always say that feelings don't dictate reality they dictate your personal reality
and so I was like my personal reality is that I won't be doing
this today and you're just fine so
I did the routine got up went got the cold plunge soon as I came out I was yelling pumping my fist
in the air on fire took my dog on a run and felt phenomenal and I was so grateful that I didn't
stay in the bed but it's that discipline to say I may be telling myself this or feeling this but get
up and do it and so that's kind of my routine and after I do the cold plunge then I take my dog on
a run then we usually I go to the gym and work out for a little b
it and I listen to audio books so I
try to get take care of myself in the morning I'm it's my sacred time between 5 :30 and usually like
9:30 um every morning like it's just you know the morning routine the breath work the meditation the
cold plunge the exercise listening to audiobooks um just filling my tank and then after that
I'm here for the rest of the world I have all the energy there's nothing left that I need to do
for me and I can be fully present for others nice yeah that's such a
nice reminder of you hear
the silly cliche all the time put your oxygen mask on before you help your um your neighbor or
whatever but it really is true a lot of the time and I think sometimes we forget that can you one
thing as you were talking that really resonated with me which which is certainly a barrier
or or something I struggle with is that that emotional reactivity uh and how that influences
my discipline or my decisions or whatever it is so right now I could lose some weight so I
have
been able to go to the gyms so I've been really good about that lately uh I also have some sort
of chronic back issues that have been really good lately so when that's not a problem I start
playing hockey again and whatever but the thing that I really still struggle with is my eating and
it's no doubt emotional emotional eating and like I just so maybe we can use me as a guinea pig um
but yeah I guess I'm just kind of curious how you help people with that and maybe maybe we can use
me
as a guinea pig here yeah that's awesome that's a great one um so here's a couple things I would
say is it definitely is like stress and then we get into habits there's the stress external that's
causing you know external stress is the things in life and then the internal stress we create from
that so we start to tell ourselves a narrative a story and we start to look for food as comfort
or we start to do it habitually and also some of the habitual Foods we do in our routine of what
we eat
like we build candida in our stomach and so it actually is a it's a it's a life force it's
its own being you know we've got we have millions of biom in our body and so that food source
actually craves stuff so it's like a little kid that wants to eat all the time so you put a
kid in your not even you anymore that's the gut health right yeah so couple things I say to do
they're really good with helping this will work with anything but it's specifically with yours
um first of all our emotion
s are a signal and this is something when we learn this it really
transforms your life so I always say like you know think of your mindset is just two things to
make it really simple you're either emotionally thinking or you're objectively thinking and I is
clear like you can tell me there's no emotion on it's like this is good this is bad this is why I
would do this it's very logical but when you come to emotional thinking it's not logical it changes
and moves and wishes and like you reall
y can't put anything on it but the thing about emotions
they're they're brilliant they're a gift from God they are our internal navigation system but
most of the time we feel angry and we feel we want we're embarrassed about it or sad and don't want
to talk about it so we repress emotions instead of looking at the signal the signal is telling you
there's something you need to do right now there's something you need to learn and so every time it
happens like this is an opportunity for growth
that's something I've embraced that has changed
my life so I don't run away from emotions when they come up I've trained myself to be able to
step out and witness the emotion to go oh this is happening for a reason let me learn something so
I would give you this kind of I'll give you this kind of two-step process to do first thing you
do is whenever you feel any emotion this can be anger sadness fear guilt it can even be anxiety
or a desire to eat or do something a trigger of a behavior yo
u don't want what you want to do
is you have to recognize it first and go okay you know what I have this technique I call take
five and come back better and it works when you're trying to get out of a negative mindset and it
works when you're trying to break a bad habit so let's say that you're at home you get anxious and
all of a sudden you want to go eat food you're sad you're frustrated you go for comfort food what
you do is you say you know what I'm gonna take five before I do this I'm
G to step away because
what's happening is when you're emotional and you're not getting the signal is you're reacting
you're not being proactive if you're not making a decision you're letting this pull you and feeling
like you have to do it like an addiction so the minute you feel this craving come on you say to
yourself um you know what I'm going to take five minutes you go outside you go someplace else you
have to change the environment that's step one doesn't matter where you go you want
to change
environment get out of the kitchen get out of the living room go sit on your porch That's where
yeah sorry I want to interrupt you that's exactly where it is I'm in the kitchen or the living room
like like that's prob or you know sometimes it's like I'll be be out in the world or whatever
but generally it's in that exact environment yeah sorry interrupt you I just toity you can
see yourself right yeah yeah so you gotta get up and leave that environment and you know it's
good you
go outside for a minute get some fresh air but you can go anywhere you want to separate
because there really is an energy in a space and so step outside then what you do is sit down and
you're going to breathe for a minute you're just going to breathe and like I suggest doing this
breathing technique this is a really simple we'll do some more in a minute but this this is an easy
one that anybody can do it's called 426 it is a inhale for 4 seconds in your nose so hold it for
two seconds at
the top and then exhale for six seconds we'll do like a couple more
of those you can feel it so inhale for four hold it and exhale we do one more inhale for four hold it and exhale as you do that what happens your body
begins to settle you start to take control and manage your physiology which affects your
psychology and you become calm and you're able to separate yourself from the emotion if you're angry
or sad or something like that it will process the emotion because again once you get th
e signal your
body's like okay I got the signal the breathing tells it you can send the signal away I'm aware
of what you were trying to tell me I've I've made a change in my navigation and so you process it
through that breathing the 426 all of a sudden you don't feel angry anymore you don't feel as much of
a craving anymore to go do whatever you're going to do then you ask yourself these two questions
number one how is this helping me and the second question how the sorry sorry how is lik
e the
emotion or the yeah whatever this thing is like for you if you're having the craving and you're
like oh I'm gonna go get some get some chips I'm G get some Doritos out have a soda and Doritos you
breathe and you go how is this helping me how is going and having Doritos and drinking a Pepsi
helping me your mind's like well it's not you know you kind of come like okay so that's question
number one you know maybe you're angry and you're with somebody and it's like you're arguing with
th
em you aside like okay I just keep belittling them or cutting them off and not listening how
is this helping me how is arguing with my partner helping me and your mind will like it's not you
know or maybe it tells you it's getting you out of a situation where you're being offended sometimes
it's protecting you you know you'll get the clear answer but then you say what am I supposed to
learn from the situation that's question two so what am I supposed to learn supposed to learn that
every ti
me I sit around and don't go to the gym I end up eating poorly or every time I get stress
stressed at work I go do this thing so you're able to understand and remove the triggers or you're
able to go do something like let's say you're angry with a partner what what's teaching you
is how's it helping me or what am I supposed to learn I'm supposed to learn that I need to be more
patient I need to learn that I'm not being a good listener and I need to start listening and when
I listen we have
more effective uh conversations together right more valuable conversations and so
part of that process what's up doing for your Mike is like again you're allowing your body to slow
down for a minute so you're kind of taking over man in control of it so it's not a reaction
that you're having then as you calm with the breathing it tells a signal that it can dissipate
so your body's like oh I've got the signal then you actually move from the emotional part of the
brain when you ask yourself a
question a logical question how is this helping me you turn on
different centers different neuropath ways in your mind that it has to turn off the emotion and go to
solving a problem and then through the process of working to solve the problem you're reinforcing
being in that thought pattern and so all these things move you out of that behavior and after
you do it multiple times over and over it starts change it to where even when you just start to
recognize like oh I need to take five your
body's like oh great I'm G to feel good in a minute and
it's already it's leading you there because it knows what's going to happen plus you're getting
the information of how is this helping you what you should be doing so you're getting your action
plan and if you act on that plan and actually take those steps you will start changing your life
you'll like I have couples that argue all the time people that have addictions um you know people
are going through depression anxiety and they do
this stuff within a week or so they're like wow
it's amazing I'm not doing this anymore and they start catching themselves self-detecting because I
always say really important you know discipline is a important thing and then also being able to
witness your own experience so when something happens like I'll get angry as soon as I get angry
now Split Second later I goes I go oh and like all of a sudden my mind's like oh wait look at this
it's like oh you just clinched your fists your jaw jus
t tightened your temperature went up two
or three degrees my mind started being like Oh I'm going after them you know you start to notice like
man that thing made me change all these things about myself quickly but if I can observe I can go
okay that's fine so apparently this is something important I need to work on I'm not going to go
grab something break it I'm not going to go road rage I'm gonna go I need to work on this this
is really important so I just take that signal as if somebody'
s like yelling at you stop or duck
and it's like this is a warning and then I go do the work right yeah yeah that's great and that's
very nice and clear and and it's coming up in my own or it does come up in my own head often but I
also know it comes up in other people's minds to how when the resistance or what's sort of typical
resistance that people have in those processes or that they ask you to help them through kind of I
don't want to do this right now or this is stupid or almost like
a shutdown kind of thing where you
just can't access that awareness I guess something like that um what are some common struggles I
guess that people have and and how do you help them with that yeah it's great you know number one
is saying don't have the time you know people will a lot of times like don't have the time I'm so
busy and I say a couple things that number one is how do you not have the time to better your
life right it's like people people tell me I'm so unhappy like I'll say y
ou know what would make
our work together successful for you what would make this you know something you'd be happy about
be fulfilled by and they'll say well you know I'm unhappy with my life I don't like my career my
relationship is going my Health's terrible I'm unfulfilled and I'll say okay let me give you a
little 10-minute technique to do I'm I don't have time for that I'm like you you told me you hate
your life you don't even know how you're gonna go on but you're don't have time to
make 10 minutes
for it so it's really just BS unfortunately and we have to get over the bad behavior there's
another bad emotional thinking Behavior we haven't trained so I just kind of help people understand
re-educate you that look at the beginning it's G to be tough you're not going to go up and hit a
home run you just got to keep showing up so it's not about doing it perfect about showing up again
the discipline show up show up show up don't even worry about the fact if you do something
and you
forgot to do it and later remembered that's good because you're starting to change that behavior
it's your pattern interrupting you're changing the pattern of what you did before right so number
one people say they don't have enough time and I tell them number one that's BS number two the
thing is is what I'm teaching you is going to show you how to become so much more efficient with
your life that you're going to have so much time it's going to blow your mind like very soon if
yo
u do the things that I coach my clients through you're like wow I can teach you an hourong morning
routine when you didn't think you had five minutes and all of a sudden you'll do that hourong routine
and your entire day will be organized and you'll be done early and everything happens smoothly
and you're getting better results so it's like you know if you make the time for yourself to
do the practices you need it transforms how you experience life and the results you get so
you're not goin
g out creating more mistakes and collateral damage and spinning your whole day like
I hate what I'm doing you'll start being inspired by your life so that's number one the other thing
is um you know when we're in these situations sometimes like you said you know like what what
people's resistance to it they feel that something is them that it's just a little shift in how
we are approaching our life and approaching the problems so it's not that the problem is so big
it's that we've created a
narrative a story that this is how things are and as we begin to disect
it and look at there's other ways things can be the minute you see an option there's optionality
it starts to loosen up that problem so like could you imagine so I give them different um scenarios
right could you imagine what it would be like if you weren't doing this thing you know what would
it be like if you Contin to do this thing and so through doing that again we change that that solid
limiting belief that's been
created that narrative that helps people shift and I think that's a
really important big one so that you show up when you need to be there and again things go into
your mind that you don't realize unconsciously so if you just have the intention of doing it it
will start to work but people sell themselves out of it and tell themselves I can't do it it's not
going to work and that's the bad thing so we have routines again with that morning routine we start
to reinforce affirmations and thing
s statements we say that start programming our mind so you may
not believe it at this moment but you're putting a healthy suggestion in that soon will be there
because you're repeating this new story right because you got to get rid of this one that's
playing all the time you got to override it with something new yeah nice and and I I like I love
that you use the word suggestion I don't know if this is exactly what you meant but often times and
I love people's kind of [ __ ] detector uh whe
re this idea of false positivity so it's not that
we're we're not giving ourselves some BS story right of everything's going to be great and blah
blah blah blah blah can you just kind of talk to that a little bit and how you see that come up and
and talk to people talk people through that yeah i' love to that goes right into what my process
is you know so like basically what happens when I when I work with people like I tell them like
you know if anybody ever tells you I can tell you everyt
hing to do I've got all the answers for you
they're full of it um I am one of the best puzzle solvers in the world so what I do is I help people
when they come to me figure out what they need to do and then help them recognize when they're not
doing it I'm not like oh hey Mike I got all your answers but I can help you figure them out I can
help you figure out things about yourself you've never understood before and so the first thing we
do is I help my clients discover their passions which
is these unconscious drivers it's not just
like oh I love to play the guitar it's exactly how you play the guitar when you play the guitar what
it means to be the fulfilling it's very niched and then we we go through a process of organizing
those things that are important in your life and prioritizing them so that you're focusing
on the top five things and my point for saying this is when you understand those things they
become the filter in which you run your entire life through the decisi
ons you make the goals
you have the relationships you have everything you do is a factor of how does this fulfill this
passion or how am I living this passion or how is this working with it so you can build that path
once you have that in place you know why you're doing what you're doing where you're going what
your ultimate goal is what fulfills you each day in every area from your career to relationships
Etc so once you have that Vision then what we do is we create affirmation this is wha
t you're
talking about here the affirmations are what you need to be do and have in order for that to become
reality if you want to become the number one jazz or blues guitarist in the world and you want to
do it because you want to take that money to help impoverish children in City inner city areas where
they don't have access to certain things it's very specific well you're gonna need to be a certain
type of person you gota like who's that person have to be you have to be an advocate you
have to
be patient you have to be charitable someone that cares that's empathetic what do you have to do
you have to da da da da da what do you need to have I need to have these different degrees or the
successes or connections and so the affirmations that we create are just programming you to become
that person that needs to go on that Journey right it's like if you were to say to somebody like who
who do you think should be the president everybody has a different opinion but you could go
through
list I think the President should be somebody who is like this you can list the characteristics
this is what I want my president to be like okay that's how you see a president so we have to
get clear on who you want to be and then we have to to develop that character and say this is how
that person gets there and behaves it's the only person that can be that person and so you're not
bsing yourself you are getting specific for the first time because most people don't know what
they
want I can stop most anybody anywhere and say what are you most passionate about what do
you want in your life where you going what do you need to change and I can't give me answers and so
that's okay because again it's emotional thinking they become stressed worried I'm going to get it
wrong I don't know but when you get specific you remove the emot you get clear on the goal and then
it's about execution instead of questioning your decisions instead of saying like what should I
be doing y
ou're like how should I be doing it and so we reprogram your mind by understanding
the steps you need to take the action items and then building them and the more you know them
the easier it is to get to them and then you understand each day like what I need to do or how
I'm off track like if I'm supposed to be this I'm not this it's like maybe I say an affirmation to
myself I have clients who are bad listeners and I'll have them start saying affirmation that I'm a
great listener and I'm co
nstantly improving every day people are thanking me for doing such a good
job of hearing them truly and at first you're not it but it remind you get out there mik and do
this today be a good listener you know and so it becomes the it's the guiding it's your Guiding
Light yeah thank you and I wanted to ask you about because I don't think we talk about this very
well sort of in our maybe certainly more in the US uh in certain parts of it but the idea of of
God or high high power or spirituali
ty that kind of stuff how I guess sort of you did talk about
it a little bit but how how does that play into all of this for you or how do you help people uh
if they're open to it I guess or just come into relationship with that concept and then maybe
maybe it's not um doesn't fit exactly but maybe just a little commentary on sort of the god-shaped
hole in Western Society if you have any thoughts on that yeah yeah it's a great question Mike so
you know like I said I've been very faithful my
whole life it's you know we go in and out of like
our practices and how much it's um a Forefront of what we do but I'll tell you in the past 10 years
and absolutely in the past six years it's become so much more the Forefront of who I am so most of
my clients are high performing Executives you know I got people making multi-million dollars running
casinos here big large companies I me know like and so when I was doing this for a long time I
felt like I need to keep anything that has to do
with spirituality or faith out of the conversation
because I feel like it does it doesn't belong here in business right then I started to re realize
one is I evolved my work you know because if you're somebody that pays attention to what you do
you you're like where's the gaps where do I need to improve where can I refine my work so I was
always leaning into things personally that led me into more meditation and Buddhism and things for
myself that that just practices of understanding spirit
uality because I realized it was a gap
for me but also started to realize that a lot of my clients I mean I have a client come to be
making $20 million a year and I'll ask him what would make this successful your relationship what
do you want to get out of this I'd like to double my money I'd like to have more my investments and
scale my company and it's like but you just told me you're so unhappy with everything you're doing
and so I started to realize not only in my work but in their expe
rience that within about month
and a half to two of working with me they're like you know what Brett the money doesn't doesn't
matter anymore it's about impact it's higher purpose and so I realized that what happened was
it's the accountability it's no matter what you want to call it it's getting outside of yourself
getting rid of the material and starting to look at something that starts becoming more Divine like
how what Legacy am I leaving how am I impacting this world what am I doing fo
r my community my
family and the people I love and so I started to realize that I need to lean into it more and as I
started to kind of just talk about or lean into my experiences wasn't preaching it to me but sharing
what I was learning people were jumping at it and they needed it and wanted it and they were all
sharing with me that I've had a bad experience with religion in the past I grew up this way
or I've had this or I never understood it and so they felt uncomfortable so the thing wa
s the
conversation wasn't being had so what I realized was with my work was it wasn't about me going out
and preaching to somebody it was about giving a space where people felt comfortable to have this
conversation and feel that it could be explored without somebody saying oh here's the Box you
need to get in right now let me get you in there and shove you in and make it fit it was like let's
talk about what happened let's unpack it let's get rid of the trauma from the past and the limiting
beliefs and let's see if there's a path forward and through that my Approach and my belief is I
believe that I'm here to do this I think it's one of my highest calling is leading people to their
spirituality and sometimes people again they go oh but what I mean by that it's not religion I'm
not saying run out and be a Baptist or a Catholic or anything like that what I mean is if you really
peel back a couple things to me when you're home alone when no one's there and you're by yourself
wh
o are you accountable to because if you're just accountable to yourself you're probably not going
to do your best you're going to cheat you're going to line and you're let yourself off the hook if
you're accountable to something else you're not going to be right if you're like I'm not going
to cut that corner I'm gonna actually I told my friend I'm going to do this I'm going to sit down
and do this I told him I'm going to read their email or not I'm going to sit down I'm read their
email my
friend writing a book I'm going to read your introduction instead of saying like I did and
they just oh nobody's gonna know you do it because you have integrity and authenticity and so there's
a higher connection and accountability beyond that come on I I love what people's ideas are but
really you think as brilliant as this world is that just something came from a bang boom and
like all this incred no chance it's like you know nothing in the world happens that sequentially
it's too comple
x and beautiful and brilliant and beyond that to me everything is really truly about
love it's about love it's about um empathy caring for each other it's about the unity We Are One
Global consciousness of one Society the animals everything that's here and when you harness that
you start to live with such a peace and such a a love and a kindness in your heart that you live
so differently I have now coached hundreds and hundreds and hundreds maybe even thousands but
hundreds for sure of peop
le through this Dogma this ideology of loving being kind having a higher
accountability just being a good person when when it comes down to it's all the good things have
integrity be honest care about people listen show up give be grateful and when you do I've watched
them transform I've watched them say I've never been happier they're good people going out and
making a real impact in the world and so that's what I really carry out to people is finding that
love and feeling connected to the
world around us you're not alone a higher accountability of
being a better person and understanding that you do have a purpose and here's the other thing
I'll tell you Mike is you know I've learned about the power of surrender in the past five or six
years and it's so powerful because what we do is we create a goal and we tell ourselves we know
everything basically because we want that goal to happen exactly how we wanted it or we're upset
it's like nothing in the world ever goes the way y
ou want it to right like nothing so when you
create something and you're frustrated because it didn't turn out how you want I think it's
laughable I'm like no it's it's a guidepost it's it's giving me a direction in the night to know
where to go and so the thing is when it doesn't happen or when I go along the process everything
is happening for me it's either somewhere I need to grow and learn or it just works right something
goes along and it happens or you're like no I came against a wal
l the relationship didn't work the
career opportunity didn't happen you know what if you surrender I guarantee you something better
comes along and you just grow but most of the time we are not listening to the signals we're getting
from our emotions and we are not paying attention to the opportunities for growth that are guiding
us through life we're constantly fighting instead of being in the flow and so I think in Western
Society you know you talk about the Gap kind of the hold the tier
I think what it is is we
become way too external everything is measured on money and it's measured on what you own and the
truth and listen I work with all those people they come to me all the time very successful wealthy
leaders and the thing is they're unhappy they have everything you'd want on a piece of paper
and they hate their lives until they make these shifts and so um I think to me at the end of the
day I'd rather have peace of mind than a billion dollars because I have a billion h
ave no peace
of mind what what is it you're just Chasing Life you know so that's kind of my that's kind of my
little Soap Box on that yeah no thank you thank you uh and maybe can you just talk a bit about
that idea of surrender and how I think a lot of people get or or maybe are just unaware of what
that actually means it doesn't mean that we're giving up agency or anything like that which
I think is a common misperception or something like that but can you maybe just I know you did
sort o
f talk about a little bit but any other thoughts or or what that looks like in in a moment
or in a yeah situation yeah you're right Mike most people think of these things as inactivity I'm
one of the most active people you ever imagine I call part of my company action Mastery for that
reason that's the thing we only need to do um but surrender is not inactivity it is a perspective
and it's a behavior so you're still behaving in it but what you're doing is so most people think
surrender mean
s just stop doing what you're doing give up and just let it all happen in order to
surrender you have to do the work first and have a plan you have to develop a plan a strategy like
I'm talking about have your vision for the future know what you're passionate about you need to
have a daily routine where you are measuring your performance you get the vision and you have
how you show up each day when you have those two components because if you think about that's for
everybody that may be my
process but it boils down it is right where the heck are you going and how
are you feeling how are you doing each day because that's what it is so if you improve how you're
doing each day you're going somewhere and then where are you going but the thing is once you have
those things in place you have to surrender to the process and say I've done I'm doing the best I
can and that's the best I can do and just show up and say that if something doesn't work it means
that there's something I nee
d to learn like I keep trying to make this I keep arguing with my partner
I'm trying to make this this person doesn't want to be married or date me anymore I'm trying to
make it work I'm trying to make it work or I'm trying to push this thing and make this project
happen that isn't happening it's The Universe telling you there's something else to do right now
this is not the step maybe sit back maybe push the proposal don't call the person again and try to
get their business don't track tha
t person down again and try to get that date or fix that thing
sit back for a minute take a moment I'll tell you Mike in 20 years of doing this I've never had
a single person tell me they should have gone faster nobody ever says that everybody always says
I should have taken my time I should have slowed down I should have thought through it more so the
surrender is an action item but what you do is you surrender to the fact that what is happening is
supposed to be happening and you do do th
e things that come present so rather than sitting down on
the couch and saying well it's all going to come to me I'm trying to get this proposal I've got
this business thing I'm doing I'm trying to get somebody to invest in my company so I'm going
out and I'm doing meeting after meeting after meeting and no one is accepting and investing
I'm not getting anything doesn't mean I sit down and go okay well I'm just going to wait now for
everything to come to me what I say is okay the surrender
is the way I'm doing this isn't working
the universe God is telling me that pushing and fighting and trying to find another person try
to force this thing isn't working maybe I need to look at my proposal and shift The Proposal maybe
the pro the approach that I'm coming at is wrong maybe I don't need investment maybe I need to
to build this thing a different way that is the surrender is understanding that you're still going
the right direction but you maybe have to change your strategy and
also understanding that if it
doesn't work something else will come along and the minute you surrender that I'll tell you man
this is crazy but the minute you surrender things start to shift you start to feel peace you start
to go it's okay I don't really need that thing I'm feeling all right and all of a sudden a little
bit later an opportunity will show up that will you'll be like oh my God that's the piece I need
I met that person now that I realize I didn't have the right CEO for the bu
siness and there they
are or my friend actually has a company that has a component that works with this and now
we're going to join but when you're forcing it you're just pushing a peg into a into a place that
doesn't work and you just lose the time on it and then you burn out your emotional bandwidth
and you give up but surrender means you're at peace with whatever's happening and it keeps
you in a flow you're you're learning and growing and experiencing and learning and growing and
exper
iencing yeah that was a beautiful description of all that um thank you okay and yeah that was
really good uh I I often think you know from the sort of meditative perspective it also sometimes
it helps to think about it as like contraction and ease which you sort of were describing but like
physiologically speaking there's like contraction and ease Y at least that's sort of how I'm trying
to learn a bit more or get in touch with what that is actually like and I always go back to that
scene i
n my living room or whatever when I'm like anxious or frustrated or whatever it's like
food food food surrender somehow I need to to to enhance my ability to surrender there um and and
okay we have about 10 minutes or any so I I want to maybe any other particular things you want to
make sure we talk about and then maybe we could do another little breathing practice or something
else that you think would be helpful yeah actually I'd like to go into that we could do this together
so I'd love
to share a little bit about uh the breath work because it's something I'm extremely
passionate about right now it's things I'm focusing on with my work but also these are things
I can impart right now a couple simple things that anybody listening can use these immediately and I
guarantee you'll start to change your life you're like I cannot believe this is this simple and
working this well so let me give you a little bit real quick kind of like a background of like
the theory behind the bre
ath work because I think once you understand this this is what gets you
invested in in taking the the dive and trying it so what most of us don't realize is and this is
things we've learned through science in the past several years but most of us think that the
way our mind thinks like I'm stressed so I've got all this stress in my mind and I'm negative
so therefore because I'm stressed I'm breathing a certain way that's actually incorrect which
is kind of crazy um what it is is the way you
breathe actually tells your mind how to think so
it goes in reverse they've realized that there's millions of receptors in your lungs and the way
you breathe in the quality of air the speed and the rate of air that you breathe in it sends
a signal to your brain and says this is how we need to think or it turns on certain centers
of your mind so for example let's say that you are out someplace and uh something happens like
you know a bear comes at you in the woods or a car almost hits you w
hat happens is we gasp take a
big or something AR brother like so like you see a Barry like oh oh gosh you know or like something
scares you what that does is that huge gas bin that amount of air and the way it comes in signals
the body boom fight or flight adrenaline cortisol it kicks you into a state to be prepared to fight
or to run um let's say you're GNA go like you're GNA get like you're going to jump into a cold
plunge you're gonna jump into a river you're G to do some kind of workou
t or something what do we
do we pump ourselves up we go and we do that to go okay it's time to pump up or if you go like I need
to calm down we go and we slowly so we're actually kind of doing it but we don't realize it we're
just not connecting that we have the power to do it so the thing is is when you manage your breath
and you understand the different techniques you can use to manage your breath you move yourself
through a process of changing and managing your mind controlling your anxi
ety your creativity
your inspiration your focus Etc so here's a couple things to know about this that's number
one you control your thinking with your breath so when you manage your breath you manage how you're
going to focus or perform the next thing is when we breathe when you exhale longer than you inhale
you actually calm your body so if you notice like when we're exhausted we sigh long sigh like that's
because we're trying to calm our body down so that's why I did the 426 if you're bre
athing and
inhaling for four seconds but you're exhaling for six seconds your body starts to settle it's like
you breathe in and then it just settles the body and settles the body and settles the body it tells
the mind it's time to relax and all the centers go and the fight ORF flight gets turned off in
Reverse if you want to get activated if you want to get pumped up for something you do longer
inhales and shorter exhales so there's a technique I do called Breath of Fire where you just bre
athe
through your nose and your mouth is closed you just do short breaths like kind of blowing out and
it activates your body because what your inhale happens just naturally as an uptake you're just
blowing out blowing out blowing out blowing out and it just charges you up with energy and so it's
really cool to know that if you ever need to do one or the other exhale longer to calm down inhale
longer to power up so those are kind of nice to do so just remember that the exhale you know it's
kind of like your body too if you let the air go down out of your mouth it's lower than your nose
and lowers you relax if you pull it up in the nose you're lifting yourself up and you're giving
yourself energy and so um couple things I like to do and these are some techniques I can get people
right now and we'll do one of these together in a second yeah let's do it but this is what I would
suggest you do everybody has a smartphone now we have alarms and all these things in there when you
g
et done today or when you're listening to this put an alarm in your phone and set it so it says
you you can call them with different names you can title them call it check your breathing and right
now set one for four hours from now and in four hours when that alarm goes off stop for a moment
and just pay attention to how you're breathing don't don't regulate it just go how's my breathing
and like wow notice it's shallow or whatever's going on and then start to regulate it you can do
again
that 426 inhale through the nose for four hold for two seconds exhale for six four 2 six and
if then reset your alarm for four hours later do this two or three times a day for a week and after
two days you're already going to change your life but after a week you're gonna go I I guarantee
you your anxiety will be diminished or gone your focus will be incredible everyone around you is
be like what is going on with you you're so calm you seem so grounded you seem you'll also even
look better
because when you oxygenate your body right your blood flow you look healthier but we're
giving to we over breathe as a society the average person does 20 to 30 breaths a minute so that's an
inhale exhale cycle they us do 20 to 30 of those a minute when we need to be doing five to seven
so it's incredible how much over breathing we're doing which you're over oxy in your brain if you
think about it what's a panic attack panic attack is breathing too much too much oxygen to the brain
and so we
're doing a level of a panic attack every day all the time so you got to kind of bring that
back down so that you're in a healthy homeostasis okay those are some big things to do another
thing you can do real quick here just throw out a couple because people have the recording they'll
be able to listen to this then we'll do one is you can set a timer on your phone for 60 seconds and
just count your breaths inhale exhale one inhale exhale two kind of count how many you're doing in
a minute w
rite it down and then do another minute and adjust and try to do seven or eight breaths in
a minute of ay inhale exhale and you'll see like you're sitting at 20 and the next wrap around you
go and really slow the breathing down and try to get it to reduce s rate you go my God I feel you
can so relaxed you can lay down and sleep and this is somebody that's normally anxious and can't even
get to bed okay so those are some really simple things but what I like to do is we'll do a really
short c
ycle here of something I do which is I do this all the time I do it several times throughout
the day there's a first technique which is Breath of Fire so again what you're going to do is your
mouth will be closed closed you just breathe out your nose and just imagine if you had something on
the end of your nose or on your finger and you're trying to blow it off like so it's just sharp
exhales and you your stomach you want it to come from your diaphragm so your diaphragm is popping
it should
n't be like a it's a pop pop pop strong breath the other thing is when you breathe you
don't want to breathe up and down a lot of people do this with their shoulders going up your lungs
should expand horizontally that's healthy breath it should be opening your lung capacity your rib
cage okay so that's that breath that is the Breath of Fire then we also have alkaline breathing
which is just inhaling through the nose deeply and exhaling out the mouth so just in the nose and
out the mouth in
the nose but they're deep breaths like want to feel the lungs fill
up like as deep of a breath like it was your last breath you
could take for a while you just so what we'll do is and then we're going
to do a breath hold afterward where we'll do this I'll say like like breathe in the inhale and
hold it and we're going to hold it for a minute and you can come out whenever you want but I'm
going to have you hold as long as you can okay so we're going to do alkaline for first then we'll
go in
to or so we'll go the Breath of Fire alkaline and a breath hold I'm gonna guide you through
it so it'll be easy I'll guide you through the steps I want you to see what this feels like
to do this process with me okay so we're gon to start with Breath of Fire and I'm GNA count it
first so I'll kind of tell you how to breathe so Breath of Fire is just the nose so we're going to
go breath breath breath so sharp breaths blowing out just breath breath breath breath try to make
them sharp strong l
ike you're trying to win an award for breathing the best way you can with
this breath breath breath good keep doing that breath bre breath bre good just keep it going
nice pop in the stomach now we're going to go double time with this you're going to do the
same thing faster breath breath breath breath and don't worry about getting it right just try
to go faster breath breath breath breath breath breath breath breath yeah good good breath breath
breath breath breath breath breath breath bre
ath breath breath breath breath breath yep keeping it
going now we're going to go to inhaling through the nose and out the mouth so in the nose and
exhale big inhale exhale going to pull it in fast like another big one another big one one more now we're going to go double
times and inhale exhale inhale exhale try to suck them in
real fast and strong just nice keep going couple more one more then taking a really deep inhale
suck in some more air and hold it and don't let go now hold your bre
ath what I want you to do
is relax your eyes let them close I want you to let your shoulders drop relax the tension
around your eyes the tension your forehead let your face and your jaw relax let your neck just
begin to feel it peace and start to go inward to your heart and just simply focus on your
heart chakra for a minute think about living through that and feeling through it you have
so much oxygen your body you just oxygenated it so you have so much more ability than we
realize and th
e thing is a lot of times our monkey mind will go and say I got to breathe
I have to let go I have to do this thing just observe it this is the practice like meditation
go like oh interesting my mind is saying this it's doing this when you observe it you notice
all of a sudden you're able to hold it longer and maybe go a couple more seconds and then in
three two one go ahead and take your recovery breath and then take a real nice
inhale again and in and hold it just just hold that for a sec
ond let the shoulders drop and a big exhale with a sigh now just keep your eyes closed for a second
and do what I call a Mountaintop breath which your nice deep inhales through the nose just
let it fall out the mouth it's like you came down on Thanksgiving morning you smell turkey
or apple pie or on the top of mountain you're [Applause] like nice and now you can just come back and
return to normal breathing how's that feel yeah it feels great great yeah it does thank you
thank you and do yo
u is that sort of like a whole process that's suggested to do all like
in sequence yeah I do that I have so I have um I do these morning meditations every Monday
morning where I everybody come on to zoom and streamyard a bunch of streaming platforms I take
them through cycle of these and we do different variations but I usually do three rounds I did a
little bit shorter for us today but I usually do three rounds of that and I will usually do the
uh Breath of Fire single and double then I'll
do alkaline single and double double and then I'll
do a breath hold and there's empty tank breath holds and there's full tank we did a full tank
where you fill up your lungs and hold it right you can also you breathe in you exhale it all
and then hold it there and they do different things for helping you get used to the breath
and kind of managing it through the body but if you just do two or three rounds of that you
know that alkaline or Breath of Fire alkaline and breath hold you're talk
ing about maybe seven
eight minutes and it's incredible you'll realize like all of a sudden until you'll start being able
to breathe breath hold your breath a lot longer I can hold my breath now so easily for like three
minutes like it's nothing and you come out of it and you're like in a state of euphoria because
what you're doing is you're actually resetting the hormones in your body turning off the fight
ORF flight you just turned off your fight ORF flight mechanism so adrenaline and cor
tisol that
might have been in your body any anxiety shuts off it sets those signals in place and so then
you get more Focus opens your mind to creativity and just a bunch of great things but you know I um
people can follow me online and I have my YouTube channel there's many places where you can find
these have all these recordings and be guiding these breath work Journeys awesome awesome yeah
I was just going to ask you know sort of we're at the end of our time so I people can find you on
your website and all that stuff will certainly be included like in the show notes and and whatever
when when it gets published but any other kind of reminders or pointing people towards something or
or yeah how do people find you yeah yeah you know what I would say is so you can find me obviously
my name if you search it anywhere you're going to find everything Brett Balman and my website's
Brett bowman. comom but I would suggest doing is a couple things um if you go to my website there is
a section on the top of the menu that says action Mastery underneath that I have tons of great
resources every Monday I do these free morning meditations you can go in there and sign up and
join them and watch the recordings um I do free online breath work Journeys every other week which
are powerful incredible I'd love for you to come to one Mike I think you'd love it going to yeah
yeah it's really awesome yeah yeah you can sign up on there it just says breath work Journeys and
um they're
an hour long and then after we're done I do a live Q&A and we talk about it and process
it but what I'd love for people to do is I have a uh I actually have a Facebook page it's uh my
action Mastery Facebook page and so you can find this by going to anything or messaging me but if
you just go to a or facebook.com action Mastery tribe um you can go there and there's so many
resources I do videos constantly everything like this I'll post podcasts I do breathwork Journeys
tools books it's a g
reat place to find a good community and to be able to access these resources
and connect with me to find them amazing amazing I am definitely going to join um Monday probably
is better for me than Tuesday but uh anyway I will find a way to to do that and you know just again
Brett thank you so much that was wonderful maybe more helpful for me than it was for others but I
don't know uh I assume I assume not but that was really great thank you so much and uh yeah keep up
the great work the wor
ld certainly needs you know people like yourself so thank thank you thank you
Mike real pleasure to be on really appreciate you okay great awesome thank you I am very grateful
that you watched to the end of this video please click one of the boxes to watch more of our
content and otherwise have a great day peace out
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