Information Is Not Transformation

Stories In The Subconscious

SPEAKER_01 1:25

All right, welcome everybody. We are coming to you live. Uh, should be streaming on YouTube, Substack, Facebook, LinkedIn, and I am here with uh my two good friends and partners in crime. We've been doing this on a regular basis, the three of us, Danny Coleman, Dr. Ray Heinish, because we uh often the three of us, when we get together, we have some of the best conversations. We learn a ton from each other, and we're just uh playing around with the idea of letting you all in on our discussions. And we come with sort of a loose uh topic. And as you all know, um I study personal transformation for a living, but so do these two. And so what's really neat about our friendship is the three of us are very, very deep into personal transformation. Uh, we've all done physical transformation work too in our past lives, where we uh, but now we focus mainly on personal transformation with slightly different um, you know, uh angles that we we come from. You know, Danny's a little bit more in the leadership space. Uh Ray and I are a little bit more sort of in the uh personal transformation, individual space where we're helping people deal with health issues or relationship issues or financial issues. And of course, I run a certification as well in this. But one of the things that I think is critical, and we're still here, uh just January just uh ended. Uh, this is the time where most people start to go right back into their old patterns if they did set up any kind of New Year's uh resolution. The three of us did talk about that. So if you want to go backwards and hear a little bit about our take on that, but the idea for today's conversation that I just want to present to you two is this idea of personal transformation or change, it is a very, very tough thing. People are incredibly resistant to change. The three of us have talked about this idea that we know through our work that people absolutely can change, and we've seen it over and over again, but it certainly is not something that is easy. And what I would say is I think what most of our um our conversations in this field revolve around, not the three of us, but the but the field in general, revolves around this idea of if I give you information, right? So if Danny gives you all information or Ray gives you information or I give you some information, the thought is, oh, I've got the information. Now I should be able to change. And we have a saying, pithy little phrase, information is not transformation. It rarely actually leads to transformation because the change has to come from much deeper in the subconscious. And so I want to talk a little bit about this idea of how we get into the subconscious to change the stories that drive our patterns. Because it's those stories. My hypothesis is it's those stories about who we think we are and how we think the world works that keeps us stuck in a box that no matter what kind of information we are giving, we have this deep belief that it works this way and we always end up back in that place. And I'm gonna I'll say one more thing about this and see what the two of you think. From my perspective, what I have noticed, this doesn't mean I'm right. I want I want your both of your perspective. What I have noticed is the people that I have seen change most dramatically in their lives. Typically, that change comes after a pretty big life upset, a financial loss, or a romantic uh breakup or betrayal, or some kind of health scare. By the way, it's no guarantee, but these do seem to be the people that seem to go, all right, something's got to change. It's almost like when they hit rock bottom, it's at that point they're willing to question the stories that control that have been controlling their lives up to that point. And there are ways, I think, to engineer these types of events. And I think this is where we could start this conversation. But first I want to see do you two agree with this idea? Do you want to add anything to it? Do you agree with the idea that it's these sort of difficult life events, these rock bottom moments that seem to make us question our stories and create a lot of change, or do you see it a different way? And I'll just let whoever wants to jump in on this jump in.

Rock Bottom Vs Chosen Disruption

SPEAKER_03 5:55

I got some juice, Red. I'll jump in real quick because I know you got juice, but I I just happen to have juice on this one. Uh I definitely agree with that, Jay, that it does tend to be these, I guess you would call them, pits of life where you kind of hit this trough of life. But I do think also there's there's positive drivers as well, or just regular shifts and changes, like a big move. I just moved to Colorado and I found a lot of my habits rewired naturally. Just a change of environment. I'm walking a lot more because there's walking paths around our house. It's a lot more beautiful outside in July than it was where I was living in Texas. So I want to be outside a little bit more. That led to more connection with my wife, which led to me not being such a jerk about dishes left in the sink. So there is like little things in our environment when you shift the whole environment, I think, like a move. So it's not necessarily like a, I wouldn't call it a pit in my life, I would just call it a big change in environment. I also think these kind of one-off experiences, which I'm sure we'll talk about uh today, but like one-off experiences can kind of rewire our values. I you guys know I'm a big Mark Manson guy, and he tells this story in one of his books around a friend who loved, she loved to party, she loved to stay outlayed, she loved to spend all her money at the club, and then she went and volunteered in Africa and saw real poverty and real uh real despair and wanted and started helping out there. And then when she came home, everything changed for her. She never really partied again. She kind of rewired her her whole her old path in life. And so I think there are certain experiences that almost rewire our values pretty quickly with like big changes in perception. So it's not like a personal thing that happened to her. It's an experience that she chose to do and then she came back and sort of her values were rewired. And I've had this a couple of times in my life where I immediately uh stopped biting my nails. Like overnight, I decided to stop biting my nails. And the reason why is because I got a bunch of I got a bunch of fake teeth going on and I kept popping my teeth off. So my vanity was a stronger value than my craving to bite my nails. Or like in high school, I remember uh I actually knew Jade when I was in high school. And I I called, I called you actually, we were talking because my legs kept giving out in practice. Like I was like, dude, I cannot jump. Like I can't jump very well anyway, but I definitely can't jump now. I don't know what's going on. And you're like, all right, well, tell me what you're eating. I'm like, well, I wake up about eight bowls of Fruity Pebbles, and uh and then I'll launch off.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

This is legit, this is for real. You did this was what he said.

Environment As An Identity Lever

SPEAKER_03 8:25

And then I was like, yeah, launch off a couple root beers. And you're like, every day? I'm like, yeah, pretty, I'm pretty routine oriented. Yeah, every day I pretty much eat like this. And he goes, uh, damn, if you want to have the physical performance on the basketball court, you're gonna have to give this stuff up. I'm sorry, dude. You can't be having eight bowls of Fruity Pebbles. And I did. Gave up the cereal and the soda on the spot because I cared more about my basketball performance. So those are a couple different things that came to mind sort of when you were sharing. Yes, definitely the troughs of life uh are huge motivation points for people to change and transform. But I also think there's other other avenues people transform as well. Love that. Ray, how about you?

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Yeah, uh a couple years back, a few years back, I was uh laying on the couch and uh my wife was on the other couch and we were chatting. And uh, you know, she um you know, she had made some statement. And I, you know, here I was, you know, you know I'm a personal development junkie Jade. I had been, you know, ever since I was uh a teenager. And um I don't remember what the conversation was about, but uh at one point I turned to her and I said, I said, I said, Sherry, I so I gave her some advice and she said, uh, I don't know about that. Uh I don't know if I agree with that. And I was uh insulted because here I am. You know, I don't you know I'm the guru of personal transformation? This is what I told her. I said, I said, I said, Sherry, I have I have read more about personal development in the last month than you have your entire life. And she said, she she didn't miss a beat. She turned to me, she said, How's that working out for you? And in a moment of clarity, in a moment of clarity, I said, I'm the least successful person I know. And we we we laughed about it. And but it was it was true. And and the reality is what you said is information doesn't is not transformation. Now that doesn't mean that information can't lead to transformation. What it means is that there's a missing ingredient. And I think that's that's that's the ingredient that you spend a lot of time talking about, Jade. And so, you know, I think the first the first realization people have to have today is that is that one liner. Information is not transformation. We can build from that. If we continue to believe that information is transformation, then all we do is just seek out more information constantly. And it's like a drug, isn't it? It's like, it's like having these these like um, I don't want to call them insights because generally they're they're very superficial. Like you'll be reading a book and you'll be like, wow, that's that's what a concept. And you think you're having an insight, but it's not a true insight because it's not built into the depth of who you are. And I think that that is the trap that a lot of people get caught. I know I've gotten caught into it. Um uh of I mean, you could, you could, you could walk around my basement and find literally like 600 books. And uh, and that's after I've kind of weeded through and given a lot of those books away. Um, because you know, I for a big chunk of my 50 years on this earth believed that uh that my transformation, my change was somewhere in one of these pages. And if you if you can just come to grips with the fact that it's not, then we can work with that and we can actually make real transformations. So take it away, Jade. Tell us what the missing ingredient is.

The Trap Of Book Knowledge

Aligning Narratives With Action

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Yeah, I don't, well, I don't know that I know it completely, but I have a better sense now of what it is than I did at any other time in my career, right? Like that's for sure. I feel like I have that. And I think from my perspective, what you're saying there, let let's let's just uh back up a little bit and go, okay, so why is information not transformation? Right. So Ray has all this information from the books he's read. So does Danny, so do I, so do many of you listening. And you certainly can, and this happens to a lot of us, I'm sure a lot of you can relate, you certainly can pass that information on. And from that perspective, you can have a true expertise in that information. But then I love what Sherry said to Ray, right? Because we all have this. Then I go, how much have I practiced? I have a very deep understanding of metabolism, what to eat, to burn fat, and all the things, right? But I also have a very deep understanding of being Italian and connecting over wine and loving cannolis and tiramisu and pasta. And this goes to kind of what Danny says. So to me, I go, my internal narratives have to align with the information that I am receiving, because that information is gonna get filtered through my personal internal narratives. And then what we do is it's kind of like someone trying, being like, here, try this outfit on, try this outfit on. And you're like, nope, don't like that, don't like that. That doesn't fit me. That won't look good on me. I don't like that color. This is what we're doing with information as it comes in. We're literally taking our internal narratives and going, does this fit? By the way, that process is happening unconsciously. So we're not conscious that we're like, well, this information comes in to Ray's point, we're excited about it. We might be like, that is a cool outfit, but there's no way we're gonna wear it because it does not jive with our internal sense of style and story. And so it's the stories, I believe, that we tell about life and the world. So that's the first thing I'll say. Then I want to just comment on what Danny said because I also agree with Danny, right? This idea that if you change your environment, your environment is directly tied to your story, right? And so if you're walking around, your brain is looking around all the time, again, unconsciously, and it's going, This is where I live, and this is how this life works, and this is how I function in this place where I live, how my life works. And so my story is aligned with that. And so if I try to introduce not bringing in wine into the house, that might last two days, then it's there again in that house. But as soon as I go to Colorado or move somewhere else, there's an opportunity where I go, oh, my stories are a little bit more loose because the environment is impacting my subconscious mind in a particular way. And I can begin to dress differently in that context. And so all of that to say is I think it is story, not information. And I know story is not something we're used to hearing because we think about reading a novel. I'm not talking about reading a novel, I'm talking about the stories that we tell ourselves at an unconscious level. If I have a story that I can't be successful, that will sneak in. And I might have all the affirmations in the world that I am gonna be successful and I am gonna manifest and this and that. But if I have a deep-seated story about success that doesn't fit, it won't work. And I think that's where it comes from. So I think it's a story. I'm curious what you both think.

SPEAKER_03 15:35

I've got no push, I've got no pushback on the story. I recame along this line that said people act in line with their personal stories. And I teach this in a lot of my workshops. Don't be surprised when people do what they do. It leads into an exercise around listening and understanding and trying to peel back and like what are people's stories that they're acting out. Most people just get mad at other people's stories. And my fave, my I guess it's my least favorite story that I hear the most is, but I would never do that. And I go, yeah, because that's not your story. You weren't, you didn't, you didn't write that story at any part of your of your life. So of course you don't act like that. We're totally different people. So I teach a lot about understanding people's stories and how to do that. And I think that would be useful to hear from both of you is like, this sounds good. Like I get what you mean. I even like the term story. Like, yeah, we do write these little stories about how the world works, both micro and macro. Macro of of identity stories, like even things like I'm a hard worker is a story. And then that's why they've done some research on people who have the story. I'm a hard worker. These people cannot sit and watch Netflix. It gives them anxiety to the max because it's it doesn't match up with their story of I'm a hard worker. If that's my story and I'm watching Netflix for eight hours, there's gonna be tension there. Then we have micro stories like someone cut you off in traffic. Most people get this. What's the story? Actually, this is funny, guys. I've been doing this exercise, like someone cuts you off in traffic. What's the story? You know what most people are saying? They go, I just assume he was in a rush. I go, you do? I'd go, he's an asshole. That's my story. He's putting my my family in in danger. What a jerk. He's not, he's not compassionate. So there's micro stories in the moment, there's macro stories of who we are. So I definitely agree with that. I, well, I won't go in there. I'll just see what Ray thinks. So I think like, what's the practical, what's the practical then shift? Like people say, all right, I got a story. What do I do with that? How do I start to rewrite these things or transform these things?

Macro And Micro Stories

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Yeah, well, I'll say one thing before Ray goes, but I think the interesting thing is that the first, one of the first steps, and maybe you can key off this too, Ray, is to go to use your traffic example. It's there's two stories that could be told there, right? The story is that this person is in a hurry and trying to get somewhere, and I can understand that. But the better story is to go, and this is where it can really get powerful, is that I am somebody who protects people on the road. So I let them merge. I am this on the road. I this is a story I tell myself. When I get in a car, and this has completely changed the way I drive, I go, I'm gonna protect all other drivers on the road. You might, all of you might think this is silly, but as soon as I tell myself that story, I don't tailgate. When people come up speeding behind me and I'm in the fast lane, I get over. When a truck puts its turn signal on, right, I flash my lights and let it get in touch. Because my story is I take care of people on the road. I want to be that that person. So it goes both ways. And this is where I think some of the first uh aspects of this transformation happen. But I would I can't wait to hear what Ray has to say about this. I know you're so giddy over there, man. Why are you so giddy?

SPEAKER_00 18:33

I'm so giddy because a memory just popped into my mind uh about Jade. We when us three were at uh uh we were in Asheville and we were at a restaurant and we were waiting to get in the restaurant, and Jade goes, he goes off to go to the bathroom and he comes back and he says uh something along the lines of, you know, I I uh um I was in the bathroom and like uh somebody had uh peed on the toilet, and uh so I just you know took some toilet paper and I dried off the toilet, cleaned off the toilet and put in the track. And he says, Why don't people do that? You know, just just help out, you know, just help out. Like that's the story in his mind is find these little ways to help out and do it. So it just really speaks to I forgot about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

I forgot about that too. But I I literally do that in bathrooms. I literally do that.

Choosing Better Driving Stories

Fictional Selves And Real Behaviors

SPEAKER_00 19:21

And so it's it's just those those little things that that that's how you know that your story is changing. It's when you change in the absence of other people's eyeballs. Now, the reason you told us was because we were discussing something along those lines. But I'm sure you've done it a hundred times and and nobody ever knew. But the um, yeah, so you know, I you you guys know I've been through a uh a few psychedelic experiences, and um one thing that happened with for me after psychedelic experiences is like for months I would um for months I would have insights and I would uh I would I would have dreams and like I would wake up in the middle of the night with insights and I'd I'd quickly write them down before they disappear. But one insight that I had was um uh this was this is probably um this is probably months after uh a psychedelic experience I had in Jamaica. Uh I just popped up like from my bed in the middle of the night and I said, holy crap, we're all fictional characters. Like in the mind in our minds, we we think that we're all this this solid human being who walks around uh this solid earth. But in reality, like we make up our character in our mind. We're all fictional characters. And that was uh a pretty impactful uh insight for me because it led me down to one specific experience within my own life where I could see how the fiction in my mind was impacting my outward um behavior. And this kind of speaks to you know your question, Danny, about like how do we use this stuff? Um how do we make this real? Uh my mother is is in the late stages of dementia. And my um my mother was a just a she's just a wonderful woman, just a wonderful soul. And um in my mind, my my the the fiction I was saying was this is not fair. She uh spent her life loving, helping people, and how is it that she's that she's um and um this is uh awful, this is sad, and that was impacting my desire to go and visit her. She lives with my brother, because I was thinking in my mind, like the all of the emotion I had around that um experience was negative. Was uh it was a reminder of how unfair life is, it was a reminder of how awful, how sad. But in that moment, when I woke up from that uh uh with that insight, I realized that this isn't sad, this isn't awful, this isn't um, this isn't uh um unfair, this is just how her story ends. And I don't I don't know why that had such an impact on me, but it changed my entire um uh emotion around uh visiting her and seeing her. Like now that I I kind of realize that this is just how my mom's uh story ends. And now I can approach it without those emotions of sadness, without those emotions of uh of fear. You know, you don't want to see your parent, you know, you you fear seeing your parent in a um in a difficult situation like that. Now I can just approach it from you know, this is how my mother's story ends, and I can love her to the end. And so like it it really does make a difference when you start to view this life, uh the life of Ray as a fictional character. Because now, as Jade said, you can start to rewrite the stories in your life. And um and uh I I'm a bit surprised by just how uh uh just how uh impactful that that moment was. But I know you've seen it, Jade, in your practice with people as you're helping people to rewrite their stories. So maybe you can kind of help people out here. Like, how do you manufacture that? Like for me, it was just out of the blue insight, like 3 a.m. in the morning. But I know that you have a system and a strategy for how you go about manufacturing that kind of insight in people's lives. So maybe you can touch on that.

Suffering, Insight, And Choice

Rewrite, Rewire, Retrain Framework

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah, I love that, Ray, so much because I think that is exactly what the story you just told about your mom is exactly where these things happen for people, where they actually can really rewrite the story because it's something that they're very attached to and they start to suffer through that telling of that story. And through that suffering, insights emerge. Now, insights aren't enough, but the insights begin to emerge. And then through that insight, you essentially go somewhere along the way, you'll get this, and you'll basically go, you know what? I don't actually need to see it this way. I've the I'm the one who decided to tell this particular story. And there's infinite numbers of stories I could tell. This is, by the way, why I do like psychedelics, even though you don't need psychedelics to do this work. Psychedelics open the mind to be like, you're telling this very narrow story. I call it mud, misguided, unconscious decisions is what I call it. They're misguided because we make these things when we don't really have the wisdom. They're unconscious because we don't know they're there, and they're decisions whether we remember them or not. But what happens is you get very narrow and they keep us stuck in the mud. And all of a sudden we can't get out. But when we start to suffer, and we, especially loved ones and changes in our finances and health, we start to question our story. That's the beginning aspect of this to question the story. The future that you imagined can always be reimagined. Our brain is a meaning-making machine. You know, it's interesting. I just wrote an article here on Substack. For those of you who are live on Substack, check this article out that basically says right now in the health and fitness world, it's all about nervous system regulation. Regulate your nervous system. You know, it used to be gut stuffed and it was hormone stuffed. Now it's regulate your nervous system. The nervous system does not respond all on its own, it's responding to the perception about safety and belonging in the world. So your nervous system regulation is literally controlled by the story that you tell. And that story that you're telling is simply a choice. This is the part that people don't understand. But when it's unconscious, you can't see the choice. So Ray popping up in bed all of a sudden is seeing the choice. And he's like, this is all just a story. I can actually see this very differently. That's the beginning of this process. The one thing I'll say here, and this is the hard part, I want to hear what you you both say. When this happens, for those of you listening, don't get too excited because it's actually the worst thing to have happen to you in the beginning. Because once you perceive different, you start to see things. For example, when the asshole realizes they're an asshole, that is not a great place to be. But it is, but it is the place that you need to be to change the story. So, real quick to answer Ray's question, though, now I'll let Danny go on this. There is a three-step process that I think you have to follow. Again, this doesn't mean it's right, but it's the best I've been able to do with the information I've gathered up to this point in my career. And it follows three processes rewrite. We must somehow get into the subconscious and rewrite the story. By the way, not erase, more like edit. So it's a rewrite of the stories that we're telling. Second is rewire. And we need to rewire the emotional holding pattern. This isn't about the nervous system. This is the emotional holding pattern because for every story you have, there's an emotion that makes that that animates that story. Think of the story as the mud and the emotion as the rebar. This creates the cement and the structure of your life. And then the final phase is retrain. This is where the habits come in. This is where the biohacking comes in. This is where the information comes in. This is where the eat this, not that, communicate this way, not that way come in. But notice that there's three components here we have to file. Rewrite and rewire, the entire industry ignores. We're all just retrain, retrain, retrain, retrain information, information, information, and it does not work. But add in rewrite and rewire, change the stories and the emotions. Now all of a sudden I think retrain has a chance.

SPEAKER_03 28:07

I just want to I just want to touch. I've obviously heard the Jade's framework a lot, and I just look, I try to poke holes in it, man. I like it a lot. I got nothing. I got no no feedback for you on it. I think I'm not sure. I like reading it.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

I do like when you poke holes in it, though, right?

Four Motivational Dials

SPEAKER_03 28:21

I just got nothing. Ray, my Ray, Ray's better at seeing the flaws, which is why I want to present um I want to present my model too that I use for people and for you to poke flaws in it, because ChatGPT just tells me it's amazing, and which feels really good. And I like that. But I am curious to use in the two in the Yeah, they're like, wow, genius. I'm like, no one's ever thrown that word at me before, but thank you. So I uh I just want to one more comment on stories, and I want to I want to show you like my my kind of four-part thing of how we can help other people transform and you guys can poke holes in it. The last thing about stories that just came up when you were sharing that, Jade, was these stories, they they were useful at some point. And I think that's really important for us to understand. At some point, we wrote these stories because they were useful for us. They either protected us emotionally, like you you read a lot about uh people who had really traumatic childhoods, they develop stories about how the world works. So otherwise, a six-year-old would just dissolve and crumble. They need to develop these stories to protect themselves and survive. Even less extreme, though, we all write stories somewhere along the way that are useful for us until they're not. So I think it's just important to note that it's like, don't beat yourself up for these stories. Like there was some utility, at least in the process. Now they just may not be useful for you. So it's important to pay attention. We talk about this a lot, paying attention to sort of the signals that that the world is giving back to you. To use the example of the asshole, if you find yourself waking up, it's like, well, I can't make a friendship work, I can't make a relationship work, I keep getting fired from this job. These are all signals that maybe you have the you have the wrong story. And so I've, you know, I have a friend who um who as long as I've known him, he's definitely bought into um, he's definitely bought into like the whole purpose of money. So the best job is the one that offers the best money. The best the best path is the one with the most money. Um he also loves the story of the old ball and chain in relationships, like the woman is the ball and chain. There's two stories that I've noticed him just kind of leak out here and there. And what's interesting, he gets this job and he's making a killing financially, like stupid money financially. And now he's seeing, he's seeing someone for mental health stuff. And he is getting on medication. He's going through some of these things that because he thinks something is broken in the brain, and really it's like, nope, the story is broken. You made all your decisions in this direction. Same thing with relationship challenges. If you see your partner as the old ball and chain, yeah, I think it's gonna be hard to build a happy story around relationships. So just a something I wanted to call out. It's like these things actually are good until maybe they're not anymore. And then that's when we need to kind of rewrite these stories. And then, real quick, I just want this is where I want you guys to poke hole. So if I'm coaching someone on how to how to coach other people or lead other people, this is kind of like my four, I call them the four motivational dials. And I like the uh I like the term dials because they can go too high or too low. So you got to kind of pay attention to all four. The first dial is information, which we've been talking about. I always talk about my early health and fitness days, how many people would not get in the gym because they didn't want them to look like an idiot. They didn't know how to structure a workout, how much weight to put on there, what to do next. They didn't want to be caught on one of these social media videos where they're flinging around upside down like a jungle gym. They were really cognizant of that. So they needed information in order to be motivated to change, to go to the gym. So the information is an important component, but you turn that dial too high, and we all know it's analysis paralysis. We know people who've read every diet book out there and still have cake for dinner. So there's there's information that's important, but then if you turn the dial up too much, you might have to do a little bit of an information detox. Number two is safety. This was a huge one for me, and I mean psychological safety. One of the most, I always talk about you two being some of my mentors, one of the most valuable things you guys ever gave me was the space to say stupid shit and then take it back. Be like, didn't really mean it like that, or that didn't come out quite right. Like, and then you guys, and Jade has this line, like, we're all human. And I remember when I lived with Jade and my sister Jill back in the day, I remember it was the most it was the greatest gift you guys gave me is like you took the shame out of some of these normal human behaviors. You normalize. That was a safe environment for me to say stuff, to say, hey, I did this thing, I'm a little embarrassed. And you normalizing that for me. That's a that's safety. So when we're talking about safety, we're talking about not being judgmental like on someone's character. You come for their ideas, like I want you guys to come for my ideas on this. So you can't go for their character. There's a subtle difference. Like most leaders that struggle that I work with, they go, they're dumb. That's a character assault. Like they're dumb is not, that's not, that's not useful, nor is it a safe environment for them to feel like to share ideas. Safety, then connection. I always say, I will change for, I will change for my siblings. I would change if one of you guys told me, like, hey, Dan, you're being an asshole. I would I would take that to hard. If a stranger told me that, probably not. So the connection dial often needs to be turned up, but it can be too high. Like my mom, who just thinks every she she is the only paid subscriber to my Substack. She listens to every podcast episode. That dial's probably a little too high as much as I appreciate it, mom. But there can be too high connection too, where it's like, you're just amazing and perfect, honey. Like, that's not the connection we're talking about. That might need to be turned down to motivate me to go out in the world. And then the last one is autonomy. Autonomy is like allow people to make choices for themselves, allow people, you can't write someone's story, a new story for someone. They have to write it somewhere along the way. But at the same time, again, that autonomy dial can be a little bit too high. We're just like, do whatever you want. Anyone do anything. That's a little bit too high. So people need guardrails, we need boundaries, we need systems, we need frameworks. That's that's like how I kind of treat those dials. So I talk about this a lot, make it more practical for the managers I work with. But just curious, those are kind of the four dials: information, safety, connection, and autonomy. And I was curious what you guys thought about the dial system. Are those key motivators to help people transform? Am I missing key pieces? Or you can be like Chad GPT and my mom and tell me it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

You are a genius, my friend.

SPEAKER_03 34:19

So loose with that term.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

It really is a nice, nice framework, I'd say. And uh, you know, what's interesting about frameworks is they um they will resonate with specific people. Like Jade's framework will resonate with some people, yours will resonate with some people. And we're on this earth, not to reach everybody, we're on this earth to reach specific people or to play a role in specific people's lives, uh, many of which we've never met yet. Um, but there are certainly people that will resonate with that, and people will resonate with Jade. So I think it's a genius framework and keeps developing it.

Safety, Belonging, And Autonomy

What Integration Really Means

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Yeah, and actually, I really love, I have two things to say on the framework. I'll tell you why. One of the things I really like about it. So when I was listening to you, because obviously my whole thing is been on the subconscious and getting into the subconscious and how we do that. Psychedelics are one way that you could do that, but you can do it through other engineered things. So I'm looking and going, where's the subconscious piece in Danny's model? And I don't know that you see it this way, Danny, but to me, actually, it's the safety component. That's the piece. Yep. That's the piece where the subconscious lives because in stories, when we're talking about subconscious stories, those stories really uh we share as humans uh three prominent stories that really drive everything else. And it and it basically we know this through childhood development. We have to have safety and security, we have to have acceptance and belonging. These are core things for our species, and we have to have freedom and autonomy. And they go along with child development. And children, the child needs to feel safe and secure. Otherwise, there's deficits that come up in nervous system function and other things. You know, you see this in the ACE research and the PTSD research and stuff like that. We need connection and belonging. This usually happens around the time of our teenage years. Then we need freedom and autonomy, late teenage years, 20s. But safety is a critical one that we are always looking out to see, and it is a story that will dominate. This, especially when we talk about politics and why people vote particular ways and why, you know, they are very emotional, because usually it's a safety and security issue or an uh acceptance of belonging issue. Team think or safety think. It's not a whole lot after that. So I love that model from that perspective, and I think that's the biggest one. And then I'll say what I love that Ray said, this to me, actually, what Ray said to me, and uh we'll see what you both think, and hopefully I can explain as well. But what Ray was talking about there was this idea you hear thrown around a lot, especially in the psychedelic space and in the personal transformation space. You hear the term integration thrown out a lot. And to me, uh, people who are doing integration are not doing integration. What they're doing is they're doing retrain. They're retraining, retraining, just more information. Let's just talk about it, let's process it now. That's not integration. Integration is integrating a new story into the emotional holding pattern and the nervous system. That's integration, right? So it's like, how do I take the old story? And both of you kind of uh uh pointed to this. How do you take the old story of who Ray was, who Danny was, who Jade was, who you as a listener were, and integrate that into the news story? You can't jettison it. For Ray to have gotten to Ray who he is today, he needs to include all the rays that he was, and all those rays and all those stories have benefit. So as you're writing the news story, you have to go, well, I am this, this, this, and this by my essential nature. I do have this and this and this and this piece of wisdom. This and this and this pattern, this goes to your thing, Danny, don't work for me anymore. So he's essentially saying, I'll take these components, I'll jettison this component, and I'll set an intention forward to go, here's who I want to be now. The problem with people is they go, I will forget the stuff that I did, the shame, the grief, I'll just push that all aside and try to be new. No, those stories must be included in the new you because they are in a subconscious holding pattern that the body sort of knows and goes, you have got to take care of this story and include it in some way. So for me, for example, you all know my story. Many of you who listen to this know my story. I cheated on my wife, I got a divorce, I was a pretty uh dishonest person. If I just tried to go, that's not who I was, I don't want to talk about it, don't want to think about it, don't want anything to do with that story. I'm gonna be new, I would fail in being a person of honesty and integrity and all of those things because I would not have internalized the lessons that are required for me to live a new story. In other words, I'll say it one other way, because I know this is a complex topic, but integration means I must take all the things that I've done, good, bad, and indifferent. I must include them in my process and make sure that I use them for who I'm gonna become. That's why when Ray says we all have different models, someone's gonna hear Ray speak and go, I dig Ray. I don't dig Jade. Jade's got a weird accent, he's bald, whatever. But Ray, for whatever reason, resonates with me. I don't really, you know, I don't really dig Danny. I like Jade because, you know, Danny's what he's into basketball and he likes popcorn or whatever. What do you gotta say?

SPEAKER_03 39:49

Yeah, what do you gotta say, man? You got something to say, come on, say it.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Your popcorn habits out of control, right?

SPEAKER_03 39:55

It is, man, it's a problem.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

But but the interesting thing about this is if I own all my other stories and integrate them in this way, all of a sudden I can be authentic, Jade. Not not being authentic to a past self or a current self, but authentic to my next level, human self. That's how we rewrite these stories. So integration to me means owning every aspect, all the shadow stuff, all the really good stuff, all the confusing stuff, all your ignorance and bias and dogma and all your mistakes and fears and failures, and considering them in who it is that you can be moving forward. That's how you change, in my opinion. And so I know that's sort of a complex argument, but if we're gonna talk about personal transformation and we're gonna talk about stories and insights, we have to talk about this concept of integration. And I think everyone gets it wrong.

God’s Three Words: No, Go, Simple

Utility Over Truth

SPEAKER_00 40:55

Yeah. Okay, so um, so I love where you went with integration. Um, I think for me, the integration isn't, you know, you're right. I think they get integration wrong in the psychedelic space. Um for me, integration is um when you go through a psychedelic experience, the um, and and by the way, I'll give you my my simple, well, a framework that was given to me by God during a psychedelic experience. I'll give that to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the uh the integration for me is when you leave a psychedelic experience, your brain, that your default network is scrambled. It's like it's diffuse now, is how I would put it. It's diffuse. And so integration is being open to a new story in that in that time when your um when your default network is diffuse. Because now I think what happens for me, the integration wasn't in talking it out. It wasn't in meeting with a therapist or anything like that. The integration happened naturally because I was open to new possibilities. And I went into my first psychedelic experience as a guy who had uh who was um who was uh uh who grew up Catholic. My mother was a an ex-nun um that uh was very much taught, you know, my entire life, there's you know a very specific path. And I exited that with the openness that ultimately led me down to kind of the non-duality, uh more Hindu uh type approach to spirituality. And I was just recently just um thinking about in awe that transformation, how it happened. And it only really happened, and it has resulted in a uh amazing amount of peace in my life that you know perhaps wasn't there before. So I think that the integration for me is just being open to the new story when you're in that diffuse uh state of the default network. Um and uh and uh um it's the four-part model of the of God. I want to hear that. So in my first experience as a psychedelic, let me talk this was this was in in Jamaica. This is about um, I guess it's been almost two years, maybe a year and a half, two years. I went into it, Jade. Uh, because you know, as as you when you're going to a psychedelic experience or when for the first time, and I had never done any drugs in my entire life, um, you're afraid. Like you don't know what what to expect. So you talk to people who've been through it. And I made the mistake of talking to you. And uh and it wasn't just you, it's practically everybody. They always say the same thing. You gotta go to the dark places, you gotta go to the difficult dark places. That's where the transformation lies. And in your case, it was a uh a dark uh uh groin blob that uh you had to go to battle with. And uh for me, so I'm going into my first experience thinking, okay, go to I gotta go to the dark places. And I don't have any big T traumas in my life. Little T traumas, maybe, but no big T traumas. So I don't know where I'm gonna go, but I'm thinking in my in my mind, go to the dark places. So we take uh we take um uh the uh the first dose of the psychedelics. There's like nine of us in the group and we're all looking at each other, scared, not knowing what's gonna happen. We go to our separate spaces and we're laying there, and I'm in my mind, I'm just repeating the words that Jade told me. Go to the dark places, take me to the dark places. And it was interesting because all of a sudden I started I started to notice I feel a little bit, a little bit strange. So I've I figured, okay, I'm going, uh it's beginning to take effect. I put my mask on, put my earbuds on with the music playing. And the first thing that happened was I felt a heat in my chest, and I looked down, and keep in mind, I've got I've got um uh a mask on. Uh I look down and I see this black ribbon on my chest. And I say to myself, okay, take me to the dark places. Here we go. And then all of a sudden, I heard the a voice in my head, which I later came to experience as God. And she said, No, you can go. It's that simple. And in that moment, I look down, the black ribbon shoots off, and instantly I know I'm in the presence of God, at least in my mind. I'm in the presence of God. And um, and we spent the next probably five or six hours in what I can only describe as like a telephone call between, you know, where we were just old friends, just riffing back and forth, laughing, joking with each other. At one point, she explains to me what that meant. No, you can go, it's that simple. And this is gonna sound completely stupid to some people. Maybe it'll resonate with some people with big T traumas may say, oh, it's not that simple. And, you know, uh, I hate you for even thinking thinking it's that simple. But this is what she told me. Not me. This is God talking. So don't blame me for this. No means uh you have an experience in your in your in your mind. No means you don't have to go down the path of believing it's a negative experience and living in that negative experience. No, that's all that means. You can go means you don't fight it, you know, like I because everybody said you got to go to battle, like you went to battle with your growing blob. Uh and a lot of people go to uh go to battle with the darkness. She was saying you don't have to go to battle with it uh because there's nothing there. She said it's not even a scar. Like people think these traumas are a scar in their life that they carry around with them. She said, it's not even a scar. It's like smoke from a fire that's been extinguished. It's nothing. There's nothing. It's almost as if it never happened. Like it's not that it never happened, it's almost as if it never happened because it's in the past and the past doesn't, it doesn't exist. So she said, no, you can go, means you've extracted the information, you've extracted the knowledge from the experience, you've extracted the wisdom, and now you can go, your work is done. You can go and you can just let it let it kind of float down the river like a leaf on the river. And it's that simple means there's nothing else to do. Like it's it's easy to get caught up in, okay, I've done this part, uh, and now I've got to do this, this, this 10-part framework to uh get to the other side. And what she was saying, at least in my mind, was no, you can go. It's that simple means there's nothing else to do. Once you've extracted the wisdom, the knowledge, the information, you can just let it go and just live from that space of wisdom now, not from the space of trauma. And so uh I realize that framework probably sounds stupid to a lot of people. I realize it probably sounds like oversimplification. But um, I my hope is that the somebody who's listening to this will say, holy shit, that makes so much sense. And it might lead them down and into an insight that will ultimately lead to a behavioral change. And who knows? Maybe it will. But uh, that's the framework that was given to me from God, as expected, very simple. I think once we start to get into like 20-point frameworks for how to fix yourself, you're starting to get into um uh a manufactured solution that has no chance of helping people. To me, that three-step framework really resonated. And um I, you know, I hope it helps somebody.

Psychedelics, Theta, And Breathwork

SPEAKER_01 48:41

Yeah, Ray, I have to tell you, you you and I have not talked about this yet because we keep going. We need to compare notes. So let me tell everybody, because my experience, the first major insight I got on Psychedelus was very similar uh to Ray's. Uh you so you and I haven't had this conversation yet. So one, so just to set people up, my first experience was ayahuasca, which is kind of like, you know, you know, it's like the big gun. You know, I didn't know any better. Um but anyway, the first experience was pretty horrible, pretty dark. Going, you know, it was pretty dark. I was too scared to do the second experience because the first one was so dark. By the third experience, because there's three in a row, I was like, you know what, I'm brave again and I'll try it. And then the third experience was as blissful as the first one was horrible. But here's what I got I got this thing that basically goes, Jade, you're so obsessed with truth. Stop thinking about truth, think about what's useful. So it was this dichotomy of utility, usefulness is the most important thing that you can teach yourself and your clients. Is your story useful or is it not? Truth doesn't matter. And there was a whole conversation around that, which I'll just briefly describe, but I won't go too long. But basically, I was shown that truth is not known anyway, and truth is an evolving process. Everyone is chasing the truth, and it can't be known, it's an emerging process, and that by focusing on what's most useful for yourself and others, you'll eventually get to truth anyway. So that was what it showed me. And it's very interesting because it goes very much into your story of like that thing, no, you can go, it's that simple, right? Is a story. And that story worked tremendously well for you, and you're sharing it because you're like, when people hear this story, it might work tremendously well and be useful for them. And I think it brings us to this place when you're looking at personal transformation. To me, you have to look at how useful is the story I'm telling myself, right? Like, I'm no good at whatever. Is that a useful story? Maybe, probably not, but we don't question these stories ever. And so I love that because to me, the experience I had, it's very similar to the experience you had. And I also had the experience of feeling I was talking to some kind of universal intelligence, consciousness, or intelligence. It felt very personal and it felt like an immediate knowing. And this is the difference when you go through these processes. There's a difference between understanding something, believing something, and knowing something. And this is where the stories come in. You can understand a story, you can believe a story, but when you know a story, all of a sudden it becomes very real. And for those of you who've ever had this experience where you've read a book and it made no sense the first time, and you read the book again, and all of a sudden it's like, holy shit, that's not the book I read back then. Now I just get it. It's not an understanding. You read the book previously, you understood the words, right? But all of a sudden you just know this is what we're talking about. And so I love that. And I'm I'm curious because uh, Danny, you have not done any psychedelic experiences yet, or have you? He had one. It was okay.

Engineering Change Without Drugs

SPEAKER_03 52:08

I did have one, and the voice in my head was uh what I felt, well, it felt like an hour I was thinking in a British accent. And it was an ancestor. Basically, like literally a British accent, but felt like forever was just talking to me. And it was like, Danny, I can't even do this shit, man. Like he was telling me he's from London. He said, Look, I'm way back in the ancestry. And uh, you know, he at first I was like, in my head, I'm like, this is fucking ridiculous. Okay, this is this is something that this is I'm never doing this again. This is a bizarre experience. One thing, there are two things that came out of it for me that I was like, all right, like uh let me try to lean into this a little bit. And uh one thing that my British ancestors said was that you're leaving too much on the table. Like, you gotta get in the arena. You're leaving too much on the table. You're not trying, you're leaving a lot of attention on the table. Like, I would encourage you to try, man, because pretty soon you're gonna be where we're we're all at, where we are all at, whoever we is. I guess all the rest of my British ancestors, which is gonna make my Irish father very upset. I'm sure he wanted that voice to be in a Gaelic language, but no, it was British. And then the second thing was just realizing um how little control I had in those moments was the larger lesson for me about like how little control you have in life. Like just it since that experience I have, uh I've been less I don't I would never say I was controlling, but like things just bothered me, me, little things that my wife did around the house, or I try to control like I would be irate when someone's like late for a Zoom meeting. And especially someone's perpetually late. Like all these little things that I can't control would really bother me. And since that experience, I've I seem to have let a lot of those things go and and relinquished a lot of at least this idea of control. So those are the two things. But yeah, the British accent was I didn't say he didn't say he was God, he said he was Tom from 1740.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

Is your uh uh you know, your experience was like uh I think set and setting, like uh where you do the experience and your mindset at the time of the experience makes has a huge impact on how things progress. And for you, it was just in your house and it was just kind of like, hey, let's try this out.

SPEAKER_03 54:17

And um Yeah, it was almost recreational.

SPEAKER_00 54:19

It was almost recreational. And so there's a different experience that you will have with that versus when you're like in Jamaica and surrounded by beautiful weather and by support of people who know what the hell they're doing. And and um uh and so so yeah, there there is a difference in the experience of you know how psychedelics work, depending upon both where you're doing it and your mindset at the time. But um yeah, and so I would um, you know, I I had a uh I did three experiences, three, three experiences the first time, and I just came back from another one where um uh where I also had an uh I had a very, very difficult experience. But maybe if people are interested in hearing this about you know our psychedelic uh uh journeys, uh maybe they can just uh get in touch with you, Jade, and let them let us know. The thing about telling psychedelic stories about what happens during a psychedelic experience is it is very personal and it almost makes no sense because it because it makes no sense. And um and it's almost not the thing that happens during the psychedelic experience that makes the impact on your life. It's the things that happen um outside after it's done that seem, at least in my experience, the time that I would call integration time, which is months after you know a psychedelic experience, uh, is so much more important. So much so where I'd say it's almost not important what happens during, it's what happens after that really makes a difference.

Does This Actually Work

SPEAKER_01 55:48

100%. And I think you and I both know, and there's lots of people in this space who they just revisit this over and over and over again, doing one after the other, after the other, after the other. And then it's like that whole thing again where it's like, how's that working out for you? Right. Because it's that same thing where it's like you see these people who revisit this again and again. The way I look at psychedelics is taking a big boulder, dropping it into a giant pool of water, and it just the water is just moving. The default mode network for you scientists is becomes incredibly neuroplastic, changeable. It is very loosened. And by the way, from uh you probably know this, Danny, but the number one thing that we see changes and changes permanently after psychedelic experiences is you know what? Openness in the hexaco model or the big five, openness to experiences changes and remains permanently changed. But let me just say this, and then we can go where we want to go, or we can start ending it. For those of you who are wondering, you actually don't need psychedelics for this work. And I will say a couple things, and I want to see what Ray, because uh Ray and Danny and I haven't had this conversation uh yet between us. So you're you're hearing it for the first time here. But here's the way I look at this psychedelics can take you into gamma brainwave states. Gamma is sort of like that, you know, spiritual, you know, sort of uh sends you out into the giant electron, right? Like you're basically floating around in the universe, like picking up information. But from my perspective, for those of you who are looking, we're talking about personal transformation. Gamma is not really where the magic happens. The magic happens in theta states. Theta states are those liminal dream-like states. It's kind of like that lucid place between sleep and wakefulness. That's kind of where you want to get people to go. And you will be in that space a little bit in psychedelics, but psychedelics can take you sometimes way too far into gamma. And gamma is an amazing experience, but it's kind of like a dream that you know is amazing, but you can't remember all the parts of it. Theta is where you start to integrate a lot of the emotional processing, and that can be done through different types of breath work, uh, through different types of music. For example, in my events, what I'll do is we'll play particular types of music. We will do particular types of breath work, very specifically, a very intense breath work that puts you in a sympathetic state while you revisit a pattern or an emotion, or if you have a memory, a memory. And so we just go into this place, then we move into a very relaxing breath and a different type of intention where you essentially float in a lucid dream. So at next level human, we basically engineer the lucid dreaming state. It's theta-based. So it feels like some parts of a psychedelic journey, but not quite. And we don't actually want you to go into gamma. And for those of you who are interested in the science, Ray mentioned it. What it's doing specifically is your identity, which is essentially another way of saying all of your emotional holding patterns, belief structures, and stories live in the default mode network. That's your identity. They become loosened. The stories that you're living from bubble up to the surface. You can see them. And then you start to go, oh, I don't have to hold them this way, and they're not quite as useful as they once were. Then you come out of that, we do some journaling work to integrate it a little bit, and then you're off and on your way. And you really do not want to go right back into another experience to raise point. You want to let that sit. But this is the work that we're doing at next level human, and you do not need psychedelics for this.

SPEAKER_00 59:27

I love that. I I'm thinking, I'm wondering, Jade, if what happens after the psychedelic experience is while you're asleep and you're entering brief periods of theta state. And that's why you know the insights happen as they do in that integration phase. I'm wondering if that's what's going on. But uh Well, that's what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

When you told me you started up, I'll tell you, I think the same thing. And you when you were like, I came up and had this understanding. Isn't it interesting that after your journeys, right? You have this, you don't sleep well. You're in this sort of, you're in this sort of liminal space, and you and you are in theta a lot after. And you'll even be in the shower. I remember after an LSD journey, and all of mine like rays have been, they've all been uh ceremonies. Now I've never done any recreationally. So, but I was in, uh I haven't told you guys the story either, but I had this quote past life regression. I won't get into it because it doesn't matter. But the next morning I didn't sleep too well and I woke up and I was in the shower. So already not under the influence or whatever, you know, maybe it's still active. This was LSD, by the way. You woke up in the shower. I was I was in the shower and I did, you know, so and then I essentially saw, looked up into my shaving mirror and saw the saw the face of the guy that I was that I supposedly lived as a past life, and then I kind of woke up from like then I was like got lucid again, like conscious. And so when you heard, so I've had that where I was I was literally in a like a walking dream like state even after the the process was over. The these things are super interesting to talk about, but what it has to do with personal transformation is re-engineering these or engineering, not re-engineering, but engineering these moments of change. Like Danny talked about in the beginning about going to Colorado, that puts the default mode network in a different place. It's trying to grasp onto where's my identity? It's loosened a little bit. Psychedelics do that too. This breathwork process does that too. Suffering, suffering does that too. Because when someone you lose someone or you go through a financial crisis or your health scare or whatever, your identity can't grasp on to what it thought it was. This is why I think transformation happens in these moments that we all talked about, but it can actually be engineered. So I'll kind of leave it there and see what else you guys want to do or uh what you have to, you any thoughts you have, Danny, and then we can kind of end. But I think this is what makes this so interesting. There is a technology that the three of us are talking about that we can use to help people with personal transformation. And it's very, very different, very different than the current habit-based, info-based thing that the world is doing. And it works incredibly well.

Grace, Timelines, And Outcomes

SPEAKER_03 1:02:23

What would you say? What would you guys say the success rate, if you just if you're pulling numbers out of a hat, I know we probably don't know, but success rate of something, a transformation experience like this versus the success rate of someone who uh read and loved the book Atomic Habits, and they're like, I'm implementing all this stuff. What do you think those? Because I know you guys have worked crosshabits, I know you've worked some of these types of transformations. I'm just curious the the methodologies of these technologies that you speak of, what's their success rate comparatively?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:54

Yeah, I'll let I'll let uh Ray go after me, but I'll I to me I go like this. Can you read books and have it seep in? 100%. It takes longer. I would say if you if I had to give a number, I don't know, because we don't have data on this necessarily. Well, we actually do in terms of success rates. Health and fitness success rates are uh less than 10%, 99% failure rates after three years. Uh in the financial realm, 80% uh failure rates. In the relationship realm, believe it or not, a lot of people don't know this, but in that realm, people fare a little bit better because they do therapy work a little bit more, but it's still 65% failure rates. So we don't have data on this new stuff, right? But I would say maybe 30% success rates for habit-based stuff. Maybe that's might maybe being generous, I've had to guess. And with this new stuff, I would say maybe 50%. Maybe, you know, like maybe 50 to 60%. Uh, I don't want people to sit here and think like we're tapping into something very brand new, and I'm seeing some pretty powerful things, but I wouldn't say that we're still maybe at 50%. I think maybe better for me, maybe it's 60-40. Still a lot of people fail. But to me, it's it's much more successful and it takes uh a shorter period of time. But let me just say this what's shorter period of time? Let's say six months to a year. It's not like immediate, but it it is there is a lot of change there. I'm wondering what Ray has to say on this.

Why Habit Coaching Plateaus

SPEAKER_00 1:04:18

I, you know, I've met a lot of people using Atomic Habits as a great example because it was a very, very successful book. I've met a lot of people who said I read Atomic Habits and it was uh an amazing read. And I've I don't think I've met a single person who said I've I've read Atomic Habits and it completely changed my life and made me a millionaire or extremely successful. 100%. So I think I think the problem with that though is that um so uh weight loss is a really great example because if we implement a strategy with weight loss, let's say we we take somebody and we say, okay, you know, your problem is you have uh you you eat too many carbs. So we put them on a low carb program, they uh step on the scale uh you know a week later, and the scale has lost two pounds. They, in their mind, because of the way the industry works and the way most self-development industry works, is we say, okay, well, the reason you know your weight right now is is a um is uh essentially caused by the strategies you implemented the week before, and you've lost two pounds. But the reality is their weight at that very moment is a culmination of every decision they've made in their entire life up to that moment. And so making one little change like cutting cutting carbs is like a drop in the ocean. And so, and that's one reason why that two pounds that they lost is not, you know, is not indicative of their weight loss moving forward. That eventually what'll happen is it'll level out and it'll reverse because the weight that that's happening on the scale is not due to the the changes or the choices you've made over the last month or three months or year. It's a that weight that's on that scale is a is a culmination of every decision you've made in your entire life, including the person you decided to marry, including the um the um the eight bowls of fruity pebbles you had as a child, you know, uh 20 years before, including the job you decided to get into the uh six months ago. And that's what's showing up in that moment on the scale. So you've got to give yourself a lot of grace because uh when you make a deposit, including whatever deposit you make from the book Atomic Habits, it's a drop in the ocean. And there will eventually probably become a point where those drops become a significant impact or have a significant impact. So when you read a book like Atomic Habits, it enters into the ocean of all the knowledge that you've that you've uh accumulated in your lifetime, and it can make a significant impact when combined with everything else you've learned in your life. So all you got to do is say, okay, this is could this is contributing, uh, but you got to give yourself grace because I always tell people, you know, your job is not to lose weight, or I work a lot with people with osteoporosis now, bone loss. And I say, your job is not to reverse. Reverse bone loss. Your job is to get in the gym and exercise. Your job is to eat the right foods. Your job is to take the supplements. How much bone you gain or how much weight you lose is up to the weight loss gods. It's up to the osteoporosis gods. Your job is just to do your part and continue to grow, be a little bit more healthy this week than you were the week before. And eventually you'll get the results that you're after. But it may not come in your timeline. It comes in the timeline of the weight loss gods of the osteoporosis gods. So I think that we need to continue to develop ourselves. We need to continue to learn and to and to um study materials like atomic habits with the idea or the thought process that this is adding to my ocean of information and knowledge that will one day potentially culminate in an outcome that I'm after. Just give yourself some grace. It's not up to you guys. It's not up to you whether or not you quit smoking or you um or you lose weight or you, you know, enter goal here. It's uh the only thing that's up to you is what you do in this moment and the moment, the moments moving forward. So that's how I would answer that question. I'd say, yes, it's important that we continue to grow and learn. Uh no, one book, one piece of one insight, one piece of knowledge is probably not going to change your life right now, but it adds to all the things that culminate in a life that you will have, you know, a month or a year or 10 years from now.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:58

I love that. It reminds me of your rain your reign thing, right? That you'd like to say as well. It's like do do your part and then sort of detach from the outcome. I like that a lot. And we've we've talked about that privately as well. I'll I'll just share real quickly that we do have, we Jade and I built in the health and fitness realm a coaching program. We do have numbers on that to know exactly how effective this habit training was. We basically were using the tools from atomic habits. We were trying to change people's habits. And what we found is maybe the coaches on the lower end of performance, if you want to call it that, they were succeeding about 25% of the time. And when I say succeeding, I'm just talking about the short term. Did that person stay in a program for 12 weeks and did they get positive results? That's a success. We're talking three months, and we know if you were to follow up with those people a year later, most of those probably would have regained the weight and probably a little bit more. So we're talking short-term success rates at 25%. The best coaches we had were high 30s, 35 to 40%. And they were really good at all these elements of coaching from that from my four motivational dolls. They were great at connection. They were great teachers of information, they were good at implementing systems of habits. So even the best coaches we had back in that program, Jay, doing these sort of habit-based approaches, we're only succeeding about a third of the time with our clients. So I know there's a lot of different factors that go into that, but we know we have, we do have sort of practical data from putting hundreds of people through through that system and what that turned out was.

Live A Different Story

SPEAKER_01 1:10:27

Yeah, and you know, you and I, I haven't talked to you about this, Danny, but you know, part of the reason I, when I uh when metabolic kind of fell apart and stuff, is that part of the reason I went through to next level human is because I I thought to myself, me and Danny built, like I literally thought this, and it was a little bit depressing in the beginning. I was like, me and Danny built probably the best coaching model that I could have possibly ever created. And it had marginal impact in terms of uh what we would have hoped. And we did everything from giving them the workouts to giving them, we thought of every aspect. And it's not that I was not aware of this work because I had already been studying a lot of what I'm delivering now. Uh, it's just that for some reason, you know, there's too much. We couldn't get it in. And I was just like, it's time because that stuff just did not deliver what we wanted it to deliver. And I am convinced that, and I want to study this obviously, because I do want the data, that uh this new stuff is much, much better. And to kind of just sum it up in what Ray was saying to me, I go, I that's what I say too. Now people ask me, will you work with me on diet? I'm like, no, but I will work with you on your story. You don't need to follow a diet, you need to live a different story. And in that new story, your diet is almost certainly to change. But right now, for most people, uh, they're not really buying into that. And this is another whole dilemma. The three of us will talk about. You're, you know, me and Ray, this is kind of the curse of me and Ray in our work. Ray and I are always on to the next thing. Both of us, we're always, we're always looking ahead and being like, this isn't good enough because we're both very uh Ray is this way and I'm this way. We're very conscientious practitioners. So we just go, not working good enough. Back to the drawing board, right? And because of that, we're always way ahead of the curve. I I wrote a book on hormones back in 19, uh, what it was like first thought of it in '98. It came out in 2010, right? That's how long ago I was doing with hormones. Today, people are talking about hormones and nervous system stuff. And I have long ago been like, that's old stuff, but that's also part of the dilemma. Because to for someone to live a different story, they have to look around and go, who else is living this story? No one else is, so I don't want to be the one, right? So there's a whole component of that as well. So yeah, it's fascinating, um, fascinating stuff. But I think this is probably um a good place to to go ahead and end. But why don't you, Danny, tell everyone where they can find you? Um, and Ray, you do the same, and then we can wrap up.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:09

Yeah, I think Ray might have had some final thoughts. I saw him with the.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:12

Go ahead, Ray. Yeah, let's not lean, let's not uh let's not end on me.

Two Fathers, Two Final Choices

SPEAKER_00 1:13:16

Let's end on you. Let's end on you. You get the final word. Okay. And uh uh so um uh years ago, my father, uh, who was also a wonderful, wonderful human being, was uh he fell ill and was in the emergency room. And um, and we were there kind of surrounding him. He was he was in his probably his 70s at the time, and uh he got some sort of infection. And anyway, the doctor walks in and the doctor says, Mr. Heinish, he says, Um, I have a question I need to ask you. Would you like a DNR? And he's like, you know, in his, he was uh kind of in and out of stuff. He's like, Well, what is that? And the doctor said, that's a do not resuscitate order. So if you were to die, we would not try to uh bring you back. My father, who uh was in love with life, uh reached up, I'll never forget it, reached up with a little bit of energy he had, grabbed the doctor by the white coat, pulled himself up to the doctor's face and said, I want to live. And then he dropped back down and fell asleep. Fast forward, okay, this is like it's funny. Fast forward, uh uh, this was probably a couple years later, and I was on a date. Uh uh, it was like uh second date, and we were at a wine bar and um and I was having a conversation, and first I don't know how I got on the topic because it's second date, not good father for, but I anyway, you know, we we we go deep, Jade. Yeah, we go deep, 100% we do.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:43

Yeah, it's like second date's fair game for me too.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:47

So I was telling her this story about my father, and I told her the story, so he reached up and he and and he said, I want to live. And she started to cry. And I'm thinking, God, if I had a nickel for every time a girl on a date cried with me, I would be a very wicked man. And I said, I said, I'm sorry, why why are you crying? And she said, This is this is this is she said years ago, my father was also in the emergency room, and I was there with him, and he was an alcoholic. And uh the doctor comes in and she says to him, Do you want a DNR? Do you want a do not resuscitate order? And my father looked at the doctor square in the face and said, I want to die. I thought, wow, yeah, wow. If that isn't ex isn't an example of how the stories we tell ourselves impact our behavior and our lives, I don't think that anything is. I mean, that to me just blew me away, like the the contrast between those two stories. My father's story was life is freaking wonderful. And he had his problems, he had neuropathy, he was overweight, he had heart disease, but man, he loved life. And this guy, you know, uh this poor soul was uh in torment and torture. And the stories he was telling himself were leading to that torment and that torture. And it just it just really blew me away. And I think I hope that people will listen to that story and understand just how powerful the stories are that we tell ourselves. It is arguably the most important thing that you can narrate in your life is the stories you tell yourself. I'm sure Jay would agree.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:45

Thousand percent. And I love that so much. And I would just add that it's in the subconscious. And so we're not even aware of these. And that's why this work is so critical. Love it. So, Ray, where do they find you? And then Danny, where do they where do they find you?

Where To Find The Hosts

SPEAKER_00 1:17:03

So, right now I'm trying to build a YouTube channel. I have no videos, zero videos on it. Uh, but it's uh it's uh youtube.com slash uh one insight away or at one insight away. If you guys, I got eight eight subscribers on there. If uh uh you guys can uh are I'm going to subscribe. Yeah, this type of you know, fodder, then uh go and subscribe.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:24

So at one insight away. Yeah, you got it. Yeah, and you know, and I love this too before you go, Danny. Ray, Ray is always this one other thing I love. He's always building a business, always, you know, on and he's an incredible content creator. So one insight away on YouTube for Ray.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:41

You are an incredible content creator, and that's why I'm wondering where all your videos went, man. You know, probably on a neighbor's video of all yeah. My favorite video of all time is when you have that huge piece of fat where you was flinging around the video.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:55

This is 10 pounds of fat. It's a classic. Look at how close it is. You erased all the way. Look at look at this.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:06

That's a fantastic video. We'll have to we'll have to pull that out of the archives. But uh, yeah, I love Jay uh Ray's Ray's videos, but mine is I'm on I'm in the middle of a rebrand, so I'm I'm lost in internet space, but you can find me on Substack. I'm hot on Substack right now. Uh Danny Coleman. Take care by Danny Coleman on Substack.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:24

Yeah, and Ray is also on Substack. Um I'm trying to get both of these guys on Substack for all so all of you on Substack who are listening and really enjoying my time with them, please go follow and subscribe to them on Substack. I think they have free subscriptions there, but go and uh give them some love. Anyway, I love you boys. Thanks for hanging out. Um just hang on real quick so I before you two hang up, because I want to make sure this loads up for the podcast as well. But to all of you hanging out with us live, appreciate you. We will talk to you next time.