Barbell Shrugged - How To Accept Chaos And Develop A Practice With Dr. Matt Kreinheder— The Strong Coach #15

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

  Dr. Matt Kreinheder is a transformational healer, speaker, and coach. He has a doctorate in chiropractic, a master's degree in acupuncture and has professionally written for publications all over the globe. Dr. Matt has been trained at the highest level of Network Spinal Analysis and mentored under Donny Epstein, a world renowned healer. Dr. Matt helps entrepreneurs and high performers step into the next level of who their soul is calling them to be.   After 4 college degrees, running his own business and studying some of the most transformational and profound healing work in the world, Dr. Matt came to the realization that something wasn’t working. He was helping people but there was a gap, an incongruity that was both stifling his happiness and his impact on the world. Dr. Matt realized that he was being called to more. In 2011 he realized that he had to get crystal clear on his soul purpose After an intensive writing and self discovery process Dr. Matt found his purpose in helping others become their more full selves.   In this episode we dive into Dr. Matt’s background, the three criteria that led him to his current practice, the two tools you can use to accept chaos, and why it’s harder to be human now than at any moment in history. Listen in for a look into this man’s mindset, practice, and way of life. Come join us at www.thestrongcoach.com   -Mike   Episode Breakdown:   ⚡️0-10: Dr. Matt’s background and the three criteria that led him to his current career practice ⚡️11-20: Why Dr. Matt feels that it’s harder to be human now than ever before and the importance of hiring a guide ⚡️21-30: The two tools you can use to accept chaos and the importance of sustainable life practices ⚡️31-40: The 5 most common stages of development for adults ⚡️ 41-50: Why language limits our ability to express subjective experiences and Dr. Matt’s style of coaching ⚡️51-60: The importance of developing an inner and outer stream for your life plan and why meditation is the best tool for change ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/tsc-kreinheder ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Welcome to the Strong Coach Podcast. And today I'm excited that I get to present to you Dr. Matt Krenheider. He's currently my coach. And I'd really like to point out that every coach should have a coach. And you get a peek into the types of conversations that we get to have. If you want to look into our coaching program, The Strong Coach, go over to thestrongcoach.com, hit the application button, and book a discovery call with Danny, our head coach, today. Enjoy the show.

People have been telling me for two years, you got to meet Dr. Matt. I'm like, okay, whatever. Okay, whatever. this happens a lot with other with other men who uh might be considered like alpha in the uh in town it's like like looking at each other like who's that guy right but um so we finally did get to talking two years after being told that we should hang out and then you were telling me what you were up to, and I go, oh, shit. That is right up my alley, and that sounds like exactly what I need right now. So much so that, yeah, I think we're working together.

So starting next week. So if big, awesome, major changes happen in my life, we know it's because of this interaction. But if everything goes to shit, it's all Dr. Matt's fault. Yeah, blame me. That's good. That's right. That's part of what you teach out here is to blame others.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I figure if someone's paying me, they might as well be able to shove off the blame on me too. It's good. All right, so give us – you're a coach. You coach a much broader topic than fitness, but you're a fit guy and you understand training. And so it's going to be cool to have this conversation with you.

Can you give us a bit of a background on where you came from? Totally, totally. Yeah, so my background is in chiropractic. I have a doctorate in chiropractic, a master's in acupuncture. I have two undergrad degrees. And the meta background to that is really studying personal development and spirituality and the spiritual journey. So when I went through my first sweep of career running music stores and then decided I wanted to do something more adult, I went to chiropractic school, got to chiropractic school and realized there was over 100 different chiropractic techniques that you could practice. And I kind of said, oh shit, what am I going to do?

I went to start visiting offices. I had three criteria that I was looking for. By the way, I want to mention this. Yeah. One of the reasons I I want to mention this is one of the reasons I never came and saw you is because you're a chiropractor and I don't have anything against chiropractors, but I'm like, I know what that is. Like, I think I know what it is. And then when I went and had a session with you, it was,

it was next level completely and very different than anything I've experienced before. So laying that out there as a hook for people to keep listening. Cool. Yeah. So I had three criteria that I really wanted to meet. I wanted to really help people in a more full life, holistic way. I wanted to make a shit ton of money. And I was looking for a practical way to explore metaphysics. And I realized when people are messed up in their bodies and when life isn't working and their body shut down, that's because they are at right angles or at odds with the way that their life is supposed to be working and moving. So those... When you say metaphysics, can you explain that for people who may not be familiar with that conversation?

Totally. So metaphysics is basically, how does this place work? How does this universe work? How does life work? How do we do it right? How do we really be kind of in sync and in groove with the way that life is supposed to run? So that's the broad sweeping stroke. So you can tell from that description,

I was looking for something more than just cracking and popping bones back into place. So yeah, when I got into school, I started to visit a whole bunch of different offices. And I found this technique called network spinal analysis, now just called network spinal. And basically, it's a system of really light contacts on the spine that help access the neurological tension patterns that are hooked into long-term chronic patterns of fight and flight that also anchor in the emotional response and

the mental response that's just kind of been habitually practiced and locked in the body. Got it. So you went to school for chiropractic. You were able to focus on network, what's it called? Network spinal analysis. Network spinal analysis. And what'd you do? You opened up an office after that? Yep. It took me a little bit extra time to finish the master's in acupuncture after chiropractic

school. I did that. I was living in New York, upstate New York. I opened a practice and it sucked really bad because I was in the wrong spot and I didn't know it. So I struggled in business for like four or five years until I just kind of had the realization like this stuff is amazing and no one here wants what I have. So big eyeening moment. And then three years ago I moved to California and all the hard work that I was putting in in New York paid off and business has been amazing. My clients are amazing. Coaching is amazing. Yeah. How does the coaching work with alongside with what you're doing with chiropractic and do you see them as separate? Yeah, I, I do in a sense, um, uh, in a sense. So I would say that the coaching is always turned on. So when I'm working on someone,

when I've got my hands on someone, that coaching mind and kind of watching the patterns and who this person is stepping into and what life kind of has in store for them, that's always there. And because I've worked on tens of thousands of people at this point, like I get really clear information when I talk to people and when I put my hands on people. So the coaching really takes all of that tactical, tangible, practical knowledge that I've gotten through having conversations with people who have been in every single problem you can imagine and seeing kind of the life circumstances that a have led to that but be the solutions that life is asking for to use that that that stress and that intensity and that problem or pain and use that as fuel for transformation so the the coaching I do

separately but it's always kind of acting when I'm working with people on the table too yeah it sounds like it's not as, like you're looking at the whole person and seeing how they're living their life is impacting them physically and how they are physically is impacting other aspects of their life, the interconnectedness of everything. Totally, yeah. And the body really is the concretized physical manifestation of our emotional way of being and our thought

and belief patterns. And if you believe in this side of it too, like how in line you are with your spiritual path. So if we are out of alignment in those other areas of life, it's going to manifest in some way, shape or form in the body. And the body hangs on to that malalignment, whether in a physical pattern or a biological kind of digestive issue or some other symptom. And when we can correct the whole system of being, now the body really has an opportunity

to thrive. How did you get to this point of understanding and being able to look at somebody or put your hands on somebody or simply have a conversation and get a tremendous amount of insight. Is this, is this, did you know this is where you were going as a, as a coach, as whatever it is you would say you specialize in, but did you know you were going this direction or is this something that these pieces fell in place and how long has it been that you started having the conversation of things are interconnected and more of a whole systems conversation? Yeah. So a couple answers. One is I had the great gift, like I mentioned, to have a really hard time in business in New York. And I realized I was doing something that I loved, but I wasn't really uniquely designed to do. In order to run a great chiropractic practice,

you have to see 200, 300, 400 people a week if you want to make a significant amount of money. Wow. It's a lot. make a significant amount of money. Wow. It's a lot. It's a lot of people. It's a lot. And if you're energy aware, if you're intuitive, if you're emotionally connected, that's a massive amount of people to have running through your office. So I realized that chiropractic alone wasn't going to be my kind of way to make a big impact

in the world. And I had to figure out what the hell am I going to do if this isn't going to work for me like how am I specifically and uniquely put together and what is that constellation of different characteristics and attributes designed to do in the world so uh like three to four times a week after work I would go to a coffee shop with a journal and just sit and journal for like two hours and I went through all my personality profiles I went through all the archetypes that were manifesting I went through every different kind of way of looking at myself that I could find until I reached this point of saying oh you're designed to be in deep container with people one

on one and really help them see through all the patterns and the story and the bullshit that's going on in their life and step into this next version of who they're being asked to be. And it became so clear. Like I, it was one of those moments, like I didn't know how I could have missed it before. Um, it's usually how it goes. Oh shit. The, uh, one of the things that we really uh we teach inside of our program is uh we try to move coaches closer to you know working fewer coaching hours than they normally think they need to be doing it's like oh i need to be doing 40 hours of coaching a week i go whoa whoa whoa like are your clients getting the best you in that scenario so I usually try to back people down to 20 or less

I love it which can be you know it's usually counterintuitive to the average coach they go whoa whoa you know how am I going to make enough money and I go well now we need to shift the business model and there's it there's a it's a much bigger conversation than just back your hours down totally or back or bring your hours up there's a whole system to consider a business model and whatnot to consider so yeah absolutely so going from like two to four hundred clients a week to getting in that that deeper container that's that's a big deal. I think most, I think that's what most people want. People go see even doctors,

it's five minutes with a doctor and they just scribble on a pad and walk out. People are really wanting a deeper connection with the people they're working with and they're not getting it. And so I think there's this huge opportunity in the world for people to be offering that. And we have more wealth in the world more than ever. So I think people, I think that's why coaching is really growing in the market overall.

Yeah, I totally agree. There's more opportunity to run a quality business through coaching and the rate of growth that people need to have in order to keep up with the pace of life now is way higher than it has ever been in history. It's harder to be human now than I think ever before. And we have less pure survival kind of stresses, but way more complexity and way more emotional openness and way more kind of just overall intensity to manage in life. So having someone who can guide you through seeing yourself and still thriving in that process is, it's critical. Yeah. And in order to do that, we as coaches have to do an enormous amount of personal deep work ourselves because, I mean, I know for me, my ability to show up for clients is the depth

in which I can show up for them is only as deep as I've gone with myself. Totally. So you were going through this journaling process and you were looking at yourself from all these different angles and you go, oh, what was exactly the big aha? You want the regular pedestrian story or the weird spiritual story? Oh man, fuck it. Let's go weird. Okay. So, um, at the end of this six months, nine months, whatever it was, I, I got to, um, this kind of single statement that I felt like was really clear. And it was something like, I help people see the truth of who they are. I was like, okay, cool. Like that feels pretty good.

And I just, I wrote it in my journal and I just kind of said out into the universe, hey, this is what I'm going with. If you need me to do anything different, you gotta let me know. And put the journal on the bedside table and went to bed. And literally that night I had a dream.

And in that dream, I was, uh, in this, in the middle of this like rice patty in what, I don't know, my brain says might've been China. And I was in a, uh, like a restaurant and this guy comes in the restaurant and he says, help me, help me. I'm lost. I don't know where to go. And I just said, cool, come on and sit down. Let's have some tea. And we just sat and we had tea and he just talked and talked and talked. And then he jumped up and he said, ah, I got it. I remember.

I know where to go. I was like, okay, cool. Be on your way. And there was a sense of knowingness and a sense of truth in that. And that night from that dream, I woke myself up saying, I hear their souls call and I set them on their path. Those words were coming out of my mouth and it woke me from the dream. And before I even knew what I was saying, I started to write that down and I looked at it and I said, oh shit. I guess that's pretty clear on what I'm doing next. Yeah, that's why you got to keep a journal

next to your bed, folks. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that sleep state is something that I've played around with more in the last few years. There was a, man here before the show, I'm like, let's not get too weird. And I'm like,

fuck it. Let's just get weird. I, uh, was talking to a shaman and they were talking about, um, yeah, you want to get good at plant medicine.

Well, if you want to get good at that, you should probably focus on your dreams quite a bit. Totally. And because you're doing it every night. Yep. Yep. Yeah. on your dreams yeah quite a bit totally and because you're doing it every night yep yep yeah and the Tibetans say that having a quality lucid dreaming practice is one of the most powerful practices that you can do because it's the practice of waking up in the illusion of waking up into everything that's not true and that helps us in our consciousness day to day to just see

through all the things that we're creating stories that have the opportunity to run our life. We don't catch them in the process. Yeah. I got lucky or I'm just especially weird, but I was 15 years old. I started reading about lucid dreaming and I started journaling my dreams every single morning in an attempt to get good at lucid dreaming. And I did for a little bit. But I found myself not feeling rested. Does that make sense?

It totally does. Yeah. Because at that point, the conscious mind starts being active both at night and awake. And you don't have time to often go into deep dreamless sleep, which is really the deep restorative sleep. Yeah. So I remember feeling a little fatigued from it and not resting. And then I went in the Navy and then completely dropped that practice altogether because yeah, that's not happening. Uh, so, so you, you had this realization when you're on the East coast,

how much time between that and coming to the West Coast? About a year and a half, I think. It's a similar process, honestly, coming to the West Coast. I had this moment in the office where I had three people. I work on more than one person at a time. I had three people down on the table, and I looked around the room and realized that everyone that I was helping in that moment, I was helping to be more comfortable to sit on the couch to watch TV later that night. And I freaked out. I was like,

what am I doing here? What is happening with my life that this is what I'm dedicating my energy and my time to? Like, that's not okay. I'm not a pain relief guy I mean that's important that that happens but what I'm tasked with is different and and I think bigger so I kind of made the same declaration like hey whoever you are out there up there this isn't working and if you need me someplace else like if you want these gifts employed someplace else you gotta let me know and about two weeks after that and for the following six months, almost every day, someone talked to me about San Diego. I saw San Diego on TV, overheard it in a conversation. And maybe that was just the reticular activating system in my brain filtering for that information.

I don't know, but it kind of doesn't really matter. Here I am. And it seems to be working out. You're enjoying it. Yeah. It's going good. There you go. That's all you need. That's for sure. So how would you – so you do coaching as well. So you have your chiropractic practice, and you have coaching.

Of course, there's the intermingling going on. Who's your typical client? Yeah. So mostly it's entrepreneurs who recognize how big of a part the personal development plays in their business. And they're at a point where they've lost sight of who they have to be next. They've kind of hit the end of the road either of what they wanted to create and they're taking the next jump into like what gets created next or they've lost connection with kind of the next iteration of who they have to be. And so we help them. I help them with that process of like, OK, this is what you've done. This is amazing.

And now there's something more that's being being asked for. And how are you going to step into that? How do you have the clarity of the purpose and the mission aligned with all of the emotional upgrade and then the cognitive upgrade that needs to happen in order to really grasp onto that and not shrink back down into old ways of being? Yeah, it's interesting. I think just like physical training, there's this introduction to physical training, which is very technical. Yeah, you're going to squat. The person's supposed to move this way. The joints are supposed to be at these angles. And, oh, by the way, you want to do five sets of five for this amount of time.

And then you're going to deload and all this shit. And then there comes a point where you go, oh, to be a better athlete, I have to do some deeper work. But then as a business owner, the same thing, I go to a business conference and I learn about marketing and I learn about, you know, having, you know, creating quarterly planning and managing the finances and I have all this stuff and I go, okay. And that's the same thing as learning how to squat or teach a squat. And then of course in business, you go at some point, you know, looking back over, I've been an entrepreneur for 11 years now. And I look back over my career and I go, wow, I've made the biggest leaps in my development and the development of my business when I did the deepest personal development work.

Totally. And that also sometimes the, when I did the deepest personal development work was the most disruptive to my business as well. Absolutely. But it looking at the time, it seemed like hell. And, but looking back, I go,

Oh, well that felt like hell at the time. But six months later I could tell that it was the best decision I'd ever made because it put me on a path that was a much bigger game than I, than I was, you know, that I could imagine at the time. Yeah. So it's super and super important. And that's something that, you know, we, we're always focused on something I'm always focused on, um, sometimes more than others. Sometimes it's just, I just want to have a good time. Totally. Yeah. And that's important. You know, I tell people that there's three stages to the growth process. There's the actual growing and then there's the stabilization and then there's the integration.

So the growth is what everyone who does, you know, entrepreneurship and personal development really love. They love the feeling of being someone new. But if you don't stabilize that and really maintain that, then you tend to drop back down. And then if you don't integrate that with the rest of the parts in your life, then one area is growing and the parts that you aren't paying attention to are going to start to make issues. So you got to look at all those parts of the process when you're in the growth cycle and really just not get addicted to one part of it. Yeah. I think that's very, very common. And

I mean, you could look at even uh different parts of the country i think some some parts of the country really seek more stability and they stay in stability way too long yeah but you might be here on the west coast where there's probably too much chaos too frequently i agree i agree i mean i i've i've got caught in that cycle before i'm like i'm like nothing i've gone way too long where things just are crazy. I don't know what's real anymore. Does it matter? I don't think it matters. Yeah. Yeah. And they tend not to value stability out here as much, you know, like they actually prefer a little bit more chaos and without a recognition of what's actually going to serve them. And I think that's the

biggest thing. Like I'm for chaos, I'm for stability, I'm for whatever needs to happen next in order to really get where, you know, I need to go. What do you, if somebody is in a place where they've had a lot of stability and they're like, oh, I want some change, but I don't know exactly what to do, you know, what do you suggest to introduce some chaos and how do you make somebody I guess okay with the uncertainty that chaos brings because that's the thing that keeps people from exposing themselves to chaos

is the uncertainty so two things the first is one of the tools that I love using is a death meditation so just imagine that you're taking the last ten breaths of your life do you say yeah i did it and is what you're doing now on that trajectory or do you say yeah i really i i was about 60

percent for me that is so much motivation to be like no way like that's not happening. If I don't get it done, quote unquote, get it done, whatever it is, that's not okay. So that's one tool. And then the second thing, like how do you get comfortable with the instability? This is the number one thing that I see most people avoid, whether entrepreneurship or anything else is getting really present to the emotion.

And there's almost always fear, uncertainty, not good enough, you know, whatever your personal cocktail of crappy stories running around in your brain that are running the show that make the instability seem terrifying. But if you can just really get present to, okay, I feel afraid right now. And outside of the fear, there isn't any other good reason not to do this. If you're dragging your feet just because of the fear, there isn't any other good reason not to do this. If you're dragging your feet just because of the fear, it's time to do some emotional work and become just as skillful with your emotions as you are with your mind. What do you tell the person who lives in chaos too much and needs that stability? Stop doing drugs.

Stop going to programs, sit and meditate and, and really find mentors who understand what grounded change looks like, because it's, it's not a matter of, uh, uh, of, of going to programs or not. It's a matter of having the right teachers who say, you need to find your balance right now of stability and, and change. And you're swung too far to one side. So I remember when I first moved here, I had this conversation basically for six months straight. It's like, burning man is not the answer. Doing more psychedelics is not the answer. Doing more spiritual work is not the answer. And like coming back into your body and getting really aware of what's actually happening in your life is the answer right now yeah yeah all right so the integration piece yeah that's uh that's a big

conversation i've tackled or i've attempted to tackle many times uh because i people know that i've played around the plant medicine psychedelic realm. And when I was first introduced to these ideas and these experiences, I was really excited about it, right? And I was like, oh, everybody should do this. And then over time, I realized everybody should not do this. And then at the same time, I go, oh, wow. I wasn't, I guess, mature enough in that area to be giving the best advice. And I don't think a lot of people took it, which was good, which is like, oh, I'm just going to go do a bunch of psychedelics now.

But I think I've always suggested responsible use and having facilitators and all that kind of stuff. But over time, I've taken a lot less, taken way less attention on the actual experience and put way more attention on to integration of these transformative experiences. Because if it's actually, you know, man, people do these transformative, they go to these workshops, they go to these retreats, they. I mean, fuck, I put them on. They do these psychedelic experiences. And then six months later, you look at their life and it doesn't look any different. And you go, okay, that actually wasn't transformation. You got high.

Even if it was a Tony Robbins event. People go to Tony Robbins. They get really high off of whatever they do there. I haven't been. But then a month later, it's like the same complaints are coming up in their life, and it doesn't look that much different. And it's nothing wrong with Tony Robbins. The program's great.

It's up to the person to do the work, which is the integration, right? Totally. So what are some common pitfalls around integration, and how do we do it better? Yeah, I think one of the things that's challenging about doing events, and I'm the same thing, I do retreats as well, and we have an immersive experience for three days, five days, whatever it is. And you help the person see who they can be in a really highly energized and coherent container of this event. And then you send them right back out into all the patterns of work, family, home, you know, all those environments that are reinforcing of the old way of being. And it's really hard to hold that level of knowing and that level of of commitment to this new way

of being when you have like all this old environment to transform as well so i think that's one of the the biggest things so having sustainable systems and sustainable reliable contact with people who maybe were there at the retreat or whoever was facilitating the retreat or you know some sort of work with that afterwards is so important because they can say, Hey, you remember who you were on Saturday night at the retreat and how fricking high you were and how possible everything felt that version of you still exists. You just have to get back there, man. And let's figure out what needs to happen in order to do that. Um, and slowly over time, what tends to happen is that as they hold that stabilization period,

they start to transform everything else that's in their life. Their relationships change, if they're not healthy, their way of moving or eating or whatever it is changes. All those other factors have to change in order to upgrade and make that change that they experienced at the retreat upgradable too or sustainable. Yeah of my first mentors he said the thing that separates uh the people who are extremely successful from everybody else is speed of implementation it's um how fast you got the information how fast do you implement it in your life totally and sometimes implementing it means complete and total failure but you get the feedback yeah oh that actually didn't work yeah so now i'm going to implement the next best thing Totally. And sometimes implementing it means complete and total failure. But you get the feedback.

You go, oh, that actually didn't work. So now I'm going to implement the next best thing or whatever I thought was next. Yeah. And that's, man, I'm blessed. I think I have that naturally. It's one of those things when I heard that, my business partner looks at me and he goes, man, you do that already. I was like, yes.

The hardest part for a lot of people is the taking action. Totally. One of the things I've discovered, let's say in the last couple years of coaching, is that people confuse thinking about it with doing the thing. Yeah, man. What do you think about that? Are's like you're gonna are you gonna do it or what it's like well i've been thinking about it for how long you've been thinking about this

it's been a month thinking about it isn't moving the needle people confuse thinking about it with everything one of my favorite questions to ask in coaching is so that they have this whole big long story about what's happening in the essays, so how do you feel about that? And I would say 80% of the time they say, well, I think what it means is, and I stop them right there. Because I say, how do you feel about that? And they immediately respond with, I think. So we are mind addicted in this culture. Or people say, I feel, and then they start talking about thoughts.

Exactly. culture or people say i feel and then they start talking about thoughts exactly i don't i'd say 99 percent of time when someone starts a sentence with i feel it turns into i feel like and then they start describing a thought not a feeling totally yeah totally so yeah and in the same thing with action implementation like well i'm thinking that i need to do this before it's like whatever you're doing you need to do something now. And I was on a coaching call this morning with one of my clients on the East Coast. And it's like, cool. Okay, so we had this big breakthrough on this call.

What are you going to do in the next two minutes after you hang up the phone and actually implement this so you can get the shit done today and really move the business forward in the way that you need to? And he's like, oh, okay, cool. I need to do this and this and this and this.

It's like, awesome. Text me when it's done. Nice. Yeah. Accountability. Totally. That's always great to have. All right.

So I think this would be a good time to bring up, we talked about doing a retreat, feeling high, having a state change. Yeah. And so can you just riff a bit on the difference between having a state change and a stage shift or a stage of development? So I might be jumping a little fast here, a little far for people. So people want to be they want to develop themselves right and so even if someone

is coming into like a gym and they want to get better you know i see fitness as the the first rung of personal development yeah for for most people they go okay i'm not happy with my body i want to transform it i want to make it different for whatever reason. Right. And so, uh, it, that's what it was for me. You know, I was like, Oh, when did my personal development journey begin? And for a long time I was like, well, I was about 30 and I go, no, it happened when I was 13 and I started eating really well and I wanted to change the physical aspects of who I Um, so people are wanting to develop themselves when they walk into a gym or they hire a life coach or they hire a business coach. They're looking for development. What are those stages of development look like?

What's predictable stages of development? Yeah. So what we know is that adult cognitive development goes through a number of levels. And really the brain and the way the brain works has a number of predictable steps that it goes through. There's two systems that I love to use. One is spiral dynamics. Another is integral theory. And kind of the central core of these two is talking about these different levels of cognitive development.

So I won't go through all of them because it gets a little exhaustive, but I'll go through four or five that are really the most common that we see. What's really cool about these is that they term them in colors rather than numbers. Because as soon as some people see that someone thinks they're a six and I'm a four, they shut down immediately to the fact that this could even have any value. So we'll start off at a... What's with people hating hierarchy? That actually happens at the green level. Yeah, I mean, it's challenging for them to see that it's possible that someone is further along the path that brings up all their not good enough, all of their, you know, that wounding that says they need to be smarter, better, faster, whatever.

And that's just part of the human condition until we get really able to be with those feelings. So I'll start off with a color that's halfway through the first part of development called blue. Blue is all about rules and roles, all about how to do things the right way. In our American culture, blue is really closely associated with usually the church, whatever your particular church is, and the way that religion kind of casts things into specific ways of being that are right and wrong, good, bad, light, and dark, all those kind of polarity-based things. And what it, from a cognitive development perspective, says is that there needs to be an architecture to the mind so that we know how to behave and

we know how to act. From there, we get really grumpy with all the rules and roles and being told and what's right and what's wrong and that you're wrong or you're bad if you do this. We say, screw that. This is actually all about me. I'm going to go out and get mine. You're describing the majority of my life. I spent a good amount of time there. A good amount of time. I sometimes go back there. Yeah, I like it there. I'm a fan.

So when people bump out of the blue, they go into orange. And orange we can think of as really capitalistic, really about getting the Mercedes, getting the big house, getting everything that we want, all of the kind of the things that prop our self sense of self up and and help us achieve. But it's really all about me and what I can do and what I can have. And it's a huge step up from blue because we've broken out of those rules. But it's still all about me. From orange at some point, you you've probably seen everyone who's listening has seen the the guy who's a executive who's 50, 55 years old and he says, is this all there is? Is it just about me? And they start And that's the shift into green. It becomes much more about community, much more about having deep connected sense of self to your own feelings, your own emotions, your own sensitivity. And that part of us really starts to open up. And the issue with these levels of development is they

all start to push against each other. So if you look at those three, like the people who are in blue who are all about the rules and roles get really pissed when the orange people break all the rules so that they can win. And the people who are green are looking at the people in orange and saying, oh my God, you guys are just cutting down the rainforest and you guys are doing all the pollution and all the bad stuff in the world. And orange looks at green and said, you crybabies are just sitting there feeling your feelings and orange response to to green is the classic calling someone a snowflake right because they're so sensitive they're so kind of uh just soft in their eyes so all of these these levels start to fight against each other until and and um claire graves the guy who developed spiral dynamics said this is the momentous leap in consciousness we bump up into a whole new way of being, which is yellow. And yellow has the ability

to look down at all of these different levels that came before and actually value them and actually not need to fight against it and recognize that each of those levels is so critically important to who we are. And if we can reclaim the gifts of each of those levels then we can actually start to be a whole person does does somebody wake up one day they were in blue for 20 years and then one day they wake up and go i'm orange no yeah usually it's a really subtle process and a process that takes time and it happens in different parts of life at different speeds. So in someone's cognitive line of development, in their mental thinking line, they'll probably change faster than their emotional line or their psychosexual line or their social line.

All these different parts of life sometimes move at different speeds, but usually the mind is the one that changes the quickest. I've noticed that for myself. I mean, some people are more cerebral than others or intellectual, whatever you want to call it. And, you know, I read, I love reading philosophy. And so I definitely have noticed where I'm like, I'm learning about these things. And, but my, my behavior doesn't necessarily, I'm like watching myself. I go, what the fuck? Like, I know this, I know that I'm like, I want to be this, but my behavior doesn't match. Is that like the emotional aspects of things just not agreeing yet?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of different parts. There's like, how do I develop the motor patterns of the movement, like in the habits of how I be in the world based on this new cognitive architecture so i understand it in my brain now how do i actually put it into practice and then when we try to put it into practice we realize oh it's actually really uncomfortable to be that open or to be that driven or to be that scene or you know to to tell myself that i'm actually good enough and okay that actually is really comfortable and that's usually the slower part of the process

gotcha um so we we talked a little about stages of development and when we're when we're talking and okay, that actually is really comfortable. And that's usually the slower part of the process. Gotcha. So we talked a little bit about stages of development. And when we're talking about that, there's also this whole state change. And we were discussing being at a retreat and feeling high and then going, oh, I'm going to be different and then give back. And so I think people confuse a uh experience with a stage of development totally can you comment on that yeah absolutely so especially for um events that have a big energetic component whether it's specifically energy work or there's just a lot of energy in the room that energy tends to float people up to a,

a ability to see themselves in a new way and kind of have a breakthrough. And the states of development are really more along the, the spiritual path. So that, that feeling of riding on the energy we would call an experience of, of the subtle state and the subtle state can have a lot of different aspects. You know, the feeling of energy in your body is definitely part of it. That what we were talking about before with the dreaming practice,

you know, having that visionary experience is very subtle. So starting to have access to those experiences has its own whole trajectory of how people create breakthroughs. And we've all seen that someone, whether you believe in it or not, someone has a spiritual experience or an energetic experience or some sort of crazy meaningful dream, their life can change from that alone. And that's really remarkably powerful.

So the states of development are the gross, which is the physical, the tangible, the body, the couch, the things that we can touch. Then the subtle, which is the more energetic. It's the visionary. It's that meaning-making part of us that lives beyond just the physical. And then from there, they have the causal, which is, without getting too technical and weird, it's the void or kind of like the background that everything else sits on top of. And then there's the non-dual,

which is the oneness, the unity, the everything. So depending on how you're growing, you can either grow through these stages of development, like we were talking about with the colors, or you can grow through these states. And ideally, we should be doing both. So in these states and ideally we should be doing both so with in these states of development do you see people having this experience and holding that experience or do you or do people

normally bounce all the way back to where they were how does that work yes a really cool question um both you know both happen um usually there's a fair amount of bouncing first until they stabilize. That's the language they use is like, okay, I've stabilized the subtle state. And in any given moment, I'm noticing energy either in my body or in the space around me. And that's just part of my normal experiencing now. And then they have a bump up into that causal experience and they bounce up and down of having this kind of sense of being in just pure presence or pure spaciousness and until they can stabilize that. And then that becomes part of their normal experiencing. And that tends to be more rare. It's not usually people's focus. You know, people want to usually

grow on the stages side, but they don't realize that they will hit a ceiling until they can start to access some of these states as well. That could be the part that's holding them back. Very possibly. It can be the hardest thing to... It sounds like to me the stages of development were very easy for you to explain and for me to hear. Then you start talking about states and then all of a sudden it became hard to describe.

Yeah. Why is that? Well, part of it is because language starts to break down. You start to have spiritual experiences and all of our language is based on binary, this or that, left, right, right or wrong. And once you start to lose some of that language, you know, this is where Rumi writing poetry

about the ineffable and Rilke writing, you know, poetry about deep spiritual love. Like that's why these things had to exist because the language is just tough. And it's really, it's deeply subjective. All these kind of cognitive states are objective. We can see the elements very clearly, but these subjective experiences

are sometimes hard to convey. It makes sense that you would need to have, be going, yourself and through states in order to get to that yellow yeah area that yellow zone totally because it sounds like it in order to be accepting of everything that you have to get into a non-dual state or at least have the experience of a non-dual state. Or at least have the experience of a non-dual state. Not necessarily non-dual. People may have had a taste of that in a moment at Yellow,

but they absolutely need to have some level of subtle awareness. If they're not, they're going to be pulling back into green more often than not. Because that subtle kind of interconnectivity is what helps them relate to other humans that makes them able to accept anyone wherever they are in whatever level of development they're operating from. Gotcha. All right, we're going to have a whole show on that later. I can already tell that people are going to – I'm already like, all right, we're hitting the edges here. Which means I'm hitting my edges. So when, um, when you're, when you're coaching somebody, what's your style?

I love asking the questions that people can't see. Um, I always say to people, like the way that I see a human, do you remember in Minority Report when they're playing with like the digital screens that were kind of VR in front of them? Yeah. They're like floating out in front of them. They can just reach out and swipe. Totally. Yeah. So that's kind of like what happens in my brain. It's like, okay, so this person has this problem. This is where they are on their level of development. They've had this state experience. They're this with their emotion. They're unwilling to feel this. They're completely unaware of how they access anger. Life is asking them to do this and this and this and this. And so there's this whole kind of thing that, that kind of happens in my mind when I'm working with someone. And then there's usually a question that comes from that.

Like one of the questions I love asking about emotions is what's your favorite thing about anger you know and people are like what i can like anger i thought that was violent and bad and destructive and not okay oh no you can actually have the sensation of that move that through your body without never had that question heard that question that's awesome i love it yeah it's a really good way to yeah yeah and and just and just that kind of a question helps people see that, oh, all my preconceived notions about my experience with anger have been built on an assumption that it wasn't okay. And the truth of it is, if you want to have power, you have to have anger as well.

But you need to have really great strategies for how you funnel the energy of that anger into something constructive rather than having it be destructive and taking it out on someone else. What are some examples of somebody who is experiencing anger but it looks destructive? I think it's probably obvious. How do you harness that? Yeah. So a couple aspects that are critical. One is separating the sensation from the story.

So the truth of it is that anger is a sensation that's happening in the body. It's a heat. It's a constriction. It's an intensity. It's a needing to move. There's a physical sensation in the body. And then there's our mental overlay. There's the mental story about it that says, I am having this experience that feels uncomfortable because of this. And if you can pull those two things apart, now you can just work with

the sensation and the energy in the body. And you can have some distance from the story and really start to examine if that's true. Because most of the time, it's based on our wounding. It's based on our traumas. It's based on our cultural conditioning. It's based on all these things that are not actually accurate. And then what are you going to do with the anger? I mean, I go do deadlifts. I go do something heavy in the gym and move some weight so I can actually express and move that through my body and then see what my mind thinks is true after that. If it still feels like this person is whatever, A, B, and C, then I have a conversation. But there's something constructive that can happen at that point rather than, you know, telling them that they're an asshole or, you know, just

projecting all of my anger to them or on top of them, which doesn't tend to be all that useful. What do you tell the person who's just, who says, I just see red and I fucking lose my shit? Yeah, I would say move away from that conversation. Say, excuse me, I'll be right back. Practice that before you go into any highly charged conversation and get out of there and start to breathe and do whatever you need to do to start to examine the way that you're experiencing that. And it's likely that there's a backlog of a whole bunch of anger and a whole bunch of story that's wrapped into that, that you've created as a habit in your neurology and in your way of being that needs to start to get expressed. Go hit a giant tire with a freaking sledgehammer. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things that I see happening in the, in the coaching industry

is I see, uh, fitness coaches becoming much more holistic in their approach. Cause one of the, one of the things that I'm working on is how do we, how do we start having the bigger conversation with someone who's a fitness coach? Because I, I think it has to go there. That's where we're all evolving towards. And even if not, we're causing it, right? If someone else isn't going to do it, I'm doing it anyway. So fuck it. Awesome. And the deal is coaches want to be more for their clients.

They want to be there because usually when clients are showing up to the gym, that's the best part of their day. That's a place to have relief. One of the conversations I'm having with my team, my enlifted team, is if you're going to work out, if you're going to treat workouts as therapy, it might as well be therapeutic. So many people are working out for therapy, but it's just they're on fucking repeat. Because they're not actually getting to the solution.

It's a relief valve. So we want to move people from that relief valve mentality to let's actually work something out here. You've obviously done a lot of personal work just to be able to have the conversation. I mean, you're taking me to my edge of understanding and I'm well read. And so what do you tell the coach who's like, okay, I just learned this. Is it okay for me to go implement this with a client? How much space do you feel like someone needs to have with their level of understanding and application with a client? I think it's a really cool question.

And I think it's really important to recognize when you're in deep water and when you're above your head, because there's a lot of coaches that I see who are, are new and enthusiastic who dig into trauma in the body. And that actually is regressive for their client. So there are landmines, you know, of, of trauma and stuff that are hanging out in people's body and hanging out in their emotions that we need to have the skillfulness to be with. And I think no matter what the greatest gift that you can give your clients is your presence and to really be eye to eye with them, energy to energy with them and be there for them, whatever they're going through in that experience and encourage the shit out of them. You know, whatever it is that they did that day,

if they put it out there, they did great. And you can always ask them how they're feeling about it. There's some real basics that we can implement right from the get-go that can be massively transformational. And the presence to be with someone, I think, is high on that list. Do you have clients that come to you with specific goals? They already know what it is they want to achieve and they go, help me get there. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And my work at the beginning with those clients is to understand why that's important to them

and to understand if it's actually in line with who they are, how they're built, how they're put together, and what they're meant to do in the world. Because a lot of times those goals are built on, you know, their parents' story or society's story or what they think is going to make them happy. I mean, how many people do you know who got to doing, you know, high six figures, seven figures, and they thought that was the thing that was going to make them happy, and they're just as miserable as when they started? You know, like creating happiness is a whole... More miserable. miserable as when they started, you know, like creating happiness, more miserable, creating happiness as a whole, like endeavor unto itself. And you can be creating both happiness and

wealth simultaneously. So, you know, that's really my focus with people when they come with goals. And if it feels like it checks all the boxes, then hell yeah, let's freaking do it. And let's make it huge. And let's make it make an impact and make some real good in the world. What do you find that keeps people from reaching their goals? It's almost always, in my experience, the emotion. You know, they're unwilling or don't know how to be with the scary stuff. And once they can get present to that and recognize that the fear is running the show

or the anger is running the show or the not good enough, then they can actually start to make real shift. So that's the internal side of it. And then if they don't have a good strategy and they don't have a good plan, there's also no way to go with that. They need what I call both the inner stream and the outer stream. So the inner stream is the physical, the emotional, mental, and spiritual. And the outer stream is the business, tactical, strategic, marketing, all that stuff. What are some ways to develop the inner stream piece? I guess what's common?

I'm sure just like in physical training, we're with a client and we go, well, what's holding you back from squatting more weight is your ankle mobility sucks. But the client never knows that. Like ankle mobility, what the fuck is that? So in regard to, say, an entrepreneur coming to you with inner game issue, what are some common, is there like a top three? Like, oh, yeah, I see this all the time. Yeah, yeah.

I would say that for the people that I work with, they've got a lot of intelligence, a lot of excitement, and they are actually a little too close to themselves and a little too close to their passion. So they need a little bit of distance to see how to turn that into something that's really, truly scalable to a bigger business. What do you mean by too close to themselves? The manifestation of that is they get to like 200 grand, 250, and all of a sudden everything that comes beyond that doesn't feel good. So they're too invested in what feels good. They're too close to the actual experience of what they think the business needs to look like to take it to the next place. And I always see that entrepreneurs can't see themselves. Like they're too, too, uh,

kind of wrapped up in what's happening in their mind in order to be really clear on what needs to happen in the business. So that's a big one for sure. I would say the number one thing, you know, in all of this that I recommend for people, um, and it's going to sound maybe even cheesy and really simple, but it's meditation. God damn it. It's always the answer. It is, man. All the research says it's just the most useful way to start to unravel what's going on and start to really make rapid transformational change. How do people get started in meditation?

I know so many people, they reach out to me and they go, I want to meditate. I tried to meditate. I failed. I'm a big fan of telling people to just go get the Headspace app. Love it. Because that's how I got started. Yep. But what are your recommendations for meditation?

Yeah, I think really defining what your goals are is important. Are you looking for more clarity and peace of mind? Are you looking for calm in your body? And if so, you can do some guided meditations. That'd be really great for that. Are you looking ates with you because there's really subtle clever ways that the brain has all these stories all these programs that's running in the background all the time and if you start to sit and count your breath you start to hear these thoughts pop into your mind and you realize, oh, that was a thought. Oh, what if that's not true? Oh, oh, oh boy. Okay. We're at a whole new level now, you know, and, and we also get to learn to how to have these feelings and the emotions and these sensations in the body and a seated meditation practice, counting your breath up to 10 and then going back to one and counting again for 20 minutes a day and if you want to get aggressive 30 minutes a day is the number one thing that changed my life hands down

over anything else that i've ever done and it's just if people will commit to it and it takes work and it's challenging it doesn't feel good and it feels like we're never you know making progress but you realize the progress that happens a year later, two years later, and it's massive. Yeah. I, um, I like float tanks. Have you done float tank? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Super cool way to take out some of the neural stimulus and get some of the, the kind of the sensory aspect out of the experience. Are there benefits to sitting meditation that you won't get with float tank in your opinion yeah i think that there's um there's a way that we posture in a way that we hold ourselves the in buddhism they talk about holding yourselves with dignity so there's actually like a neuro emotional aspect to

sitting upright with our chin tucked in our head back that has a very regal sense that when we're in full open, just kind of floating experience, you don't quite get the same thing. So I think that there's an element of that seated meditation that is really valuable and it's work on the body. I mean, when I, when I'm in like a five day silent meditation, I do a lot of stretching because that will really take a toll just getting your body to sit that much. Yeah, it's work. Yeah.

It's work. Lately, I've been gravitating just floating. I'm a lazy meditator. Man, if it works for you, that's the measure. Is it getting you where you want to go? If it is, then do it. I think it's great.

Yeah. Awesome. You've dropped an enormous amount of knowledge. I hope everyone was able to stick with this show because it's just, I'm sure there were moments where it's like, oh, what the fuck are we talking about now? I feel that way sometimes when I talk. Yes. I get it. That's why we're hanging out. So you've written a book. I have. And I'm sure there's places that people can find you. You have retreats. Plug yourself now.

Let people know where they can find out more about you. Yeah, cool. Thank you. So the book for people who are interested in that state development side of things and the spiritual journey, it's called Awakening the Mystics. And it's a rally cry for the dormant mystic archetype in the time we need it most. I believe that the next evolution that we have to take as humanity is really bringing not crazy woo-woo bullshit, not old school religion, but really a deep grounded and practical spirituality back into our life.

I think that's drastically missing. So the book is really dedicated to how do you start to unlock that in yourself. And you can find that at awakeningthemystics.com. If you're interested in just kind of who I am and the other things that I'm doing, it's drmattk.com. Very simple, d-r-m-a-t-t-k.com. And yeah, follow me on social media, Instagram, the whole shot. Awesome. By the way, that was one of my favorite books I've read all year. I've only read a few. I tried to read a bunch of others, and then I got a couple chapters in and put them down.

It was a low intake year, but when I picked up your book, it was the first one where it was a page turner. So thank you for writing that. It was really enjoyable. I super appreciate you saying that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. All right, guys really enjoyable. I super appreciate you saying that. Thank you. All right, guys, girls, we'll see you next week. Ciao.

All right. We know you love the show. Go over to Stitcher, iTunes, give us five-star reviews, positive comments. And if you're a coach, you want to take your game to the next level or you want to start coaching, go over to thestrongcoach.com, hit the application button. You'll get a discovery call with our head coach, Danny. And I'll see you next week. or you want to start coaching, go over to thestrongcoach.com, hit the application button. You'll get a discovery call with our head coach, Danny,

and I'll see you next week.