Dhru Purohit Show - Could Having a Spiritual Void Drive Stress, Anxiety, and Worry? With Jon Gordon

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough and InsideTracker.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Jon Gordon to discuss why moving from a place of separation, anxiety, and fearfulness to oneness is key to unlocking our purpose and potential. Jon discusses how he overcame his negative mindset and shifted his perspective on life by adopting a gratitude practice and becoming grounded in his faith.   Jon Gordon is a best-selling author and keynote speaker who has inspired millions of people worldwide. His principles have been tested by numerous Fortune 500 companies, professional and college sports teams, school districts, hospitals, and nonprofits. He has written 28 books, including 14 best-sellers and five children’s books. His latest book, The One Truth, is set to be released on June 27th, 2023.  In this episode, Dhru and Jon dive into: -What’s possible when you go from separation to oneness (2:23) -The five D’s (4:23) -Jon’s story of overcoming negativity (18:25) -How the duality of life promotes separation (27:56) -Quieting the mind to move toward oneness (31:35) -Spirituality as a guiding force into oneness (38:42) -How childhood wounds lead to separation (48:51) -The relationship between physical health, separateness, and oneness (56:21) -Ignorance as a sign of separation (1:04:20) -Daily action steps toward oneness (1:21:38) -The History of the Soul (1:39:37) -An early miracle that Jon experienced (1:44:50) -Shifting your perspective and becoming open to receiving (1:50:05) -How Jon’s religious beliefs shaped his and his family’s life (1:52:32) Also mentioned in this episode: -Heaven And Hell Are 'Not What Jesus Preached'  -The Energy Bus -Preorder The One Truth here.  -Positive University Podcast For more on Jon Gordon, follow him on Instagram @jongordon11, YouTube @JonGordon11, and Facebook @jongordon, or through his website, jongordon.com. Right now, you can get 10% off Sleep Breakthrough. And if you buy two or more, you’ll get a free bottle of Magnesium Breakthrough. This is a limited-time offer! So just go to sleepbreakthrough.com/dhru and use code dhru10. InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out yourself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So many people are struggling with their mental health, it's become so common that we think, oh, this is just a way to date. It's not meant to be that way. We're meant to be whole. We're meant to be powerful. We're meant to feel peace and love and joy. We're meant to live with this incredible power to take on this world and do amazing things in this world. And when you move from separateness to oneness, you start to feel that power. Welcome to the Drew Prod podcast.

Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds and wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is John Gordon, and we're talking about stepping out of separateness, which causes so much suffering in our lives, into oneness and how oneness can radically change your life for the better. Now, a little bit more about John. John's a best-selling author, and his best-selling books and talks have inspired readers and audiences around the world. His principles have been put to test by numerous Fortune 500 companies, professional and college sports teams, school districts, hospitals, and even nonprofits. He is the author of 28 books, including 14 bestsellers and five children's books. His books include the timeless classic, The Energy Bus, which is sold over 2 million copies. And his latest book, again, which is about stepping away from separateness and stepping into oneness is called The

One truth. John and his tips have been featured on the Today Show, CNN, CNBC, The Golf Channel, Fox and Friends, and numerous other media outlets. His clients, which are notable, include the Los Angeles Dodgers, Campbell Soup, Dell, Public, Southwest Airlines, Miami Heat, the Los Angeles Rams, Snapchat, West Point Academy, and many, many more. It's a fascinating conversation on all things oneness with John. Stay tuned.

Welcome back on. It's a pleasure to have you here. You have a new book out. The book is called The One Truth. That core idea is that our life changes completely and dramatically when we go from separation to oneness. Now, before we describe what that is and how that transition happens, which we're going to get into the interview, give our audience a little bit of a promise, right? What is possible for them in their life when they make. this transition. What's possible when they go from separation to oneness? What a great question.

And the promise is we're not meant to live this life feeling cluttered, anxious, worried, chronically stressed all the time like so many people are. They're walking around going through life, just feeling down, feeling scattered, feeling anxious. And I truly believe that it's okay to feel that way. I have felt that way. But it's not really normal to feel that way. We've actually normalized it so much that so many people are struggling with their mental health, it's become so common that we think, oh, this is just a way to be. It's not meant to be that way. We're meant to be whole.

We're meant to be powerful. We're meant to feel peace and love and joy and clarity and focus. We're meant to live with this incredible power to take on this world and do amazing things in this world. And when you move from separateness to oneness, you start to feel. that power you start to feel that connection when you move from oneness to separateness you feel this disconnection which makes you feel powerless and so the goal is to go from powerless to powerful and that's my promise as you listen to this as you understand the one truth as you understand how this works and you see

this through a different lens you're actually gonna be like a Jedi in this world and have this Jedi ability to now take on this world in a more powerful way give us an idea like you mentioned the word feeling a couple couple times. What is separateness, right? What does that feel like in the body? So if somebody's sensing their body right now, they're present to this podcast. And if they just take a moment to kind of tune into their body, what have you seen are common examples? You know, you're a best-selling author, speaker. You're always out there publicizing your information. You get a lot of great feedback from people. You have close friends that you share your concepts with. When you've heard from people

about separateness and what it feels like, what do they say? Let me share the five Ds that actually divide us and make us feel separate. I think that's helpful as we look at this. One, it begins with doubt. You start to have a lot of doubt. And that feels like insecurity. It feels like concern. It feels like a lot of doubt. Like, am I meant to do this? Do I know my purpose in this world? You sort of feel like out of place. Am I even meant? A lot of people feel like am I even meant to have a purpose? Maybe I'm the forgotten one. Something went wrong with me. Yeah, great point. Like everyone else is meant to have a purpose but me. Right. And there's something wrong with me. So you feel like something's broken when there's some doubt there.

And then there's distortion, which are negative thoughts. And negative thoughts are lies that will tell you things about yourself and your future that just aren't true. And so many people have negative thoughts. And I always ask this question, do your negative thoughts come from you? And they'd be like, yeah, of course they're in my head. But here's the next question. If you believe your negative thoughts come from you, who would ever choose to have a negative

thought? Would you choose a negative thought? Would you choose a thought that says I don't have what it takes? I'm not enough. I'm not pretty enough. smart enough, I'm not successful enough. You wouldn't choose those thoughts, but they're always coming in. Nightmares and dreams are always coming in.

Are you choosing those nightmares? No. So thoughts are always coming in. They come from a spiritual place. They come from consciousness. So understanding that these negative thoughts, these distortions, are lies that are actually sabotaging you are not coming from you, is a really part of understanding how they can make you feel

and how they can separate you. Fear divides. Negive thoughts separate and devise. I'll get on to that in a second. This leads to discouragement. Here you have doubt, you have distortions, and that leads to discouragement. And so we don't give up because it's hard. We give up because we get discouraged.

And so discouragement sets in, and that feels like, sometimes like despair in many ways to the extreme. But it also could feel like just dejection. It could feel like apathy. You could feel like I don't want to take on this day. It could feel like I'm just discouraged. I don't have this optimism, hope, and belief. So it makes you want to give up at times when you get to give up at times when you

get discouraged. And we see so many people, especially teenagers, that they are discouraged. And they're given up so much that they're even given up on their lives, which is what terrifies me. It's why I'm actually sharing this work. I was speaking to a teenager who felt very discouraged. He was in the ER two nights before I talked to him. I knew his mom. I went to high school with his mom. So I reached out to her because I heard he was in a tough situation. And I said, let me meet with him. Let me meet with him. I was home visiting where I grew up actually. And finally he agreed to meet with me. And I taught him this. And once I taught him this, which we'll get to in a second, he was no longer discouraged. The thoughts that were in his head were beating him up. I said to him,

do you have a lot of thoughts in your head? He said, oh, so many. I said, do they discourage you? Do they attack you? He goes all the time. And they bombard me. So much so I just want to give up. He was feeling defeated because of his negative thoughts. He was actually beating himself up. and it was feeling shame and guilt for not being positive for the thoughts that were in his head. Once he understood they weren't coming from him, he realized, oh, I don't have to choose those thoughts. I don't have to listen to them.

I don't have to believe them. I could respond to them. And that changed everything. The next day his parents said, what did you do? He's like normal now. He's great. I was like, I just told him the truth.

Reached out to him just recently. How you doing? How you stay in my, Mr. Gordon? I'm doing great. And I knew right then, then like, okay, I've got to write this book because I've done this a number of times with kids actually and teenagers, college athletes, a friend's daughter played lacrosse at a very prestigious school and was really struggling with fear, anxiety, doubt, worry, shared this with her,

turned her around right away. So again, I think this is really key in understanding these five Ds. So discouragement sets in, we give up. Then there's distraction, which is the fourth day. Distractions. Distractions are the enemy of greatness. It might be distractions. like thoughts that distract you from your purpose, thoughts that keep you from what matters most, it might be a distraction that, oh, there's that bright and shiny object. I should pursue that.

It might be fame. I'm looking for fame. It might be distraction of social media where I'm looking at someone else's life and being jealous or comparing myself to them instead of focusing on my own purpose, my own path, my own mission,

why I'm here. So that's a big part of it as well. And then those four days lead to the 50. Here's the key thing right now. here. The root for the Greek word of anxious means to separate and divide. So when you're anxious, you feel divided, you feel separate. You ask me, what does it feel like? I really believe it feels like anxiety. It feels like the separation. I feel divided. I feel separate. I feel disconnected. And if you look at most mental health disorders, actually all, they all move from oneness to

separateness. They all move from positive to negative. They all report feelings of aloneness. I isolation, disconnection, they retreat from life. We don't hear that, oh, they have so many positive thoughts because they have a mental health issue. No, they have so many negative thoughts. Why is that? As you move from oneness to separateness, the thoughts start to go towards the negative, and you start to receive more negative thoughts.

And so those five Ds lead to a division that happens, a separation that weakens you, and that makes you feel powerless. That makes you want to give up. That makes you feel hopeless that so often leads to despair. Again, different degrees based on the separation. So a minor separation might be just a little bit of anxiety. And sometimes it just starts with that. But then it grows worse and worse and worse.

The more we actually think something's broken, something's wrong. And usually, it's not that something's wrong, but usually there's a hole in our soul, H-O-L-A. There's usually a hole in our soul, a wound that causes us to feel that way. And those thoughts always attack us in the place of our wound. and our identity. And once you understand that, then the whole goal of this,

the promise going back to the beginning, is to feel more a whole, to feel more one. Because if you don't, the five Ds, we'll lead to a 60, which is defeat. These five Ds take over a team,

by the way, as well, a marriage or relationship. It could lead to the feet of a team, divorce in a marriage, or an individual, it leads to your demise. And so you have to understand how these five Ds work

to overcome them. And that's sort of like the game plan against us. And here's the great thing, but there is actually a game plan. But once you understand what's coming at you and how you can lose the battle of your mind, the key is, okay, now I know how I can win the battle. I can confront these five Ds. I can overcome these five D's.

I can live with more instead of doubt. I can trust more. And that really is the answer. So when I start to feel doubt, like for me, personal, I'll just give an example with me. Do I have doubt, of course. There are a lot of times I have doubt. And in those moments of doubt and insecurity, I just stop. pause and I just pray. God, I trust in you, God. I don't have all the answers, but I just trust.

I believe in a higher power and I just have faith and I just trust that I'm not in control and that there's a plan for my life and I just trust. And in that moment I feel a whole lot better. It does make a difference for me. So for another person, the key to an antidote to doubt is to trust more. Trust in your abilities. Trust in your team if you're at work. Trust in what you've done in the past. Trust, I believe in having faith and I believe that the more we do connect to a higher power that does start to actually help us and heal us. And most research shows this. Addiction programs actually show this that there's a belief in a higher power. Think about addiction programs. People feel separate from their source. What are they trying to do? Get back to

that feeling. So what do they do? They choose cheap substitutes as they're trying to get this feeling of connection that they're meant to have, but instead they're actually trying to get that feeling other ways. So as they stop with the substitute, they now have a disconnection. So what do programs do? They bring them together through community. And then you have more connection with other people. Then there's this connection to a higher power that moves you away from self towards a greater connection and more healing. So it moves you in that direction from what? Separateness to oneness. So trust is essential. And then instead of the distortions, when they come in,

my favorite advice is to speak truth to those lies that come in. And the truth is, you were never meant to be average. The truth is, there's a plan for your life. The truth is you are here for a reason. You're not an accident. I asked that teenager who was suicidal, are you an accident? No, I'm not an accident.

I go, well, if everything is just randomness and you're here by chance, and this world is here by chance, Well, then you are an accident. He goes, well, no, I'm not an accident. I go, then you believe there's a purpose for your life? He said, yes, there is. I said, okay, great.

There is a purpose. Then you're not meant to give up. There's meaning for your life. You just feel like there is no meaning in this moment. But now that you realize there is meaning, you can start to pursue and seek that meaning for your life. And so that is really important to understand that in terms of the distortion, speak truth.

And the best advice they ever heard, I share this all the time, is from Dr. James Gill's. He's the only person on the planet to complete six double Ironman triathlons. That's a double Iron Man, which means you do an Iron Man. A day later, do another one. And the last time he did it, he was 59 years old. He was asked how he did it. He said this, I've learned to talk to myself instead of listen to myself. If I listen, I hear the negative, the doubt, the fear, all the reasons why I can't finish this race. But if I talk to myself, I could feed myself with the words and the encouragement that I need to keep on moving forward.

I love that advice because even in our training exercises for our leadership development programs, our positive programs that we do for leaders and teams, we basically have people write down their negative thoughts on the left side of a piece of paper. On the right side, you write down words of encouragement that you will speak to yourself when those negative thoughts come in. And it's a game changer. Even my wife now is going, okay, stop. And she'll say stop when the negative thoughts come in.

And she'll start saying those words she wrote down on the right side of a piece of paper to uplift yourself, to encourage yourself. And the word encourage means to put courage into. So when you encourage someone, you put courage into them. Let's humanize this a little bit. It's been a while since you've been on the podcast. You shared a little bit of your story. Tell us your story of negativity and how that was so overtaking your life.

And how did those five Ds, right? Well, there's a sixth one too. Can you kind of humanize them by weaving them into your story? What was going on with you that led to this sense of separateness? Yeah. This is why I'm doing this work because it started with my own journey. And by the way, the 70 is your destiny. And so when you overcome the 5Ds instead of the 60, you actually tap into the 70,

which is leading to your destiny. And that's what happened to me. I was losing the battle of my mind. I was losing the battle as a father, a husband. I was so negative, miserable. My life was falling apart. I lost my job going to the dot-com crash. how I'm going to pay the bills.

I was so focused on success. And my identity was wrapped up in all the success I was trying to achieve. And then when everything came crumbling down, my identity was now shattered. Who am I? What am I here to do? What am I going to do? I felt like such a failure. What did I do?

Started blaming my wife. It was her fault because I wasn't living my dreams or realizing my potential. Men often do this. We start blaming others instead of taking, ownership ourselves. Human beings. Do it. Yes, human beings, but men do it a lot.

And as a man, I need to take ownership. And my wife gave me an ultimatum. She said, I love you, but I'm not going to spend my life with someone who makes me so miserable. We tell our whole story and relationship grit, a book we wrote together. And it's raw and real. This is not about how great our relationship is. This is, no, the mistakes we made, or I should say I made.

And then how my wife stayed strong. She gave me that ultimatum. and she's like, you know, we're done, like, if you don't change. She was ready to leave. And I had to change. And that really began this journey of, I'm smiling now, I wasn't smiling then, because I know what it took to overcome and to get there, but began the journey of research in ways that could be more positive.

This was during the emerging field of positive psychology. And so I'm studying these ideas of how I could be more positive, this emerging field, I'm finding this data and research, and I'm practicing these ideas. So I start doing that. and they start to improve my life. I start to enhance my mental health. Now, what's really cool is everything I did then

to overcome the five Ds started to play out in my life and I started to elevate my state of mind. I started to find more oneness in doing that, like gratitude. Research shows you can't be stressed and thankful at the same time. So there I am every day taking a walk of gratitude in my neighborhood.

Saying out loud what I'm grateful for. My neighbors thought I was crazy, but here I am doing this. saying this. To this day, people remember me walking all the time. I still walk all the time. Do this all around my neighbor. People say all the time, yeah, I see you walking and, you know, along the road, on the beach, wherever. So you're just going for a walk and then repeating out, out loud? Yeah, out loud. Yeah. And do you have any sort of methodology or like a number that you're trying to hit, like how do you kind of? Because, again, that takes away. If you try to hit a number,

there's got to be an essence of feeling. So you just go to anything. You go from one area to another, small things, big things. I start with small and move too big. I'm thankful that I can walk right now. And you still do this today. to this day. And are you somebody, because I'm kind of like this, are you somebody who does better with gratitude spoken out loud versus writing? Or can you do it both ways? I think whatever works for the person.

Yeah. And what does it work for you? For me, it's more audio as I'm speaking. Yeah, I'm more like that. Yeah, as I'm saying it. Is less of a draw to me. But at night, my wife and I do this thing, three things we're grateful for before we go to bed. And it's like, I get into it when you start speaking it.

So going back to your story, you'll walk in around. around and you were feeling it and you're in gratitude. I'm in gratitude. I'm saying what I'm grateful for. And when you appreciate, you elevate, you elevate your state of mind, elevate your mood, how you feel. Why? Because that gratitude is moving you more towards oneness instead of separatist.

I'm convinced abundance flows into your life when gratitude flows out of your heart. And so you're practicing this gratitude and you just start to have a different feeling. And that feeling, that energy that you start creating and that you start attracting, literally starts to transform your mind and research shows your brain. You start activating the positive part of your brain instead of the fear-based amygdala part of your brain. So you actually start to have more effect on your brain.

You start to rewire your brain, you know, from negative to positive when you do that. I believe we talked about this on the last podcast. But it was life-changing for me. And I needed to change, especially my daughter too, you know, my son. I was a dad who loved my kids, but I was so stressed. and running and trying to create and trying to drive towards success that it was actually ignoring the people that mattered most.

I wasn't a very engaging act of father either. So doing this gratitude walk, I'm convinced had a huge impact on my life. But it was the negativity and the feeling of separation. Tons of anxiety, tons of worry, tons of angst. What were the things you were worried about then, right? Everything. You had lost your job.

Well, there were initially. worries of survival and supporting the family and bankruptcy. But even after that, even after I started to second mortgage my home, $20,000 in credit cards and opened up a restaurant to try to make it, there was obviously a lot of worry, fear, and anxiety then. But I started to do some of the things that I talk about now and I literally started to pray. I was practicing gratitude. I was saying positive things out loud. I expect great things to happen today. I accept all the people that want to come to my restaurant and support it. We were almost bankrupt several times, but I kept saying positive things, kept believing, kept hoping, and eventually the restaurant

became successful. Now, is there a magic button where you do that and you're going to be successful? No, but I know that gave us the best chance to be successful, because the more you focus on the positive, the more you're optimistic. Research from Duke University shows that optimists actually work harder. They get paid more, and they're more likely to succeed in business and sports. you're an optimist, you see the possibility. And then you take actions to create it. And then you take action. See, that's what the research is found.

Because they believed it, they took the actions necessary to create it. So every day I was believing it, now I'm acting on it. I'm flying movie theaters. My wife and I are out there trying to get catering. She was so amazing. You know you with the right person when they give you strength. And my wife was just like, everyone says when they read that book, like your wife was a rock star.

John, you're pretty average. But your wife was a rock star. And it's true. Like she really was our foundation, our rock. in so many ways. And I can look back and see how that optimism, though, that positivity was a game changer during the most fearful and stressful time of my life.

Well, what was an early moment in this process of changing, in this process of awakening and becoming more of who you truly were? Because the negativity is not who you are. Right. You're becoming more of your true potential, stepping into your purpose. What was one of the first early moments you remember where your wife really felt like,

I'm seeing a difference? Yeah. And then that was communicated, whether it was through, you know, just a little hand touch or verbal or whatever. Is there an early moment that you really remember that your wife, even though you had felt it for a while, your wife was like, I see this. Within three weeks of doing the gratitude walk every day, my wife actually noticed that I was doing it and said, wow, you're like, you're different. You seem so much more calm in this moment. Wow. So she noticed it early on, even doing that every day.

The mind is like a garden. You had to weed the negative and feed the positive. Do it for a day. They're going to do a lot. Do it for a week. Do it for a month. We were chit-chatting a little bit before we started recording. I have a weekly men's group that meets.

We've been doing it for the last seven years since I've basically been in Los Angeles. I've been here about nine years. And all guys who are growth-minded, but not necessarily were in the beginning. We were just kind of friends who were looking for an excuse to get together. And every week we get together, we start off with tell us what you're celebrating in life, which is a version of tell us what you're grateful for. We kind of barred this question from this group called Summit that we're all part of. Another one, which is tough for men sometimes, but it's part of it.

Tell us what you're navigating. Right. So start off with the gratitude, but then also tell us where it's a little bit sticky. What's a little bit tough that isn't working out? What do you have to let go of? And it's a little bit of the surrender part that you're with the safe group and you're like, okay, this thing isn't working out, but I'm trusting that it's okay. And there's a lesson inside of it.

And it's been a powerful thing. We look forward to it every week. That's so good. I think about that as you're saying that, I'm not failing, I'm becoming. Think about that all the time. Like we look at failure, we look at the moment. It's not about the moment.

It's about who you're becoming along the way and how you're growing on this journey. And so we all have failures, but no, let's change it to say we're becoming. And that navigating you're navigating, that's the problem. That's the challenge. But everything you navigate

is actually your teacher along the way. It's the teacher. Every person who might be even a rival, for instance, In life, you face adversity and there are personal rivals along the way that become what I call your worthy opponent. A good friend of mine was teaching me this concept, right, Brian Schwartz, your worthy

opponent. You're going to face worthy opponents along the way that test you, that refine you. And it might be a person, it might be an event, it might be a situation, but you look at everything as a worthy opponent that's actually here to help you grow. It's actually not even your opponent. It's your partner

in your growth. And once you realize that, you see everything, thing is, okay, this is refining me, testing me, helping me choose either fear or faith. Am I going to choose to believe the lie or go forward and seek the truth? Am I allow hate to come in or will I allow love to come in? What will come in? What will I choose? And that's our life journey is the duality of life.

Everything has duality, ups and downs, right? There's love and fear. There's light and dark. We have to say you move from the darkness to the light because we live in a world of duality. And so the duality is what brings about separateness. And then there's the oneness that when we move beyond duality, we move towards oneness, we move towards that one connection, one spirit that we're meant to have. Namaste says, the spirit in me recognizes the spirit in you, recognizing we are one. That's where the power is. So the goal is to move from that understanding, okay, I'm living in this

world of duality and I could see you as my opponent as someone who's bringing me down or I can see you as my partner that actually is helping me grow and lift me up. I can look at this challenge. What am I navigating? Yes, it's a great navigator. But guess what? If I didn't have this problem, I would never actually come up with ideas and solutions that make us better in the long way. And all the beautiful things that I have in my life today started off initially as something that might be a problem, right? And my life and my work, the one truth I share now that I believe is going to saved so many lives started with me and my problem and my negativity and someone who actually wanted to give up at times and someone who dealt with depression. So anyone who's struggling out there,

I've been there and I know what it's like and I know that feeling and it is such a horrible feeling. And you do feel so alone and you feel so disconnected. And that's what I want to help people with. I don't want them to feel that way. I want to move them towards greater connection, towards greater oneness. So they don't have to go through life feeling that way because too many are in it. It breaks my heart when I talk to people where I hear kids and what they're going through. What I've been doing lately, I can't do this with everyone, but I've been saying, hey, if you have a son or a guard that needs help, I'll be happy to talk to them. And I've been doing a couple talks a day.

And it's, it's, I can't do this forever, but it's been powerful to have these conversations. But once you share the truth with them, you see the light bulb go off in their head and they recognize, Wow, they were living with a veil of a lie that was telling them they are their problem. They are their failure. They are their thoughts. And you move them away from that. You lift the veil and they see the truth. You turn in the light.

It's like the darkness dissolves and everything changes. It's like the greatest feel in the world in that one moment. It happens every time. Once they see it, boom, there's a change. And that's what I'm passionate about. Going back to, you know, discouragement, we encourage distractions. We focus on what matters most. And then division, the ultimate thing to teach people is fear divides, but love unites.

Because people always say, okay, how do I get to oneness? What are the keys? What brings me back to oneness? And it's always love. Love is what unites. Love creates connection. Connection then creates clarity. So the more like I'm connected to the moment or I'm connected to others or I'm connected

spiritually to God and I had that connection, I start to have so much more clarity and wisdom in those moments. And then from that clarity, I now have more confidence. I want to go back to your story because it feels that a big part of your clarity was also getting quiet enough to be able to step into gratitude in that sense of quieting the distraction, taking things out. So you mentioned gratitude walk, right? And typically this was something that you were doing early in the morning,

is my guess, or like early in the day. Oh, very early. Right? Because it's how you start the day, sets the tone for the rest of the day. How you start the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. What is an example of something else that you were bringing into your life

to help you get into a place where you're on that journey towards onness? Meditation and mindfulness was instrumental in my journey. See, you have to understand how thoughts work. The more you have a lot of thoughts, you have clutter. and that clutter is what lowers your state of mind, a lot of thought. If I do two circles, one with three dots and one with a thousand dots,

which mind will perform at a higher level, which mind will be happier, which mind will have more at peace, the one with just a few dots, not the one with a thousand. The thousand dots is a lower state of mind. The few dots is a higher state of mind. When you have a higher state of mind, you have more clarity, more focus, more positivity. A lot of clutter, a lot of fear, worry, anxiety. in doubt. Does that make sense?

It totally makes sense. And I think the follow-up question that all people are thinking is like, where do you think these even come from in the first place? Right. Right. Like where does negative, where do negative thoughts come from? Right. You said yourself, are we choosing them? Nobody would sit down and say, I want to choose to beat myself up today, even though it might look like, you know, people sometimes self-sabotage. Nobody's choosing that on purpose. So where is that negativity coming from? What do you believe? So there is a world of duality. And if there's light, there's dark. If there's good, there has to be evil.

If you look at Harry Potter, what is Harry Potter about? Good versus evil. Star Wars is about good versus evil. Wonder Roman, good versus evil. Black Panther, Good versus Evil. Superman, good versus evil. So in the space and the absence between man and women and God, the space, that's where evil could exist. when you are one with God,

when you're one with your source, one connection, evil can't come in. The minute there's separation, there's a gap, then evil can come into the gap. In a world of duality, there's going to be some separation

because it's not like you're one. You experience moments of oneness. We've all been in the zone. You feel like time stops. And let me go back to a tree that's planted in the soil. It's meant to be planted there to grow, to thrive. You put a fish into water. It's meant to be.

in there to thrive. It can't survive outside the water. We are meant to be connected to our creator. We were not meant to be separate. Again, this is my belief, but we are not meant to be separated from our creator. We're meant to be one. Spiritual people say source. Christians will say one with God. Jews believe they were here. Again, my mom was Jewish. Jews believe, yeah, there's a creator that created them and they're part of God's creation. I believe we're all part of creation. We're not here by accident or else we wouldn't have meaning. We wouldn't have a purpose. It would be all be an accident or all be a randomness. So we're meant to be connected and we're separated from our creator and we're disconnected. That's when we start to

feel separate. And it's also when negativity could start coming in. And that's our journey through life. This is the curriculum of this life. This is the narrative of this universe is that there's a battle going on between good versus evil because why would negative fits exist even in the first place? Now, people will argue, you'll have evolutionary folks that will say they come. come from survival. That you have negative thoughts because you have to notice there are tigers coming your way

and you have to survive them. They come from making sure that negativity bias. Negative bias, you may not have food so I've got to make sure I go take care of my garden, so I'll have food to live. Okay, great. I will give them that.

But that's a different kind of negativity than the thoughts that say you're not enough, that you don't have what it takes, that your future is hopeless, that this painting, is not great. None of that has any evolutionary purpose whatsoever. Those are thoughts that attack you in the place of your identity of who you are. And that's a spiritual notion. Even the ideal of greatness is actually, where did the ideal of greatness come from? Like, not like the top of the tribe,

but there's an essence of greatness, of striving. Why do we paint? Why are we artists that are creating? Why do we care about any of that? That doesn't have any evolution. purpose is whatsoever. That what it's what it means to be a spiritual soul living in a physical body and we're here to imagine. We were imagined to imagine, created to create. We are here to create futures. We're here, as my friend Erwin McMahonis says, we were here to create, I believe, destinies. We're here to create our lives, inventions, paintings, buildings, sculptures, art, music. All that is acts of creation that is more tuned to a spirit. spiritual person than an actual fleshly being trying to survive and escape from the tiger.

So I believe that there is existence of some negative thoughts that are about survival, but the things that I'm talking about have nothing to do with survival. They all have to do with negative thoughts that come in that attack you and your ability to be happy, your ability to actually move towards your destiny, to live your purpose, to be who you're meant to be. And that's because you're a soul. your soul with a physical body. And so your soul and spirit with a physical body.

And when you die, your body turns to dust. But what are we living? An energetic reality, we call great science as we are energetic beings. So we're living this energetic reality. How do we see the world through vibrations and frequencies, spectrums? And then there's signals that are interpreted by the brain, language, images all energetic.

It's an antenna. So we're seeing this world literally through an energetic reality, but we're like a soul and a spirit, not like a we are a soul and spirit that is now expressing our self, our unique expression, Drew, this is your unique expression, your unique soul living in this reality and expressing it in this energetic reality.

And guess what? When you die, the energetic body that seems physical turns to dust, which lets you know your energy, lets me know I'm energy, and then from there, but what lives on? Your spirit and soul,

which is eternal. And that eternal soul comes here and earth to live a purpose, to have a destiny, to go through this journey, like the hero's journey. And along the way,

negative thoughts are coming in to sabotage you on the journey. So that's a long answer, but that's where I believe they come from. And when I share it with younger people and they see, wow, that makes so much sense.

because why would I have a negative thought in the first place about my life, about my homework, about my future, you know, about who I am as a person, about what I'm going to create. My son right now is just graduated from college. I'm having a lot of anxiety about my future, dad. Why would that give him a sense of anxiety about his future? You know, so those are all places that we get attacked in. Does that make sense? Absolutely.

And I think it brings up this larger point, which is that you're not just talking about, and this is not to minimize it, but you're not just talking about just belief. There's a lot of people out there that have belief for their relationship with a higher power. But there's a little component of a missing component of action and practice. And of course, what I'm hearing from you, correct me if I'm wrong, is you're talking about the combination of both of those, right?

You can believe a lot of different things. People believe all around the world, different things. But it's do those beliefs match with actions that take you towards love and ones. So good. So here's the deal. So I want to be honest. I'm a person of faith. Yeah.

I think everybody got that. Right. But most Christians don't talk this way and don't see the world this way. Like I see the world through the world of an energetic reality as well. Yeah, which is very new in Christianity. And then we have an antenna. I'm not sure people, I might be excommunicated. If you could be excommunicated, I don't know.

I'm not big on religion, I should say. Well, by the way, you also said something interesting, which would have gotten you excommunicated like a thousand years ago or 500 years ago, which is that you believe in a soul. Yes. For the modern interpretation and sort of that time of Christianity is there was actually not a recognition of a soul.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. There's a really great couple books that I've read on this sort of history. Like even back in the day, Christians didn't believe in that you die and go to heaven. Right.

You die and your body remains in the ground until Jesus comes back on earth. Resurrection happens and then everybody. And that's a big part of why there was this history in Christianity of not being an organ donor. or like being buried with your pets or being buried with your wife

or being buried with your possessions because when Jesus would come back to the earth, then everybody would be resurrected and you would need all those things that were there in heaven. So just saying a little bit of history context that beliefs can change. And that there's the, I'm hearing a spiritual,

you know, you have your beliefs and I celebrate them. I'm hearing a spiritual core essence with your unique relationship that is your connection with oneness. Yes. Right? And then it's matched with the Christian tradition. Right.

Right. Within that belief set. Technically. But here's what I wrote in the One Truth. Truth is truth and you'll find it everywhere. Yeah. And so the truth doesn't need the Bible to exist. Yeah, I heard you mentioned that.

It already exists. It's basically the Bible, though, that explains the truth of oneness actually. Yeah, that's more than anything. Yeah, because if you look at the Old Testament, that's a story of separation. Adam and even the garden is a story of separation because they believed the lie, they ate of the fruit, they basically were separated from each other

and from God relationally. And if you look at society, we see that happening all the time. We see relationally being separated from each other and spiritually being separated. The New Testament is basically the prescription or the solution to the separation and how to restore people back to oneness.

But as I wrote the book, I'd ask myself, okay, if that's the case, then why are so many Christians struggling with their mental health? Why are so many Christians depressed? Why are so many Christians not living? like the teachings or what they believe in the teachings of Jesus. And what you realize is, as you said just a minute ago,

it's about practice. It's about implementing. And what I realize is that if we're a spirit and soul, as a Christian, what happens is you then, in your belief, for instance, in Jesus, you're saved, right? You believe in a savior. You're saved, but your soul still needs healing.

So your spirit's saved, but your soul still needs healing. Your soul is still. encumbered by the patterns of the past, by the wounds of the past. Your mind and soul are what governing the body and brain. So you have this mind and soul, this software, the operating system. And you can be saved in the spirit, but your soul still needs to be healed. And if it's not, you're going to be saved, go into heaven, but act like you're living in hell and feel like you're living in hell. And that's what happens so often. So what I share is we've got to spend each day bathing in the spirit.

If you took a cucumber and you put it into pickle juice and you dumped it in once and pulled it back out, would it be transformed? No, that's baptism. Like they get baptized in the water and then, boom, I'm baptized. You've been saved, but it's not transformed. You must bathe your soul in the pickle juice to be transformed, to be pickled. The renewing of your mind that's talked about in the Bible that Paul talked about, Don't be conformed by the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

What is the renewing? Every day meditating, every day praying, every day going through the healing process that heals your soul, the whole in your soul to become whole, W-H-O-L-A, to become one with the God that created you, that loves you. Here's another thing. Relational psychology says that we heal in a loving relationship. great okay now they're wondering can you heal with a higher power okay can you heal with a stranger no there has to be a love there so you can't really heal with a stranger if the higher power is a stranger you can't heal and that's the argument for a personal god a god of love that loves you yeah that that has that that that loves you and wants to share love that is love and you are love

and when you connect love to love that's the wholeness that's the oneness that's the spirit the spirit. And so real healing takes place when we are able to receive love. I was a big time new ageer. I was a Buddhist studied for years. Buddhism, it led me onto a very spiritual path. It's part of my journey and my history and I'm proud of it. But I know this. You can't heal with a stranger. You can't heal with a higher power that's a stranger because it certainly didn't work for me. And self-love is not enough because self-love, we all fall short because we're not and we're not God. And so the many of you try to heal with self-love,

it's like trying to heal my own cut. I can't heal it. Yeah, you know, I would chime in. You know, there's a Reverend Michael Beckwith here in Los Angeles. He was the Goppa Center. I don't know if you've come across him. I know, I met him years ago. One of my favorite quotes of his is that, you know, man made,

sorry, God made man in his own image. Okay. And man has been trying to repay the favor ever since. That's good. There is this oneness. There's many people that listen in this podcast. So, okay, great. Some come from a Christian background. They're going to resonate immediately with what you're talking about. Obviously, we have you on here because these truths can be applied

to people and the action is there regardless of what background is there. And I totally celebrate. You know, thank you for speaking up for your background that you come from. But going back to Reverend Michael Beckwith's quote is that we, you know, I think the challenge that a lot of people have of certain interpretations when people only see God from their unique vantage point, which is nothing wrong with that is there's often the humanification of God. People want to take this thing, which is source, all knowing, all being, oneness. Right. And they want to put human traits on it. Yes. And so they put anger and they put this and they put that on God. When God is love, God is oneness. And some people might have the word universe. They might have some other things, source you mentioned.

And I think that more as the world continues to grow in both positive and negative ways, right? And the free floating of ideas, I think that one thing that shows up is that there's these flowering of people. You know, I consider you as being one of them. People who are speaking up and saying, here's what I believe. Here's my background. Here's my, what I'm stepping into. And also, too, none of that gives any sort of excuse. that we're going to lessen, lower, or put other people.

Yes. You can have beliefs. Yes. And I can have my beliefs, but I'm not using those beliefs to make anybody lesser. Yes. And this is not just happening in religion. We're seeing it in everything. And everything.

We started during the COVID pandemic. We saw this with this side versus, you know, this side. Oh, everybody who chooses not to get a medical intervention, they're lesser than. We're not going to treat them as human beings if they decide to have medical autonomy or whatever it might be. We see this in health with battles that people. have. So I feel, even though that you can look online and you can find it, the news, another Reverend Michael Beckwith quote, is, you know, you turn on the news, it's the expression of the

lowest common denominator of the human experience. You go looking for it, you're going to find it. But there's so much more positivity in the world that we just do not see. Does not get amplified. So I think as as society is waking up and it takes the negativity to do that, we're seeing more individuals that flower and are sprouting up and saying, we want to step into one. and also too, if I have beliefs, these are my beliefs. And I'm going to talk about it. And that doesn't mean that I'm here to try to say that you're lesser than if you don't have those beliefs.

I respect everyone. And I respect where they are in their journey. I respect what their beliefs are. I'm not here to convince anyone of anything. What I am here to share, though, is a process for healing and restoration and how to feel and experience the oneness they're looking for. And again, mindfulness and meditation is a part of that path. because the more you can lessen, for instance, the thought you have, you'll have less clutter.

Your brain, which is an antenna, will start to tune into a higher frequency, and you will start to tune into more of that healing energy and that healing voice. I believe, again, it goes back to why are we here? What is our existence for? Are we here by accident? I think most people believe we're here for a reason. But I also believe most people will actually realize that they have a wound in their soul and a hole in their soul.

And we've gone through life where we feel like something's missing. Where we know something's wrong. We know we're missing something. We know we need something. And so often it's a relationship with a God who loves them. And often it's a relationship

that was harmful where people were betrayed in the past that keeps them from that connection. But let's talk about that for a quick second. On the podcast that you were here last time, you were talking a little bit about your upbringing. Yeah. Do you feel that that was part of your dad

was a police officer, constantly in fight or flight, constantly after being aware. He is even his negativity bias is more prone towards negativity because that's a lot of the sort of interactions. You know, police get called when shit hits the fan so they can involve when things are, you know, negative. And they see the worst in humanity too. They see the worst in humanity, right?

They see a lot of good and they're trying to bring in good, but there's a lot of negativity that they see. And then you chat a little bit about how that sort of shaped his life and how he loves you. He saw the division. He saw the division. He sees the division. that's where a little bit of your wounds come from?

Or do they come from something else? I think we all have wounds. Sure, sure. There's universal wounds. Do you have one? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I have two main kind of what I call them. I had a mentor.

He gave them the nickname in sort of his teaching. His name was Serrano Kelly. He calls them pathetic insecurities. Okay. So these core insecurities, which by the way, positive and negative, they also create your strengths. One of the core ones for me was that I believed when I was younger. My family moved around a lot.

I was always the new kid. I ended up in a couple situations where I felt like people don't have my back, right? Whether that was my family for not intervening, whether that was, you know, new kids that was meeting who might be, you know, everybody got bullied to some extent when they were a kid, but being in a situation where you felt like, oh, I'm not fitting in or I'm being bullied. So I would say that was one. Another one actually came from when I was younger. I had really bad dyslexia.

Well, actually, I didn't have really bad. had borderline dyslexia that was getting worse. And I had a teacher that basically was giving me Fs in a particular class and made me go home and sign it. And I didn't take the papers home. And I kept on stuffing, you know, the little desks that we all had when we were in elementary school. And then finally one day my teacher called my parents and said, your son is not getting these sent to you. And my parents, you know, South Asian Indian parents, all about academics. They're like, how could you lie to us? And I understand. internalize it as a young kid and I said, I'm a liar. So those are the two sort of, you know,

wounds, I'm sure amongst other spiritual wounds that we're all navigating, but yeah, those are two for me. Yeah, if you think about it, why do we all have wounds? What are wounds? But a separation, a wound is a separation. Okay, let's zoom out a little bit. If you have an injury on your arm, there's a cut. Separation, you went from wholeness to separation through a wound. Yeah, yeah. So now even going even a little bigger because we're jumping around. We'll come back to a few things. That's good. So even within that, right, part of a little bit of, you know, the understanding of these wounds is that, first of all, everybody has wounds.

Yep. And also, your core strengths in life often come from the things that wounded you. So are they bad? Are they good? Are they wrong? Are they right? Or are they all part of oneness? You ask me about my personal journey.

So for me, I believe my wounds come from one, my father who left when I was a year old, my biological father. So my stepfather was a New York City police officer who raised me. Thanks for clarifying. Since I was five. So I was left by my biological father. And again, I'm glad he wasn't the one of raised me because my stepfather was the best and a great dad.

And I am who I am in many ways because of him taught me a lot about toughness too to take on the world, even though he started in a very negative way. Funny, my biological father is a psychotherapist, a social worker. So everyone always asked me if I'm a psychologist. I have a natural understanding of psychology. I say I'm not a psychologist, but most of them read my books. So it's very interesting. But I have that natural understanding.

And I go in that direction in many ways from the genetics standpoint. But I definitely had abandon him issues, I would say, for a long time. And before I started writing, I went up and forgave him for not being a great father, for not being there for me in many ways. Because I would see him on weekends, but he was never really there for me and my brother. and my brother sort of said he had enough with him. But for me, I was still reestablishing connection. And going up to forgive him, I don't have a great relationship with him. I don't have much of relationship with him, but I forgave him.

And by doing that, there was a lot of healing that took place from that. Again, you have a wound. The whole point of life is to heal the wound that you have and to take the hole in your soul and make it whole. So I had to heal that. And forgiveness and love is a big part of that. So extending love, extending forgiveness. That was a huge part of my journey. I started writing after that.

I don't believe I would have been able to write if I didn't let go of the old. And that gave me the ability to now create the new as I was moving forward. And that's when my whole journey began, really, in this world of self-development, of leadership, of teamwork, of mindset, came from doing that and going through that.

So did it lead to my greatest strength? Yes. Did my negativity? Did my fear? Did that lead to now a source of love and a greater love. Yes, that's the journey of life to going from negative to positive,

separation to oneness. I believe we start out as one. We then get separated and the whole point of life, the whole journey of life is now going back to a oneness. And the more we can experience and feel those moments of oneness

and connection with other people spiritually, that leads to healing and wholeness and happiness and joy. And so wherever you are in the spiritual spectrum, wherever you are in your spiritual beliefs, just know moving from separateness to oneness is where you will find more healing and wholeness and begin the process of making you whole

which is the point of your existence and as your whole W-H-O-L-E you will then find more power in wholeness whereas separation there is weakness to make this real for people practical yeah the word integrity comes from the word integer which means whole and complete

so someone with integrity has wholeness and completeness they have oneness A leader with integrity is powerful because there's no gap between what they say and what they do. A leader who's a narcissist, or if you're married to a narcissist or you have someone in your family, it's a narcissist, the narcissist actually feels separate. The narcissist at the neurological level has cut off other parts of the brain to protect itself because it's experienced trauma. And narcissists in many ways have experienced some sort of trauma that has caused them to feel separated, isolated, and alone. So they feel disconnected.

So what do they do? They focus on self instead of others. And it's about self-preservation. So once you understand this, you can even see how leadership plays out of oneness and separateness. And that person who's feeling separate doesn't care about other people, again, but mostly because they've been hurt and because they've experienced a wound. And that same narcissist, if you study narcissistic personality disorder, what you'll find is they also report feelings of depression, isolation, aloneness, disconnection. They have same symptoms as many other mental health disorders because they feel separate. Going back to the experience of oneness and separate.

So what we're doing here is we're literally combining in this conversation and in the one truth, the spiritual understanding of who we are with the scientific understanding of what causes mental illness. health disorders. And it's explained, not by me, but just in general, when you know the truth, too perfectly, and it fits too perfectly to not be part of our existence. And we're trying to separate, just like holistic healing. Well, let's talk about that for a quick second. You and I connected a bunch because you are like deep into the world of health, wellness. You had your own, you know, health journey. Your gut was messed up for a long time. Separation. So, you know, the body, especially in modern times, is also being wounded by our, you know, your body. You know, modern lifestyle, right? And the body impacts the brain, the brain impacts the body. How does that fit

into the mix over here as you're thinking about it and how we have to treat our body like the temple that it is so that our brain and our heart can function the way that it needs to? So good, because shame and guilt, I often say, is the inflammation of the soul. And when you have shame and guilt and blame, you have this inflammation that keeps you from healing. And by the way, you know, highly critical people, right, which you've even mentioned before, like you've never met anybody who was super happy who was highly who just happened to be highly critical right but also i find that highly critical people are also they don't feel good they don't feel good in their body they're not in body and that is another form of separation that's there so it could be

inflammation could be blood sugar roller coaster could be too much processed food so yeah where how do you think about the health component as it's related to separateness and onness go into the critical part I have to just address that real quick because when you are critical, it's actually because you feel separate. And you don't feel like you have intimacy with other people and connection to other people. So then you start actually rejecting others or criticizing others. It's like traffic in L.A. You know, we look at the other person as the cause of our traffic. They look at us as the cause of their traffic.

Sure. And there was a sign in L.A. that said you are the traffic. So it's understanding that we're... I haven't seen that. Yeah, we're all one. Was that assigned by the... Is in Hollywood? By the government or somebody else put it up?

Someone put it up. Somebody put it up. You are the traffic. That was a brilliant understanding of, we're all one. Yeah. We're all one. Once you realize that I'm not competing with you for that one spot over there on the road. Because if I am, I'm separate.

But if I'm one with you, I'm not competing, guess what? You can have that part. Right. So inflammation is when there's a disconnection and a lack of healing in the body. We have all these processed foods. We have all these different stressors. We have these environmental. toxins that are actually destroying the natural ecosystem of our body and of our health and our

wholeness. And so as a result of that, we get inflammation and you know in health, you have to remove the inflammation. Chronic inflammation. Yeah, for the body to heal. Chronic inflammation for the body to heal. But if you have chronic inflammation, the body can't heal. So we've got to remove it in order for healing to take place. Same way about removing the shame and the guilt that you feel for healing to take place in your soul and in your mind, which again, not your brain, but your mind. But going back to the body, you know, the more we're doing that, we're creating a disconnection and a separation even within the body where it doesn't function well. What is Chinese medicine all about?

It's all about giving the body to flow like a river. And there's blockages. Yeah, chi. There's chi and there's blockages along the way. I've done acupuncture for years. And there's blockages that happen. And those blockages keep you from being connected and whole causes separation, which causes health issues.

disorders. So disease is when the body's not flowing naturally and chi is not flowing. So if you understand how that works, what are all the things that are causing us to feel more separated and more disconnected in our body? And the more we infuse our body and our brain with these toxins that are destroying us literally, then we don't feel as good. And our brain, which is an antenna, then gets damaged. And then you start connecting to, I believe, lower frequency, negative thoughts, more fear-based thoughts, which is the thoughts that bring you down and divide you versus the thoughts that uplift you.

Think about when you think positive thoughts, how they uplift you. Think about how joy how it uplifts you when you feel joy. Think about how encouragement uplifts you. Think about all of that that makes you feel one and connected to other people versus the thoughts that make you feel disconnected. I believe it starts in many ways.

Again, it goes two ways. It's the mind, the soul, the battle there that could lead to effects in your body. So again, what we're thinking, is hearing, right? The body's receiving what we say. So the body does listen. But I also believe our body and our brain, when they're not operating correctly, will then start to have an effect on the energy you're putting forth and putting out. And that affects everything else as well. And so I don't want to get too spiritual, but I got to share, I got to share this because it's

it's true. This place of podcast. Romans 856 says a mind governed by the flesh leads to death. A mind governed by the spirit leads to life and peace. And so the flesh means bad behaviors, bad actions, greed, promiscuity, and all the things that if you feed yourself with that, it's going to lead to death. And it's going to lead to bad functions within your body, brain, and ultimately your mind and your soul. But if you're feeding your mind and your soul from the spirit, joy and love and peace and purpose and connection to your source,

that fuels you and it gives you life and peace. So what are you feeding yourself? So that tells me, we've got to feed also our flesh life. We've got to feed it whole foods. We've got to feed it organic as much as possible. I said this the other day, I speak on positive leadership.

Why do I even have to say positive? Should I just say leadership? Because a leader means that you should be positive. Why do I have to say organic food? Shouldn't we just say food? Why has it gone the other way that we're now like, I think it was Max Louvre who said that if you, if there's a health food section of a grocery store,

what's everything else? What's everything else? Yeah. So to me, it's like, why are we destroying our bodies? It's why. Why do we allow it?

Duality. You have a choice every day between the cookie or the piece of fruit that was grown in the ground. What will you choose? It's duality right there. And if you believe in evil, evil can't create. So what does it do?

it corrupts. It can't imagine it can only imitate and try to make you then choose the wrong thing instead of the right thing. And what is it? Temptation. Do I eat this and I am tempted by it or am I going to choose this?

And it's easy to be tempted. It's harder to choose the thing that you should do that's good for you. But what is good for you is often something that's a little bit harder, but that makes it worthwhile in the long run. And I think that as you start to step in more of that oneness, you even start to see evil through the lens of oneness.

And here's what I mean by that. You know, there's that old saying that says, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Yeah. When you study Nazi Germany and we always hear about the extreme examples. Right. You know, concentration camps and the evil and like the worst, worst, worst situations and soldiers and things like that.

but also I think just as much as to look at that is to look at how did an entire nation of mostly good citizens good people people who wanted to provide for their family people who had kids people who want to be a loving husband or wife how did their brains get hijacked yeah how did they believe that they should support this not everybody right there was some resistance but you know largely there was a lot of support that was there and how did these these these good people end up coming to a place where they believe that by killing others, the Jewish people and community. My grandmother escaped Oshtia during Nazi Germany because he was Jewish.

Right. My grandfather's Jewish. I'm 99% Ashkenazi Jew. So you would know about this more than anybody. It's like, how do you hijack people's brains and how does this, what are the circumstances that can contribute to that? And obviously, there's a lot that goes into this. Many books have been written about this, the economic crisis,

you know, what was going on in the world at the time, a bunch of different things. Five Ds. Right? Five Ds. So even you can see that even within the processed food epidemic that we live in, ultra-processed foods, a lot of those things initially started off as a good idea. Somebody coming in and saying, hey, convenience. Oh, the government is now saying fat is bad.

Okay, great. Let's create all these products that are out there. They're going to taste great, and it's going to be sugar. Okay, yeah, a lot of the science is, They didn't know that initially. So I feel like the more you step into oneness, it doesn't mean that you still don't take action. Hey, there's right and there's wrong. This is causing suffering and this thing is wrong over here.

We need to take action. We need to speak up. But you have a little bit of a sense of understanding that even at DuPont, Monsanto, all these big companies that are out there that, you know, a lot of people in this podcast have challenges with. There are good people there that think that they're doing the right thing. I want to share this with you. I think it's really important.

I'll speak to companies that might be pharma companies. I'll be brought in to speak on leadership, culture, teamwork. And I gotta tell you, there are really good people that I meet to work for these companies. And they don't understand sometimes

what damage can be done or is being done. You're right. They have good intentions and they're good people. And not everything they're doing is bad. No, and not everything. No, there are some pharmaceutical products and I tried to choose those.

Probably a lot. There's some that like if they can extend your life and you have like a really rare liver or kidney disease, there's drugs that could extend your life another year. And I'll speak to a company like that. It's powerful what they can do. Yeah, we're not anti-drug here. No. We're not anti-big food.

We're just sort of pointing out and I guess the point that I was making and I kind of cut you off. I'm anti-stupidity. I'm anti-ignorance. I'm anti when you know something is not the right direction. You know, can I say one thing? choose the right direction. You know, in the Bible, right, there's the quote, forgive them father because they know not what they do.

Yeah. Right? So much of ignorance is so much separation that you don't even know you're separate. Don't. Perfect. We nailed it. I loved it. And so good.

Eckartoli, I don't know if you're familiar with this work at all. Yeah, I read Eckertoli. He's done a lot of his sort of breakdown from his standpoint. I'm a big fan of his. I met him years ago. And, you know, he says, again, I'm not, you know, Christian historian and I'm not a Christian and, you know, I might be butchering a lot of these things.

Right in, my email's available for people. But in Eckhart's breakdown of the book, The New Earth, and he did a continuation sort of education series on that, he was taking the Christian tradition. He was saying, you know, in the Bible originally, the word sin, if you look at the original translation was the idea of missing the mark, right? The goal that you have, you're missing the mark. There's not the awareness that's there. A lot of his work is in the space of present.

moment awareness and that oneness is when we step into the present moment and we're not letting the past and the future hijack our brains because when you're present you see the joy, you see the gratitude, when you're not in your thoughts of negativity and other things that are there. So I often think about this because there are so many people that, you know, the most, quote, stupid, right? Most stupid, the most ignorance that's out there is people that usually through their, you know, circumstances of the community that they're in, how they're

race or in the case of Nazi Germany, the ideology that was at the time, the propaganda that was there, you're ignorant because you're in this milieu, right? And that doesn't again mean that there's not right and wrong, but it's like you feel for somebody in that and you still have to fight for what's truth and justice. But does anybody wake up and choose ignorance? No. I don't think they choose it, but once you see it, then you're required or you should act on it. but also at the same time, like, let's look at mental health, for instance. If we look at mental health, there's a lot of people who really care and want to do good, especially with the epidemic that we're facing with mental health.

But there's a lot of practitioners being given the wrong tools to help people. And then there are a certain level of people at the top that are then pushing certain ideas or certain medications, for instance, as we saw in the past with pain medication. And then it's pushed as a solution. And then later on, we find out that wasn't a good idea or that was actually, actually very damaging. And I think that's what we have to be careful about. My whole goal is I don't want to, I don't want to criticize the practitioner. I want to give them better tools of what they can use for their patients, for their people to help them. I believe we have to give greater tools

and understanding and awareness of oneness and separateness to help people who are in all fields of what they're doing and how they're doing it. So what you're saying is so true. I don't think anyone chooses ignorance. I think there's really good people in this world trying to do good things. Sometimes we believe the lie. That sometimes we often believe the lie. And we're actually fed a lie. And there are people, some people that do know the truth and know the lie and they're still choosing to do it and act on it. And sometimes those people are people in decision-making positions that then dictate the policy for everyone else or the company or the food.

For instance, we know all these other countries that have banned glyphosate. But we still have abandoned here. So the fact that we have abandoned here, we know what it's doing. We know it's harmful. We have all these countries that have banned it, and we're not. I believe in many ways it's criminal about how we're acting and how we're approaching it. Because that at the physiological level, you're literally creating a dividerous separation in your gut health and your gut lining and causing leaky gut, causing all these issues with your gut ecosystem. So if you look at it that way, too, there's, I mean, we go really deep with all of this.

But I believe, like, there are people that are making decisions that should be making better decisions, and they're not. And then as we become more aware of what, you know, sugar can do, too much sugar. Am I against sugar? No, but a little bit of sugar is okay. You're talking about a lot of added sugar. A lot of added sugar and a constant use of it. And kids that are consuming sugar constantly, what it's doing to their body and brains over the long term, we're going to find in the future that it wasn't very healthy at all for them and it wasn't very good for them.

It was actually harmful to them. We're going to find out more and more about that over time. The problem is usually it's 20, 30 years later, the damage of cigarettes, the damage of the things. But there are often people crying out, crying out, sharing the truth, sharing the reality. And other people poo-poo it, they don't listen to it, they ignore it. And then there's a shift that happens at some point. And then eventually that truth becomes the dominant narrative and the understanding. And then something else emerges.

And it's so interesting that that's our journey. Trust me, I'm trying to figure out why and how. But that's a journey. It's like what is true is often harder to share, but eventually it takes hold than when it does, it changes things, but then a new lie emerges and then you have to now live up to deal with that lie. Well, it brings up the bigger question, you know, in the space of spirituality is that could it be any other way? Could it be other than the fight for good and evil? And is that consciousness looking back on itself?

Or is that God, right? why did God make man in his own image? Right. Right. What was the reason to even have? Do we want play things? Do we want this? Like there's a need for oneness source to reflect back on itself.

And that's a lot of what the Hindu, Buddhist traditions, Jane, which I come from like, I don't identify by any religion, but I come from the Hindu and the Jane tradition. You know, in that sort of belief system, there's a belief that we are all as the expression of consciousness created to, basically solve the puzzle because when you're source and you are there, whether that's a God or a universe or whatever, how can you see back upon yourself if there's not some sort of ability to reflect back upon yourself? So within those traditions, it's like it couldn't be any other way that the universe is constantly expanding and then it contracts, that there is constantly the hero's journey and then there's the awakening at the end. We, we, we, we, we,

we are in the process of spiritual beings that we're constantly in that evolutionary pathway. Like we need the tough times to become, you know, good people. And yeah, anyways. But it sounded like that sounds like a very narcissistic creator, though, a narcissistic guy that is actually, you know, that has just, that's your humification of it. That's you projecting your idea. And I get that that comes from your belief system. Listen, I'm not trying to convince you or anything.

No, no, I'm just created. I'm just rationalizing. That has created us. to reflect back on itself. But my only thought is you were saying that is, but you have a unique soul that's unique to you. I think that's meant to be who you are here. I think that's the humanification, right?

Well, let me ask you another question, okay? Let me ask you another question because we didn't come on this podcast to disagree, but it's also okay, it's okay to disagree. I love it. Do you feel that there's- A lot of people still love them? Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.

Do you feel as you've been paying attention to space, health space, everything like that, have you also been looking at the world of psychedelics, in particular psilocybin. How do you feel that fits into this? Have you ever had any experiences if you feel comfortable to that? I have not. But it's funny because the conversation came up the other day with a group of men I was with talking about this very thing.

And a couple guys did it. Other people were against it. I'm actually doing my research on it. I just had Ben Greenfield on my podcast. Clearly, he's against it now, plant-based medicines and so forth. I believe that what we're seeing with it, it in a healthy way that for people with real severe trauma, people with PTSD, since soldiers coming back from the war, they've done a lot of studies with this and a lot of experimentation.

We don't really fully know what we're doing, I believe, fully yet. But what they're doing is as they do it, they're seeing that people are being helped by it. And I believe the reason why is what it's doing is it's opening up your brain. It's getting your brain to operate at a higher frequency. it's connecting to a higher frequency, a greater consciousness. And in that, you're moving then from separateness towards more of a feeling of connection and oneness. And in that connection and oneness,

it's why a lot of people report feelings of love and be able to work through issues that they had in the past and a moving away of separation. So in that regard, if you're helping to do that, I believe that it's actually going to be very healthy and helpful if it could be done in a very safe environment. The scary part is if you believe in a spiritual world and you believe that there's good and evil, when you open yourself up to that, there are moments and that's why people also have bouts of

really dark experiences doing psychedelics, that you can now tune into a demonic force. You can tune into some dark energy and dark forces that can really affect you if you believe in that in the spiritual realm and if it is a battle versus good versus evil. So you have to be careful for that as well. So different dynamics. So I'm open to it in a very healthy way. in a way that establishes connection. But I still think eventually you can have that feeling.

You can experience that oneness, but then from there, you can also have then where you retreat back to feelings of depression and so forth in separation. So I believe ultimate healing still happen. In anything. And I still feel like that's why we have to continue to heal. Continue to tune into the positive.

T-U-N-E. Trust and truth. Unite with love. Neutralize the negativity. elevate your thinking. Every day we have to tune into that. And when you do it on a daily basis, you become more whole. I have an acronym for prayer as well. I'm a big believer. And I really believe you can tune your mind by praying on a daily basis and a way to pray that helps you connect more to spirit and more to spiritual. And that more to God. And if that happens, you'll have more

healing. So I think, I think the psychedelics need to be rooted in something and connected to something to have healing take place. But do they serve part of the process and do they serve ultimately healing? Yes, I believe we'll find that there are some good uses for it. Yeah. From the people that have had on my podcast

like Dr. Roland Griffiths, from John Sopkins, from my own experience earlier this January, I took my family, my mom and my dad, my wife, my brother-in-law. Y'all did it together. And we went to an assisted psilocybin experience in Hawaii

and we had one of the most meaningful experience of our life. We were with a group. Then knew what they were doing. And a lot of experts that have come on this podcast, functional medicine psychiatrists, other people have shared that, you know, this has to be done with intention, working with people, working with the right group. And that the value, if you're really going to get the value from it, you have to pay attention, not just to the actual ceremony.

It's about all the work up front. And most importantly, the integration work in the back. anything can be a throwaway. You could have an insight on one moment and then nothing changes in your life. But if you treat it sacred, which comes from the root word sacrifice, you have to sacrifice things

to allow you to tap into what's possible, right? That there could be a reminder because I believe when we're all young before the trauma really sort of like kicks in and some people are born right into trauma. You were mentioning your biological dad leaving very early kids have a natural awareness. Now, they may not be able to have the intellect and the language of what oneness is,

but there's a sense, you know, you see a baby and how present they are coming straight from source and from women, that there's an inherent sense of, you know, something that's there, right? Purity that's there. And naturally through life's experiences and different things that imprint upon us, we forget about that. And my personal experience with psychedelic, which I don't think are right for everyone, right?

From the national surveys that are out there, about 8 to 9% of people have a bad trip, wrong situation, wrong circumstance, not getting assisted. A bunch of different things can contribute to that. A lot of people doing it in a party setting, which I don't think is the right thing to be doing. If you have a good experience

and you're working with somebody great, my personal experience is not a recommendation, was that I got back into a remembering. And I have my daily spiritual person. practices. I have my daily version of what prayer looks like to me. I have my daily meditations or my, I'm not a daily meditator, so let me clarify that. I have my moments of mindfulness and then my infrequent meditations that come into the mix. And there was a return to, oh my gosh, these are a few things that I forgot about. And it does seem from the national surveys that

are there and the work that's been done, especially by Johns Hopkins, that I'm most excited because I'm more worried about weed, alcohol, right? Those, if you talk about demonic forces, right? Like, those things are more likely to bring in and are more associated with violence, negativity, abuse, all the things that are out there. In particular, it's not cool to say right now, but I've had one employee and then also a close friend have weed-induced schizophrenia. Right?

I'm very worried about, you know, that sort of component, which is different than CBD and people using weed for cancer therapy, pain management, etc. etc. But I'm very excited about the potential of it to pull people back, especially on maybe some of these heavier medications that they've been using. And again, I like to dabble a little bit in history. Go out there in Google, you know, there is this, the history of the Catholic nuns in saffron. Right. Okay. Do you know about this? So at different stages, this even happened with alcohol in the Catholic tradition. Okay. And why monks got. into sort of becoming brewmasters and what they felt that the role of alcohol was to sort of

connect them with the higher source. Right. This happened with saffron. So there was this group of nuns, I believe, that were in Italy, who discovered that when you sniff saffron, concentrated source of snafron, it sort of elicits this happiness feeling. Oh yeah. Right? Dr. Amon recommends it.

And so now these days people use saffron sometimes in blends and supplements and other things, but it has a deep history of using certain tools. or things that could be, and I'm not saying that that one group speaks for all of Christianity, but there is a history of using different things, but it's all about doing it in a mindful way. I love that. And the thing is, as you just said,

what's the root of it, what's the purpose of it, what's the intention of it, and why are we doing it? And what is it rooted in as we move people towards oneness, hopefully with the plant-based medication and medicines of what you can do and how you can do it. Let's get into taking action.

Yeah. Right. When you start to understand this is important, when you start to become aware of these five and six Ds that are preventing you from getting to the seventh, right? Yep. What do people do? How do we take action from there to begin to actually head towards on a daily basis? The more your whole, as you were saying earlier, the more your whole and you're feeling connected, your decision-making process is different.

You do see things more clearly. You don't feel as, as, as. ignorant. You don't really feel like you have as many blind spots, although you may still, but you just see things a lot more clearly. So the goal is that clarity then leads to more focus action because of what you're seeing. I truly believe when you do feel one with other people and you feel one with everything, you start to actually want to help the one. You go after the one. You go after the one who feels lost. You go after the one who's feeling challenged. You want to make a greater impact in this world. You realize you're going to die one day. And guess what? The person

you help is going to die one day. And then their kid is going to die one day. Like we're all going to die. I often ask this. Okay, if we're all going to die and everyone you help is going to die because we'll often say, well, the goal is to help the next generation, but they're going to die too. If everyone's going to die, what's the purpose of life? And I believe that appearance is temporary, but essence is eternal. And so I believe that as you move towards oneness and wholeness, you see that essence is everything. So what am I bringing forth in my everyday life? What kind of essence am I bringing?

Am I bringing love? Am I bringing in unity? Am I bringing purpose? Am I bringing a caring soul to others? Or am I bringing division? Am I separating? Am I dividing? Am I arguing?

Am I focus on defeating? What's the goal? And so I think as you move towards oneness, you actually want to make a greater impact in this world. And you realize that every moment, moment is an eternal moment to make an eternal impact. And that's what matters most. Because, again, we are an eternal soul living a temporary space-time reality.

Again, that's pretty deep. This eternal soul is living here right now in this experience, but it's also an eternal soul living in eternity forever. And once you understand that, then you realize, okay, that's the eternal reality that I am meant to impact right here right now. So when we're having this conversation, we care about each other, And even in our disagreement, when there's love flowing, I still feel one, even when we disagree, right? Someone who's really charged in a certain subject may not.

Again, that's where the division comes in. Going back to TV. I often say that the TV today is the Bible of the Fearful. It's the Bible of the Fearful. People worship the TV and worship what they're saying on TV. We were designed to worship. It's why we worship things. It's why we worship sometimes people.

We're not meant to worship people or things. We were designed to worship. were meant to worship a creator, a higher power. I believe that. And so as we move from things to people, from things to eternal souls, then that makes you focus everything on making a difference in this world, on making an impact right here, right now.

So just to clarify, because we were talking about action, so is it that you feel that you have to have that belief first or you'll be thrown off or no? Can people still take action? I think you can take action tomorrow. And sometimes you're going to act even when you don't believe. But at the same point, I was talking to a good friend of mine, Garrett Kramer. And I want to give Garrett credit.

He taught me high state of mind, low state of mind. Garrett is a non-duality teacher. And he is brilliant in a lot of ways. And it's so funny the other day he talked about evil, which in years past our conversations, he never believed in evil. And now he does, which is interesting. We've had a lot of conversations. And I talked about my son, who was searching for his purpose and dealing with a lot of anxiety.

And I said, Garrett, he just needs to start to serve. He needs to start going out there and just making a difference and start to live on purpose. And then his purpose will come. And Garrett says, no, John, that's not how it works. When he remembers he is one, it reminds himself of the oneness that he is, that he's connected to everyone and everything. out of that oneness, his purpose will flow. Because you can go do it, and you can go to that local shelter,

you can go to that local school. You can be there, and many teachers feel this way at times, and they can be so discouraged, so down, that they can lose their purpose, and they can be there, and you're taking the action, but there's no intention or purpose behind it. And if there isn't, is the action going to make a difference? I would say it is, because people do not,

have one moment where they awaken. It's a gradual process. Even look at your story, right? There's a reason why you found your Christian faith later on in life. Right. At 35, 36. Yeah. You were on a journey. Somebody could look at that and say, why didn't you figure that out earlier? Well, you had to go through those circumstances and situations to that. So I actually think the world would be a better place if now we don't want to be doing things simply because we think we're going to get a return on investment right but i don't think that you have to fully be stepped into oneness there could be the sense of actually i'm going to make a difference i'm going to go down to that shelter that's over there and you know what there's probably a lot of atheists that would be become better human

beings just by spending more time in service right just like there would be you know other people a lot of christians would become better people 20 more times in service yeah so Don't you think independently certain actions contribute to people on their journey, especially if we look from your perspective, right? The Christian perspective. I don't have a Christian perspective. I don't live life from a Christian perspective. Isn't your belief in God a big navigator of how you go about this?

It's really more. To me, it's not a Christian perspective. It's, again, it's truth. It's a truth's perspective of oneness and healing. And then explain to you by the teachings of the Bible. And look, none explained to me by those experiences and those truths came. to me, but not even know they were in the Bible. That's what's crazy.

So you'll find the truth everywhere, as I said. The story of Adam and Eve is an ancient Jewish story. It's not a Christian story. It's an ancient Jewish story that existed before the New Testament was even written. Yeah. And the Bhagwagita is way older than that. And there's Buddhist texts and a way older than that. And the Cherokee story, the two wolves, the positive and negative themes in these story.

The teachings of these story, the universal truths of these stories. Yes. And the two wolves is the story of duality of a choice between a positive and a negative. It's the same story being told in pop culture when you have the angel on one side and the devil on another and the main character of a movie and they're both talking to them. Same story between the two wolves. They're both speaking to us. Which one will you feed?

Right? Which one will win? The one you feed the most. It's the same truth told throughout different generations and different stories, different traditions. So to me, I'm a one truth. I'm a seeker of the truth. I wasn't looking for Christianity. I wasn't looking for that.

I was looking what's the truth and what explains oneness and separateness? You will not find good and evil in many places, right? That really is explained more in the Christian tradition, the Christian belief, understanding of separation and oneness. I think it's through the Bhagwitah fully. Of separation and oneness? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

It's a story of good and evil. Okay. And it's, I mean, most of what you talk about mindfulness, all the things, you realize, like, that would be blasphemy in the Christian tradition. But mindfulness and meditation, again, contemplative prayer, contemplated prayer. Even the idea of having your own relationship with God, that was outlawed in Christianity. It was through the church that you have a relationship. It was a born-again Christian movement that created that here in the United States. Again, going back to, I'm not a fan of religion.

But if you actually go to the source of Jesus' teachings. the teachings are clear about oneness and understanding about oneness and experiencing that. Yeah, I don't deny that. I think here's where I was trying to come to. You had mentioned something, which said, if you just go down to the shelter and you do it, right? I just want to make sure that people who are in their journey of on oneness and are working on getting there, right? I don't think anybody officially, it's almost like looking back, you're like, oh, I've been in that place of feeling oneness. are we discouraging certain actions because we feel like we have to have somebody arrive to a

conclusion or a belief in oneness. So that's genuinely, I'm asking. I agree with you. Take action. I do believe we should take action. Yeah, definitely take action. But I'm saying taking action is not ultimately the answer because you can take action and not have any essence or spirit behind it or intention behind it.

And if there's no connection behind it, the action is actually going to be futile. But do you feel like sometimes certain actions end up creating a situation where that action is more likely to put you on the roadmap to getting to that place? It looks that way from an appearance perspective. It looks like. It seems like to be the reality because you see people's stories and everybody arrives to their conclusion of oneness in different ways. Different ways, different experiences.

But again, that experience was what you were going through and experiencing. But was it the experience that made it happen? Is that the cause of it? It looks like it was. But it was actually your state of mind in that moment and the shift of your soul and your energy in that moment that leads to it. I guess here's the reason why I'm asking, right? Genuinely on behalf of the audience who is like really listening to you and is like paying attention is like, I feel this. I believe in this.

Regardless of maybe where they come from, they're saying, okay, and now what? Of course. You know, pick up a copy of the book. They can read it and feel it inside of there and really connect with those stories. But like, what do they do from here? I would say one first, remember your one. Okay, got it. I would start with that.

Which is a work in progress. Right. But no, but it's not a work. It's just remembering your one. Like to really know that you are one and meant to be one with everyone and everything. And that in that oneness and that connection, which right here, right now in this exact moment, you can actually know that, be aware of that. and the more you go through life with that understanding and that awareness, that will change everything.

You talked about Eckertoli. The more you're one with the moment, the more you're actually experiencing and thoughts fade away and you're not thinking about the past or the future. Which is very hard to do. We've had Andrew Huberman on this podcast a number of times. And one of my favorite quotes of his is that, you know, the way to quiet the brain, right? And he has his whole Huberman lab is often through the body. It's tough to quiet the mind with the mind.

It's tough to quiet the brain with the brain. It's just a lot of what neuroscientists have found themselves. I agree 100%. So it's often through, okay, so. It's actually often through heart. What's that? It's often through heart. So it even could be through heart as a concept, but even the activation of, okay, let's

use breathing, whether that's the double sigh, as Andrew Heumman talks about, whether that's a practice that my mentor taught me called falling still, right? There's got to be some sort of vehicle into it. often when you leave people to their own devices and they're thinking, they're like, okay, if I just think hard enough, I'm going to get there. Right. It's, it's tough because everybody's mind is that their, you know, your mind is always doing the best that it can with a level of consciousness and awareness that it has.

If you were aware of a different way of doing it, you would have done it already. Right. So I guess I'm looking for the vehicles to get into there, right? I mean, you've talked about meditation and mindfulness. You talked about gratitude. Right. Those feel like vehicles and regular practices. So once you step into remembering, is there.

anything else that can be done to bring us towards source? Yeah. So I'm going to share it again. I'm going to share from my perspective and what I'm sharing that I believe will help a lot of people if they actually start doing this. And it's P-R-A-Y-E-R prayer. Okay. And P-R-A-Y-E-R prayer. Okay. And P-S, you start with praise. You start with praise, worship, worship. If you don't want a praise guy, you don't want to worship, then just practice gratitude in that moment. Gratitude is the ultimate prayer you can actually say in the ultimate praise. You're grateful for everything that is given to you. Every other. thing that you're experiencing, you're grateful for this life that will connect you and start to move

you towards oneness. Or, you may not like this one. Other people may not like this one, but it's to repent. And it's to ask for forgiveness. Forgive yourself, forgive others and ask for forgiveness for the things you've done wrong and the things that have been done to you. So you let go of. And if you're forgiving, you can also release. A great way to think of forgiving is releasing. I'm releasing other people for what they've done to me and I'm no longer going to hold on to that. Why don't people like that? I mean, that sounds like a universally beautiful thing.

I love it, but some people don't like the idea of repenting. They don't like that idea. They have a need for repentance. But the idea is that you're holding on to stuff and you let go of it. So you repent. And I do that. And then there's A. You ask God for what you want.

You can say the universe, but I believe there's a God who created the universe. The universe is a medium. It's an echo. The universe is like saying the universe. Tell me how the universe changes your life and the impact you. The universe is for you. How can the universe be for you? There's no intelligence to the universe.

Where do the intelligence come from then? There's an intelligence, right? So there has to be an intelligence who designed and created the universe. You know, that's the humification of things, right? I'm a humanifier. Okay. So you have this ass. So ask God, ask for what you want.

And by the way, I just want to add in. I don't know when this episode airs probably the next week. It's going to be right around. We just had on a neuroscientist. And she even talks about this. Ask out loud. Because even if you just look at things, which is not your perspective, you don't feel, you don't have to clarify.

Like, we know that's not your perspective. Right. That even if you just believe that the world is atoms and randomness, you are priming your brain when you ask. Right. Right. And I do believe in there's elements of law of attraction as a man thinketh, as a woman thinketh, what we think we then so often create what we think we can become.

Even that's just training your brain to look for stuff. Just like if you started to say, I'm going to. I'm going to look for red. I'm going to look for red. You're going to start seeing red everywhere. The same way you're doing that for the things that you're asking for in life. And if you don't feel comfortable directing that towards a God or seeing universe or you don't have a faith yet maybe for people who want the journey, then it still can be something that's beneficial. And so you ask. And I love the idea of asking Abraham Hicks, ask and it is given is a teaching that's been around for years and years and years. The law of attraction is asking.

But I believe, you know, you're asking for your daily needs to be met. You're asking for. What are some things you ask for? Right? I mostly ask for the health of your family. I mostly ask for the health of my family. I ask God to show me the direction that I'm meant to go in. I ask for wisdom.

I ask for brotherhood. Brotherhood. Good friends. Good friends. Relationship. I ask a lot for my kids. My kids are 23, you know, now. And then my daughter is about to be 25.

So I just ask for God. What's their spiritual or religious journey right now, where they are in life? They've both been on a journey. My son, you know, was struggling for a while and, you know, just even in his faith and anything. And I never pushed religion on my own kids. They can believe whatever they want to believe. And again, my wife being new ages for years, you know, Buddhists and many other different religions along the way, we've experimented. And we've experienced a lot and thought a lot and read a lot.

So, but for my kids, I would say my daughter would identify herself as a Christian and she is someone who is of the Christian faith. And my son is developing a much stronger connection to God. Yeah. And again, our idea of religion is a relationship with the creator of the universe, a God who loves you and connecting with that God who has a purpose for you, a plan for you, and has you here for a reason and wants to live through you and live with you. as you create this life. Yeah. And allows bad things to happen and allows struggles to happen and allows challenges to happen. Because God's ways are not our ways.

And so it's about living life, understand that you're going to face challenges, but you can't do it alone. And so it's our kid's journey and their belief that, you know, their goal is to have more of a connection to God. And they know that in that connection and that oneness, they'll find more power and healing instead of feeling so separate and disconnected. So they ask. They're asking, I'm asking. Big part of that prayer is really to ask for what you want.

But knowing that and trusting that, you might ask for what you want, but you might get what you need. And so, but you are asking. And then there's why. Yeah. And why is where you yield. And that's where you would love this, probably surrender. And so in yielding your surrendering and your trustee, and you surrender, and you surrender, and you surrender self. You surrender pride.

You surrender ego, which stands for edging God out. You're surrendering your ego. You're surrendering all the things that make you focus on yourself instead of being connected to this greater power, to this greater strength. We don't even talk about where the ego comes from. That's a whole other conversation. But the ego comes from a soul that actually is focused on itself. Because your soul actually is a unique spiritual DNA expression of who you are.

So that's what gives you a sense of self. Otherwise, you would just be spirit and just oneness and experience that oneness all the time. But once you have this soul, it gives you a sense of self. Yeah. And by the way, you know, the soul is like a very Western concept, right? So just just sharing that, that that's a very new addition for a lot of people to step into that we all individually have a soul. It's Western. It's been in the Bible for years. If you study the Bible and read and read and go through the... Well, if you look at like the Adam and Eve story, it's that God breathe into Adam. Right. And that the belief in the interpretation for a long time in Christianity was that when you're born, that's God's breath. When you die, that breath comes out of you. And there's, and there's, There's no soul and there's no activation of your body that independently exist until Jesus decides to come back on this earth and bring you back into things.

So then the Old Testament understanding would be that he was breathing his spirit into you and then his spirit was now becoming your spirit. I'm just saying that the word soul is not a thing. But it is a New Testament understanding which is not a Western. Translated as the word soul? Yes. Okay. I got to look into that.

I will definitely undereducated. I have it on my phone and I will give you the interpretation. the interpretation because I studied this with a theogen as I wrote this book to make sure my concepts were correct in that. Since I was blending spirituality and science and all these different teachings. Yeah. And again, my book is going to raise a lot of questions. It's going to make people ask a lot of questions.

It's going to make them think. Is it providing the answers to everything? No, but that was the point. To write the answers to everything, I felt like it would be about a 500-page book. But I've had someone say this book feels like it's teaching you the secrets of the universe. and the understanding of everything. And once you understand it, it will then help you explore more

and think about more things. And I love the conversation with you because you're challenging me. And it's not even challenging you. Was it asking? No, but you're challenging certain assumptions and also making people who are listening think about it for themselves as well.

And their own beliefs, their traditions, what they grew up with, what holds them back. A lot of people who are practicing other traditions and religions were early Christians or were Christians when they were growing up and they had bad experiences in the church or saw bad actors of the Christian faith

who hurt them that caused them to retreat from the faith. Best advice I ever got is I was a seeker was, don't let Christians keep you from Christ. And a lot of the people, even though the New Age faith and tradition, will believe in the Christ energy is what they'll call it. But they don't like the idea of a Christian religion. And I totally can get that and understand that. Well, they don't like the persification of God.

And also the betrayal that they've experienced, right? Is God a guy with a beard hanging out up there saying, you know, do this, don't do this. No, no, God is so beyond our comprehension that we can't even fathom God. He's got a man. We can't even fathom God. I can't even answer that.

A lot of them, a lot of them. They can't even fathom them, the interpretation of it. And obviously, I separate all that. I separate all that as a difference between that, which might be, you know, words are so limiting. And words and how people understand God is highly dependent on the current climate of the world.

Right. Political climate, this. Back in the day, when we were living in the deserts of the Middle East, a lot of the interpretation of what heaven was was filled with water, that there was an abundance of water. There was these natural streams. You know, there's a book written as like, what do you look at crazy terrorists who were suicide bombers?

In living in a society where they're deprived of intimacy and sex, their version of heaven is 70, two versions that they're going to, right? So like you have these crazy extremes that are different aspects. And I separate out. I can see that somebody has a connection with source, with truth. And that can be real, even if their interpretation doesn't maybe match your interpretation, but that doesn't take away their connection with source. And you can see like this person knows. They've tapped into something. And that's true and that's real for them. Right. I don't have to deny that. Of course not. If I don't have the same.

interpretation that they have. And I would never judge anyone for what they believe. I think, again, the minute you judge, you're actually violating your Christian faith if you actually judge others because you're not meant to judge others. That's actually part of your faith. Sure. Well, a lot of religions, not just Christianity, have used that over the years and say, well, we can judge people because we're the chosen ones. They're the right ones that are there. It's not judgment if you're fighting for God. It's not judgment if you're trying to change somebody's religion. That's how a lot of religions operate for a lot of times. As a Jew is my chosen one? as a Jewish person

because the Jews believe they're the chosen ones. As we've been, wait, did we finish, so we did, do we finish all the acronym? No, we got to get to why. Why is surrender

and surrender, which I love. I love how we just bouncing around, but E is really cool because PRAY has been around. People have talked about that. But E is where I knew there was more and it's this, expect. So when you ask and you surrender,

you expect, and again, I believe you expect God to deliver. on God's promises. You expect miracles, and I think it's okay to expect miracles. I don't know how. I don't know which way it's going to happen,

but I expect a miracle in my life. I would often say, show me a miracle, God. I am open. God, I need a miracle here. Show me a miracle. Miracles when you were kind of on your journey and you're changing your life around,

going from negativity to positivity, changing your relationship with your family, not being negative around them. What do you remember as being one of the earliest, you know, you're a best selling author, you've written a ton of books, millions of copies sold.

You'd like really turn your entire life around. Do you remember an early miracle that stood out for you? Yeah, the energy bus was a miracle. Just walking one day. That's your, that's an old book, by the way. We talked about it last time that you wrote. Wrote it in 2006,

came out in 2007. That's a miracle. I'm walking one day. I'm praying. I had been on the Today show before the book and got on the Today show, did a four week series, get energized today.

And everything started just to crumble. Nothing was working well. I wasn't getting a speaking. People said my life would change because the show went great. Full week series on the Today Show. It was a great show. You're going to be the next, you know what. And everything just sort of stalled.

It was during that time that I'm walking, I'm praying. And that's when I started to become a person of faith. It was during that time. And as I'm becoming a person of faith, I'm now praying and I'm walking. I'm like, God, you know, I trust. And next year, as I'm walking and praying, the idea for the energy bus came to me. And I wrote the book in three and a half weeks. I remember you mentioning that.

divine inspiration. And every book I've written is taking about three and a half weeks. And I wrote the book, rejected by over 30 publishers, finally gets published by John Wawa and Sons. Bookstores wouldn't carry it, became a huge hit in South Korea.

That was a miracle. It was one of the miracles because I remember thinking, like, how's this book going to get out there? No bookstores would carry it. Wow. And just because it wasn't on their radar, it was on their radar.

It's not because of anything you wrote. No, it was a self-development book about, it was personal. It was positivity. Positive energy, law of attraction there. It was purpose. It was love. There's all these different elements,

but it was about a guy who was miserable and negative, and it was his team at work and home, and no one ever had written a book about personal and professional and combine them together. So that was unheard of back then. Again, this was before we've been moving towards well-being and social well-being and health and so forth. The book hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list a week ago

and the week before that, all these years later. So it's still out there, still selling. Wyndham Clark read it before he, launched his successful bid for the PGA, won the PGA tournament two weeks ago. He said he read the energy bus, changed his mindset, and then won it.

Told everyone who was on the Golf Channel, golf digest, next to know, everyone's now reading this book. It continues to still happen like that. There's something special. So the process of that coming together, the divine inspiration, even before the book took off,

even the miracle of you getting a download. It was a download. It was a download. It was literally a download. And I started writing it. The miracle of writing this book as was coming to me because I didn't have all 10 rules,

one chapter at a time and I ran this book, that was a miracle. And then to become a bestseller in South Korea, to get the largest foreign rights deal while he had ever done because I didn't have a lot of money. Literally largest foreign rights deal ever was the energy bus sold to these two companies that were competing. One finally outbid the other. $220,000 was the foreign rights deal for that book.

My advance was only $30,000 for the book. And so that was like unheard of. That was a miracle, like another miracle. Going on the tour, 28 cities, going from city to city, five people, 10 people, 20 people, not having a successful tour. Coming back, Jack Dill Rio, getting the book in his hands, reading the book.

He was the coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, an NFL team, invites me to speak. Ever since I've spoken to the Dodgers, the Rams, the Miami Heat, all the biggest teams, all the great coaches. I get to work, Clemson football, all of them started big as objectively read this book. Another miracle.

So there have been so many miracles. And then I prayed for miracles when my son was struggled, my daughter was struggling. I prayed for them and miracles for them. And I've seen miracles happen in their lives. Even my daughter becoming a speaker now and how that happened. She was working at Nobu. meets a woman out of the blue who's having bad service.

And my daughter helps her. It is nice to her. Next thing you know, the woman says, can I pray for you? daughter's like, sure. And the woman starts praying for. My daughter starts crying. They're both crying.

And she says, I believe you're going to be a speaker. I believe you're supposed to speak around the world and make an impact in this world. This woman didn't know what I did. Didn't know this was my job. Didn't know that I've given thousands of talks. We've written all these books. And then she spoke that to my daughter. My daughter calls me up.

I'm going to do this. And now my daughter literally is on fire. Impacted audiences, making a difference, wants to truly impact people's lives because of this woman, a stranger, spoken to her. The funny thing is the woman said to her, I believe that God brought me here across the country to Nobu in Malibu to have crappy service so that you would come up to me so I can change your life. So funny. Yeah, very powerful. So expect miracles. Expect promises. Like you're praying, you're asking, expect. I think so often people pray and they don't expect anything to happen. And that, to me, is real faith. Like, that's the difference

between someone who has a real faith and someone who does it. When I ask God for something, I believe that God is the Father, that he will deliver on his promises, and he will deliver something to my life. And there's a onness and a relationship. I also believe that the more you become one, that you'll start to hear the voice and you'll start to receive downloads. And so often it's a whisper, But you'll start to receive downloads, ideas, wisdom, and God will start to speak to you and through you. But if you don't have that oneness, it's hard to hear that voice. That's why stillness, meditation, prayer, making time for that is so important

so that you can start to hear the voice instead of all the distractions that are coming your way. And for me, that's what's happened. Every book I've written, I get downloads, I get ideas. And it started with those gratitude walks every day. Yeah. I've practiced in gratitude and tuning my mind when I wasn't a believer in God. and I was just walking every night.

Yeah. So then the last one is R. And this is where we receive. And I think a lot of people don't take the time to just receive. You expect it. But now receive it. A lot of people don't feel worthy. So they never receive what God, the universe,

whatever language you want to use has for them. And so they don't feel worthy. Don't think they deserve it. There's this term out there, a phrase that says, people are afraid of success. They're scared of success. I don't believe that at all. Like, no one is afraid of success.

They're afraid they don't deserve success. We all would love to have success and wealth and everything else. We feel like we don't deserve it. So we're afraid that we're actually going to realize that we didn't deserve it if we get it. So it actually goes to our imposter syndrome, our feelings of unworthiness, and it's also why we don't receive. So we're meant to receive all that God has for us. And when you receive it, so what do I ask to receive? I receive your blessings.

I receive all the people are meant to help. I receive all the wisdom and guidance along the way. I receive all the clients who want to work with me and benefit from my gifts and talents. I receive opportunities like this to be here with you and share this. I receive the work that I'm meant to do and the difference I'm here to make. I receive all of it.

I'm here to be a conduit, not for myself, a conduit for your miracles, for your peace, your joy, your love, your abundance. Make me a conduit. Make me an instrument of your peace and all that you want me to do and be to go help and serve others and I receive it. And once I do that, I'm in a different state. I'm in a different mental state, a different soul and spiritual state.

And I believe doing that day in and day out, I'm tuning into that higher frequency. And I'm tuning into that voice that I can listen to. And doing that each day has been a game changer. Had my wife do it because my wife was struggling with a lot of negativity. Recently you're saying? Yeah, recently. Funny story. My wife is struggling with all this negativity. She goes, I'm getting older.

Not going to be like I was when I was younger. She's talking about physically. I'm sore all the time. My body feels like it's, you know, getting old. I wish I was younger again. Talking about the past, talking about how she feels, a lot of inflammation, just a lot of things like that in general. I'm not going to play sports like I did when I was younger. So she was just going so negative.

I said, honey, where is this coming from? I know where it's coming from, but I knew it was happening. So I go away to a speaking engagement. I come back and all of a sudden she's like a different person. She's walking around all energetic. She's feeling great. She's all energized. I'm like, okay, what's going on here?

Have you found a boyfriend or something? Like what's happening? She goes, no, no, I talked to the health coach. She was doing this health coaching where they test your blood, your DNA, your genes, everything, really intense. Yeah. And she said, I was talking to the health coach. And the health coach said, this is really rare. We don't see this often.

You have the genes of an Olympic athlete, is what they told her. Wow. So now she's like, I am an Olympic athlete. I am powerful. She was going to play tennis tomorrow? I'll crush you because I'm an Olympic athlete. She's literally saying that all the time.

There was a shift in her mindset. Mindset perspective, elevating her mindset. All of a sudden, now she's thinking differently. I kid you not, the sureness goes away. The pain goes away. She starts working out harder. starts training. I now share this on my talks

because I say, she said, I am. What would happen if you said, I am powerful? I am strong. I am a difference maker. I am here to overcome this challenge. I am here to help others

and make a difference. I am a conquer. I am, you know, a change agent. I am someone who wants to impact the world. You say whatever it is, I am. I am healthy. I am whole. I am one.

It's actually the end of the book says, spirit I am soul I am one and once you say I am things start to change you start to speak life and who you truly are so that experience with my wife and seeing that just shows and helps us understand the power of that and so she started praying P-R-A-Y and literally within a couple of days she's like oh my god I'm feeling different right like this is amazing and going back to your experience like you know with your family which I think is incredible that you had that experience with with the sylisibil sylocibin psilocybin right that I didn't say right right

but that experience, I wonder like, could you have that same experience if you all went to a retreat together, like an on-site in Nashville? Oh, we do everything. We go to retreats together, Tony Robbins. My parents are deep in the Hindu tradition. They're super involved in service. So in doing that together, though, but in doing that together, could you, I'm wondering, like, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Can prayer have the same impact if you do it every day? And I don't have the answer. Yeah. Will it have the same impact if you do it every day and have some of these spiritual peak experiences that people have? Can you have the same experience as you would have if you did a, say, a psychedelic to get you there? If my family, for instance, went to a place and we all got together. And after three or four days of really intensive therapy and working together through our issues and prayer together, could we walk away, change and transformed and feeling connected and feeling love?

Would we have the same or do you have to have the other to get there? Look at it as like, could you get the same thing as it, you know, from brain scans is very clear that the amount of neurons that light up. Yes. Right? I've read that and I've researched that. When you are on, in particular, psilocybin in the brain, you have all these, you know, neurons that wire together, fire together.

People who have had the same thoughts, the longer you live, the longer your brain is in age, the harder it is to see outside perspective. There is something that's there that it's tougher. It doesn't mean that it's impossible. And obviously, you know, you talk to a bunch of people who read your books and it gives them a completely different perspective. Right. But the amount of neuropathways that light up when you're on something like a psilocybin and how quickly it happens. And that doesn't mean that it's for everybody.

And there's a lot of reasons that people shouldn't do it. Right. But there's obviously that's something clearly there. And what you're talking about, prayer, offsite, retreat. Like, I'm like, why not do both if you can feel that you're ready to be. for you know both and obviously one science to study that like there's there's a researcher

in he's a neurotheologist and so he actually studies prayer meditation of all different religions on the effects of the brain newberg newberg studies all these things and it's really cool so again just from a practical research standpoint sure I would love to study

you know psychedelics and love to study the effects of prayer and what lights up for instance in the neurons of the brain and can we have an effect? Because people do feel high when they're done with meditation or prayer. Yeah, people feel high with a lot of things, but in particular of those,

and there's people who are really good at it that have honed their craft. Right. You know, Tibetan Buddhist, meditator, teachers, monks, you know, and their ability to activate and change their temperature in their body, downregulate their heartbeat, their level of control. But I would love to see that as well, too.

But what really gets me to where you're going is from everyone I've talked to who has, who have done psychedelics, it is interesting that so many of them do report this feeling of love, this incredible feeling of love and connection that comes through. Well, it's even more so as you, that's first the sense of oneness. Yes. And when you recognize oneness, you're only left with love.

It's not even like love is the entry point. It's the recognition of oneness. That love flows from that. And then you're only left with love. Okay, I have to share this with its whole, W-H-O-L-A. W is, for me, it's walk with God. And you're walking, the goal is healing. and in your healing you become one.

And in your oneness that leads to the L, love flows. And as that love flows, then what happens, it elevates your mind and your soul. So as love from the oneness now elevates your mind and your soul at a higher level. And now you operate at a higher level. So that's whole, W-H-O-L-A. And that's my word for the year.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, I heard that in an interview with Ed Milet. That is your word for the year. John, this has been great. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for letting me stress test some ideas and ask for clarification. I love it. You know, I love people fully being themselves.

And at the end of the day, you know, one of the most important things is it's like I understand how important belief is to certain religions, that the primary entry point is belief, right? And I also want to layer on top of that that I would say that a lot of people do feel this, you know, similarly is that show me how you. you talk to your wife. Show me how you talk to your kids. Yeah. Show me your service in the world. Show me how, show me your schedule. Yeah.

Right. Okay, great. You believe what you believe. But show me all that. That is a good reflection of is this belief really a knowing. Yeah. Right? Because I think that there's a difference between belief and knowing.

Yes. I think belief is I believe this. It's a very mental concept. A knowing is really that oneness. that knowing is like, this is just true to me. I don't even have to believe it. It's just true to me. And how somebody's behavior is in service

and how they take care of their family and how they talk to people, how they treat other people who have different opinions than them, how they fight against injustice, there is evil in the world, how they fight against injustice with still this recognition

that knowing that most people are still good and that evil is like less than 1% of the people that are out there. And often a lot of people, that we think are evil have just been temporarily hijacked and they want to be good. Yeah. That are there. No one really wants to be evil.

Nobody wants to be evil, right? Nobody wants to be evil. And I feel like that's who you embody as an individual. You know, there's a story that my dad would tell me growing up from the Hindu tradition. And it's a story of a young boy who was born to two parents and both parents, unfortunately, were blind. And as he was born from the most of the most of the most of the parents. moment that he could start walking, he was responsible for his parents who were in extreme poverty.

And day in and day out was focused on the basic needs of his parents who went blind later on in life, feeding them, serving them, providing for them, all while living in extreme poverty, working a job, but then having to come home, plowing the fields and having to come home home. Everything. He had to sacrifice marriage. He had to sacrifice education. He had to sacrifice everything, but his duty, or as we call it in the Hindu tradition, his Dharma was, I'm here for my parents. This is just, this is the situation that we're in right now and I have to do what's needed for them. As he got older in age and his parents started to become ill, they ultimately one passed away and then the second passed away of broken heart syndrome, right?

You lose a loved one and your heart is so broken. You end up passing away. And he was mourning the loss of his parents and he went down to the local river. to just have a little bit of a moment for himself after they had been, you know, in the Hindu tradition, you burn the bodies. And that's part of returning to source. That's what their belief is. And then you put the ashes inside of the river.

So he was there putting the ashes in the river, taking a moment for himself. And then, again, in this mystical sort of fable and story, God presented himself in the version that is there, it's Krishna from the Hindu tradition. God presented himself and showed up in front of the young boy. And the young boy looked up and said, wow, Krishna, like, is that really you? And he said, yes, my beloved, this is me. I'm showing up here to talk with you. And the son said, how are you here?

I never had the resources to study the Gita. You know, you could apply this to the, you know, you could say, I never had the resources to study the Bible. Right. I never was part of the church community. I didn't get a chance to go to the church. The boy didn't have a chance to go to the temple. He was so busy with his parents. He said, I never had the time to devote to you because I was so devoted to my parents. How is it that you're here to greet me? And God said to him, Krishna said to him, that you were so devoted that I am here

to pay respect to you. Wow. You were doing my work even if you didn't have the resources to even understand who I am. And that story, every time I hear it. And you could apply that to you to different traditions, fates, and everything. I love it. I love your work because it reminds me. It's the intersection of everything that you know to be true to you, even beyond belief of your Christian fate, not that your books about Christianity,

but your work, your influences through them. But it's also the component of the devotion to first ourselves, changing our own mindset, stepping into positivity from negativity, and then of impacting the world around this. Because once you've been born with that awareness, once you have that awakening of oneness, you don't want to stay in just yourself.

You don't just want to make more money for you. You don't just want to provide for your family. You want to give back to the world. And I feel like this latest book is the culmination of that. So I just want to thank you and honor you for coming on the podcast and presenting your work and information. I appreciate that story. That's a great, great story.

And the reason why you want to go help others and not keep it to yourself is because you see that other person as one with you and as a part of you. And I think once you know that and experience that, well, to knowing, as you said, I believe, I can't believe something unless I know it. It has to start with the knowing. So the knowing that, okay, that person is one with me. That leads to your belief of how you believe about that person, how you believe you should act towards that person, and then what you should go do for that person. And so there's a difference in that. And any time I'm arguing with someone or someone cuts me off on the road, screams at me.

If I'm in my old patterns, right, my old dysfunction, I'll look at that. I want to argue back. Yesterday, my wife and I were riding a bike and we had someone yell at us, you know, in the bike. And my wife, you know, yelled back. I'm like, honey, don't, like, you don't even know them. Just keep riding. It's okay.

Like, you don't have to argue. Like, move on. In two seconds, we'll be away. But the guy started arguing back to her. I'm like, now I'm going to have to fight to protect my wife. And I don't want to do this. Oh, no, we're going to see the social media clip of you getting to fight with somebody. I don't want to hurt someone right now.

Like I don't want to have to do that. So I think, honey, I don't have to protect you. Like, let's just move on. Yeah, she had a moment. She had a moment of reaction. And you know what? Guess what? We're all going to have moments and bad moments.

Of course. And it means, guess what? We're not God. We need to still have some growth within us. And as part of our journey, we just have to continue to work and grow and get better. And so, thanks for saying that. And I'm on a journey too. I want people to know I am by no means perfect.

I don't have it all figured out. But I can tell looking at who I was and who I am now, I know I'm growing, evolving, and I'm changing for the better. And I believe if I can change for the better, we can all change for the better. It's a beautiful message to end on. John, how can people keep in touch with you? You have a podcast? Can you tell a little bit about that?

Positive university. Positive university. Positive university. Comes out weekly? I have to have you on so I can now, I can debate you a little bit, grill you a little bit. You can grow me. I'm definitely not, I think I mentioned to you.

I'm not an expert in anything, so I don't really go on a lot of podcasts. have a great conversation. I want to have this conversation on mine. That would be a lot of fun too. So positive view and then also Instagram, Twitter, at John Gordon 11, J-O-N-Gurton 11. The website is johngordon.com, j-on-gordon.com.

Amazing. We'll have the links to all those in the show notes and also the new book, The One Truth. It's available. A link in the show notes. John, thank you for being here. Thanks, Drew. Appreciate you.

Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend

who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter. And it's called try this. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes

that's called Try This, or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.