Know Thyself - E78 - How To Make 2024 Your Best Year Yet: Joe Dispenza, Gabor Maté & Sam Harris

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

To celebrate the beginning of 2024, we’ve compiled some of the most notable moments from Know Thyself this year. Each clip features an expert in their field, sharing how to make the absolute most of your next year.  We hear from Dr. Gabor Maté, Sam Harris, and Mooji to explore the human predicament of the toxic culture we live in and our tendency to habitually sleep walk through life. We then hear from several others such as Dr. Joe Dispenza, which will give you the insights to transcend this hypnotic passivity and transform your life from the inside out. For anyone looking to start and grow a THRIVING podcast - Check out our comprehensive Podcast with Purpose Course: https://www.podcastpurpose.com/ ___________ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 1:48 Transcending Our Toxic Culture - Dr. Gabor Maté 8:25 Awakening From The Prison of Our Thoughts - Sam Harris 14:31 Who You are Beyond Your Mind & Identity - Mooji 22:57 Stop Playing Small & Shine Your Light - Marianne Williamson 27:32 10x Your Life and Self-Source Your Power - Marisa Peer 35:45 Quantum Leap Into a New Reality - Dr. Joe Dispenza 43:55 The Secret to Manifestation: Merging Being & Becoming - Dr. Tara Swart 51:04 Unlocking Your True Genius - Richard Rudd 54:32 Practices for Finding Joy in Life - RY X 1:00:33 Daily Rituals for Transforming Sadness Into Joy - Mike Posner 1:05:46 My Reflection: Trusting the Seasons of Life ___________ Watch the Full Episodes: Dr. Gabor Maté - EP 33 Sam Harris - EP 47 Mooji - Ep 77 Marianne Williamson - EP 61  Marisa Peer - EP 68 Dr. Joe Dispenza - EP 48 Dr. Tara Swart - EP 71 Richard Rudd - EP 49 RY X - EP 52 Mike Posner - EP 65 ___________ Download André's FREE Book Recommendation List: https://www.knowthyself.one/books Know Thyself Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ Website: https://www.knowthyself.one Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKg Listen to all episodes on Audio:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927 André Duqum Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ Meraki Media https://merakimedia.com https://www.instagram.com/merakimedia/

I very frequently get asked this question. Andre, what is your favorite of all time know-layself podcast episode? And it's so hard to answer because they all uniquely really impact me differently, as I hope they do for you. But what we've gone ahead and done in this episode is compiled some of the most replayed watch and personal favorite moments of mine together to give you some key insights and awareness into making 2024 your best year yet. We first start out with Gabramate, Sam Harris, and Mugi to explore. the human predicament, the toxic culture that we live in, and our habitual tendency to sleep walk through life. And then we go on to some others, including Joe Dispenza, to share some key insights

to really transform your life from the inside out. And then we move on to some final guests to share some tips and actionable insights for you to apply in your day-to-day life as you move into this year. This past year has been a wild ride. From the conversations I get to have the guests I get to sit down with here on Know Theyself, the insights. The insights. and awareness that I personally get firsthand, the growth of this channel, and who I get to step into as an individual by really owning this and seeing a blossom in the world. And so just genuinely from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you for coming on this ride with me. Thank you for showing up and doing the work and being a part of the change on this planet and for really enabling

me to do what I love to do, what I would do for free and what gets now be a full-time thing. And believe me when I say that we are just heating up, we have a lot in store for for 2024 and I'm excited to go on this ride and journey together. I hope that you enjoy these 10 selected moments to empower you to step into 2024 with clarity, with alignment, and with presence. There's a podcaster and writer called Tom Hartman, his name is, and in one of his books, he said that a culture can be nurturing or toxic. The analogy actually for me as a physician comes from laboratory science. If you're in a laboratory, you're growing organisms, microorganisms,

and you put them in a dish called a petri dish, and you give them a certain broth, and your intention is to have these organisms proliferate and grow properly. And if they do, then it's a nurturing culture. But if large numbers of them got sick or died off or it didn't reproduce or were dysfunctional, you'd say it's a toxic culture. So how to judge whether a culture is toxic or nutritious or nourishing is how are the organisms in that culture thriving or how are they suffering?

Now, if you look at this society, and I could go through the statistics, there's a lot of suffering. People, I mean, it's all this wealth, but I don't know if I have to prove it to you. There's a lot of suffering. There's a lot of pain. There's a lot of pain. there's a lot of people hurting each other, people hurting themselves, people being hurt, people achieving all the successes that the society has to offer and being miserable despite the successes or perhaps because of the successes. So that's what makes it toxic for me. Now, if a culture meets the needs of the organisms, in other words, then it's a nutritious

and nourishing culture. If it doesn't, it's a toxic one. Human beings have certain needs, which are very different than the assumptions that are basic to corporate capitalism. Because the assumption in this system is that people are selfish, that they're greedy, that they're aggressive,

that they're competitive, and that they're individualistically against their fellow human beings and that's why you succeed. Well, human beings actually, if you look at from the point of human needs, it's very different.

How did we evolve as creatures? We evolved in, for millions of years and hundreds of thousands of years. And even our own species, Homo sapiens, sapiens, we've been on the earth for 200,000 years. For

95% of that time, we lived in small band hunter-gatherer groups, where we were together with our families the whole day, with the kids spent the whole time around the parents, when people had to cooperate in order to survive, where wealth wasn't defined by what you achieved, by what you gave away, where collaboration was necessary, and this was the case until a blink of an eye ago.

So in other words, our needs as defined by our evolution are for community, they're for contact, therefore collaboration, therefore connection, which translates into giving and receiving love and giving and receiving care. Children are born with certain essential needs. I've mentioned some of them. They need to belong in an attachment relationship where they feel absolutely safe and inside that relationship they have to be free from having to work which means the child shouldn't have to work to make their relationship work they shouldn't have to

be good pretty compliant smart they should just be no work to be no work to be accepted that's the second need rest from having to work to make their relationship work the third essential need of the child is to be able to experience all their emotions all their emotions, which means all the emotions that our brains are wired with by evolution, which include connection and love, playfulness, curiosity. But they also include rage, anger, and grief, and fear. And children should have the freedom to experience all that without being told that such and such an emotion is not acceptable.

And we have the need for free spontaneous play out in nature. That's a human need that we share with all other mammals. And play is much more important for brain development than school is. Actually, I don't mean play with this, by the way. I mean spontaneous creative play. Okay, that's all the needs of children. As adults, we have the need for connection and belonging, for meaning, and for purpose in our lives.

These are needs. You deprive people of those needs, they're going to suffer. This overdose crisis in the United States, last year, over 100,000 people died of overdoses in the US. You know that more people died in one year of overdoses than American soldiers who died in the Vietnam, Afghan, and Iraq wars put together? Why did these people die? If you actually look at, they've been called deaths of despair.

A lot of them were people that, where they used to be industry, there used to be a sense of community, meaningful connection, meaningful activity. Though to globalized corporate capitalism, all I got hollowed out, people lost their sense of community, the lens of belonging, and their sense of meaning and purpose. One of the responses to that is addiction. So that's how important these needs are. and this society simply fails to provide for those needs of children or for adults.

So it's toxic. So could you share your thoughts on how thought in general, and the close identification with thought is very much like being asleep and what it means to essentially become awake from the slumber? Yeah, it's a good analogy and it really is more than an analogy. neurologically. I think we, when we're thinking, we are doing something quite similar to what we're doing when we're dreaming. I mean, when you're asleep and dreaming,

your thinking is no longer constrained by your sensory experience, right? You're no longer perceiving the world and interacting with the world. And so it's no longer, it's no longer getting, trimmed down and interrupted, punctuated by, by, you know, your perceptual apparatus. When you're dreaming, it's just, it's all thought, right? So you get fully captured by it.

But it's still very much the same process. So it is a kind of hallucination. It's a kind of, you know, just as when you're asleep and dreaming, unless you're having a lucid dream, you're not aware that you're asleep and dreaming. your mind just seamlessly transitions into this new condition. And you don't even remember enough about your life to be surprised, right? You go to sleep and then all of a sudden you're, you know, arguing with a friend you haven't seen in 10 years, right?

In a restaurant you've never been to. And, you know, you are so unaware of the reality of your life that you're not, you don't even think to be surprised. by this transition. I mean, literally a moment ago, you were asleep and you're safely in your bed, and now you're in some new, impossible circumstance rather often, and sometimes it's a total emergency, and yet you are so fully identified with being the dreamer of the dream

that you don't even register surprise. The most surprising thing about ordinary dreams is that we're not surprised when they appear, because it's a complete failure of reality testing. There's something very similar happening, every moment of the day when we're thinking and we're unaware that we're thinking. I mean, you're just, you know,

you're making a cup of tea and you're thinking about a meeting that you're gonna have in five days and you're getting anxious, right? That is a kind, it's a miniature psychosis, right? It's completely crazy to have, to be unaware of this process where you begin to imagine this future circumstance,

which may in fact not even resemble the circumstances, you're going to find yourself in in five days. And you're unaware of this process. The thought sneaks up on you just as a dream does, and you don't register any surprise that all of a sudden you're no longer aware of even making tea. You don't even feel your body in space. You're barely see what your hands are doing,

and you're elsewhere talking to yourself about something and perhaps visualizing some circumstance. and it's, it's, discouraging this negative emotional state, which you're then now, you know, living the consequences of. And that you're, your next thought, very likely is gonna be, oh my God, why am I this sort of person? How do I, well, you know, why am I anxious about public speaking?

What, like, I gotta, you know, maybe I should go to Toastmasters. And you're, you're thinking, right? And you're unaware of this conversation and it is completely trimming down your mind to conform to this, you know, in this case, an anxious state. I mean, this is the character of our lives moment to moment when we don't see a difference between being identified with thought and just recognizing thought as this automaticity that just appears in consciousness all by itself.

So, I mean, there's something very similar between ordinary thinking and ordinary dreaming, and there's something similar between those two states and what we recognize to be psychosis, who are actually mad and walking the streets to talk to themselves and talking to people who aren't there and just living out the consequences of their psychopathology in front of all of us.

The crucial difference is that they're much more, their behavior is so unconstrained. Like the difference is, you know, we're all talking to ourselves, but we know enough not to move our mouths, right? Throughout the day, a psychotic, I mean, the bright line between normal psychopathology and psychosis for many of us is just the people who can't help but actually verbalize what they're thinking.

And they may know it's inappropriate or they may just be so caught. They're completely unaware that anyone is listening to them. But we have this basic psychosis already in normal consciousness. We are talking to people who aren't there. You know, we're talking to you. When you're talking to you,

When you're rehearsing the argument you just had with your mom or your wife or your, you know, somebody in a store and you're playing it out in memory and it is kindling this negative emotion of anger or impatience or frustration or regret or whatever it is, and you're not aware of all of this. And you may be driving your car and you're having this conversation covertly in your head. I mean, it's totally normal, but it's completely crazy. It's just, it is, it is, you know, it's nine-tenths of what a psychotic has and yet it's normal. So meditation, you know, by, for lack of a better word, is the remedy for that. And that's, and breaking that spell. I mean, it's not an, it's not an accident that waking up is the ancient metaphor for just what the process is of breaking that spell and no longer being identified with thought. One way in which people really identify with themselves is through their own thoughts.

They feel that they are their thoughts very strongly. Yes. These thoughts that are arising out of an identity structure and it's who they perceive to see themselves as in the world around them. So for most people, that's a very foreign idea that I'm not these thoughts in my head. So starting there, how can you share that we are not our thoughts in the process of disidentifying with them? Okay. Well, you cannot be... Actually, I'll go more than that, more than thoughts.

You know, whatever you perceive, whatever you experience, comes and goes. You cannot be that, because when they appear and we are engaged with them, they feel very real and very present and belonging to us. But then they move on, and they come and they go. and if you were that when they go as they do and they must you would also be gone

but something is here to witness here that's over the wasness of it everything comes and goes so I liken it that the deeper being the deeper awareness is a bit like the infinite sky and our thoughts and experiences are the clouds floating floating by.

And from an seemingly external perspective, it feels like, yeah, there's all these skies like the skies like the skies is like that. But from behind the clouds in the vastness, is

untouched by them. And from that perspective, nothing sticks. Everything is floating by, has a momentariness about them. So at some stage, as we deepen and mature in

to a real understanding, a real seeing, it becomes automatically more clear that it is like that. And so the tendency to cling to thoughts or ideas or philosophies or whatever, it gradually lightens up and more distances felt. We can begin to experience or perceive

or the world with more detachment, which is quite a healthy thing, actually. We are suffering from an overload of attachments. to things which are ephemeral by nature, including the very idea of who we are, is ephemeral. That's always changing also. So it must be something deeper than the layer of condition that we accept to be the evidence of ourselves.

That is also floating by. Nothing sticks in this. There is something, though, must be there to recognize nothing sticks. Earlier I gave the example because someone, and asked, you know, you often use the word like consciousness and beingness, but we are not

able to relate to these terms. We don't have a, you know, we don't have an image of that. Could you give us a practical guide to help us to understand what you mean when you say consciousness? So I gave the example that if I'm doing this

with my hand like that, no? I'm aware and you're aware this movement is happening. But is my awareness doing this? I said, no, no. I'm aware, but the awareness is not doing. The hand is doing this.

If I change it like this, is the awareness changed? No, it is unmoving. Supposing this represented our thoughts also. They come and go. Is my awareness of them different? It's same. There's a stillness

from where we gauge the movement of life and the world of thoughts and people and things and ideas. They appear and they may seem to be enticing for our soul for a while, but they drift on. And even the person we once thought we are or were, that also that shape cannot be held. Everything becomes recognized as phenomenal and ephemeral and that there must be something that recognize

that which is changeful. So whatever you can recognize, whatever you can perceive, cannot be you, that which perceive it. You see? No, that doesn't sink immediately for many people because of this very strong idea that, no, no, no, no, but I see all these things,

but I want to be able to become more knowledgeable or more grounded in this. But even that standpoint of identity, one day is like this, another day also change. There is, what I'm pointing to it, there's a deeper nature in us that does not fluctuate. It's ever present.

I call it that field of consciousness. I just indicated or referred to that from the place where the example of his awareness moving like the hand is moving. I say, no, that's stillness. And yet we give very little attention to that. And yet this is at the very heart of self-discovery. You see?

Because there is an idea that we can learn everything. Yeah. Yeah, you know, everything is attainable. Right. But even the very faculty that enables things to be perceived and understood, that also is not permanent. If memory is the medium that holds the information, the information about the world and life,

that also is fatable. That also is not stable. There's something beyond even this or so. Because we can say that, you know, the memory itself is, memory also is going. You can say my, you can go to a doctor and say, my eyesight and this eye is out

gauge at like 65% and this high is only like 25%. So something sees the ability to see and the ability lessened by something. That, an intelligence is seeing this also

and is seeing that moods come and go, thoughts come and go feelings come and go. Even if I were, if each one was given the opportunity to write a synopsis or something about a life history and autobiography, I'm sure if you had to keep doing this for over three years,

it will keep on changing. It's nothing solid, you see. At some point, we'll find all that the senses have to offer, all that the natural world has to offer. It's a vast kingdom. We could go on and on and on. but at some point the human beings

are compelled by some force to have a deeper search because all these things without a real understanding and knowledge of our innate nature it will not be fulfilling as much as we

desire and attain what we desire they're always higher regions to go and go. There is some inner guiding that we may not be so conscious of it, but it brings you to where you need to be. And then there must come from you once the taste, you've been touched by some taste, then we will not need so much outer encouragement.

The fruit of that taste will, will itself encourage you to go more deeply? The biggest enemy, the opponent, what the course calls the ego self, is the very idea of a small and separated limited self. Now, that small, separated, limited self, which is really nothing other than a false belief, is given life through the faith we have in it.

So if I recognize that actually I am one with God, therefore all of the power of God is within me when my mind and my heart are aligned with his power, that the power of God flows through me, that within that space of love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, all things are possible. That small limited self says, no, don't go there. Because if I go there in that moment, that small self dies. So to the extent that I identify with that small self, which the world tells me to do, the world says you're a body.

The world says you were born and then you die, whereas, for instance, the course says your physical birth is not the beginning of your life but a continuation. Your physical death is not the end of your life, but a continuation. If you open up to that, then all those false beliefs dissolve, and the part of you attach to those false beliefs, that's very scared. Now, you can't, what the psychotherapeutic approach of the world is, is, well, just try to make things better within that small limited kingdom. You know, take your prison, you know, and gild it with gold. But the spiritual approach is realize you're not imprisoned.

It's the prison of your own making. You know, I read an article once about elephants. And these elephants were encaged in a fenced area. And then they took the fence down. But those elephants, they didn't realize. Now, I think that probably changed. I don't know because I don't know after what happened. But at least at the moment, they still stayed within that cage.

Because the thinking of the world tells you that you are a being within that cage. And it's terrifying. It's a perverse comfort zone. So it's terrifying to assume that we are bigger than that. And then the ego mind says it's arrogant of you to think that. Well, from a spiritual perspective, what's arrogant is to think that you're the small self. Because God doesn't create small selves. God only creates greatness.

So we have arrogance and humility upside down. So beautiful. And it's interesting because running for president, one of the things that I see is, how dare you? Who thinks you can do that? on the U.S. Constitution, the affront, not just to the patriarchy or anything like that, the affront to the ego mind, because I see as much of that, how dare you from women is for men. And it's such a testament to this belief that no one should be able to do that. Well, actually, everyone should be able to do that.

That self-created prison that we create for our mind, that identification and attachment to this identity that we have that is attached to all that unworthiness and self-doubt and self-shame. That later part of the quote talks about how as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. So I'd love for you to share how our own self-awakening, the ripples that that has on the world is huge. Well, the first thing is we all,

and I do think women do this more than men. There's this subconscious belief. If I play a little small, you'll be more likely to approve of me, which unfortunately is, true. Because in ways that I just spoke, if you really claim, well, why not me? There are people who will not be happy with you. So the people pleasing aspect is a large part of the answer. Why do we do it? Because we're afraid. We all want to be loved. And that's the courage involved in standing up for who you are. The courage to know, some people are not going to like this,

but there are other people just waiting for you to get there. And you're not attracting the other people who are playing the game that big because you're still hanging out playing the game that small. And one of the ways you play that game small is by trying to appease people who are playing a game that small and get very threatened when they see you not doing that. But then you realize actually when you do play bigger, people love you for it. It's just a kind of view, often a different group of people. If you have that passion to 10x your life, then it's already in you. So go ahead and follow it, you know, the only thing that ever hold you back are your beliefs. And human beings are fragile. We have these people who are fragile, easily broken. We're not. Human beings are resilient and

strong and tough. And they have a massive bounce about how do you think of our ancestors, what they went through with no sanitation having 10 kids. So we've got a great life. We're so lucky. So I think you have to, first of all, think of yourself as a big rubber ball. If you believe you can bounce back because people who make it, isn't they haven't had adversity. They've heard no. They've been rejected. They've been fired. But they bounce back. And that's the big thing. If you can bounce back, then you'll do great. So if you have that passion to 10x your life and be a speaker, be a coach, write a book, create a program, then it's already in you. You've already got the desire in you. All you have to do is get it out of you. And what gets it out of you is confidence,

self-belief, determination, and working hard. And I think a lot of people have forgotten that. They think they just have to manifest, just sit and go on and it will all fall down from the sky. But actually you have to do three things to manifest. The first is really spend a lot of time saying, I'm worthy, I deserve it, because 80% of your success will be down to that mindset.

The second step is to really look at what you want. Do you want to write a book? Do you want to write a program? Because whatever you require will require something of you. And so you've got to think about, well, what do I have to do? Like, what did Eminem have to, you had to go out and put it in a song? When Ed Shearren wanted to be a singer, he was singing at bus stops and sleeping in a park, he was busking just to get that feeling of people who've got to hear my music. He's now, I think the wealthiest solo artist in the world. But he had to do that thing.

First of all, really believe I'm worth it. I've got a song. I got a voice. I'm not going to die with music inside me, I've got to get this out. And then he saw what he had to do, which was to busk, to sing outside train stations, tube stations, bus stations, until he built up the confidence to then go and get the contract. But if you do step one, I'm worth it, you have the courage to do step three, which is go out and get it. So believe you're worth it. Take a long, hard look at what you require. What does it require of you? And most of all don't do the third that which is go out and get it, go out and put yourself out there, take some risk, you know, show people your work, your book, your painting, your art, your idea, your visions, but you can't do

step three if you haven't done step one or step two. And it's all about self-belief, you know, belief without talent will take you way further than talent without belief, but if you have both belief and talent, then you'll be unstoppable. There are people who have tremendous people who have tremendous belief and no talent and they make it we look at people like if i said the Kardashians that probably sounds unfair but there are reality stars who have very little talent but extraordinary self-belius other people who've got tremendous belief tremendous talent but no belief and they don't make it because the belief will take you further than the talent but if you have both you can be amazing it feels like after step one and two and you start to go into the action yeah it's like life

tests you to show up and see if you'll really show up to see who you say you want to be. Yeah, and people see a delay as a denial. It's just a delay. I mean, you know, I was a writer. I can remember still sitting in my house and hearing that thud and knowing that was my manuscript coming back through the letterbox. And I heard that thud a lot because they only send it back when they don't want it and you think they don't want my book. No, I've got a delay in getting this book published. You know, J.K. Rowling had that thud many times, but she just put it it back in the post to someone else and put it back in the post and she, I know her saying that the little folder she put it in, they never sent that back and that was costing her a few

dollars. She didn't have a few dollars, but she did that thing. She just kept resending out until it got signed. And that thing, if you believe you have a gift and someone says, I don't like your book, you go, okay, send it to someone else who will. This is a delay. It's not a denial. You mustn't give up just because someone didn't like your book, your idea, your video. Your video. You're because someone else will, but you've got to keep going. And if you have self-belief, it's much easier to keep going. The thing I find really damages people. It might help your audience a lot is that when we're born on the planet,

when we're little babies, we only have four needs. And our need is to be safe, loved, significant, and connected. That's all the little baby needs. If I'm safe and connected, maybe my mom isn't here, but the babies will look after me because I'm safe, connected, significant. loved is important. And that's all a baby needs. I need to feel safe,

safe that you're not going to walk away from me, connect as you're going to meet my needs, loved and significant. And as we get older, we have those needs our entire life, but we have a few more, as well as safe, loved, connected, Sydney, we need to feel seen and heard,

celebrated, have someone who's proud of us and feel that we matter. And what happens is for many of us, those needs are not met at all. Our parents have been. busy, we go to something we feel different. And when our needs are not met, two things happen, only two. The first is we give the need up. I'm never going to find love. I try to got ghosted so many times. I'm never going to feel I'm mad or I've been fired from every job. And eventually

we just think, okay, that's it then. I'm not going to try anymore. I'm going to live at home with my cats and I'm just going to have a job that doesn't demand anything. And then I'm not going to have these needs. So we give up the belief that these needs are going to be met. The other group do something else. They give the need. They go like, okay, I'm going to find someone. They're going to meet all these needs. They're going to feel safe and loved and amazing. And I'm going to go through their phone and check all the time. I'm going to say to my boss, am I good enough? Are you sure? Did you like this? So we become very needy. We give the needs. Hey, someone out there,

I don't really care who is going to turn up and meet all my needs. So I'm going to give the need up. I'm going to give the need away. But neither of those. things work. What works? Is it again? Okay, let me go through those needs again. I need to feel safe, connected, loved, significant, seen and heard, praise. Can I do that myself? Can I, every day, hey, I'm safe to express my feelings. I've got something to offer the world. I'm lovable just the way I am, because when you start to meet those needs yourself, just by sitting and saying, I do matter, I am lovable, I am significant, of course, I can celebrate myself, I can be seen and heard. I can believe I've got something to offer the world. When you do that, it's the

opposite of needy. And we can all do it, no matter how weird it seems, just go through those needs and keep saying, I am doing a stellar job of meeting those needs. I'm doing a brilliant job, an amazing job. And then instead of turning up in the world as needy, you turn up in the world as self-assured because confidence is very reassuring. It's also very sexy. So you've got to think, okay, it isn't anyone else's job to meet my needs? It's my job. It's no one else's job to make you happy. It's your job. Someone else's job to make you feel amazing. It's your job. And that's good, because you can do that job better than anyone else. Every day, if you just did this one thing, every day you woke up and said, I matter, I'm significant, I'm lovable, I'm enough. If you just

said that every day, wrote it on your mirror, said it when you cleaned your teeth, set it over breakfast. And if you have kids, make them say it too, that small shift will change your entire life. Because when you state it, if I'm embody it, I matter, I'm significant, I'm love, or I'm enough, you're making a thought. And guess what, your body, it only has to make it real. It's starting to look for proof of why it's real. And whatever your mind looks through, it will find. In the midlife, your personality becomes pretty hardwired. if you keep thinking the same thoughts, if you keep making the same choices, you keep doing the same things, you keep creating the same experiences, you keep feeling the same emotions, I don't know, let's be conservative. He did that for 10 years. You would have to agree with me then that it would become more automatic, it become more unconscious. So your personality creates your personal reality. That's it. That is it. And your personality is made of how you think, how you act, and how you feel.

So keep thinking the same way, keep acting the same way, keep feeling the same way, your personality is the same and your personality, personal reality would be the same as well. So if you wanted to change your life, if you wanted to change your personal reality, you would have to change your personality. And then you'd have to start thinking about what you've been thinking about and decide if you really want to believe that any longer. And when does the story end? it's it's that moment that you become so conscious of that thought you're so tired of it you're so aware of it that you would never let it slip by your awareness ever again you catch yourself complaining and blaming and making excuses and feeling sorry for yourself and that's been your unconscious program then the moment you become conscious of those unconscious behaviors you're out of the program you're only in the

program when you're unconscious. And so it takes an enormous amount of energy and awareness to separate from those programs. And then there's those emotions that we feel every single day that are so familiar to us that we don't even know what they are. We just feel guilty. We don't even know what's guilt. It's just how we feel. And the stronger the emotions that we have to experiences in our life, the more altered we are inside of us, when the chemistry changes inside of us. The brain narrows the focus on a cause and takes a snapshot or a series of snapshots, and that's called a long-term memory. And so then makes total sense then that a person, every time they relive that event in their life, they're making the same chemistry and their brain and their body.

And their body's literally believing it's living that experience over and over again. And now the body's so in the past that it's the mind of the past. So then the act of becoming so conscious that you don't go unconscious is a changing of consciousness. How many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering that is the moment of change? And I looked up the word meditation. I looked it up. I wanted to know what that symbol meant and it means to become familiar with. to become so conscious of your unconscious self, to know thyself so well that you don't default back to that old personality. That's a set of hardwired thoughts and attitudes and beliefs, automatic habits and behaviors and emotional responses that are equally as automatic.

And the hardest part about change is not making the same choices you did the day before. And the moment you decide to make a different choice, I got news for you. Get ready. It's going to feel uncomfortable. It's going to feel unfamiliar. There's going to be some uncertainty. There's going to be some unpredictability. You're not complaining any longer.

Your body is going to go, well, what are you been doing for the last 30 years? You're just going to stop today. We've manufactured all these chemicals so easily. And the body's going to start craving those emotions. And it's going to signal the brain to do what? Think the same thought. Why? So it could make the same choice, or it can do the same things, or create the same experience, so it could feel the same emotion.

The person says, this feels right to me. No, no, no, no. It feels familiar to you. So the 95% of the personality that is an automatic pilot to know myself, we discovered that you don't walk around pretending to forget. give. That's not what it's about. You sit in the fire in the meditation and you keep working and selectively deciding what thought you do want to believe. And when it's the hardest, matters the most. If you were really truly, truly ambitious about your life, you would say before you got up in the morning,

I'm going to remind myself of who I no longer want to be, how I'm not going to think, how I'm not going to act, I'm not going to feel I know it's going to be uncomfortable, but let me just, when I step in that river of change, that biological, that neurological, that chemical, that hormonal genetic death of the cell, let me help myself here. What thoughts do I want to fire and wire in my brain? And with attention and with intention, if a belief is just a thought you keep thinking over and over in your brain, you can begin to install neurological hardware in your brain. keep doing it and the hardware becomes a software program and the side effect of that is that's a new voice in your head no magic there if you said how am i going to be with my ex how am i going to be with my co-worker how am i going to be with my kids what would greatness look like today what would love do today and if you closed your eyes and you rehearsed the scene the act of mental rehearsal just imagining something The brain, when it's present, doesn't know the difference between what the person is imagining in the real life experience.

And the brain is changing to look like the event has occurred. Keep installing that hardware and all of a sudden it'll become a software program. And you might actually start acting like a happy person. No magic there either. You primed the brain for that behavior. You installed it. This is the hard part for most people. Can you teach your body emotionally what the future will feel?

feel like before it happens. That means you're not waiting for your wealth to feel abundant. You're not waiting for your success to feel empowered. You're not waiting for your new relationship to feel love. You're not waiting for the mystical experience to feel awe. You're not waiting for your healing to feel gratitude. Let's the old model of reality of cause and effect. Wait for something outside there to change to take away this lack or separation or emptiness that I feel inside me. But if you begin to condition your body into the emotion of that future. And you could become familiar with that emotion because you could bring it up every day. And you could keep becoming more familiar with the way you're thinking, the way you're acting and the way you're feeling. If you actually feel the emotions of your

future before they happen, you'll never look for it. Why would you look for that future if it felt like it already happened? Get ready. I'm telling you, get ready because weird things are going to happen in your life. The side effect of that is the synchronicity, the serendipity, the coincidence, the opportunity, the unusual event that causes you to do the... I'm not talking about a parking space either. I'm talking about a real-life event where your world is rocked. And somehow you come to the awareness, the consciousness, the understanding that somehow you're creating this. and we move from being the victims of our lives to being the creator of our lives. And I want people to experience that to prove to themselves how powerful they really are.

And people have done all kinds of things as a result. I'm just curious how you navigate this dance between being and becoming. You know, the feeling of wanting to expand limently and create and do better financially and expand our career and express ourselves creatively. but then also coming back into feeling completely fulfilled inherently within your presence in this moment, you know. So I'm just curious how you navigate the dance. I'm probably going to say something you wouldn't expect me to. Go more.

So the gap between being and becoming is the greatest source of unhappiness in your life. So if you think about there's two circles. there's current self and ideal self or current life and ideal life. If those two things are overlapping, that's like 100% happiness. The further apart they are, the more unhappy you are. So I'm not saying that you shouldn't have goals or want bigger or better things in your life. but the way to get there is to be ultimately grateful for everything you have in your life right now. And to look at those two circles and think about them in two ways.

One is that I could strive to change my current life to my ideal life and understand what it is that you have to do to achieve that. And go back to what we said at the start, which is why are you trying to achieve? that. Is it because it's what you really want or is it because it's what everybody else is doing? Or you could say, I'm going to make my current life, I'm going to say that's my ideal life. I'm just going to be happy with the life that I have now. So, yeah, you know, I have an action board and it has things on it that I want and I look at it regularly. And we mentioned a book that we both liked before. So, you know,

as part of what I learned from that, I... Master key system. Master key system, yeah. Which, you know, you have to go through it and do the exercises, but what you understand at the end of that is believe in the truth of what you wish to manifest. So part of my practice is looking at the things on my action board and visualize them being true, feeling it in my body, feeling it in every sense, and then giving gratitude for the fact that they're true. But, you know, of course I work hard, but not overly striving to get things in my life that are going to put my nervous system out of sync,

you know, kind of being patient, like being on that path, but mostly just being very grateful for everything that's happening right now. I mean, I think, you know, if you're lucky enough to have come through the pandemic, healthy and not having lost a loved one, then what it made a lot of us realize

that, you know, you can have a gratitude list that's 10 or 100 things long and it can have so many amazing things on it. But really, if you can wake up every day and say, I'm alive and I'm healthy, that's actually enough. And it's a huge privilege because lots of people have really had to stare that in the face in the last few years, not being true. Yeah.

It's, you know, I feel like it's important to have goals and like a vision of a future that excites us. But if we always feel like we're not where we want to be, that sucks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I love how you just brought kind of the importance of how good we feel about life around us is the unification of both of those to where we are living a life of alignment and who we are being is in the becoming process. And we can still aspire to create things in life, which is beautiful because we're all inherently creative beings. And that's part of our nature.

But yeah, always feeling like we're just never fully satisfied or we're not where we want to be. that that isn't feel like a joyful life to be experiencing. No, that's a really lovely summary of it. And I think the reason that it's important is because when we are on this journey of becoming, we are achieving things along the way. But the natural tendency for a lot of people is to kind of say, well, I've ticked that one off. So now I'll put that behind me and I'll move on to the next thing. It's constantly moving on to the next thing and it's hardly ever really celebrating your successes.

So, you know, the gratitude in every day, but also celebrate. your successes, because all that's going to do is tell your brain that, you know, when I focus on what I want and I work hard around that and I, you know, live in gratitude and abundance, those things happen. And so that's going to move you away from the cortisol state of fear towards the oxytocin state of love and trust. And, you know, in which state do you think the law of attraction works more abundantly? It's so interesting to feel into that. When we attract things or we have a desire to create a successful podcast or release a book that does well or whatever our goals are. In a way for it to even come in, we kind of have to expect it. And so I feel

like we oftentimes don't create the space for reflection to appreciate what has been created, which is kind of sad because we're under the illusion of thinking that we're going to feel a certain way once we achieve the thing. But then we invariably achieve the thing and then we think the feeling is in the next thing. And it's just like this continual pushing off that feeling of a joyful presence into someday in the future. And so I think that's just such an important reminder to create that space for reflection. There's actually another piece of research around that, which I've never discussed before, but it's called the hedonic treadmill. And it's the most famous research around it is from lottery winners who, you know, let's say it's like it's multi-millions, you know,

It's life-changing, that obviously you become ecstatic for a short while, but it's shocking how quickly your happiness levels revert to what they were before. Another more day-to-day example that might be more what we're all used to, is that if you have a really delicious meal, when you eat the first bite of that, you release lots of dopamine and other feel-good endorphins and hormones, and, you know, you feel very joyful, but each successive bite has less impact and it returns to neutral very quickly.

So, you know, that's what we're doing. Like you said, we're achieving things, feeling happy for a short burst and then returning to normal. So it's like we're constantly seeking that reward. And so I'll just loop that back to how I answered the question in the first place. You can't be happy if you're constantly looking for something better. And gratitude lists, many things that you speak to can allow you to just, reflect on how probably for most people

that are listening to this, there are billions of people on the planet that would kill to switch positions in life with you right now. You know, like how grateful we are to have the basic luxuries that we have is so easy to forget. What do you make of the term genius

and how that becomes available to us and what that looks like as it becomes activated? That's a great question, Andre. You know, it's a simple answer that I feel, which is that the genius comes out of the presence of our being. You know, so it becomes doing, but it's not doing. You know, so it's so sinking into that being is our genius.

It's where we find it. It's a state of being present. You know, I mean, we read all this stuff, right? We've heard it for years. All the teachers and teaching simple things like live in a moment, da-da-da-da. You know. Right.

I read all that stuff for years. And I was like, yeah, yeah, that's nice, but like, I don't, you know, I need something to help me get there. And, but actually, after the journeys, you've been on it for a while, you kind of start to realize those very simple truths. They're eternal, you know, and they actually really resonate deeply. So it's very encouraging those things, I mean, for me, those things are true. And so I kind of feel for me, I've come full circle in my quest. And so a lot of the, yeah, a lot of the seeking has died down. And I'm now more into like the space of what's revealed from inside that genius.

It's revealed. It's sitting inside us. It's sitting in our DNA. And I think if you give the space for it and the transformation starts to shift you, in that transformation, those gifts, those creative gifts emerge. immense creativity lies inside us and I think that's what

contemplation unlocks huge creativity it's very creative and then that creative force starts to come out and you're like wow and it's a kind of passion as well we all have passion

and I think that's part of our genius and finally as that passion sort of emerges you're like wow there's so much I could do and it starts to open up your heart and then you start having those feelings if I could do anything I can save the world.

I have gifts. And so probably everything that you've ever learned or past jobs or past things or businesses that you've let go of or whatever it was in your past, things that you were good at, that you may be now left behind, actually, they might be a means or they might become part of what you can offer through this genius. So I always feel that like if you've studied something or if you've done something, it's for a means. a reason and it might come back and come in useful one day through the genius that you offer. So I don't know what, you know, in each person it's such a mystery, that sense of purpose, deep in a purpose. But for me, it doesn't matter so much what you do. It's just the being that it's the being that really matters. If you didn't do anything, it wouldn't matter. Just the being is enough. It's enough. If we knew that, like, it's enough just to be here. And any doing you

or achievement or anything you have, it's just a bonus. So if you're comfortable just with being, everything's a bonus. You know, so that's the genius for me. I'd say the biggest thing is looking into your life, really examining a lot. This is universal for anybody. Anybody listening. Examine your life and see where joy exists and arises. Not happiness. Happiness is very conditional. Happiness is a thing that comes.

Music is a place that makes me happy, but it's conditional. I also have a duality. It also takes me into other spaces. So what's the place in my life where I have a natural arising of joy? And the definition of joy for me is really where is love coming through without the condition of what it is itself. You know, where am I feeling love in my life without it based on being a certain way for me, especially in a place of grief, but generally. And for me, that relationship, when I really looked and examined my life in the core parts, it was pretty simple. It was the ocean.

And the ocean growing up on an island, growing up, going through family stuff, going through a whole bunch of things, like in my movement throughout, lessons into young adulthood and realizing the ocean was the place I always went to. So I brought it back to that place because when I go to the sea, I don't wait for the waves to be good to surf. I don't need it to be a certain way for me to find, you know, love and peace there. I just go and my whole being goes like, yes, it's a full yes, it's a melt into her, into that. and for me it was like my practice and discipline in this place is to just go to the sea every day regardless of the conditions to go and make that my practice and to start finding and looking for

what is beautiful in those tiny moments the way the water comes off the surface the way the wind does something and start to magnify those moments in your life like concentrate on the way the wind is through the trees look at that and stop there and stay there just for long enough where it expands and you start becoming an expander in your own self of what is beautiful in your life. And then your energy starts going to that place. And it can be tiny. There's this beautiful quote where it's like, if you can't get out of bed, it's fine. If a week later you get one leg out of bed, it's fine.

If another week goes past and your other legs out, you know, whatever it takes for you to get to that place. And I'm not just speaking about grief, but in general, if you want to go into your spiritual practice, If you want to go into your artistic practice devotional, just start doing and start walking and start showing up for that path and look for where joy arises and double down on that place and start to take the energy away from conditional realities

and put it into that place of unconditionally. Because that is the place where you really then have a foundational understanding of not being separate from things but belonging within it and belonging to it. And that, I think, think is one of the major things that starts to pull away from the idea of loneliness and pain is realizing like, oh, I do belong. I do belong here. I do belong as part of this existence.

Yeah. I could talk about those foul. Oh, it's great. It's so beautiful. I think we all fundamentally crave feeling connected to life around us. You know, when we fall into the illusion of separation, you know, and we live into the mental person that we've created for ourselves and the receptions that we have of the world. It's very lonely, like, non-enjoyable experience, but having those practices, and for me, for sure, being in nature is like the got to be one of the best ways to be able to just feel connected, because nature is connected to everything else. We are nature, as opposed to the definition. It kind of separates us from nature, actually. And so that's... I can think about, now that you're even speaking, it's like kicks my mind in.

And it can be a lot more analytical too. Move your body every day. Move your body. You know, go to nature. You know, be around the people that you love, regardless of how you are in that room. Just be around the people that love you being you. Those three things. And then commit to something higher, you know, devotionally in spirit.

With that, if that's the cornerstone of your life at any point, but especially when you're going through a hard time, move your body, get breath, release it through your body. Absolutely. That's a practice of mine every single day. I wouldn't go to the ocean and just sit there. I'd go to the ocean and run and surf and swim and play and move my body. That became a part of my dance with her. So I'd say there's more foundational, analytical things that you can place on it. But whatever is right for you. Yeah. But I think breath moving your body every single day, being in nature every day if you can, being around people that love you and that you love. you know i mean we could bring this back but like in death right in the conversation of impermanence it was this beautiful talk recently and we did this uh meditation on death and it was like at the end of life there's really only a handful of things and it's like do you forgive me i forgive you thank you i love you that's pretty much it you know and so what are we doing in our lives to live by that code every day, if that's all that really matters at the end.

And we have to have some understanding of this realization of impoteminence in our life to give us the block to move towards, to give us the goalposts to move towards. It's just you also have to include that while you're waking up and moving your body, while you're being in your spiritual, artistic, devotional practices. You have to have something that's larger than all of that to frame, because then you always have a balancing false in whatever you do. Still to this day, I want to be really honest and real. To this day, like I'm talking this morning, when I wake up, I feel like I don't want to get out bed.

I don't wake up like, fuck yeah. I wake up like, God damn, man, I do all this shit today. That's how I wake up pretty much every morning, not every morning, but almost every morning. I used to think that I had to stay, if I woke up like that, that's how, that's the state I have to stay in the rest of the day. I now know that is bullshit. I'm in control my state. My move, my energy. Look, none of us are perfect, but like, we have a say over how we feel.

So I don't be really real. Like, dude, I've made millions of dollars. I got known for a Grammy. I've walked across America, climate. I wake up and I feel like, God damn it, pretty much every day. I wake up, I put a song on that gets me out, yes. And I start, I start doing incantations. I'm going, I am joy, I am faith, I am love.

Yes, what if this is the best day of my life? You start to feel a little silly when you first start doing it. I'm like, dude, I'm doing this. I do this every day. Every day I'm like, God, I'm doing it. I put this little playlist gets me going to. I'm like, yes, yes, I start doing it. After a minute, two minutes, three minutes.

I'm brushing my teeth, you know, I don't get any going. I use the bathroom. I've still got the music on. I do as minimum, minimum 10 minutes every day of talking to myself. I am joy. I am faith. I'm looking in the mirror. I love you.

You know, like, I am a king. I'm unstoppable. I am the light. I used to believe that I used to demand the circumstances of my life, provide me with light. I now know that I am the light that shines upon my circumstance. Like I just keep saying it's saying, how can I celebrate all the blessings in my life? God has given me even more right now.

How would God see this right now? I'm Mike Posner, see here feeling no, my purpose is to give love. I might pose and see here feeling no, life is a gift. I'm like, bro, I might pose there are see here feeling no, life is sacred. I might pose. There were times in my life where I was close to death. In those moments, all I wanted was more life. This is that more life.

I'm like, bro, by the time, like I'm feeling it now, this took 30 seconds, right? So I'm doing this 10 minutes every day. Like, now I've taken this emotion that I feel every day, right? I teach what I need to learn. I believe like we as teachers, we don't get like perfect lives. We get, we get challenges so we can learn how to overcome and share what we learn. So like I change this feeling every morning. Then if I have time, I'll do a sitting meditation.

If not, I go train. And I'll train for an hour and a half, preferably outside. You know, we live in a beautiful place. I'm running in the park. I'm riding my gravel bike in the park. Maybe I'm lifting. Maybe I'm boxing. Maybe I'm doing jiu-jitsu.

And after that, if I didn't lift, I'm in the ice bath. Then I eat. I might call a friend and I fucking start working. And I like when I work, mind you, the phone is still fucking off this whole time. I got the other phone playing the music, right? No, like, this is me creating the energy I want to put out into the world. I'm on offense. I'm on offense, right?

I'm not on defense. I'm creating. I'm not reacting. So after this, when I go to work, ideally I'm doing the most creative thing I want to accomplish that day. Like, you know, I'm starting a podcast. I have an idea I might get into that. If I'm writing, working on an album, I'm getting into a song where it involves creation. I want to go right into creation.

Administrative stuff, emails and stuff, right? I run business, right? That's later. First, I want to create something, right? So if I'm doing that, that's first. And then, you know, I'm eating something healthy. I make a smoothie first. Gardened like really healthy protein powder, vegan.

Put some broccoli sprouts in there. Mix it up, man. A lot of good stuff. Eat. I usually eat twice a day. You know, second meal is usually like a big, I call it the Daddy Poe with salads, like a bunch of sprouts and, you know,

homemade dressing, everything organic. I love making my own food. And I've gotten real serious about like what I put in my body and what I put on my body. deodorants, all that stuff, like, natural, whatever. And so that's my life, man. I try to be outside as much as I can. And, like, I love becoming friends with you

because we go and walks when we're both here in the evening. And it's like you put all that shit down and you move the ball forward and your goals, your life. And then, you know, we just are humans and we're outside in nature and remember what it's like to just be human. And so it's a beautiful life. I have a career.

many different paths where I'm inspired. I can be creative and if I do a good job, I can make an impact. My father, rest his soul, he used to always tell me there's two Hs in life, health and happiness. So, you know, I'm just on a mission. I want to make people healthier and happier. All right. Before we close out, I just want to reflect on how important it really is for you to honor and know what season and cycle of life that you are currently in right now. We're all. all in different chapters of life. God willing, will have many different seasons, many different chapters. Some of those chapters will require of us to completely shed who we thought we were. Some of those chapters will require us to double down in our career, in our creativity.

And a lot of our suffering in life really, I feel, comes from not acknowledging what season of life we are in and having resistance to wanting it be a different way than it currently is. Like I said, life might be asking you to really rest, digest, slow down, and reflect. Some, it might be anabolic. Go create hustle and do in the world. And if you are in one season when you're trying to be in another, it's going to create a lot of conflict. In farming, they have what is called a fallow season. And this is essentially a season of non-doing so that there can be fertile soil for future growth that is to come. And so some of us, many of us, are going to be in a fallow season of our life where there's not as much blooming and blossoming. And that's okay. That doesn't mean you're not growing. And so if things are going to be in a fallow season of our life, where there's not going a little bit slow and you're asked right now in life to reflect, do some inner work, and it's not as much externally focused. That doesn't mean that you're not growing. That doesn't mean that you're not living a purpose-driven life. You are your purpose. And I hope that this invitation for 2024 allows you to honor where you're really at in your life. And with that,

you can go ahead and give yourself what you need with clarity of mind. Because to me, prioritizing clarity of mind is going to be the most invaluable thing that you do because everything that we do in life is infused with the consciousness in which we do it. And so if we are in a state of depression, of lethargy, of pessimism, and we are trying to go create an abundant life for ourselves out in the world, we are going on an uphill battle. It's important to come back home into ourselves, have clarity of mind, and with that positive state of consciousness, we can choose from joy where we want to go in life, what we want to do with their time, who we want to serve, the impact, how we want to make money. All of these things become more aligned.

when we are moving from that place of alignment within ourselves. And so the invitation is to prioritize that clarity of mind. If that's a meditation practice for you this year, if that's maybe more movement in morning walks and exercises and healthy food, we all have different areas of growth. You know where yours probably are. And go ahead and use this podcast as a closing as an invitation for you to get clear on what that is so you can step into 2024 and grow this whole year from a new place within yourself,

first and foremost. Thank you for coming on this journey together. And until next time, be well.