Pursuit of Wellness - How to Live a Life Without Limits and Transform Your Reality With Tom McCarthy

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Ep #78 Join me as we meet Tom McCarthy, author of "The Breakthrough Code," who shares his inspiring journey from facing the loss of his father in Vietnam to becoming a celebrated coach and speaker. Tom discusses the power of setting goals with intention, using personal trauma as a catalyst for transformation, and the critical role of self-esteem, particularly in athletes. He dives into the mechanics of choosing your feelings, reshaping reality through responsibility, and the profound impact of our subconscious mind. Tom offers actionable advice on visualization, taking effective action, and the importance of upgrading your narrative to overcome pain and fear. This episode is a concise guide for anyone ready to craft a life filled with purpose, achievement, and recovery. Leave Me a Message - click here! For Mari’s Instagram click here! For Pursuit of Wellness Podcast’s Instagram click here! For Mari’s Newsletter click here! For Tom McCarthy’s instagram click here! Show Links: The Breakthrough Code: A Story About Living A Life Without Limits by Tom McCarthy Sponsored By: Bite is offering our listeners 20% off your first order. Go to trybite.com/POW or use code POW at checkout to claim this deal. Plus, for a limited time, you can get $30 off the first box - PLUS free Croissants in every box - when you go to Wildgrain.com/POW to start your subscription. Vivobarefoot are offering 100-day trial on their footwear. You can purchase yours today with code POW for 15% off at www.vivobarefoot.com

You shift reality by taking responsibility. And when you do that, reality starts to bend in the direction you want it to. This is the Pursuit of Wellness podcast, and I'm your host, Mari Llewellyn. What's up, guys? Welcome back to the Pursuit of Wellness podcast. I am so happy to be chatting with you today.

Today's a very motivational, eye opening conversation. If you're looking to change your mindset and break your limiting beliefs about yourself, this is for you. Today we're talking to Tom McCarthy, motivational speaker and author of the breakthrough code. Tom shares his inspiring journey from facing the loss of his father in Vietnam to becoming a celebrated coach and speaker. He discusses the power of setting goals with intention and using personal trauma as a catalyst for transformation and the critical role of self-esteem, particularly with athletes. Today is an important episode. We are going to talk about

the subconscious mind, finding true purpose, steps to making visualization a reality, finding your motivation. What do you want to create? There are no limits. I really resonated with this episode. It was so inspiring. The whole room left like jazzed for the day and just feeling really good so I think this is a really good one for you guys to listen to especially if you have goals for 2024 and I can't wait for you to hear just a reminder please hit the subscribe or follow button and leave a review it really does help me so so much continue growing the show I'd love to hear feedback about who you guys would like to see next. We have started traveling for episodes lately. We were just in Houston. We're going to Nashville soon.

So if you have ideas, leave them in the comments, send me a DM. We are so excited to bring on more amazing guests. Without further ado, let's talk to Tom McCarthy. Guys, today we have Tom McCarthy here, author of The Breakthrough Code, speaker, coach. You have clients that include Olympic gold medalists, world champions, massive companies that we've all heard of, and you're passionate about helping people get unstuck and live their life without limits. Welcome to the show. Yeah, great to be here with you, Mari. I feel like this is the perfect time to have this conversation. It's the start of 2024. Everyone's setting goals and really hoping for the best year ever. I'd love to start at the beginning of your journey. I know you have a very interesting childhood story and I'd love to hear how you got started on this path

to helping others live to their full potential. You know, absolutely. And I'd also like to later address like what you just started with, people setting the year off with intentions and goals. And unfortunately, most of those fall by the wayside. So maybe we can talk to people about how to make sure that these things that they want to create get created. But my childhood was, I guess the beginning was pretty typical. I had a mom, a dad. My dad was an army officer, so he went to West Point. We were living in North Carolina right outside of an army base. And then when I was about two and a half years old, he went to Vietnam. And I had a little brother that at the time, I guess was one and a half. And then I had a brother that was born while my dad was in Vietnam because my mom was pregnant.

And about a month before my dad was supposed to come home, I can still remember looking out the window of our little house and seeing a taxi cab pull up. And an army officer got out. I thought as my dad, I was all excited. I told my mom, but my mom knew, and if you've seen movies, you've probably seen this. My mom knew what was going on. It was somebody coming to tell her that my dad had been killed in Vietnam the day before. And when that happened, life was not black and white anymore. You know, you really, all those things that you kind of count on, and I'm not the only one. People have all sorts of situations. I mean, pretty much everybody has some situation that shakes up them or their family.

But it was very traumatic. And my childhood, my mother never remarried. She had three little boys. At that time, I was three. She had a two year old and she had a little six month old baby boy and she poured her life into us. And it was very challenging. We didn't have much money. We had a little check from the government every month because my father had been killed in Vietnam. But we struggled financially. Emotionally, my mom did the best she could, but she was under a lot of stress. And so times were chaotic. And I figured, even though I was younger, probably

not at age three, but as I got a little bit older, I said, I need to step up. And as hard as it was, there was also tremendous benefits in going through something like that because it made me want to be a leader. It made me, I started businesses when I was young and because I wanted to bring money in for my mom and take care of my brothers. And so I think I'm more emotionally intelligent because of that because I could sense other people's pain because I had so much fear and anxiety and all those things going on in me. So I don't, I'm not trying to say that it's some sob story, because at one point I probably felt that way. But when you understand you can choose how you feel about something and you can choose how you interpret whatever happened,

which I probably didn't learn that till my teens, but it made me search for these answers out there. And it's probably why I'm doing what I do today. How, for anyone listening who has maybe a similar story or a hardship, as you mentioned, everyone has something. How do we take that painful experience and flip it and turn it into like you have, like a positive life mission? I think most people do or many people do eventually. Like even you, the experience you went through, you probably look at it now going, thank God that happened, right? Thank God that I had to go through that transformation. The trick is doing it sooner so you don't suffer as much. And the thing that I, you know, there's always something in every adversity, no matter how difficult and challenging it is, like losing a family member for me. And I wish my dad were still alive.

I mean, I wish I would have gotten to it because he was supposed to be this amazing guy from all the stories I heard. I didn't, obviously only two years old when he left. So I wish he was here. But at the same time, life is not this perfect little path all the time. Actually, it is, but you don't recognize it because you want it to be this way and it's this way, but it is perfect. And so I think the one thing, this is hard for some people to buy into because it's easy to be a victim. It's easy to say, you know, gosh, darn it, I got cheated. And

I felt that way. So I know how easy it is. But when you understand the universe is always working in your favor and these things that are smacking you in the face or kicking you in the rear end. If you use them, you get to shift yourself. You get to transform yourself. Because if you just stayed on the nice little path, you'd probably never transform. You need these things to transform. Now, I'm not saying that you always need adversity. I used to think that. But if you're actively growing yourself the way you are, like reading and listening to podcasts like Mari's podcast and talking to people who have skills and talents that you can learn from, when you're doing that, you don't need as much adversity. I think adversity comes when you're not on the right path or you need a little shift to get back on that path I love that and I think as you said a lot of people I've noticed just even in my comment

section or online a lot of people feel like life is happening to them not for them yeah and that victim mentality is really prevalent today and it's something that I went through too on my journey. Before going through what I went through, I would look around for people to blame or situations to blame, feeling like a victim. And I think taking responsibility and looking inward is kind of the first step on that journey for many people. Yeah. And then one of the big things that really changed my life was when I understood or when I learned that you can choose how you feel. The outside event is going to happen. But we all have, like, you and I could have the same thing happen to us and you would go, wow, thank God. Like, that really moved me in a good direction.

And I could still be sitting here going, you know, gosh, darn it. That's so unfair. Why'd that happen to me? It's not the thing that happens that really determines whether it has value or not. It's your way of looking at it, your way of perceiving it. And it is very easy to be a victim. I mean, there's so many shows on TV that you watch, you know, victim this, victim that, people blaming. I think we're in a time right now where, you know, so many people are pointing the finger at other people and trying to say, you're the reason I'm not successful, or,

you know, you need to change, I'm fine. And when we truly take responsibility, it's not easy. It's so much easier to be a victim. So that's the challenge. But when you go against the grain and you just say, look, I take responsibility for anything that happens to me and I'm gonna use it in a way that makes me better, your life changes and you become powerful. And what my book was about is how do you shift reality? You shift reality by taking responsibility. And when you do that, reality starts to bend in the direction you want it to. And I have a quote in the book that, and I do this on my emails too, average conforms to reality. Oh, that's bad. Everyone says it's bad. Yeah, that's bad. That's average, right? Greatness creates a whole new reality. Your company was built upon adversity

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And I think you pointing out, you know, we could have gone through the same thing and had a different outcome. I think about siblings. I see that a lot. Siblings who have gone through a similar journey and one comes out successful and ready to take on life and one kind of stays the same. And it's just about changing the way we tell our own story. I'm curious when you coach people, particularly athletes or people who are trying to perform their absolute best, what are some common

challenges they run into or you run into while coaching them? Yeah. Well, I think one of the big things, even though these are high level athletes and very successful, one of the big things is really their level of self-esteem. You know, I think an athlete that, if you look at athletes and you look at their capabilities, and I played football in college, I can remember being on a team where we had one of the greatest football players ever to play in the NFL. His name was Lawrence Taylor. Now he's long retired, but he was amazing. But I remember looking at another guy that played the same position as he did. And he had all the physical talent. I mean, everything, just as fast, just as strong and was good, but not at the level that Lawrence Taylor played at. And so, yeah,

what is the difference between what results? And I would see players and I see athletes that probably aren't as talented and they surpass people that are way more talented. You know my son, Tommy, I can remember when he was 12 years old, he said he wanted to play basketball. And he'd been a really good soccer player. And he says, I want to play basketball. And at the time, he was okay, but not a great, he was a really good soccer player.

He got invited to play for the Olympic development team just for California, but then potentially play a bigger role. And he says, got invited to play for the Olympic development team just for California, but then potentially play a bigger role. And he says, you want to play basketball? And I think it's crazy. Like, why does he want to play basketball? And we put him on a team and he was like the eighth or ninth guy. He wasn't that good. But every day he worked at it and he had this belief, like he had this belief that he could be a really great basketball player. And he just started passing people by. And some of the people he passed by got better than, were taller, could jump higher, were of it, played basketball at Harvard. But he wasn't always the best athlete in terms of like his innate skill level, but he moved beyond that. And so I think for anybody, the number one thing that they've got to, they have to have is to be

deserving. They have to feel deserving of what they want to create. Now, there's some other things too. They've got to really focus intently on it. And when I say focus, I'm not just talking about the conscious mind. Our lives are run by our subconscious minds. I've heard you talk about this. What is the subconscious mind? Well, our conscious mind is what you and I are thinking with right now, right? We're aware of thoughts we have. You come up with a question. I listen to it. I answer it. But underneath that is a part of our mind.

There's actually three parts of your mind. So the conscious mind is kind of what we look around at and make sense of the day with. And we watch something. We listen to something, we communicate. We're using our conscious mind for quite a bit of that. But what's really driving what happens in a day, the conscious mind is about 5%.

It can process about 40 bits of information per second. So pretty good, right? But the subconscious, the below conscious mind, that part that you're not actively perceiving all the time is the massive part of our minds that really drive what we do. It's all our habits. It's all our behaviors, our patterns.

They're down there. And the challenge is we're not aware of it. And some of the patterns that are down there are really good, and some are not so good. It's from our little two-year-old mind that picked up from our parents that life is hard, or it's difficult to make money, or you can't trust people. And then we're wondering, like, why is life not working out? It's because that subconscious mind has programming that at one point in time, it thought it was good, right? It tries to protect you. It tries to keep you alive.

But we need to do more than just be alive. We want to thrive. We want to create. And so we can program that subconscious mind. And then the highest level of mind, I think, and it's not a body part, but I believe we have a super conscious mind, a mind that sits over everything, that can connect, that have you ever had a situation where you think of somebody you haven't talked to in a while

and then all of a sudden they email you or call you up? Literally yesterday, that happened to me. That's your subconscious mind did that. It communicated through the ethers. And also it can work on programming and bringing in knowledge. It can work on bringing that into the subconscious where now you've got an upgraded subconscious mind and you can accomplish a lot more. So how do we reprogram the subconscious mind? Because I feel

like even me, I've been through a lot, I've achieved a lot, but I still sometimes feel like I have this deep rooted rut that comes from my childhood and I don't quite know how to get in there. Yeah. Okay. Well, the way that you can start, and you said something really important, you said you feel it. Yeah. Yeah. Because the subconscious mind expresses itself through feeling in the body. You know, you feel a certain way about something. That's the subconscious mind trying to communicate with you. Also, intuition that's positive. That's the subconscious mind giving you a little nudge, you know, telling you to do something, telling you to move to Texas, right? Or whatever it might be. So the subconscious mind is trying to communicate,

but it's not doing it with words. What I like to do is when you focus on a result, we're here to create. You've created an amazing company. You've got an amazing team here that I've got to meet already. Beautiful building, like just really cool stuff. You're a creator. We're all creators. So we're here to create. So at the beginning of the year, we should say, not just my intention to fix some part of me, but what do you want to create? What do you want to create in your life? Stop focusing on what you want to fix. Nobody's broken here. We're all creators. We came from a creator. We have the creator in us. We're creators. And so what I like to do at the beginning of the year is come up with three, you know, usually three or less, but big

things I want to do during the year that would really be fun for no other reason that other than I just want to create that. I would love to create that. Not because I'm broken. I need that to feel better about myself. But then you focus in on that. And then when you focus in on it, you visualize it, right? You use your imagination. Einstein said the imagination is a preview of coming attractions. And so you just get in and you go, you know, I really love creating this. I see it. I feel it. I believe it. And then you start to notice, is there a part of you that's not in love with it, like really going for it? Even though it's really cool, there's part of you that might not have

the level of self-esteem, and the subconscious like, oh, you know, I don't know, this must, it might be too much, or I'm not deserving, or it's too hard. And when you start to feel that, then you know that's what you need to go in

and start working on with the subconscious. Now, there's lots of ways to do it. I do a version that some people might say is pretty out there, but I call on my subconscious mind to come treat, excuse me, I call on my super conscious mind to come recode my subconscious mind. And I'm a huge believer in the super, in the super conscious. I do believe that we have this super consciousness that is beyond your body. I think it, we live in the super conscious part of the mind. I think it really has pretty much no limitations. That's why book is called Living a Life Without Limits. You know, the breakthrough code, how to live a life

without limits. So I call on it and, you know, this breakthrough code, how to live life without limits. So I call on it and, you know, this is probably a little bit complex for some people going, what are you doing? But I actually do that. And then the other way that you can program the subconscious is by really visualizing whatever it is you want, but seeing it and feeling it. Because the subconscious mind is tapping into what are you really seeing? What are you visualizing? Are you seeing yourself fall short? Are you seeing yourself enjoying it and really now having this amazing thing that you've created? What does it feel like? Do you feel confident? And the other thing you have to notice is the subconscious in love with what you want to

create. If it's not, you won't get it. So you've got to do some reprogramming of the subconscious. And I feel like that requires us to really tap into our true selves. And that would in turn help with your identity. I was going to ask you about finding true identity because I feel like a lot of us are swept up in the noise and what other people expect of us. But by that visualization and really tapping inward, I feel like it would help us find our core selves too. Yeah. I think we're all here for a very unique purpose. And mine's different than yours. Yours is different than my wife's who's here. And then they could be similar, but we're here to do something special. We's who's here. And they could be similar,

but we're here to do something special. We're here to matter. And we are these creative beings. And a lot of people don't think of themselves that way, but they are. I don't care where you are in your life right now. You are a creative being. You are here to create.

You're here to create just for the heck of creating what you wanna create, right? Now, when what you create is in alignment with your purpose, then that's even better. And it's more natural. I think you've got this natural flow, but we all have different purposes. And I think the mistake that I think I made when I was younger was I would look at someone else and go, oh, I want to do what they did. I want to be like them. And then I realized, what a crock, right? I'm not them.

Like they have a whole different set of experiences than me. They're going to do their part on this planet, but I do mine. And I've got to tap into what it was. And so I started off, I was working with a Wall Street firm. And I did it because I wanted to make money because we had no money.

And I was like, I want to make a lot of money, you know, like this person I really looked up to, this mentor that I had, because he was in that business. And I did well. But after three years, I realized, you know, this is not what I'm supposed to do with my life. And I did something crazy. I left it.

I gave all my clients away. I left a lot of money on the table. And, you know, I had a couple houses back there that I'd bought at a young age. I left all that, moved out to California to help run Tony Robbins' company. I was the head of sales and marketing for his company at like 25, didn't even know what I was doing.

People were, I remember my best friend when I was getting ready to drive out here, he was crying. And he thought I had, you know, moving to California, number one from the East Coast. And he thought I had fallen and hit my head on a curb or something. He thought I had gone crazy. Now, within the year, he actually came out and started working for me. Oh, my God. Yeah. But my purpose is to help people step into their greatness. And that was a great first step for me

to be around Tony, who's a great friend of ours and was in our wedding. We actually met at his house, my wife and I. So that was a great first step. But it was, my purpose was calling me to get out of something that I thought I was gonna do my whole life and now do something else.

And I've been doing it for a long time now. I love that. And I feel like that can also be an evolution for anyone listening who isn't quite sure of their purpose yet, just moving closer and closer to it. I feel like for me, the podcast has brought me such a feeling of purpose

because I've always felt like sharing my journey and learning and connecting with my audience has been really like a huge part of who I am. And this podcast feels like a culmination of that. And it really feels like I'm in line with what I should be doing. When you talk about visualizing what we want, what are the steps we need to take after the visualization? Like how do we make it a reality yeah that's that's a great question so i've got three big ideas in the breakthrough code one is you've got to focus on less and then obsess but i really want it to be more of a subconscious

obsession i want you to train your subconscious to naturally be looking for answers and actions and things like that. The second thing you've got to do, and by the way, the way that you do that is you see it, feel it, and believe it a couple times a day. You see it, so you're visualizing it. I actually like more the word you're imagining it. Like I'm imagining myself in this. And sometimes I talk myself through it. I'm imagining myself accomplishing this and loving this and having so much fun doing this. So that might be helpful versus just trying to see it, see it, see it. Some people say they can't visualize. So imagine, imagine it. Just say I'm imagining it. And then that kind of takes the stress off having

to see it so clearly. You're just imagining it. And then you're feeling it. And then the next step is you've got to upgrade your story. You mentioned story. You've got to upgrade your story to upgrade your life. So the way you think about who you are, what you're capable of, that's an action you have to take. You've got to say, all right, what part of me has to die in order to create space to create an upgraded version of me or a new version of me, the version that I want to

move forward with? And we're so, we want to stay the way we are, but have our life get better. It doesn't work that way. The way you are got you here. That's great, right? We're here. This is awesome. There's nothing wrong with that. If you want to advance and create more, the old part of you can't do it.

Now, here's the good news. You're under no obligation to be the exact same person you were five seconds ago. You can shift. You can change. It takes courage. And also, the subconscious mind will fight to stay the same because it's trying to protect you. Don't wander off too far, Mari. You know, stay the way you are. Come on. It's great. But we want to create. We want to do more. So we've got to let part of us die, right? Part of our personality, not part of your body, but part of your personality, part of the way you think, part of the way you view the world has to go away in order for a new part to come in.

And then after you've done that, then you've got to take effective action. You've got to pack your day with effective action. Now, I used to think when I was younger, and I'm talking about your age, you're so much younger than me, but I used to think you've got to take massive action. You just got to go, go, go, go, go. You've got to grind. You've got to be incredibly tired, and then you're tired the next day, but you get yourself up and you go at it again. I don't believe that anymore. I believe you have to take effective action. So if you and I work, let's say eight, nine hours in a day, but you are twice as, and we're trying to get the same thing,

but you're twice as effective with your actions, like they're really moving the needle. And you're even doing some things that you don't necessarily love, at least right now, you probably will love them later, but you're doing some things that I'm avoiding because, oh, I don't want to do that, right? But you're doing it, but we're still only working the same amount of time. You're going to get there twice as fast. I might not even get there. And so effective action is interesting though, because I think a lot of it is, for me anyways now, it comes with intuition. Like I've got really good intuition what I should be doing next. And it's so much easier. In the past, when I was a lot younger, I would just do things that just weren't even working.

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hey, you're really a hard worker anymore. I want them going, wow, you really create things quick, or you seem to have a lot of fun with your creation. I would much rather have people say that about me than you're really busy, you work so hard. Again, I've totally shifted the way I think about it. And it's so much better. It's so much more fun. I also love what you just said. I want to go back a little bit. You said you have no obligation to be who you were five seconds ago. I love that.

And it was something, you know, reflecting on my fitness journey, I don't think I fully knew what I was doing. Now I have more verbiage about my journey. But I had to stop believing that I was a failure and someone who was average and someone who was overweight in order to move forward. I just spoke about this on a solo episode I did, but I almost convinced myself I was an athlete in that moment because to get myself to the gym and do hard workouts every day and eat clean, I had to tell myself I was training for something. And I fully like took that on. I love that. And I still, like if I wake up at five in the morning to go work out, I'm telling myself

I'm an athlete. I'm doing my training. I feel like we have to really change the way we think about our identity. Absolutely. Yeah, we always revert back to our identity. You know, back when I was working with Tony Robbins, there were studies that we were looking at that would watch people or that would observe people when they were losing weight, trying to lose weight. And most people will lose weight when you try to lose weight. You lose a little bit, sometimes you lose a lot. And then typically what happens if you do not change your identity is you revert back to your identity. I'm a person who overeats, right? I'm a person that doesn't like working out. So I love, and same thing with cigarette smoking, right? I'm a person that doesn't like working out. So I love your, and same thing with cigarette

smoking, right? Or when you're smoking, like if you are a smoker who's trying to quit, if you see yourself as an overweight person who's trying to lose weight, you will lose weight and you'll probably quit smoking, but then eventually your willpower is not strong enough to fight against your identity. You just will lose that battle. That's when we say, upgrade your story. We're talking about upgrading your identity, who you see yourself as. I love what you did. I'm an athlete. And you know what? When you first said that, your body was probably, or your subconscious mind was probably BS. You're not an athlete.

But then you've got to keep at it. And you've got to stick to that story. Most people will start out, okay, I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete, like two days, three days. They say most people, when they set intentions for the year, by the second week of February, gone. Like the majority. It's true.

The gym clears out after two weeks for sure. Yeah. Because they had this intention, but the intention didn't match the story of who they really thought they were. Now, I'll tell you, at any age, you can change your story. I'm 63. I just turned 63 yesterday. Happy birthday. I meant to say that to you. Happy birthday. Oh, thank you, thank you, yeah. But I'm not done with my story. I'm still, I'm so excited right now about what I'm still learning and how I'm gonna grow and what I can still create. And so anyone listening to this,

and I know there's probably a lot of young people because you're so young and successful, they're watching, like perfect time. Obviously, when you think you're young, you go, yeah, I got my whole life, I can make shifts. But even if you're somebody who's a little bit older, somebody a little bit more aged like me, like I got a lot left.

And when you're my age, I hope you're saying that. I know you will. I hope so. I hope I have that zest for life. And I do know I have listeners who are in their 50s and 60s. Fee's mom is one of them. And they really appreciate when people such as yourself come on and talk about that because I think it is important. I want to hear the story of your son, Tommy, who I'm friends with. I think it's such a great example for changing the story you're telling yourself and changing your reality in terms of his injury. Can you tell us a little

bit more about that? Yeah, absolutely. And so we have two kids and we've got also a daughter, Kylie, who's amazing, who's building this. We'll have to invite you out, but she's building this eco-conscious community out in Joshua Tree.

And she was a national champion soccer player at UCLA and overcame a lot of adversity. And so, and then I have my And then we have our son, Tommy, who you know as how I met you. So I'm very grateful for that. And yeah, when he was at Harvard, he started having this crippling back pain. He had two really bad concussions playing basketball. He had hip pain, he had knee pain, He had lower back pain, couldn't even walk. And then he graduated from Harvard, had to sit out a whole year at Harvard, one year from basketball. So he had an extra year and he went to a school called Rice University to get his MBA

and play another year. And when he got there, it was really bad. Like he could barely get out of bed. And so they're doing all this therapy, all the traditional things, ultrasound, heat, ice, everything, stretching, and nothing was helping. So finally they say, hey, we got to take you to an orthopedic surgeon. So he goes there and they do the MRI and the surgeon goes, you know, got bad news. You've got one of the largest herniated discs we've ever seen for a young guy your age. And they said, let's try and shoot you up with some steroids. They put him under. They shot him up, came out, didn't help. And then the surgeon told him, pretty much the only other option is surgery.

And he's going, you know, I'm in my 20s, my early 20s. I'm not going to have surgery. And he's going, you know, I'm in my 20s, my early 20s, I'm not going to have surgery. So he started researching people that were able to heal, that had large herniated discs or sciatica or all these different cracks in their spine that could heal, that could get rid of the pain without surgery, without adjustments, without all these things that people are trying that in some cases work, but in many cases they don't. And he found a doctor out of NYU that had a 98% success rate. Howard Stern had gone to him. All these people that had crippling back pain had gone to him and they tried everything else, even surgery, and he was able to help them heal. And so my son studied that work. And then he went to Harvard. He likes. And so my son studied that work,

and then he went to Harvard. He likes to research, so he studied a lot of other stuff. And literally within one week, after two and a half years of crippling back pain, he was able to get rid of his pain. Now, he still has a herniated disc, right? That didn't change, but he has no pain.

And the thing that this doctor learned is you could have a herniated disc. Like you may have a herniated, I may have one. I haven't had my back x-rayed, but we're not in pain. The mind creates the pain. The subconscious mind in this situation is, in his situation, was trying to stop him to protect him. It was creating pain, chronic pain. Now, acute pain, when you have an acute injury, you're going to have pain because it's like, stay off that. But the pain wasn't being originated in the back. The pain is originated in your brain,

in your mind. And in his case, it was unnecessary. So once he understood that he was creating that pain unconsciously and learned how to reprogram that, which he now has a whole course about, which I was telling you earlier, like a lady just wrote him 16 years of back pain gone. Another lady's six years of back pain gone. He's got all these great stories. It's amazing. And this is just proves even more the power of your mind.

Your subconscious mind can actually create pain that doesn't need to be there. And when you learn how to undo that, the pain goes away. It's been four and a half years. He hasn't had any pain since. Also at the time he had some skin condition, some acne in his early twenties. He used the same principles to get rid of that. He tried every diet, still had it, and now none, like none. It's crazy you say that because I had an acne journey as well. And I feel like one of the biggest pieces for me was learning to like imagine myself with clear skin almost and embrace that like my skin is healing because I was so frustrated with it for so long, like hating it every single day. And once I let go of that hate

and that anger, I started to see progress. So you just said something really important. See, when pain comes up, when, you know, skin conditions, all sorts of diseases, it's repressed anger and, you know, and fears and things like that. But you let that go. You said you let go of the hate. You let go of the anger. It's like, if I have it, I have it. If I don't, I don't. And then it's like, hey,

we don't need to create this anymore. The subconscious mind didn't need to create it. You had healed internally from that. And then you saw the results on the external. Everything's created twice. First on the inside and then on the outside. The good things and also the things that aren't so good. Everything's created twice, first on the inside and then on the outside, the good things and also the things that aren't so good. Everything's created twice. I want to ask you about motivation.

I get a lot of questions about motivation and I really think that motivation is there sometimes, sometimes not. And that's where habit building comes in. How do you handle motivating clients? Do you find that people have different forms of motivation? Like some people are motivated by fear. Some people are motivated by reward. How do you view that? I think people are motivated in different ways. Some people are motivated by fear. It's not a great motivation because then you're under tremendous stress. You tend to burn out. You tend to achieve something and not really even enjoy it, right? Because it was just for fear. So, I mean, there's a lot of things that have been accomplished by people being motivated by fear, but I think it's a pretty uninspiring

journey at the end of the day to be motivated by fear. I think I was motivated by fear when I was younger, right? Because I was coming, I was coming out of this, a situation where we didn't have any money. We didn't, you know, I looked at other people, they had all the things I wanted. I didn't have those. And I had to learn to not motivate by fear. It's every day you've got anxiety and it's just not fun.

So I think the ultimate motivation is to have something you want to create and be motivated by just the journey of creating it, the fun of creating it, the joy of experiencing your creation. And if you don't have something right now that you want to create, that would be the first place to go, I think, for motivation. Just imagine, like, do this. And this is something I do, is I tell myself, so I'm doing a little visualization where I say, I choose to live a life I love. I choose to live a life I love.

And then I just start letting my imagination go, like, what would be a life I love? What would be something that I would experience in a life I love? And then what else would make life even more fun? And then you start noticing these things that you've repressed, you've repressed, you've never allowed yourself. No, I can't have that. Come on, be realistic. Being realistic, it's important sometimes. You got to pay your bills. But being realistic is the biggest, I think, hold back for many people.

They look around, they go, all right, what can I accomplish? What looks reasonable? The breakthrough code's about what do you want? Not what's reasonable. What do you want? I interviewed a guy on my podcast, wrote a book, 10X is easier than 2X. He says, 2X, he goes, there's a million different ways to get a little bit better. There's only a couple ways to get 10X better.

And so you actually have fewer choices where you can focus in. And also it inspires you to go big. Like when you know you're not really going big, you're just kind of like, you know, dipping your toe in, you can't get that motivated to do that, right? It's not that much fun. I love what you just said.

And I feel like it's so inspiring and motivational. An example I think of in my life is we were talking about horses before and horses was something that I loved as a child and I couldn't afford to keep doing it. You know, my family couldn't afford to keep me in. It's very expensive. But as an adult about a year ago, I was like, I don't have any fun in my life. I mean, I work, I work out and that's kind of it. And I was really imagining, you know, what is my dream life? Like, what do I really want to do?

And horses kept coming back up for me. But that's something that like felt maybe a little silly or maybe a little out there. It's like, you don't start horse riding as an adult. That's weird. Like, it's like you don't start horse riding as an adult that's weird like it's it's not common but it's one of my most proud accomplishments because it's something that I purely did for fun and I've kept doing it and it is one of my favorite things I do in my life and it doesn't make me more productive or more fit it's something I'm just obsessed with and really really enjoy and I feel like that's a good

example for me and something that I hope, you know, when people listen to this and they start visualizing their dream life, they allow themselves to reach for the stars. When I was on my fitness journey, the people I admired were like bikini bodybuilding competitors. Like I was really like dreaming big and wanting to be the athlete that I was imagining that I was like, I, I do agree that shooting for the stars puts you in a better, more exciting position. Yeah. Well, and your horses make you happy. So I do think they, they make you more productive. There's two types of actions that we can take in a day. There are achievement actions. That's writing emails, getting on a call, doing a podcast, making decisions in your business. So those are things where, you know, let's go, let's achieve,

let's create. Those are great. There's also recovery actions. If you look at athletes, one of the important lessons I learned from working with athletes is, I used to think, because I was an athlete, I'm like, you got to go, go, go. And the old way that I was coached way back when was like, you know, you don't take a water break. You don to go, go, go. And the old way that I was coached way back when was like, you know, you don't take a water break. You don't rest. You just go. You're always stressing yourself, stressing. But now they've learned that you need recovery. I don't know. There was a national championship game for college football recently where Michigan played. Who'd they play? They played Washington. Thank you. Yeah, they played Washington thank you yeah they played Washington and the quarterback

who has the last name McCarthy for Michigan I don't know if you if you saw but his routine before every game is he goes out on and he had reporters and everyone doing it watching him this time but last year he did it every game he goes out on the field takes his his shoes off so he can ground. He gets in a cross-legged position. He leans up against the goalpost and he meditates. And that's not, he's not throwing passes. He's not thinking about the game. He's just totally letting go. And they interviewed him. They said, you know, why do you do that? He goes, you know what? He goes, I transferred in high school from the school I was in to IMG, which is like a sports academy. And he said, I was really depressed. And he said, I started researching like, how can I

create happiness? And he learned to meditate. And also on his, again, this is a fun little thing he does, on his hand or sweatband, he draws a little smiley face to go in and play this brutal game. But he's this great young kid that's figured that out. You do it with horses. You do it with other things that are really fun, but people listening, don't be afraid to have fun. Like if you're not having fun, come on, what the heck are you grinding for? Like, and make it fun along the way. Totally. Even like doing things with your friends. I feel like for a long time, I was a little bit stuck in grind mode.

Yeah. And then you kind of look up and you're like, what's the point of all this if we don't share it with our loved ones and do things that we love? Yeah. A quote that I love that you say, and I know you said it before,

but I want to dive a little deeper into it. Focus on less than obsess. What do you mean by the focus on less piece? Well, so you are a phenomenal business person. You are an athlete. You are a great horseback rider, but there's some things you're not great at and you don't care. You're not trying to be great at everything. And so I think the misconception that people have when someone like people look at you and go, she's probably great at everything she's ever done in her life. Right. Absolutely. People that I coach think that, you know, you're just amazing at everything. No, I'm not like, I find a few things that I really want to be good at.

And, and then there's other things that, you know, I don't really get, my wife can tell you, I'm not a very good dancer, right? Am I gonna work really hard at being a great dancer? No, I'll get out and dance, but I'm not gonna try and be a great dancer. That's just not as important to me. So the mind, if you're trying to be just like a light bulb and shine a little light on everything and trying to do everything

and trying to be great at everything, you're missing the boat and you're probably not in alignment with your purpose either if you're doing that. You've got to be a laser. Now, what's the difference between a light bulb and a laser? The accuracy.

Yeah, the focus, the level of focus. A laser is light and it may not, like I've got a little laser pointer. I don't have it with me today, but it has a little AAA battery. And then I've got a flashlight that's got, don't have it with me today, but it has a little AAA battery. And then I've got a flashlight that's got, you know, or a couple of AAA batteries in it. If I do the flashlight,

you can see it go out relatively far. It's a pretty powerful flashlight. The laser, you can see a mile in the distance with the same power, but it's just focused. So we're focusing our minds on something that we really want to create. And if you've got a something that we really want to create. And if you've got a hundred things you really want to create, the mind's just like giving up.

But if the mind knows like, all right, there's three big things, doesn't mean that you're not doing other things during the day, but there's three big things that are really important for us to create. The mind can become a laser and all of a a sudden, man, it's got a target. It's going to start working to get you there, especially when you upgrade that story. Totally. And I think that's where it's so important to find people around you to help with the things that you're not good at. I mean, there's a reason I don't do the numbers at this company. I hear numbers and I zone out immediately. It's just not my thing. Marketing, not my thing. That's my husband's thing. And finding people to hire or be friends with or surround yourself with that complete that puzzle for you, I think is really great.

What would you say is an important lesson from this conversation that you hope people take into 2024? I think what I hope people take into 2024 is that there are no limits. I mean, the things that we take for granted now, you've got the iPad or right in your lap. Like back 20 years ago, no one imagined that. 2007 was when the first iPhone came out and it was mind-blowing to people. And if you go back to when I was growing up, we had a phone stuck to a wall that had a rotary dial and we never imagined these things. And the things that right now seem so far out there, those things will be created.

We are creators. So there are no limits. There are no limits. And it doesn't matter where you're at. You might have had a financial setback. You might have had a setback in your relationship. You might have a health issue. The body responds to your mind. You can heal the body with your mind. I just told you what my son did, right? There are no limits. The only limit we have is based upon the limitation of our focus or the belief we have of what is truly possible. I'm excited every day to see what's happening. You know, right now, AI is the big thing. And I can remember in 2000, Tony Robbins gave me a book called The Age of Spiritual Machines, where he's talking about AI.

And it scared me because like, whoa, like that could really happen. And it could actually have a personality. Like we're not seeing that quite yet. But this guy, Ray Kurzweil, was predicting that way back in 2000. And it was freaky, but he had a good spin on it. He said, look, when AI can do so many things for us, we can become more spiritual. Like we can spend more time meditating

or creating or doing things and be more productive. So I do believe that we are in this acceleration phase where so much more is gonna be possible. Like we look at it now and we go, wow, everything's possible. No, even more is gonna be possible. Like we look at it now and we go, wow, everything's possible. No, even more is gonna be possible. And when you buy in with your mind, like you're gonna be one of those people

that's creating these things. And again, I don't care where you're at. You might go, I am so far away from that. Well, at one point, Mari was far away from being where she is right now. Look at her people, like she is thriving. Her office is amazing. It's just so vibrant and beautiful. And people here are so kind. That was created from somebody

that at one point in time felt like I could never create that. And here you are. Wow. Tom, thank you so much for today. I'm feeling so inspired right now for the rest of the year. I'm feeling inspired to create. And I hope everyone listening is as well. And I hope that they realize that they have the potential to do whatever they want to do and be the best at it. So we so appreciate you coming on the show. Where can everyone find you online? Where can they find the book? Give us all the deets. Yeah. So the book's on Amazon, The Breakthrough Code, and it's done very well there. So I hope you would check that out. There is a page in the book where if you connect with us, I did some videos that go along with the book, so you can get those for free. And then tommccarthy.com is my website. The Tom McCarthy is my Instagram, which

I feel a little bit embarrassed about the V, but someone already The Tom McCarthy is my Instagram, which I feel a little bit embarrassed about the the, but someone already had Tom McCarthy. So I had to do something. I just got Tommy McCarthy, but I've got the the on there. So we post some good content there and we posted a lot of content

we had with Mari from the podcast and then thebreakthroughcode.com, you can also check that out. Yeah, guys, I did an episode on Tom's podcast so make sure you go check that out. Thank you so much for today. It's an honor being with you, Mari. I'm so excited about your future

and you're such a bright light. And the thing that I really love when you did my podcast is you're just so authentic. And young people having that level of authenticity. I think a lot of young people and probably even me when I was young, I was trying to prove myself. I was trying to make sure people knew that I was, you know, a good person and I was important and you're just, you're just you and that's so beautiful. It's so powerful and you are a light that shines up, shines all over and I know you light a lot of people's lives up.

So thank you for having me. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on the Pursuit of Wellness podcast. To support this show, please rate and review and share with your loved ones. If you want to be reminded of new episodes, click the subscribe button on your preferred podcast or video player. You can sign up for my newsletter to receive my favorites at marilowelland.com. It will be linked in the show notes. This is a Wellness Out Loud production produced by Drake Peterson, Fiona Attucks, and Kelly Kyle. This show is edited by Mike Fry and our video is recorded by Luis Vargas. You can also watch the full video of each episode

on our YouTube channel at Mari Fitness. Love you, Power Girls and Power Boys. See you next time. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and does not constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor or health team.