The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Operating Manual for Enlightenment: Recreating Your Mind by Lincoln Stoller

Episode Date: October 13, 2024

Operating Manual for Enlightenment: Recreating Your Mind by Lincoln Stoller Amazon.com This Operating Manual is not offering enlightenment, it’s describing it. The enlightened mind unites intellect and emotion despite their separation being built into the structure of our brains. This split appears in the mythic division between our lower and higher natures, and the separation of mind and body. Intellect and emotion function in concert. As color and shape are to vision, one complements the other. When fully integrated, they cannot be taken apart. The topics in the book’s first half lean toward the intellectual. The second half looks at the division from the emotional side. What we are separating with one hand, we are putting together with the other. Struggle We naturally consider our problems as different from ourselves. We see them in our environment, and rely on our skills and insights to resolve them. Our intellectual solutions address one aspect of these problems, while our emotions address another. Are these problems to be solved, or processes to be understood? What should we do if our problems are inside us? Mind Your state determines your readiness, arousal, and self-reflection. Your state of mind orients your thinking, how you can feel about yourself, and who you’re able to be. Equally important are thoughts you’re not likely to have, or cannot have at all. This book is about the states of mind that support focus, awareness, thoughts, and feelings. It’s is not a guide to solving problems, it’s an explanation of how you see. State With our state of mind, we gather our thoughts and focus our attention. Focus without a state is like a telescope with no one to look through it. In order to focus, first take full responsibility for all you think and feel. The properties of your state determine what you’re capable of. One state of mind is not enough because you cannot understand the world from one point of view. Your future is determined by your range of states of mind. Wisdom Alternate states of mind support understandings we don’t have. They may be logical, emotional, spiritual, or evanescent. They could involve knowledge spread across generations so that no one generation has the complete picture. We might call them prophetic, inspired, psychedelic, or delusional. Larger states of mind develop with experience, but they’re not defined by the facts they hold. One needs a state of mind that can accommodate contradictions without generating conflict. Instantaneous Enlightenment Change does not happen instantly, but epiphanies feel instantaneous. The reason is simple: a new state is a whole rearrangement of one’s previous conception. There are no halfway states to total rearrangement. Many pieces need to fall into place before we can make ourselves into something new. We are at a watershed moment in our understanding of the mind, after which psychology will change. Instead of focusing on thoughts and behavior, we are coming to understand that what’s important is what you can think and how you can behave. The Operating Manual is an intellectual, emotional, and neurological road map to the integration you don’t yet have. About the author Lincoln Stoller grew up around and was mentored by artists, engineers, scientists, athletes, and educators recognized as some of the greatest of the 20th century. He has published in the academic and the popular press as an astronomer, physicist, software architect, neurologist, anthropologist, psychotherapist, and explorer. As a teenager, he fell 1,000 feet off the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, swam to rescue on an island in the arctic sea, crashed his airplane, collapsed his horse, stepped in quicksand, survived frostbite, starved, poisoned himself, survived a major earthquake, was buried in an avalanche, and became a cultural ambassador to families in Central America, Mongolia, and the Caribbean.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hey, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, folks. Hey, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen, the Iron Lady sings That Makes It Official. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. As always, for the show to your family, friends, and relatives, go to goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, Chris Voss 1 on the TikTokity, and chrisfossfacebook.com

for all the groups and stuff we have for the show on Facebook. Today we have an amazing young man joining us on the show today. We're going to be talking about his book, his insights, some of the works he's done, and how maybe he might have some advice to make your life better, improve the quality of your life, and get more done with it. Or not, maybe he'll just teach you how to chase hookers and blow. I don't know. We'll find out here in a second. He is the author of the newest book that just came out may 13 2024 and it's being revised with a major publisher on the 15th of this month operating manual for enlightenment recreating your mind with lincoln stoller it's lincoln welcome to the show how are you pretty

good today pretty good thanks pretty good should we check back tomorrow no i'm just teasing it changes day by day it does doesn't it though so give us a dot coms where do you want people to find you on the interwebs my website is mind strength balance dot com and that's really the center of my friends complain that page is too big but that's where it's sort of all located and there's links to books and and what I do. So check that out, people. So give us a 30,000 overview.

What's in the new revised edition of your book that you're doing? The publisher wanted to make it smaller because they said, Books on Enlightenment sell to women between 30 and 45 and must be below 300 pages. And mine was 340. So I cut out the last chapter on healing so i like the original one needs that chapter you know whatever you know you can put the healing part i think would be the most important part wouldn't it i don't know but you know people don't heal until they're ready to so really it's about getting ready to so whatever heal whatever. Heal people, damn it. We're tired of you all running around being unhealed. Well, let's get to it, really.

So tell us a little bit about yourself. I didn't have a biography for you. Tell us about your upbringing, kind of what influenced you, how you eventually got into writing. You've written several books, too. We should plug them as well. The books are a diversion. They're just big calling cards with lots of pages in them. And people think you're smart if you write a book, but I guess it's harder than a calling card. But you know, the point is, if you have something to say,

it's not that hard to write a book. To answer your question, I don't really know why I am what I am, but I look at my family history and so forth. And my parents were involved with arts and engineering and the great artists of the you know last century so bucky fuller and sandy calder and a bunch of architects my father was an architectural photographer so he knew all these guys frank led right and those folks and And the Eameses. I like the Eames. They're great. If you remember their movie called... What was that movie called? I forgot.

I'm forgetting a lot of things these days. Anyway... I'm afraid it's... I got COVID two weeks ago. I was in the hospital then. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't quite make it there. It was not a fun experience.

I'm still experiencing it. But educational in a bad way. I like your spin on things. I like the way you spin on them. That was educational. But look, get back to the point here. When you hang around as a kid with people who are unusual you kind of develop your own unusual tendencies not putting up with nonsense and wondering why

the world is crazy so this started early and i was first i was a criminal but they didn't catch me so maybe i don't i guess criminal is when you're caught but you know a vandal at age eight is it can be pretty destructive and you know i blame my parents why not yeah it's always good to play that's what they're there for that's what they're for and you know i've spent the rest of my life figuring out why and it's kind of starting to become clear but my interest is they can usually i'm a psychotherapist and a lot of people's parents didn't really try very hard oh that's the stories i hear so i i actually appreciate that i got into mountaineering when i was 13 you'd think it was young and i guess it was young but it really i

mean mountaineering is kind of a crazy thing but it's got a lot of sane aspects like traveling and meeting people and planning and sticking your neck out and and being responsible and they didn't they don't teach you that in school really so i learned those things sort of on the road and that was i'm still appreciating it and now i've become a counselor for the american alpine club's climbers grief fund an idea, self-explanatory. And it lets me reflect on issues. And, you know, grief is an interesting thing. It's kind of a front for a lot of underlying feelings. Although I'm, you know, practicing as a mountaineer, and now I'm a psychotherapist, putting the two together is very interesting. I mean, I always thought those people were a little nuts.

And they were, you know, super high performers, high risk people, and not always stable, unfortunately. Like most of them don't know when to stop, and most of the people I climbed with are dead. But not the best ones. That always should be remembered. I think that when you not the best ones that's all should be remembered i think that when you're the best at anything you tend to transcend a lot of the nonsense that most people understand and it's certainly true about extreme athletics you learn your limits or else you

fall off the edge of the world then i went to physics because i thought that would be a place for answers and there i met you know my experience with the world is limited to the places I visited, but I'd have to say I met the most morally low quality people I've ever met. And maybe I could blame academics for that because it's such a small sort of monarchy and you know how monarchs are, they sort of breed with their cousins and where were you for hell's sakes you know this is you know you get involved in utah or what we're florida it was texas so that's not far away but you know there's plenty of blue bloods from the east coast there and they're also you know it's not genetic but it's almost genetic when you

think alike with so many people. After a while, nobody criticizes you for your thoughts. And this is a bad direction. So in physics, the technical skills are rampant and deep. But the moral ones, obviously, they're not. Because, you know, everybody works for the military and nobody cares this is this is what oppenheimer was about right so it's real it's real it's a problem having moral responsibility when you have a lot of power you mean when power comes great responsibility no way

yeah we should have a moment's silence on that but anyway yeah i have so many stories i can't I can't start talking about them because they'll let you know one of the 30,000 foot view. So off we go to the next segment of my life, which was, God, I got involved with culture. It was partly mountaineering. You know, you travel around the world, you meet people and you wonder, why don't you know them? You're off climbing the mountain. And maybe those people in the little village in Peru had something to tell you. And you know, they did. So I met people in New Zealand and Mongolia and Peru and Central America. And then I started to say, you know, this is as interesting as mountaineering. I was very lucky, I must say, to have a girlfriend who was an anthropology student, and she did all the hard legwork to get me into a very remote tribe of people in Panama who don't like outsiders and who don't welcome them. So I got to live with these people for a month, and I wasn't, you know, the annoying anthropologist taking notes i was just helping around you know helping with the chickens and

cutting down the plantain trees and learning how to build dugout canoes and it was kind of a wonderful experience i'm still trying to figure that all out you know there's there's so much in a culture that is not obvious anyway so now so now I've got physics, and I've got whatever you want to call it, authentic anthropology or authentic culture. And I started being interested in, still, mind, medicine, ceremony, religion. And then I found myself taking these crazy ayahuasca ceremonies, you know, these psychedelic plant medicines from mostly the americas i don't think there's any ayahuasca outside the americas anyway so that went on for another 15 years

and yeah you know that's a long trip there yeah and i i mean it's typical of me is i didn't want to just take it i wanted to learn it i wanted to know want to just take it. I wanted to learn it. I wanted to know it. I wanted to grow it. I wanted to make it. So I have all these interesting stories about poisoning myself with the wrong plants or plants harvested in the wrong season. You know, there's no textbook for this stuff. I remember taking one plant, mixing it in with another plant, and getting extremely sick. And this voice came out of the ether and said

what the hell are you doing here and you know our voices are interesting they tell you things and they're not always off base so this was a an on-base voice which you know anyway i have one of those off-base voices it always says kill kill, kill, kill all the time. The judge says it can't be that personality anymore. Don't make a joke about that. I have people who tell me that. They do have those voices. They are paradox, those people. Like, why do you listen to that voice?

That's not what Bob told me, Doc. Say that again? That's not what voice number five Bob told me, Doc. I know. It's weird. That's another story. We'll get there anyway so the people who do these ceremonies are relatively sane mostly adventure seekers

recreationalists ceremonialists some authentic indigenous people and from that i connected with people who were doing brain science you know they were monitoring the brains of people taking these drugs. And that was interesting. And I knew, you know, the electrical engineering behind that and the physics of waves and amplifiers. So I got involved in that for another decade or more of learning what's called brainwave training, neurofeedback. And I still hadn't really done psychology because it didn't meet my standards as a science. You know, you've got culture, you've got ceremony, psychedelics, brain science, and it's still not a well-developed field, this brain training neuropsychology field.

It's starting to become known slowly with books like The Body Keeps the Score. We talk about that book a lot on this show. But it's still not part of the training for people doing psychotherapy, so nobody learns it. Isn't that amazing? Is it because it's deemed holistic maybe you know the way that medicine is divided up into specialties separates the head from the heart and the psyche and the mind and it's considered neurological or biochemical and you know i i there are a couple of textbooks but they're not integrated into the curriculum of

psychotherapists oh i'm a'm a terrible student, you know. And I tell my son, who's 14, throw that homework away, you know. Throw that garbage away. Write them the answer to the right questions, because the people who determine the questions are the ones who determine how you think. Oh, yeah. And if you're going to answer the wrong questions, then you're off, you know, barking up the wrong tree.

They're misleading questions or leading questions. My son gets questions of why should Napoleon be in history? I'm saying I really have to censor myself because I'm a very profane person. You can just imagine me putting

in mental beeps here. My disrespect for traditional education is very high. And I tell my son, don't answer questions about why Napoleon is important to history. Ask, answer questions about why Donald Trump, Richard Nixon,

Bill Clinton, these are the people who are relevant anyway. So he doesn't listen to me and he does this homework. No kids, you know, I mean, maybe the better question is, and you're right, questions are important in how they're framed and how they're asked and getting good data. Maybe the question isn't so how, you know, the assumptive measure, the assumptive presumption of the question of, you know, how was Christopher Columbus, you know, good for whatever.

Maybe the question should be, was he good for anything? Was there anything good or bad that came out of it? Or, you know, I take it to another, why do you think he's good? Because that's an interesting question. You know, celebrate the famous people who are sufficiently long dead so they can't complain. I mean, this is, you know, the whole thing about Christianity and Jesus Christ. Would Jesus Christ approve of how he's portrayed these days? A lot of people

say no, but that doesn't stop him. Anyway, so to finish my 30,000 feet, then I got involved in psychotherapy, and I'm still involved in all these things. Hypnotherapy, don't forget, dream work, very important. You know, you had asked me when i was signing up for the show to sort of have my bullet points and my bullet points are all about awareness and the awareness that i focus on and try to convince everyone to understand and some of therapists i get clients they come to me with questions and problems is that there are different levels of awareness. And the three big ones are your subconscious, which you're vaguely aware of.

And your conscious mind, which is like ruminating and talking to you. It's the voices or yours or someone else's or the schizophrenic ones. And your neurology, third one. Your consciousness, your subconsciousness, and your neurology. And people think only their conscious mind is in their control. I don't know if it even is. The questions of free will are a little sticky. But it's your subconscious that basically controls your direction.

Your consciousness is just the autopilot that responds to your feelings. But your subconscious makes the feelings, builds them, and puts them in front of you. And you that responds to your feelings but your subconscious makes the feelings builds them and puts them in front of you and you can't deny your feelings i mean you can you can verbally but not emotionally yeah you're about to say something a little hard to deny you know you can repress them but how how does that work that's what alcohol is for no joke man no joke absolutely and a lot of people are do use tune out devices like drugs alcohol i was just reading you know pot used to be five percent thc and people could handle it and now it's 99 thpc and a lot of people cannot handle it and it's doing some serious metabolic

damage to people not everyone but some people just take down. I've seen some edibles that you can order that have about 1,500 milligrams of THC in them per piece. You know, like 10 pieces in a thing. And if I take 10 milligrams, like I'm going to sleep. I'm just going to curl up in a ball. At 20, I'm going to sleep. I'm just going to curl up in a ball. At 20, I'm going to sleep. And there's people running around and they're taking 50, 100, 1500 milligrams. I have a client who's a schizophrenic

and this client takes THC gummies and a few weeks ago she had a psychotic break. And it's one of the symptoms of THC poisoning. And happily, she's not going to take them anymore. But it gets worse. Anyway, what are we talking about? symptoms of THC poisoning and happily she's not going to take them anymore but it gets worse anyway what are we talking about oh why people do this yes yeah so I try to get people to get in touch with themselves other ways a little more hands on the wheel and it's not that easy you know sometimes people don't want that's sort of one of the reasons

that comes up when you talk about why alcohol, why drugs. They don't really want an alternative. This is the alternative they like. This is their coping strategy. And the alternative, when they come to me, is I read them the Riot Act. I say, if you don't get your shit together, it's not going to get together.

And how do you get it together? You start understanding your your neurology what you've built yourself to respond to how do you do that how do you see it you start interacting with your subconscious and starting taking some role in the feelings that you have not just responding to them but so now I'm talking about taking psychedelics, doing hypnotherapy, doing dream work. Dream work's great, but it's really kind of hard. It interrupts your sleep, obviously. But it's great stuff and rich. And I always ask my clients, you know,

what are your dreams? What's come up? And it's usually a source of novelty anyway here we are but i think that you know to look forward i think we're all obliged to change the world i think that's what we were born here to do i mean really if you're not contributing you're kind of ancillary to the whole program. Yeah. So how do you, you know, you do it by this program.

And you wrote books too. You know, and I should say, you know, the, what is it? Don't compromise book. Don't compromise book. Here, let me try and pull that up. Oh, never, never. Don't compromise are you talking about the negotiator the other yes yes i was talking his book it's not that's not you no my my book is because of leadership and yeah yeah i have the podcast for 60 years and he doesn't the other chris voss wrote

book called never split the difference about how compromise was kind of a bad thing because it meant that you didn't come to common agreement. You agreed to disagree. And I do this with all my people, all my clients. I say, you know, you're not really looking for compromise in your life or with your problems. You're looking for resolution. And you know, that puts things in a different light. What about people who are looking for confirmation bias? Looking for confirmation bias? Yeah. Like?

Looking for confirmation bias or seeking confirmation of their bias. Yes, okay. Yeah. I would say. I'm a therapist, clearly. You know, take responsibility for what your bias is. Yeah. And there are some people that they just go around the world not really seeing education.

They just want their biases confirmed. But that's your filter. You know, this gets to the sort of metacognitive level. Think about your thinking. Look at what your filter is doing. Look at your environment. This is one of the biggest problems with people's lives is that they surround themselves with people who reinforce their feelings

good and bad mostly bad if they come to me because if they're good they don't come to me ah the court doesn't order it then huh i don't know if you could do forensic psychology it seems like a oxymoron to force somebody to change and i don't do that yeah i mean i wonder if like you said i think at the beginning of the show people have to choose to make that journey pretty much pretty much and that's what i do with so i've got two kinds of clients now so we went through the culture and the physics and the psychedelics and the hypnotherapy and the brain training and we got down to therapy and i get two kinds of clients the ones who are or say they're disabled and have a problem and want a solution and the ones who are enabled and they're on the top of their game

and they're trying to figure out either what to do or how to get rid of what's bothering them and you can imagine that's kind of two different worlds. The guy on the top of his game is a hyper-achiever, and the guy on the bottom of his game is considered a low-achiever. And in both cases, though, I'm telling people to get in touch with what they're seeing, and really what you're saying, what their bias is in how they perceive the world, and take responsibility for it. You know, not to be guilty.

This is different. A lot of people have guilt, and they're ashamed, and they're trying to make up for it. That's the reason that they surround themselves with supportive people. I had one client who says, oh, he says says i haven't been drinking anymore for six months but i really met this great girl and i'm interested in developing

a relationship i met her at aa i said oh wait a minute this is like the wrong place to meet girls if you're trying to you don't need i've dated an alcoholic you don't need to have two alcoholics especially if you are one already yeah exactly but the point is that you know you build your environment and you know the typical thing is you you have extramarital relationships with your neighbor or you know somebody in your environment so if your environment is a reflection of your bias then even though you don't know it, you're going to get reinforced. Yeah. So how do you get outside of that? It's not hard. You got to do uncomfortable things like go to strange places and meet strange people and go on to podcasts with people you don't know

and make mistakes that Chris Voss number one is Chris Voss number two. And this is great. You know, it really is. So now tell me about yourself. Why are you doing this? Are you asking me seriously on the show? Well, 30,000-foot view, yeah. 30,000-foot view. So fun fact, the Christopher Voss, who's the FBI agent,

I built the Chris Voss brand. I have Chris Voss everything, Chris Voss LinkedIn, Chris Voss Twitter, although it's suspended now, Chris Voss Instagram. It got hacked by a chinese organization after 12 years 10 years but i don't have anything chris voss i started the chris voss brand on social media and 16 years ago and somewhere in 2016 a guy with no followers decided to hijack someone with millions of followers across social media and recognition. And instead of putting Christopher Voss's name he uses on his book,

he used my name in the format to hijack our awards and our interest in everything else. He's done a really great job hijacking it and building a great brand, but we still own the Chris Voss brand, so we're we're keeping our fists around it to why to why i do this podcast was that the question i lost track on the segue there yeah i think the question is how did you get yourself into a position to do it were you a marketing person a journalist i started my first company 18 and i've been entrepreneur ever since worked for myself ever since you know sometimes other people and a consultant or a referent of more sort of thing. But for the most part, all my own companies, doing my own thing.

I've always been the big mouth, the CEO, hundreds of employees, thousands of employees over the years. And so I'm used to being the cheerleader, the talker, the guy who shares vision, the guy who communicates leadership, all that sort of stuff. And for me, once 2008 hit, kind of wiped out a lot of our companies. It was like, okay, what are you going to do, Chris? We're going to be a consultant on business and go do that. And in doing so, you know, I just, I always wanted to be a DJ. I always loved radio.

I always loved how funny radio DJjs were because i grew up in that area of the radio and podcasting was kind of coming of age people talking about their thing and so we jumped on and said hey cool i have stuff to talk about you know it was basically the model that everyone uses now 16 years ago where it's like hey you tell you give people free information they'll hire you to do stuff for you so that's why where I got into it. And I really have, Larry King said one time, he goes, I really am interested in people. I find them very curious. He goes, wherever I'm at, I talk to them, I ask them questions. And for me, life is a collection of stories.

I'm a griot from ancient Africa. I love collecting stories. I love hearing people's stories. I'm sick of my own. Although my audience is like, he tells his stories on the show all the time. But I like hearing hearing people's stories i'm sick of my own although my audience is like he tells his stories on the show all the time but i like hearing other people's stories their journeys like why did you choose this over that why did you get on this pathway and so it's very interesting to me and i learned from every guest that we have on the show i'll learn something new every time

and and and that's kind of what i love learning aspects of it and plus it seems to change the world it seems to impact a lot of people a lot of people told me that they changed you know changed their lives changed the world you know we've got millions of downloads we've reached millions of people you know having that sort of effective change that we gave away for free i mean awesome let me jump in here I've heard enough from you, Chris. No. Actually, you haven't told me the real dirt, but okay. The real dirt? The real dirt.

Yeah. A prison blow. That's right. You know, when you're out in parole and, you know, the car you crashed and the person was injured. I've got seven of those parole, what do they call them, the ankle bracelets? I get one off tomorrow. It's a joke. There is no such thing as a joke. That's what you learn in psychology.

All jokes, if it's a good joke, has a resonance. Otherwise, it's just false dead. But anyway... Some of us that are comedians, we just write jokes for the sake of writing jokes, and they don't really have a resonance. Yeah, and then like Robin Williams, you like you hang yourself in the closet so watch out about that one i'm not robin williams and don't listen in in excess all right so i forgot one part of my life which was that after physics i became a computer scientist and spent 20 years writing financial software and

that was interesting because i worked for all these middle-sized businesses and I worked for these CEOs and they're all a little, not all, some are a little warped. The ones that worked the best with me were technical because they understood what I was talking about. And the ones that worked the least were, I don't know, crazy in other ways that I didn't understand. You say crazy like it's a bad thing.

No, I don't, but it's a potential. It really is understand crazy like it's a bad thing no i don't but it's a potential it really is a potential you can use it or you can abuse it anyway so part of my shtick now is to try to get people to perform at their best oh that sounds really canned but it's okay i mean that's what we're all trying to do i think we're trying to do the podcast too yeah that's true you are and and and so look as a therapist people who come to you have to have an issue because i'm charging 200 an hour if you don't have an issue that's funny sometimes people get other people to pay for them and then those those those therapies don't go very well because no one they don't have skin in the game. I do have a little of that imposter syndrome where I'm wondering if I'm really worth it. But my clients tell me, you are. And the other

interesting thing is you're always better as a therapist if you don't know what you're doing because then you have no preconceptions, no bias. And we're talking, like you and your knowledge of stories, these stories are wild. And for you to preconceive what somebody else's story is about is probably unjustified. So you really have to not know. And, you know, okay, I have skills. I have talking skills. Like, you have talking skills.

I have listening skills. What? But do I have solution skills? No. You're the person who has the solutions i'm supposed to fish them out of you make you realize them and realize how you're standing in your own way and what your you know biases are and what your traumas are from your parents and you know it's like for me i i think i told you i'm still figuring this out i feel like i was

abandoned as a child. Because I didn't have any brothers or sisters my age. And my father was a workaholic. And my mother was, I guess she was crazy. I couldn't figure it out. What? How long have you been feeling this way? My whole life.

I remember I wanted to kill my mother. I was like six. I was fantasizing about killing her. Because the reason was I couldn't get any response from her. Because she just was 30% there. And I thought, I don't know what I thought, but I was unhappy. So this has plagued me for the rest of my life. I get involved with people who I want real relationship. Yeah.

And it hasn't worked that well because most people aren't ready for a real relationship. Unless they're willing to pay you $200 an hour. Most of my real relationships are with my clients. And I couldn't put up with socializing and, you know, chit-chat and talking about the weather. No, you can see a therapist about that. I talk to myself quite a lot, actually. And I talk to a lot of dead people, too.

Oh, all right. You know, whenever I'm in a physics problem I can't solve, I bring up Feynman or Dirac, and I have them explain it. Of course, I've got to read the textbook, too. But, you know, it's a useful thing to put another voice in. Yeah. And it's not a bad voice. They don't tell me I'm stupid.

Yeah. That's why I have multiple personalities, so I can have the different voices. It just adds. You know, you're joking again. But I'm telling you, I've got clients who are who are like that yeah and they don't sound a lot different than you that's why that's why the joke is right so well that's right that's right shut up bob but actually kill kill kill to be a little to take it a little more seriously people with multiple

personality disorder the reason it's a disorder is because they don't know they have it ah if you know you have it or if you know you've got other personalities then they're talking to each other it's not so much a problem yeah they're having it's when they don't it's when stop me before i kill again yeah you know that's then it's the problem one of my karen's no longer talking to bob right now in my personality circle but yeah they'll they'll get together they'll'll make up later, I'm sure. But that does make sense. If you don't know you're the problem, what is the thing I saw? It's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Yeah. It's like the Russians. How do you know you're the useful idiot of the Russians? I don't know that. What's that? In the room? How do you know who's the... Let's see. If you don't know who the useful idiot is for the Russians? I don't know that. What's that? How do you know who's the... Let's see.

If you don't know who the useful idiot is for the Russians in the room, it's probably you. Yeah. So on your book, Operating Manual for Enlightenment, you help people find their way to enlightenment. There are several different topics you talk about here.

Struggle, the mind, state, which is the state of the mind, I guess. Wisdom, instantaneous enlightenment. You want to flesh any of these out? It goes back to what I said before. There's the three parts, the subconscious, the conscious, and your neurology. I mean, you could break it down into the body. I don't want to discard the body. The body has its intelligence. That's Van Der Kolk's book, The Body Keep into the body. I don't want to discard the body. The body has its intelligence.

That's Van Der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps the Score. And I'm trying in this book to get people to see all these different levels of awareness that they could have and could relate to if they paid attention. So, you know, how much do you know about your liver? Probably zero. Could you know more? I don't know. How much do you know about your colon? Actually, we know a lot about our colon because it tells us when to go to the bathroom, quite dramatically, without any argument. And so you do interact with your body, your lungs, your stomach, your heart, your skin, and your body tells you things and you think that it's just physical and objective, but it's not it changes your

hormones it changes your thinking you know there are kinds of weird ideas about how your digestion affects your mind you have a nervous system in your gut that's a tenth the size of your brain and it actually doesn't take orders from your brain. It sends the orders to your brain. Your second brain. Yeah. In this book, I'm trying to get people to see if you have physical issues, what are they? Why are they? What are they saying to you? What are they actually trying to tell you rather than just comfort and pain? And the neurology is interesting. A quick tour of neurology is that different parts of your brain have dominant roles in different parts of your thought. It doesn't break down so mechanically to, you know, that there's a part of your brain that does music and a part of your brain that does just language. For example, your eyes are interesting. Your left eye is attached to your

right brain and your right eye is attached to your left brain, but only the central vision. The peripheral vision, it's opposite. So the central vision of your right eye is attached to your left brain, but the peripheral vision of your right eye is attached to your right brain. And your right brain does associative processing and pattern recognition, and your left brain does analytical executive function language hearing things i'm going cross deductive yes so but that's the point cross

crossing your eyes are doing the crossing and your brain is doing the integrating and you can work at building up all parts of this chain so how do you do it lots of different ways education is probably the weakest way but it's the process of doing it that gets you strong and what i do is called brain training where you actually look at the electrical vibrations coming out of your cranium which are sort of related to the substrate underneath your cranium, but it gets diffuse because it's tissue after all. And you can train certain brain areas to be more or less active. So, for example, this is a dramatic example. In the 40s, there was this wonderful surgery called prefrontal lobotomy.

I love those. Which, yeah, the guy got a Nobel Prize for it. And he went around the country in his station wagon giving it to people, I don't know how many thousands, tens of thousands of people, whose lives were destroyed by having essentially an ice pick stuck behind their right eye and scrambled their right frontal cortex. That's our freak fest. It's that part of your brain that handles fear and anxiety and anger. So if it's dysfunctional, then you're a semi-vegetable and a very nice one for the caretakers that have to wheel you around. But you don't have to destroy that area. You can actually train it.

You can train it to be electrically calmer. Okay. You can train it to be electrically calmer. Okay? So you put a little electrode over your right eye, and you look at the electrical strength that's emanated from that area of your brain, and you tell the client who's sitting in the chair hooked up to your amplifier, make it quiet. And they say, how?

And you say, I don't know. Just do it. And you give them some feedback you give a little bar that goes up and down when it's noisy and goes down it's quiet or all kinds of feedback things but basically you're seeing what you're doing so imagine how could you learn to ride a bicycle if you were blind and had no sense of balance you couldn't you just fall over you need feedback and in the case of a bicycle, you can learn to do it through some miracle, which is not all that different than learning how to walk. And with some feedback, your brain learns how to control itself too. And the kicker is there has to be some benefit to it. Otherwise, your brain's not going to do it.

If it was painful, you probably wouldn't do it. But you like riding a bicycle. It doesn't hurt. It gets you there faster and it's fun. So you learn. Same with walking. Same with brain training. So certain people's problems focus on certain brain areas and sometimes their dysfunction.

So the dramatic brain dysfunctions are like epilepsy or traumatic brain injury where you've got a concussion or an aneurysm, and it leaves a real disruption. And you can train yourself back to normal. You can regain function. People with strokes, not all, I don't know, it depends on the nature of the stroke. You can regain language, you can regain cognition, and you and I can regain our memories. Maybe.

Still working on that. Why did I walk in this room? You make these jokes and they hit right at the heart of the matter. That's the beauty of jokes. Yes. Anyway, so I try to... That's one of the three aspects of this book so operating manual for enlightenment where it's just about enlightenment in my view is becoming aware you know it's true

what you do with it is important you could hide your head in the sand because you can't put up with it and you know i kind of did that i moved to canada because i said oh this american politics i don't have anything to do with it. So you actually moved to Canada over politics? I moved to Canada. Everyone threatens to do that. Canadian politics are just, you know, it's almost like another country up here, but it's not really.

Okay. No. Politics doesn't change over eons of time. Now, if I went to China, it would be different, but who wants to go to China? Yeah. Everyone's leaving China. Your neurology, understanding your neurology,

understanding that you can change your neurology, understanding that your nature changes with your nurture, so how you grow up actually becomes firmware in your brain, and firmware is open to change, but not easy change. So I'm actually trying to do this with more and more of my clients because although that's never their first problem, the amplitude of my right prefrontal cortex is too high in the alpha range. No one comes to me with that problem.

But I would like to tell them that that's half of their solution. It's the bottom half of the solution in many cases. I like what you said there. It could be on a coffee cup. What was it again? It was, it was, I had a short little blip there.

What, you know, my right prefrontal cortex alpha amplitudes are too high. No, no, before that. You want me to remember? It was, it was really short. Anyway, it's on the show.

Okay. Go find it later. But, it was about the blueprints, the original things that people have anyway i guess it's lost your your nature is nurtured you're developed firmware that's it your nature the the nurturing is your nature yeah so this is really important it's really yeah put on a coffee cup but have it tattooed on your yeah forehead or something

so this is why i'm talking to you on a podcast i deal with people for their individual issues and of course it's you know personal and i don't talk about it and at least directly and there's a similarity to everyone's trying to up their game, whether they're a high-functioning or a low-functioning person. Are some people really trying? Because I've got some dating groups, and a few of them are trying. Yeah, the ones that come to me. I'm just not everyone.

Everyone comes to me. Oh, okay, I see. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, you're right. I think there's a term they have for this, a controlled group or something. I would like to get more people so why don't more people work at it this is a question we can both ask you have to you have to face yourself you have

to be accountable i mean we live in a world now where it's a victimhood emotional society instead of logic and reason and meritocracy and people want to operate from one of two things. They either want to claim that there's, I saw a joke once called Schroeder's Feminist. People want to operate from two things. They either want to be the victim or they want to empower. So when they decide whether or not they're going to have, how they're going to deal with the situation,

tell it to the world, they decide, am I going to be a victim of what happened to me? Or am I going to claim that I'm empowered by what happened to me? And those are two choices they make. But we live in this victimhood competition where it's, oh, you fell and cut yourself? Wait, I fell and cut myself bigger. Let me show you my scars bigger. And lack of self-accountability is just huge.

Especially with one sex it's it's almost like the most it's almost like superman and the green stuff what's it was it he used to he used to have to avoid kryptonite kryptonite and and the narcissism rise in our society of narcissism through social media all the other other ills, you know, has just made people, they just won't embrace self-accountability. And I think that's why it's hard because they would have to face themselves. They would have to look at themselves in the mirror and go, I'm the fuck up here. Thank you for using the F word. I know it's loud. So I just finished writing, not one of my best pieces but I like it anyway I like

everything I do that's the key of a person who keeps going forward a piece on conspiracy theory and that is one of people's excuses I believe now I'm a great conspiracy theorist I don't think it really makes sense I think conspiracy theories are just how the world works. But to feel victimized by conspiracy is something that people like, because it takes responsibility away from them. Now they can point to the Illuminati or the Pizzagate or, you know, what they can't see and can't do anything about. That's the big issue. And I rail against that. I say i say you know if you can't figure out who the problem or the perpetrator is then you're fooling yourself work on things that you can understand i mean you can worry a little bit about crazy things sure it's always useful that

could be inspiring but you know don't be a vigilante trying to you know can i don't want to go with the i don't even i'm not even a good conspiracy theorist i don't keep up on it but chemtrails are one that drive me crazy yeah chemtrails you know the those are the ones that are making the frogs gay i think or something like that whatever what so i'm john's reference so the people who come to me have decided to take action i used to think psychotherapy was for sick people, but now I realize it's usually for people who want to get out of their hole. Some of them make a million dollars a year,

so it may be a hole that a lot of people want to get into. I mean, I've done that. I grew up poor and got successful and rich, and then I was miserable because I thought that that would fix all of my personal problems and trauma from childhood and damage. Yes. It didn't. It amplified them.

And I want to sort of contradict your distinction between the people who blame others, victimizers, because I have a lot of high performers who can't stop complaining about their crappy clients, their lousy boss, and their uneducated underlings. Yeah, that's Thursdays around here at the show. Well, I don't even want to talk about what goes on after air on this show of yours. It's kind of like that hour of the PDD Freak Fest where he says, all right, all you need to go or stay but it's gonna get weird i don't get that reference but that's okay you gotta be on the pd that's right i don't know if you've been following the news on the pd thing he was arrested and put in jail i should probably know for people watch this 10 years from now i do follow the news but i only

read the headlines that's my rule yeah you you got to get down into the baby oil and then you'll start okay now let's get serious chris yeah so the people who are not ready to put their nickel in the coast coaching counseling management slot they go to the chris voss show and they they sort of tiptoe around the edge of commitment to make change they go to the Chris Voss show and they sort of tiptoe around the edge of commitment to make change. They want to say, you know, what are my opportunities? What can I learn? Where can I go? And I want to talk to those people and say, you can't

fart around for too long. You have to jump out the door. I like it's interesting in Mongolia, it's the only culture I've ever been in that's a really intact old culture. In Mongolia, there are a lot of attitudes people have, biases, that everyone shares and nobody's even aware of. One of them is, you do not stand in a doorway. It's socially inappropriate for somebody to linger in the doorway and you could

say it means that they're non-committal it means that they're obstructing the passage or flow of things and if you stand in the doorway in mongolia you will be pushed out of it by people who don't even know they're pushing you out of it they just it's uncomfortable to them for you to be in the doorway. So they, you know, shoulder you out of it. They shoulder you out of it. Do you, boom. And so that's what I like. I think that's a good attitude. Don't hang around too much listening to Chris Voss.

Don't do it, you know. You can go back and give him five stars and thank him for what he did for you, but you've got to move forward. We talk about this a lot on the show, and hopefully we're the entry drug to professional psychotherapy. Or coaching. You could call it something else. And I like professional coaching.

I usually tell people to go with someone who has a degree and a license uh i'm big on that you know when people come to me and go i heard a crystal coach i'm just like all right what the fuck yes and we're very critical of that and we really believe that go see a professional because i i hear it on dates i hear it in my dating group i hear it from people all over the place i I self-healed myself. Really? You're molested as a child and you self-healed yourself? And you're a woman, which is going to carry a lifetime of damage and emotional issues.

You fix yourself? Yeah. How'd you do it? Oh, through crystals or astrology or, I don't know. Religion. Religion. Some people do that. And so we're a big proponent.

We always tell people, go seek professional help. Don't fuck around. You know, people always ask me, what would you say to your 16-year-old self, your teenage self? You know, people kick those little tropes around on Facebook. And I'm like, I tell myself to get into therapy.

And people are like, really? That's what you tell yourself? I'm like, yeah, I was a pretty fucked up kid. Yeah yeah i have to agree with you it's changed but yeah then or now but here's a sad story and it's a short one i got a call by a young kid who said that he succeeded in having sex with his father what the fuck and he asked me do you think i'm a homosexual and i was but i mean he didn't hire me right so i i'm not a therapist you know i'm not really allowed to start talking but i said to him i mean i'm thinking you know that should be the least of you that should be the least of your concerns here but i'm saying you know you need some guidance you need some

boundaries you need to understand and you know what the sad part of the story is he never called me back oh and so this is part of the story too some people need to they need to fall in the ditch before they realize they're off the road some people have to hit skid row and i don't understand that that has to be so bad but you know I sometimes I don't understand it but sometimes I've had my own cathartic moments and you can kind of say they were my bottoms and you know so sometimes we have to go through that cathartic crisis you know there's been time and I started losing weight one day when I just got it was almost 400 pounds and she's got sick of being

feeling sick and shitty and awful and miserable and being bloated and fat and i just one day i just broke and i don't know there wasn't a real proponent to it yes i just said i don't want to feel like this anymore i quit i quit drinking i didn't have a problem drinking but as i older, it just wasn't any fun anymore. It's two hours of fun on Friday means three hours of bloating, drag, carrying water weight. You know, I just feel that my energy would be shit for three days. And I'm just like, the math doesn't work here anymore, man. And I'm tired. You know, you get old enough.

It's three beers. You have a hangover when you used to be able to drink like a whole bottle of vodka before that happened. And so one day I just, I just just said i'm just not doing this anymore it's just not it's it's just i i'd rather feel good and i just stopped and so some people just i guess they have to hit that some for some people it's a bottom for some people it's a cathartic moment for some people it's a you know it's that network TV movie event where you go to the window and shout, I'm sick of hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. This is part of what my book is about. It only takes an instant for you to become enlightened.

Oh, yeah. But it can take a lifetime to get to the point where it's going to happen. Yeah. I had to learn how to eat better. I had to learn how to prepare my food better. And the point is like, what were you doing to get to that point? You didn't even know that you were heading toward that point.

But could you, here's a good question for you, could you have avoided that? By doing the right thing like you did beforehand? I don't know. What? What could you have done that would have brought you to the point of enlightenment sooner anything not really no one of that there

was a problem man come on you can't i can't accept that so hold on there was a proponent to it i i i'm a big fan of penn gillette and their magic over there and he put out a book called presto and he was doing a tour saying how he lost a hundred pounds in a very short period of time and was enjoying his health and some of the things he talked about like there you know the belief systems that people have in their head about all sorts of things that they they bullshit themselves to hang on themselves up with you know I had belief systems about food you know oh it's a reward oh it's you know things from childhood and he had he had some ways that he talked about when he was doing this the book tour that I saw and I went fuck I'm gonna get book. And then I started reading his book and seeing how my belief systems were complete shit that I believed in.

And I was just using it to cope and substantiate myself. You know, oh, you know, you need 10 to 15 Mountain Dews a day to keep the energy going for work. And so by recreating new belief systems, you know, I was able to reconfigure how you know and I started waking up I would be like Jesus Christ I I believe that you know the food pyramid was from the 70s was was a good idea I believed that you know so I started really examining my beliefs and and so kind of that that book presto was kind of the point where when I read it I want fuck this I'm gonna do what he did that kind of was the helper thing I don't think i could have made the conversion without that book yeah i've spent spoken to him

and thanked him several times because i'm like you saved my life dude you fucking saved my life and so i just i needed to have the tool and and really his book in his change in his belief systems that he learned that helped lose 100 100 pounds, I just copied that. And so it was kind of a cathartic moment of I'm sick of feeling like shit, but it was also a cathartic moment of someone handed me a tool. And I went. Well, I'm going to read that book. Here's the story of a client I had who had came to me with anxiety and insomnia and, you know, was plagued by it. And we did brain training,

because I thought it would be good for him. And it was making him feel better. And within a month, he, you know, started to drop his anxiousness. And then he got a hold of this book that he said changed his life. The book said, it was one of these really poorly produced books, didn't even have a ISBN number in it, or a publisher, and full of misspellings. And it said basically this, don't worry, be happy. Don't worry, be happy. That's it. That's all it said.

And he said, let's open my eyes. And I said to him, look, Bob, it opened your eyes because your eyes were almost open. You know, before that, you were never going to get out of the hole. Your brain was so repetitively anxious that that message would never have made it. But now that you are ready to accept that because you had no reason to hold on to your anxiety. Okay. So sometimes the book is instrumental. Sometimes the book is just icing on the cake

and so i would say you know to you too chris pendulet's book probably came at the right time for you it did it was very momentous i mean like i said i wouldn't have been able to make the change and the tools he had in the belief systems and he showed how he took his belief systems about food and eating, which were a lot like mine and a lot like a lot of people's that are raised by parents. You know, I was taught to eat everything on my plate, right? Not a good idea. Nowadays, when I eat, I go out, I'll usually eat half of whatever I have. My dates hate me when I do this.

And then I take the other half home. And it's just, it's a habit now to where I just don't even think about it. I'm kind of full when I eat half my meal. And it keeps from overloading my system. I used to have this, my, you know, my mom used to do this thing and she meant no malice by it. But I think a lot of moms did. She would tell us, hey, if you're good in the store, you don't cause a scene, you don't cause problems and be noisy and, you know, mind, be good. You'll get a reward when we leave.

I'll get you a Coke or a Snickers bar or something. And oh, we wanted one of those. So we would always be good. And so all my life up until the time I was, what, 45 when I made made this change i would always like load up my car with the most fattiest cholesterol article clogging shit you could i was drinking 10 to 15 mountain dews a day you know several six packs of mountain dew and then on top of that i would be like i need a reward for going to the store as a 45 year old adult and i would get i don't know a giant bottle of fucking coke and you know and

and some ice cream ice cream ice cream you know double snickers you know nowadays the stickers bars they have or you know are the size of two insulin it's like it's yeah thc and pot yeah and and so i had to deconstruct i'm like like, dude, that's not a reward. You're fucking ruining your health with this stupid shit. You're a grown adult. You don't need a reward. You went shopping. What do you want, a fucking medal? And I put all these bullshitting, self-deluding, coping things that I had around food.

And so that book really helped change. So there was a bit of a proponent. Someone told me when I was finishing my book, and I was really losing my mind over the editing part, the re-editing part, and I was at that all work and no play Mixed Jack and Dole Boy stage where I felt like I was typing that all over. Yes, yeah.

And I complained to one of my author friends and she goes, there's somebody out there that needs your book and the only one person who can get through to them them is you and they've got to hear your stories you're telling this book and while they seem to be at you this point you're sick of them you don't want to deal with them anymore you just want to fucking quit that person out there needs your book and you may not ever meet them you may not ever know who they are but they need to hear it from you and they need to hear your story to make the difference in their life and I went wow that's fucking

powerful and fortunately I've met people that read my book and it's changed and had an impact in their life and and of course the podcast does a lot of that same thing and yeah I mean that's the great thing about books you don't know how it's gonna trigger some people you know maybe the chris faw shows the entry drug to psychology i would hope that we would be you know we don't import people i've often joked at our singles events that we throw and in the podcast that maybe we should have a psychiatrist sit in to pass out cards to everyone not a psychiatrist a psychologist or a therapist you know they're're all, it's like the Catholic religion. There are bishops and cardinals and popes.

You've got to deal with the pastors. What does drugs, the one that asks you if your mother hugged you enough, is that how it works? Wait, say that again? One of them prescribes drugs, and the other one asks you what happened to your mother. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. So don't tell people to go to psychiatrists. Okay. They're the evil technicians. Just get therapy. Yes. Get therapy. Therapy or whatever you want to call it.

I can't afford that. Get good drugs. Anyway, no, don't do that, people. We're just kidding. So as we go out, pitch people on where to pick up the book, reach out to you for your services and all that sort of good stuff dot coms etc very good so i have a blog i write if you pay for it you get it weekly and if you want it free you get it monthly and if you sign up for the monthly free blog you'll get a downloadable e-version of this book for nothing nice yes i mean just get your act in gear.

Sign up for the blog, and you can always cancel it, but I hope you won't. And read the book. You know, if you've started to listen to this podcast, then you're obviously looking for the tool that you need. And as Chris says, this might be it. I mean, I tend to be kind of cerebral, and it's very dense.

I mean, it's not technical or of cerebral and it's very dense. I mean, it's not technical or academic, but it's like straightforward. You know, let's talk about your subconscious. Let's talk about how your brain works. And let's talk about your childhood and how your thinking works. So that's the book. MindStrengthBalance.com

No spaces. MindStrengthBalance.com MindStrengthBalance. Anyway, it'll pop up and ask you for your subscription, and then you're off and running. Then it sends you an email, and you get the download link for the book. Sign up there. And then people can order your original manuscript, May 13, 2024, Operating Manual for Enlightenment,

Recreating Your Mind, or they can watch for the 15th of this month, which is about seven days, for the revised version this is true and there's an audiobook if you want to listen to it audiobooks are good kindle thank you very much for coming the show we really appreciate it lincoln thanks chris thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortress chris fos linkedin.com fortress chris fos chris f fuss one of the tiktok and all those crazy places on the internet be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time and that should have us out fun is fun great discussion