The School of Greatness - 6 Steps You Must Take To Confront Your Fears & Visualize Success w/George Mumford EP 1238

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

George Mumford is a globally recognized speaker, teacher, and coach. Since 1989, he’s been honing his gentle, but groundbreaking mindfulness techniques with people from all walks of life, but most notably professional athletes like Kobe Bryant, Shaquillie O’Neal and Michael Jordan, who credits George with transforming his on-court leadership and helping the Bulls to six NBA championships.He’s written the book, The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance as well as a new course to dive deeper into the lessons in the book.In this episode we discuss:What separates the top 1% of high performers from the rest.The five superpowers we can all focus on to be the best version of ourselves.The practical steps to stop living in fear.The greatest lessons George learned from coaching mindfulness to great athletes like Kobe, Michael Jordan, Shaq and so many others.And so much more! For more go to: http://lewishowes.com/1238Get George Mumford's new book: The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure PerformanceMel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-podDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-pod  

This is episode number 1,238 with George Mumford. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome back, my friend. Today's guest is George Mumford, who I had such a pleasure

sitting down with. And George is a globally recognized speaker, teacher, and coach. Since 1989, he's been honing his gentle but groundbreaking mindfulness techniques with people from all walks of life, but most notably professional athletes like Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, and Michael Jordan, who credits George with transforming his on-court leadership and helping the Bulls to six NBA championships. And he's written the book, The Mindful Athlete, Secrets to Pure Performance, as well as a new course to dive deeper into his lessons in the book. And in this episode, we discuss what separates the 1% of high performers from the rest. We dive into the five superpowers we can all focus on to be the best versions of ourself,

the practical steps to stop living in fear, the greatest lesson George learned from coaching mindfulness to great athletes like Kobe, Michael Jordan, Shaq, and so many others, and so much more. I think you're going to love this one. And if you do, make sure to share this with a few friends. Text some friends, post it on social media, and make sure to tag me and George as well over on social media. And if you are new here, please click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify right now for the School of Greatness so you can stay up to date on the latest,

greatest from this show every single week. We've got some incredible content coming up, so make sure to click subscribe right now for the School of Greatness. So you can stay up to date on the latest, greatest from this show every single week. We've got some incredible content coming up. So make sure to click subscribe right now. And also, if you know someone that would love this show, share this with a few people. Text some friends, post it on social media, and spread the message out there to the world. And leave us a review.

If you're enjoying this, let me know what part of this episode you'd enjoyed the most from this episode. You can go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. And a big shout out to today's fan of the week from Xavier, who said, I've been tuning in regularly to the School of Greatness podcast for the past couple of months. I'm always impressed by the range of excellent topics and expert speakers. The learnings and insights are invaluable.

And to Lewis and team, thank you for the great work you continue to do. Big shout out to everyone who is helping us create this show, build this show, and serve humanity in a bigger way. It's been such a joy to be of service to each and every one of you who listen on a consistent basis, whether your first episode is right now or you've been here for nine years. We're just so grateful for your support and for spreading the message forward to others in your life that you think would be inspired by this message. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only George Mumford.

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but can be used instead of insurance. In 2021, GoodRx users saved an average of 79% on retail prescription prices. I speak from experience when I say the best way to stay consistent with your fitness and health goals this year is to switch things up. It'll make it easier to stay excited for your workout each day. And of course, it can be hard to always come up with your own new type of workout routines, which is why I love Peloton. They always are coming out with new stuff to help switch up your exercises. The Peloton Bike and Bike Plus are releasing new classes, new music, and new ways to keep your workouts fun and motivating. Keep your workouts interesting. This is key. Peloton has a workout for every goal, day, and mood. De-stress from a long day with 30 minutes of strength and 20 minutes of cardio,

or do a quick 15-minute total body class before work. Stay motivated while having fun with bike workouts, yoga, meditation, dance cardio, and more. And I want to see you achieve your goals. So make sure to visit onepeloton.com to learn more. That's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N.com. What do you think is the difference between the 1% of the athletes or the leaders that you've worked with mentally? What is the difference between the top 1% of high performers and the 2% to 100%? What is the difference there?

The willingness to succeed. to 100%, you know, what is the difference there? The willingness to succeed. When they've done this study and they ask coaches and experts, what is the one thing is the willingness to succeed. The willingness and you might call it the pursuit of excellence. You could talk about never quitting and having a goal that says, yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm going to take it to the next level.

So it's the hunger and the thirst. You have to go for it. It's not something that's going to come to you. It's something that you have to pursue. There's a lot of people that don't have hunger. They're not hungry. How do you train someone? Or is that not something you can train?

Yes. So it's interesting because I've done a lot of research and study on this, even on my own. I had a sense of urgency. You had a sense of urgency. Some people have to create a sense of urgency. And before I was motivated by, you know, my butt being on fire or just survival, just wanting to get to living. But you can create a sense of urgency by creating a possibility, a vision of possibility that you want to live into

or you want to serve more people or something. So initially it was me just getting out of that, you know, but on fire. Then the game I'm playing now, I'm pursuing excellence and wisdom with grace and ease. So there's a hunger for me to want to get to the next level, to want people to help people get to the next level. And to me, it's about helping people understand they have a masterpiece and that their job is to express it and share it with the rest of us. But it's an inside job, and only they can do it. So unless they have the will and the desire to do it, but not just say do it,

but I have this will to succeed. I'm going to do whatever I need to do to get there. And so that's the 1%. That's the 1% that says I am responsible and I have a masterpiece inside of me or I have greatness inside of me and it's my job to develop it and express it. Yeah.

And that's why it's so challenging because if you want more than the other person, then that's a problem. But if you can help them discover that they have this greatness inside of them, and that's a problem. But if you can help them discover that they have this greatness inside of them, this masterpiece that can be developed and that can only be developed by them.

So let's say you're, there's a lot of really good athletes out there. There's a lot of really good humans, good people at their jobs, but they stay good and they don't transcend to the next level for themselves. Not meaning they have to be the best in the world at what they do, but they stay very comfortable. Right.

You know, maybe they did well in college as an athlete, but they didn't take it to the next level because they didn't have the desire or the willingness or whatever it is. Maybe someone stayed well at their job for 10 years, but they got to a level of comfort, but they didn't want to grow and develop their skills to another level to see what's possible.

How can you inspire, evoke, empower people that are at a good level, that have been stuck there for a while, that haven't been willing to do what it takes to see what their true masterpiece is? Is there a level of coaching? It's what I said. You have to create a sense of urgency because why would they change?

I've got to be working with young athletes and say, what's up, man? How you doing? I'm chilling. Yeah, relaxing. And I say, chilling ain't going to get it done. You can be chilling, but you got to be willing. So you can chill now, but then you have to step to the next thing.

So the way that it works, especially if you're thinking about getting out of the flow, you got to look at it as a step function. Because once you get to a certain level, then it becomes normal. And so if you don't challenge yourself, it's like a step function, and the high challenges will get you revved up and you have to have a vision of possibility. We live in the future, we see. So if you're not uncomfortable,

then you're probably not learning. And I don't mean being uncomfortable all the time, but I talk about getting comfortable being uncomfortable, which means keep moving and increasing your capacity to grow learn and experience life in different ways and that's what it comes down to so it's an inside job without the will mm-hmm they're not doing it and the will some some people look at will as having three components one component is motivation one component is commitment but the One component is motivation. One component is commitment.

But the third component is security or confidence. And so people who have a strong self-efficacy, like myself, like you, that we embrace the challenge. We see things as a challenge and a venture and something to move towards. So we're always trying to expand our capacity, but we have this adventurous spirit that says,

I don't know how far I can take this, but I'm just going to take it as far as I can take it. And it's fun, and it's something that I know creating a service for others. I want to help others by expressing or being a leader in terms of how am I going to not get so comfortable that I'm chilling and when you get to that that that phase of you know even boredom or just relaxed and you know just sort of satisfied that's when you

have to challenge yourself and if you you challenge yourself, then you have to raise everything to meet that challenge. And unless you do that, that's where the self-regulation comes in. And that's why when you talk about MJ or Kobe, some of those guys like that, Tom Brady, there's a lot of them out there. I'm not naming all of them. Of course, the ones that are there now, you know, I could name them all. But what it comes down to is you will know them by their fruits, right? You will know them by their ability to not settle and their ability to keep getting better.

If you think of Steph Curry last year, he knew he wasn't going to. Well, I can't speak for him, but it was pretty obvious they weren't going to win without Klay, but he took his game to a whole other level. And see, that's the thing. If Klay was there, would he have been doing that? Probably not because the situation probably didn't call for him to be extraordinary. And that's why if you think about going to a team that's already loaded,

you might win championships, but you really have to look at, this is my opinion, whether or not you're challenged enough so that you can get out of your comfort zone and go to that next level. Without that sense of urgency, you can't do it, or unless you're committed to excellence and you're taking it to the next level. So let me give you an example of that. I can blot about MJ, but let's just talk about Kobe for a moment. So Kobe won a championship in 2009. I think I have it right.

You were working with him then? When they come to Boston, yeah. I've always been, when they come to Boston, I work with them, talk with them. The process they use is the one that we developed when I was here in the early 2000s. So that's the thing. So that's what I'm talking about. It's like, okay, you won, but you want to go to the next level.

So you, you know, you retire, you can reflect on, but you got to keep getting better because now the team knows you won. Every team is going to be coming for you. So you have to keep getting better. It's progressive realization of a worthy ideal. So you're not there,

but it's in that day to day just making today your masterpiece getting better today it's that incremental process and that's what I mean and there's other people to do that I don't have to name names people don't realize that Tom Brady probably spends 10 to 12 hours a day in the offseason, getting ready. Now he's 44. Now he just came this close from going to the next level at the defense held. He probably, knowing him, he would have got the ball and scored and they would have won, but that's a mindset. It was 27-6.

No quit. That probably just inspired him even more. Yeah. So that's what I'm talking about, that idea. So it's not about how do we get them it's how do we help them go inside and make that become willing mmm to go to the next level because some people just don't want to do that they're not interested that's why they say many are called fewer chosen who it's It's about you having a vision, a possibility for yourself that has to do with being great

or helping others be great by being a role model and by taking it to the next level. What happens when people stay comfortable for year after year after year and they don't challenge themselves? What happens to them? They become relaxed and bored that's what boredom we spend most of our time between boredom and anxiety so if you look at it that way so you're bored or you're relaxed but you're just a couple levels up from boredom but if you're bored or if you're anxious it's saying to you if you're bored you need to challenge yourself more you need to have goal setting and set goals or as steve harvey said on

the video i heard he said the reason people have a hard time getting up in the morning because they don't have a good enough reason for them to get up so you want to create a raison d'etre or way of being where you you uh jumping up like a kid at christmas so christmas eve you can't go to sleep because you know it's going to be so you have to have that kind of a process where you you are getting up and you're going at it because it makes you feel alive it makes you feel like you're you're making a difference and I would say it for what we're really talking about is people being who they are and not somebody that they're supposed to be or somebody wants them to be.

But coming from that masterpiece and when you're being real, so it's like we used to talk about it when I worked in the corporate structure. You have, you know, Hump Wednesday, TGIF Friday. It's like, so five-sevenths of the time you're doing something you're not happy about. When in actuality, why not have it be seven seven so

having a work and it's interesting because i was just reflecting i was reading this book by eric butterworth called um spiritual economics and in there he talked about what's been my experience it's not so the job may not be that great but it's what you bring to the job and how you apply yourself. And it's interesting because it's not so much about the compensation, it's about your soul growth. It's about you growing as a person, just being fully engaged in everything. And I think Jesus talked about this, about going the extra mile.

Like I guess back in the day there, the Romans could say, okay, I want you to carry this for a mile. He said, go two miles. And so this idea of giving more than what you get and there's something

about applying yourself, be fully engaged, your whole mind, body, heart, and soul engaged. So that's what healing is. It's wholeness.

So just fully engage in yourself or as in Zen they say, burn yourself in the activity. Do not leave a trace. So fully engaged, fully present, just doing it. And what you bring to it is what makes the difference. And it's interesting because I'm thinking about this book I read called The Way of Man. They talk about this idea of just fully burning yourself in the activity, just losing yourself, just really, just really.

Because what is that about? It's like, so he talks about this idea of what can man do that angels can't do? And the answer to that is that men or men with a woman with holy intent can make you know can hallow anything we can make something holy just by intention so we can make something how holy whole just by our intention so that's what we can do we can intend to make things holy we can make heaven here now just by bringing that love that that compassion, that presence that's fully committed and a productive act of love. That's what love is. When you love something, you help it grow.

So it's the intention. So do you have to stay in the job? I was in a job I didn't want to be in. Well, I woke up and I'm making missiles. I just worked for Northrop back in the day, 16 years working on that stuff. And then I went to high tech after that. But it was really more about, and I got into that job.

How did I end up being a financial analyst, getting an accounting degree? Because my high school coach told me they make money. So I did it. So I did what I thought I was supposed to do. And it wasn't until I stopped that I started doing what I thought I was supposed to do and it wasn't until I I stopped that I started doing what I wanted to do so I go from working in corporate wearing a three-piece suit going back to graduate school studying the soft sciences like psychology and then I'm there with people who were in the soft sciences wanting to go into business because they wanted to make money

and they look at me like dude what's wrong with you ah you come in here with a three-piece suit trying to do what we're doing and it was very simple that's because i was following my bliss i was doing what i was supposed to do had nothing to do with what the conversation was and had to do with me getting into a situation where i could fully express myself be fully in all in i think you talk about that a lot, being all in. And it's what I bring to it. And of course that can change, but what can't change is me being fully engaged in the moment with as much love and joy and compassion as I can have. Yeah. Something you mentioned there was healing as wholeness. Of the people that you train at the 1%, it seems to be like a lot of

those people have a chip on their shoulder. They have something where they're, maybe not always, but it's like there was a pain somewhere that drove them to be great. Correct me if I'm wrong. When I was training as an athlete, I was very driven to be great, to prove people wrong. People that hurt me or the pains that I went, or the sadness I felt, the being picked on, and all those things, I was like, I'm gonna become so big, so athletic, so strong, so needed, that I'm gonna prove them wrong. And it worked, it got me to achieving results,

and being like the captain of my team, and playing professional football, all these different things, but when I would achieve my goals, I felt so empty and alone and angry. It's almost like it was like, well, this isn't what, I thought it was supposed to heal me, and it didn't. And then I went for a bigger goal, bigger goal.

We kind of talked about this before a little bit. And it wasn't until I started doing the healing work that I was able to create from a place of peace and love and generosity as opposed to I got this chip on my shoulder I gotta keep showing up and like proving these people wrong or whatever do you think most of the top performers in the world create and and build from a place of there's something that's still not healed or whole inside of them or do you know some that you worked with who have completely healed or on a healing journey and they're creating their masterpiece at a high level from wholeness?

I think, and I'll speak about it this way because I don't get into people's hearts. I mean, I do, but I don't want to talk about people's hearts. Sure. Because I have to talk to them. And even if they express to me what it is, it may not be what it is. It's their interpretation of what it is. Right, right, right. And I watch their behavior.

I think what's important is maybe that gets you there, that anger, or gets you to prove people wrong. Because I was like that, too. When you told me I couldn't do something, you had a tiger. I would show you. But what happens is at some point you're right that's empty because that's that's coming from a place of fear so i talk about coming from you know you're either coming from love or fear and when you're coming from fear you're in survival mode which is that flight fight and freeze or growth mode or love mode where it's rest and

digest it's something that's coming inside of you it's an expression of you and something that comes from the inside out not something coming from the outside in and so even though you get there initially by that you can't sustain that and as you mentioned it's this emptiness there there's there's no meaning there there's because you're not whole you're just acting out of fear instead of coming out of love where you can have your whole being be engaged in it. So even though, like I'll use the example, I used to work in prison to do mindfulness-based stress reduction in recovery units, people who have substance abuse. And some of them, they were mandated to be in the program. And so I used to teach where it was voluntary,

and they were very different people who were mandated and said, well, I'm forced to be here. And I said, yeah, there's some choice you got here out of force, but you can decide to be here for you now. You can decide instead of letting somebody's bad behavior affect you or you'll be at bad behavior or you have being and doing something you don't want to do you can choose to do it for yourself you can choose to change how you look at that and the way it is healing you say okay i'm here I'm about to be here for me, even though they got me here.

But I can fight it or I can just embrace it and say, okay, how can I find myself in this mix? As Hans Selye talked about, in this place, there's an opportunity for me to express myself, to me to get in touch with myself. And it's an inside job to do it for myself. And so I can't speak to all those athletes but i think at some point the ones that are are the happy are the ones because if you do that and you're not in the field anymore or in that sport how do you deal with life because now you don't have that place to express that that outlet whereas yeah it gets you there but why not be there for yourself and then deal with the whole person you know how you feel you know your body is physical your mind is a mental the heart is emotional social in there and your

soul your spirit that you want all of those aspects of yourself to be be there so when we talk about the spiritual thing, it's like how do you embrace, how do you get out of survival mode into growth mode and then embracing those parts of yourself that haven't been so helpful? But you have to make peace with that. We all make mistakes. And so that, those two wolves, I talk about this idea of the two wolves with the Cherokee grandfather telling his grandson, I have two wolves with this ferocious battle inside of me. And the grandson's concerned and says, which wolf will win? He says, the one we feed. So we both have those two wolves in us,

but it's a question of which one we're going to feed. So the fear wolf gets us there, but then once we get there, can we just start feeding the love wolf? And this idea of getting beyond the illusion of separateness and being a service. And I like to call it, forget yourself to find yourself. Forget yourself. To find yourself. So when you give yourself a service and you help other people, you're also helping yourself, but you have to get to a place where you have something to give. So you have to get to a place where you have something to give. So you have to develop enough so that you can actually give.

And so a lot of things we give, we can give money, but when we can give our time, when we can give our heart, when we can give our soul, I think that pays a bigger dividend. Yeah. You talk about superpowers in order to achieve your goal. I think there's five superpowers you talk about. Right. What are those?

And why are these important to develop? So I talk about mindfulness, there's effort or diligence, there's focus, concentration, there's insight or wisdom, and faith. So they're all connected. they're all connected. So for me to be mindful, what I talk about being mindful is having a mirror mind of being able to see, let things be as they are,

like they're in the mirror, just interpreting them or letting them speak to you in their own language instead of us interpreting them. So it's like being vulnerable and letting the unfolding moment unfold without you interfering.

And so what you want to do is you want to create, you want to elongate the perceptual process. So first there's a very short time where there's, where the raw data is there. And then immediately associative thinking, abstract associative thinking, like, oh, I remember the last time this happened, abstract thinking, abstract, associative thinking. Like, oh, I remember the last time this happened, abstract thinking, selfing or self-importance, all of that stuff.

And of course, the way the visual system works is it's trying to relate what's happening based on what we've already experienced instead of seeing it in fresh and new ways. So we have to create this ability because as human beings, we have this ability to sit back and watch things as a silent witness without being critical. And that's what it is, uncritical observation. Seeing things in a certain way and that when we create space between stimulus and response, we start to be able to see things as they are, not as we remember them or as our mindset that we happen to be in is interpreting it in a

certain way instead of seeing the raw data. So we want to be able to be mindful. So you have to have faith. You have to realize, like Einstein said, the most important question to ask yourself is, is this a friendly or unfriendly universe? And let's just go with the friendly. If it's a friendly universe, then you will use all your resources

to understand how things work and then align yourself with how things work, like gravity. You don't have to believe in gravity. It works. If you align yourself with gravity, you'll be okay. And so you have to have the faith

that what you're going to do is actually going to be possible and it's going to be helpful. So you have to have the faith to make the effort to be mindful. But then you need, so we're talking about faith, we're talking about effort.

Then you have to have the focus, the here and now, you know, being able to be locked in so that you can be mindful. And then you also need the wisdom or understanding, what am I being mindful of? And what are the essentials?

What's the principles involved? Right. or understanding what am I being mindful of and what are the essentials? What's the principles involved? And so all of those things are always working. So mindfulness helps us cultivate effort or this idea of being diligent, like the sustain effort. We can't do anything without the sustain effort, but the effort to do what we say we're going to do and just to keep doing it until we get it, not quitting, not giving up, and that sort of thing. But that's really more mental to get into it because when you're in a positive mind state, then it's easier to do it.

You're coming from love rather than fear. Let's just talk about that wolf, those two. How does someone get more into love, though, if they've been living in fear their whole life? By recognizing they're in fear and understanding how it's not helpful and how to get out of fear. Well, how do they get out of it? Yeah, so this is part of my effort. It's like you're in fear once you notice that you're reacting to things instead of responding to things. And if you can pause and notice that you're reacting, then how do I not react?

Be still and know by just stepping back and instead of leaping and interpreting, just let it speak to you. But you have to be vulnerable. That's where the faith comes in and that sort of thing. By being that, then once you say, oh, when this happens, this happens, and if I want to change something, I have to change, I have to self-regulate.

I have to change my thoughts, my feelings, my behavior. And so you understand, how do I not be fear, noticing you're in fear and realize that you're in survival mode. And if you can just breathe and focus on one thing and get your nervous system into rest and digest or focus, generating what I call a hall of fame, HOF. A hall of fame. A hall of fame. Yeah. Hope, of Fame HOF the whole thing yeah hope optimism faith okay so if you get into positive mind state it's called the broaden and build theory when you're coming from optimism hope faith then your cognitive functioning is enhanced so you actually start to see instead of being locked on channel 5 there's 200 channel yeah and then by opening up you say say, oh, there it is right there.

So you have to be able to understand that's what we call right effort. How do you abandon an unwholesome mindset like fear? So one way you can do that is do the opposite of fear with love. Another way you can do it is understanding the consequences of coming out of fear. What's holding you back from that, yeah. Okay, so if I'm in fear, then I'm going to be reacting, and I'm not going to be able to create space between stimulus and response. And in that space, I get to align with my core values, with my goal, with my aim, right? So the third thing is to divert your attention from it to something else.

So if I focus on what I want or I focus on what's going to work, to divert your attention from it to something else. So if I focus on what I want, or I focus on what's gonna work, then I can't have two things in my mind at once. So if I focus on what I want versus what I didn't want, then that changes it, so you divert your attention to it. So that's a third way. The fourth way, I'll'll just you talk about four today

is you actually turn towards the fear and you say okay when fear is present i notice that there's this tightness i notice that i have tunnel vision i notice that it's keeping me small and like choking i can't breathe and if i understand so i get intimate with fear so i know oh fear is here and it's okay. Just breathe through it. Just feel whatever the fear is in your body and just let it be, you know, just notice it. But if I can breathe with it, I can open with it

and say it's okay because I'm not reacting to it. I'm actually creating space and then now I'm not reacting. So example of the fear, I had this fear of talking in public and I would get up and I was in this program called Toastmasters. I did it too. And I get up there, and I'm at the podium, and I'm shaking. And the more I tried not to shake, I shook. So at the time, I was in graduate school, and I was studying paradoxical intention.

This is Viktor Frankl. He was saying that instead of running away from the fear, embrace it. And so I decided I was gonna be a shaken fool when I got up there. And when I got up there, I stopped shaking. So the only way out is always through. So the fear is, and then we talk about exposure therapy.

So the thing you fear to do, just do it a little bit in increments that are manageable uncomfortable hard to do but doable then what happens is you actually create this what they call exposure therapy the more you're exposed to it the less it affects you so there's all of these different ways but it's really embracing the fear and generating the hope and saying okay there's a lesson here for me to get. And if I look at fear as an acronym for false evidence appearing real, or some fears are healthy, like fear of being hit by a car when you're walking across the street or touching

a hot thing. So it's really understanding when fear arises, I embrace it. And by embracing it and working through it, it is no longer fear. It's just a reaction. and we're learning from it. We respond to it. And so you embrace it and you get comfortable being uncomfortable. And by embracing the fear and understanding it, it no longer is fear. What was the biggest fear you've had to overcome?

Being myself. When did you learn that? I didn't learn that. I just observed myself self-sabotaging and being uncomfortable. So this is what Marianne Williamson said, our greatest fear is not embracing our masterpiece, our divinity, but it's just uncomfortable. And we know the nervous system, if something is unpleasant, it's going to avoid it. And if it's pleasant, it moves avoid it. And if it's pleasant,

it moves towards it. And if it's neither, it spaces out. So we're afraid of our greatness. But it's by embracing that greatness that we can, we have this, once again, that exposure therapy, just taking that a little bit more. So I do it more and more. But it's, yeah, my greatness. And it's not something I thought about it was just something I observed when did you realize that you weren't fully being yourself like how old were you I think when I was in recovery in 1984 I was about 32 and a half something like that when I started real I started getting glimpses of it realizing oh there's more to it because I lived in my own little fantasy but But just to open up and to see that I was responsible and that I could choose my response

and stuff like that, I realized that on some level I was hiding out in plain sight. Just like those folks that don't want to, don't get up, can't keep up, as Vin Diesel says, wasn't interested in getting up. So that's it but it's really fear the process of fear is probably the main thing but that's how it manifests and not realizing and you know how it feels to realize that you're afraid of your greatness really feel like a loser when you do that oh but that's just a thought it's not reality it's just a thought. It's not reality. It's just, okay. That's one way to look at it. Or another way to look at it is fear is sort of taking care of yourself. Oh, I can't do that.

That's afraid. So self-care can be looked at. I mean, fear can be looked at as self-care. And it's not self-care that's helpful or effective. But it's a form of survival. And that's what we call survival mode. That's what that is. Like a prey animal.

When did you learn how to overcome self-sabotage and how can people do that today? Learn if they've been doing that in their relationships or their career, how do they learn to stop doing that? By observing, by noticing that you gotta get into the love mode. You've got to get in a positive mind state and look at it as an uncritical observation. You've got the mindfulness.

You have to be able to see it without judging and just see how things arise and fade away and then think about how do I get out of it? How did so-and-so get out of it? What does the research tell me? What are the role models out there that have overcome their fear? And then ask them or read the books and just study. You know, I've been in recovery going on 38 years. I've averaged over a book a week.

Wow. So my way, the best stress reducer is, best stress reduction or dealing with fear is wisdom, understanding. Because as Franco says, because we're really talking about suffering, right? Victor Franco says suffering ceases to be suffering when we find meaning in it. So when you find meaning in it, then it ceases to be suffering. So we have to touch our suffering. We have to go into it and we have to understand it.

For some reason, it's hard to understand the meaning of suffering when we're in it sometimes. That's right. I always look back and I'm like, man, that was a rough time in my life, but I wouldn't change a thing because it helped me overcome this adversity and it helped me learn this skill and it helped me have more courage or whatever it is. But it's like when you're in it, you can't, I shouldn't say you can't, it's hard sometimes to really step back and have wisdom and observe.

Oh, I'm in this. Unless you have a habit of doing that. Yeah, unless you're. And unless you're able to feel it in your body and step away and get out of the mindset but this is the whole thing it's it's creating this ability to observe experiences no matter how challenging it is from this silent witness and not doing anything but just observing and asking what is this and and how is it manifesting so you're absolutely right that's why you got to get out of survival mode and get into growth mode.

If you react to the things, there's no way you can do it because there's no space to do anything but react. But if we reflect on it and then we look at it and reflect and say, okay, I reacted. What training do I need to do? What learning and practicing do I need to do so the next time I can create a little bit more space, a little bit more space. Then once I create the space, then I can really see. But you're right,

when you're in that mode, that consciousness, that consciousness is like a tractor field that only allows you to have certain options. And so you have to raise your consciousness or expand your ability to pause, slow things down. And in that space, learn from your mistakes. And then at some point you understand, oh, here's how you do it. But it's an inside job and it's something that you have to practice. So if you're going to do it and just say, I did it last week and I don't want to do it this week, but you're not learning and practicing anything, then how do you expect to not do the same thing? So you have to actually reflect on experience because the true understanding reflects on, comes from reflecting

on experience. So how did I, I did this, how can I do it differently? Well, first thing you got to understand, if you don't look at it differently, or if you don't have a different mindset, you're going to keep doing the same thing. So that's why you got to get out of survival mode and the growth mode. Or that hope, optimism, faith I i talked about or the willing suspension of disbelief and saying okay why don't i try it this way but once you change this was dr wayne dyer said when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change so it's the perspective from which you are observing experience that's's the whole thing, your mindset. If I have on the fear glasses,

then I'm gonna be looking, if I have on the love glasses, then I have on possibility. If I come from half full, that's abundance. If I come from a half empty, I'm coming from scarcity. It totally changes everything. But if you just notice, oh, I'm in fear, get out of fear and be in love, then it'll be clear to you what you need to do.

100% agree. And I remember for probably most of my life feeling like I would get in these waves. Sometimes it'd be a good season of life and sometimes it seems like, oh, man, I'm in breakdown mode, right? And I felt like stuck and I couldn't get out. And I remember it was something happened four years ago where I went through a challenging moment in my life and it felt like, oh wow, this is a, this felt like a heavy moment, like a season, right? A few months of heaviness. And for whatever reason, I think because I'd experienced a few different seasons of that in the past, like 15, 20 years, I remember thinking to myself, oh, okay, a lot is happening. It was almost so emotionally and mentally overwhelming. I was like, okay, I've been here before. And every

time I've been here three, four, five, six years later, I look back on it and say, I'm so grateful for what that taught me. So I would reflect back and have wisdom. So what are the reasons? This happened four years ago. I decided when something was challenging, I said, I'm going to reflect forward and have wisdom. Like, I know this is going to be happening for me. And I just have to wait six months, a year, two years until I'm going to see the benefits and the fruits of this. And it worked.

It helped me stay in peace mode, not reaction right helped me focus on love what I can control not what I couldn't control and it put me back on my mission like how can I improve what's the lesson what's my mission not how can I be angry at the world or whatever and it was a beautiful experience to reflect forward for me I don't know if that's something you teach as well in moving forward, but it's like time travel and see yourself a year or two away. Yes. So you live in the future, you see. So when something bad happens, we see it happening again.

So what are we really talking about here? We're talking about something happens, then we interpret what it means. Yes. Louis, we're talking about something happens, then we interpret what it means. Yes. So in the interpretation, if you interpret it from survival mode, then things are going to get worse. You interpret it from love. You say, okay, what's the lesson here? How do I learn it's going to be okay?

That's where all those, like the faith and the effort and the mindfulness and the concentration and the wisdom, they all come in and you just look at it and say, okay, I interpreted it this way before and this is what I got. So I don't want that, so I have to do something different. This is with self-regulation. So something happens. Why not interpret it in a way that empowers you, motivates you, inspires you? And that's what you did.

And that's the whole point. The whole point is we learn from mistakes. We are not our mistakes. And that's the challenge we have. We make a mistake and we identify with it instead of realizing, no, it's just behavior. It's not who you are. It's just, it's an event. But then we carry it.

So when you were talking about that and all of that carry on, I was thinking about when I worked with baseball and softball players when you haven't got a hit each time you go up you keep adding on to the drama the pressure you're going up with a 16 20 pound vest on instead of saying what yogi berra one of one of my philosophers when they asked him about that he said i ain I ain't in no slump, I just ain't hitting. So what he's really saying is I just have to get a hit, but I'm not bringing those other 16 at bats into the moment with me. Just let them go, but more importantly, reflect on those 16 and see in each case what could you have done differently to get a hit.

So now you don't look at the string, you look at, okay, what do I need to change? What are the principles involved in getting a hit? Seeing the ball, you know, having my hands right, you know, being ready, having to relax, having the confidence is your mindset. There's a certain mindset that you need to have. And then physically, you got to have your body ready. But more importantly, you have to have this idea that you're going to do well yeah did you have what we call outcome expectation you expect things to turn out just like what you talked about oh no this is happening but i expect it to turn out so now you can let go to grow and you can say okay this is just a stepping stone it's not a roadblock so it's all about the mindset it's all about this growth mindset that says okay everything that happens i need to

reflect on it and understand what worked what didn't work and and then figure out what didn't work how to make it work so that's the thing we have to focus on this moment not the previous 16 at bats but this at bat and just focusing on it and that's how mj or kobe can go in the fourth quarter before free for free for 11 or something like that and then you know hit the game with because there's always about resetting and beginning again make a mental note how okay i have to keep my arm in but you expect to make the next shot but you forget about the previous shots other than understanding, okay, I'm not using my legs, or you saw it in the last dance.

Michael, he was tired, so he didn't get his legs in it. So when he made that last shot, he didn't make it for style. He put follow-up on it because all his shots were short, so he was adapting in real time to what happened. And that's what the key is. Don't focus on what happened before. Focus on the moment and focus on what you want. Remember what I talked about?

Don't focus on what you don't want because that's what you're creating. You focus on what you want. And then you reset. It's just like my iPhone. It was probably the same thing. If it gets stuck, turn it off and turn it back on. It's reset to factory settings, and you can roll. That's what we have to do mentally when we make mistakes,

not just athletes like you talked about. When we get stuck, we make a mistake. Can we bring compassion and forgiveness and say, when I know better, this is what Dr. Maya Angelou, one of her sayings I love, when you know better, you do better. One of her sayings I love, when you know better, you do better. So no blame, no being critical, just notice what needs to change and then go from there. And the rich get richer because when you understand that, you automatically do it because you know that why would you take confidence from yourself?

You know confidence is really important. Absolutely. What do you think is the best way to build confidence and self-belief and overcome self-doubt for people? Depends on the situation, but I think the main thing is to be able to listen to that voice inside of you. So obviously prayer and meditation, focusing on what you want, cultivating that hope, optimism, and faith that I talked about, having social support. So there's this thing I talk about, predicting success in a job, Sean O'Core, Happiness Advantage, talks about the research that says there's three things that are important. The positive genius, what I talked about, the hope, optimism, and faith,

cultivating a positive mindset. Second thing is social support. So it's not just being around somebody and commiserating, but being around people who, and relationships, like you talked about, your mentor, that are encouraging you the only way out is through, and that you're not by yourself, and you have help. And then the third thing is seeing the crisis as an opportunity or seeing it as a challenge. And like we said before, people don't look at things as challenge, they just look at, oh, that's bad, I don't wanna go there. Instead of saying, no, this is an opportunity for me

to learn something and even if I don't wanna do it for myself, my kids, I want my kids or I want to impact society in a way where people are saying yes to life and not no to life and are leveling up and embracing challenge, seeing opportunity rather than staying back and being reactive to be proactive. And really talk about how can you express yourself, that masterpiece within. It comes out when it's challenged. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. You taught a lot of people over the years

and coached people and you were saying before that you learn a lot when you're teaching, right? You get some of the best lessons when you're teaching someone. Yes. What would you say were the three greatest lessons you think you learned from people you coached? Maybe there's someone well-known, maybe someone not well-known.

But what would you say just like, wow, this person actually just gave me an incredible gift. I'll give you two right off the top of the head. You can only be yourself. Because if you don't know who you are, you can end up being anybody. That's number one. Number two, if you don't know where you're going, you can end up going anywhere. Number two, if you don't know where you're going, you could end up going anywhere. Number two. And number three is you have a masterpiece inside

and when you access it, even a little bit of it, it changes everything. When you realize you have the power to do whatever you need to do, you can learn whatever you need to learn. And that you don't have to do it alone. So it's really more about understanding who you are and where you're going and that you have everything you need to succeed. How did you have confidence when you were coaching some of these superstars?

When some of these guys and gals have some of the powerful mindset out there, how did you, as a coach and a teacher, make sure you went in there with confidence, knowing that you could contribute to these people as well sometimes? To be honest with you, I prayed. Yes. I focused on my masterpiece and knowing if I could be still and know and just trust that the universe was lawful, just trust that my high-powered God, the universe, whatever you want to call it, that if I was aligned with divine will, I was going to be fine. So that means love, how can I help, how can I serve, not worrying about it.

So forgetting myself to find myself in that case is not worrying about how I'm going to perform or how they're going to take me, but focusing on how I can serve and just coming from my own experience, knowing from my own experience and being authentically myself. So understanding that if I can be still and know and come from the love, come from the inside out, and how can I help? So the two questions I usually ask people, I work with a team says, what do you want? And then the question is, are you willing to be who you need to be to do what you want? Those two questions. It's really simple. It doesn't matter who you are. It's like, okay,

here's what's happening. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to react to it or respond to it? And if you understand you have everything you need to succeed and you have that will to win remember i talked about the the desire to succeed the will to succeed if you have that and you realize that it's going to take as long as it takes but if you sustain your attention if you're paying attention then you're going to learn what you need to learn and you're going to do what you have to do. And even if you don't get the result you want, if you can walk away and say, I gave everything I had, that's a winner. Absolutely. Where no regrets. I was fully engaged in what was happening. And sometimes that's the way it is. You don't always win, but you win when you got better today, when you played your best when you

express your potential in that moment yeah in that moment my friend rory vaden says it's hard to be nervous when your heart's on service and i used to yes i like that one that's a that's a keeper my buddy rory rory vaden that's his quote it's hard to be nervous when your heart's on service for years i would be nervous before a game, a speech, whatever it might be, an opportunity to present something. And it wasn't until maybe six years ago, seven years ago, where I reached out to a coach right before a big speech. And I'd been speaking.

I did Toastmasters as well, because that was my big fear. And I overcame the fear of having the skills to be able to present an idea in front of an audience. It took me a year to really get there. Every week practicing at Toastmasters, terrified in the beginning. And years later, after I'd been speaking professionally for a while, I was still getting nervous like the day before,

and I didn't understand why. I was like, I should be better by now. I was judging myself was the first thing. But I reached out to a coach, and I said, I don't understand why. I was like, I should be better by now. I was judging myself was the first thing. But I reached out to a coach and I said, I don't know why I'm still nervous. This was about an hour before a big speech. I go, what can I do? And he said, you're focused on yourself,

not on the audience and serving. He's like, no, you're going to make a mistake. No, you're not going to remember every line or every point or joke or whatever. Stop thinking about you and what people think of you and start focusing your energy and attention on how you can be of service to them. And that was a big shift for me.

And I still maybe get a little nervous here and there, but it's like whenever I feel that insecurity, I just think I'm not going to be 100% perfect and that's okay. But if I put all my energy on the message, the mission of what I want to get across and focus on that, realizing I'm not the best speaker in the world and I'm trying to do that, then it relieves the nerves. Yeah. It's helpful.

You forgot yourself to find yourself. Yeah, right. So I'd like to say a couple of things about nerves. It's not the nervousness that's the situation. It's how you react or respond to it. I'll give you an example. People don't know, but Bill Russell, I grew up in Boston, so I watched the Celtics, and Bill Russell won 11 championships in 13 years. 11 championships in 13 years. He used to get nervous before a game to the point where he would have to

throw up. One game, he was before the game and read our back, said, Russ, did you throw up? Yeah. He said, no. He said, go in the locker room. Don't come out until you do. Well, what's that about? Because he knows when he's nervous, he plays his best.

And part of the nervousness could be for a lot of reasons. It could be maybe because you want it so badly or whatever. But in the moment of the game if you change your consciousness or your focus from being nervous to doing the next thing I call it though some people talk about the win WIN and what does that mean what's important now yeah so if you manage a moment it doesn't matter how you feel or how you see things you make you manage this moment, then the next moment goes, the next moment goes. So it's not about we have this interpretation that we're nervous because there's people who are not nervous. And then in the moment of truth, they're nervous, even though they weren't nervous before.

And that one second could make all of the difference, you know, making a play or whatever. So we have to realize that stuff can happen but it's always about the mindset and it's always about what's important now managing this moment and and forgetting yourself to find yourself when you're in flow there's no self-consciousness there yeah you're just you're doing the thing in and of itself you're not focused on the results because you're focused on the results that's where a lot of the nervousness might come from because you're focused out there instead of being in here and just managing the moment.

And that's the most important thing is, right now there's nothing wrong. Right now there's nothing wrong. Think of how profound that is. There's nothing wrong. But if we think about the past or the future, or we say, yeah, but, then it's a problem. But if we just say there's nothing wrong and just focus on what you're doing, even if you make a mistake, correct it in real time and keep it moving.

But that's too simple. We have complicated minds. But that's it. It's like, so you're nervous, so what? Like with me, I was shaking. I was nervous. And the more I tried not to shake, I shook like this. And then once I just said, I don't care.

I'm going to be shaking full. I'm going to be the best, the most nervous person there ever was. Now, once you do that, you change your relationship to it. And then you don't make it a thing. Then it totally transforms everything. Yeah. So that's it. So you're absolutely right. It worked for you.

As long as you focus on service, you won't be nervous. But even if you are nervous, who cares? The thing is, can you make the play even if you are nervous? Can you do the next thing? What's important now? And if you focus on what's important now and forget yourself and just focus on the task, then you find yourself. That's the paradox. That's one of my Georgisms.

Forget yourself and find yourself. Once you get out of the way and just let what's one of my Georgisms, forget yourself, but find yourself. Yeah. Once you get out of the way and just let what's inside of you, your divinity, express itself and being real and being authentic.

So being authentic means you're nervous, you're expressing your nervousness. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But it's your relationship to it. In that space, how are you going to respond to it

in a way where it actually helps you get to the next level? So you had a drug addiction for a while. Is that right? How long was that period of time for? I couldn't really tell you. I know I stopped in 1984, but I was, I don't know, 15, 20 years, whatever.

What do you think is the root cause of addiction in general? Why people get addicted to substances, and then also what was the biggest lesson you learned from your recovery, from rehab, recovery, and getting off of that? Yeah. Well, not speaking, that's a big question to speak about it, but I think the nervous system is programmed to go for things that's pleasant. You approach things that are pleasant. Avoid things that are unpleasant.

And space out if it's neither pleasant or unpleasant. Now, the neutral that's positive is when you're in equanimity or when you're in the center in the hurricane where there's not a preference. It's not indifference. So you're not moving towards and moving away. You're just holding your center and just observing things I just didn't want to be in my experience

for whatever reason I was trying to get away from from reality and I found a way to hide out or I could just kind of dull the pain or numb it and sometimes people just start using drugs and alcohol because it's a thing to do. And then some of us, because we get addicted to it, we need it more and more. And so it wasn't, I think the most important thing is just to notice that I was doing things that got to the point where I was a functional addict. I still worked and everything. But it was robbing me of myself and and it's like people some of us my father was alcoholic so I you know all my uncles I probably came there's some some part that's just nature

and nurture but I think the main thing was that you know I found out what for me especially I was always drinking all right but with that with the alcohol I mean with the drugs it just made me feel more it got rid of some of my inhibitions and I felt like I could just you know it was just it just changed changed me it gave me gave me courage and stuff like that when I think about it so but it doesn't matter so much how you start what matters is that once you start you can't stop yeah and and some of us some people could do it in safety I couldn't so it wasn't until my butt was on fire when I realized that I had an issue and

so I had to come to the realization that that if I don't take a drink or drug I won't get high won't get drunk and so the best lesson for me is that it was a way for me to deal with life and I wasn't dealing with me I wasn't going inside and dealing with my with my greatness with my masterpiece with my ability to just be myself in spite of what everybody else wanted me to be. Because people will tell you who you should be or who they want you to be. And when we're being inauthentic or when we're doing what we're supposed to do instead of doing what we want to do, that creates a whole... I mean, there's a lot of conflict,

there's a lot of self-hate, who knows? It could be a lot of reasons, but to me, I just didn't know how to deal with life on life's terms. I'll just put it as simply as that. And then once I got clean, now I had to deal with that during reality for the first time. And that was overwhelming my nervous system. It was really challenging.

So I had chronic pain i had all kinds of stuff so that's when i got into meditation and wow and and some of the mind body experiences but the main thing i learned was the mind and body are connected and that i am responsible and it's an inside job so that was the lesson for me is that it's up to me. I can't worry about what you're doing. I got to focus on what George can do. George can't drink. George can't do drugs.

George is not interested in this. So I was doing all the other stuff until when I got clean. That's when I just started saying, I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to take responsibility for me and what resonates with me. And I don't really, I still cared about what other people thought but I kept weaning off of that so I got to the point that the only Opinion the most important opinion is my opinion of myself and be doing What I needed to do and continue and embrace that so that's challenging. I'm still you know, I feel like 40 years later

I'm better at it, but it's something that's constant. Like you talked about nervousness or fear. You can get traumatized any time. I was working with the Lakers during the championship run against Boston, and I go in there and this voice says, you shouldn't be there. They don't want to hear from you. Inner voice.

Because of my training. I said, well, that's interesting. But I ain't listening to you. I got work to do. But you see what I'm saying? But for me, I've been doing this for a long time. And a moment, you can have a voice or you could have fear or you could have nervousness or whatever. But when you're a professional, which I think really helps me in my role, as a professional, it doesn really helps me in my role as a professional

it doesn't matter how i feel yeah i just have to show up and do up and do you know show up and show out so it can happen at any time but it's it's me creating that space and being able to observe it and not judge myself so oh that's interesting the sound from the pina galli i call it the negative committee it was just okay so it could be there like background music and just go and do what i needed to do and no one knew the difference no one knew it it was just me but it was a blip but that could have sabotaged the whole thing absolutely i could have just said well you're not not feeling good and so you're like well come on they're on the championship run you can't can't do that no and so you don't show up. Step up or step out, right? Yeah, and so it happens, but the training of being

able, I can't explain, I mean, I can't overstate how important it is for us to be able to be in a moment and observe experience as this silent witness from the eye of the hurricane and just notice it without judging, without being critical, without pushing

it away, pulling it towards you. Then once we get the intel, then out of that silence, there's a knowing. I can't really explain it. There's a knowing that there's some part of you that knows what to do. That masterpiece, that divinity within just knows what to do. We call it intuition sometimes, but it's a gut feeling. But it's just a knowing. But a lot of times I tell people, I have no idea what I'm doing, but it's a gut feel could come as a gut feeling but it's just a knowing but a lot of times i tell people i don't have no idea what i'm doing but it's great and that is because

i'm not in there but i'm letting i'm being like water i'm just going with the flow okay i hear that okay you got your opinion and thanks for sharing that but i got i gotta do my job i have to be present and staying in the moment. And then, like you said, when you serve, when you focus on service, you're not nervous. And it's the same thing as when you focus on how you're going to help somebody, you forget yourself, but by helping others,

you're also helping yourself. And then when you get through it now, and I noticed this answer in that voice, that voice is not there so much, but a lot of us have been traumatized in one way or the other. Or once again, I am on a major stage in prime time and then things could happen. Things could happen. Something comes up. And I was fortunate enough to be able to not listen and just focus on the task. And that's why I think being a professional, what I mean by that is being a professional, when you do a job or you go the extra mile or you do it,

you forget yourself and you just focus on the task. And it doesn't mean I don't take care of it later, but it means unless I can't breathe, I'm going to do what I can do. I can show up and show up. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense. What was the biggest lesson you learned about yourself from the rehab recovery process then, would you say? When we can't express ourselves, there's something, there's not a feeling of wholeness, I'll tell you that. It's like having two sides, just really trying to hide our secret self. Not wanting anybody to know who it is. So this surreptitious kind of sense of being, I'll show you who I want you to see, but you can't really see my real self. And I was identifying with that negative stuff instead of identifying with the masterpiece of saying, okay, that's the fear wolf. You're feeding that.

Stop feeding that and feed the love wolf they're both there but the one that's going to going to win the battle is the one that you feed absolutely so yeah i think to be honest with you i so focused on getting high and and and stuff i didn't really have time to think about stuff like that right it was just survival when you're in survival mode you're not thinking about tomorrow or yesterday you're focused on the next thing putting out the next fire and that sort of thing and i think for me i was just thinking about how am i gonna get high when when am i gonna drink or how am i gonna get through this and there was nothing positive there wasn't something that i was looking forward to and like say okay i'm gonna go on vacation or you know i'm gonna have this this spell of really positive results

and whatever I was doing work or play it was more a consumption of of just trying to not be present was there a mentor or someone you saw or an incident or was there someone die or there was a couple of things one thing was i was riding around with uh like 100 405 degree temperature i had a strep infection and because when you're drug when you're dope sick and when you're having that it feels like a bad cold and and all sorts of things so i had no idea but i had to go to the hospital and then they kept me for five days and so when i got out of hospital a couple weeks after that friend of mine that i used to get hired came by my house on april fool's day and he took me to a meeting on april fools on april fool but i'm looking at said dude this is a joke yeah exactly

dude dude he's a dope fiend look at him he's so what'd did you do, man? It got my attention. And that's the first time I had real hope. I hoped that, oh, there's a way for me. Then I went to the meeting, the AA meeting. And then I saw other people that had the same issue I had, but they were sharing their experience, strength, and hope. And it gave me a vision, a possibility that, okay, I could do this. It took me months after that but I went into detox for 21 days and when I came out of there it was very interesting

because I think it's the first time I ever saw my house first time you saw your house mm-hmm really saw it where I was really living on life I never I've never gone 21 days without having some kind of drug or some kind of living in fantasy or something where I was dealing with life on life's terms for the first time at 32 and a half. But it's a blur. And it was just kind of like in and out of my own little fantasy. But I didn't know I was in there until I got sober and I started seeing clearly. So it was profound. And it was even more so because when i went when i was going into the detox i heard this voice say to me if the saint george that goes in there comes out you're in trouble yeah

so i knew i had to be different yeah and of course that's probably because um that that implicit learning i got being around recovery and people who were clean that i believe that i probably uh is what they call implicit and non declarative learning I think there was some stuff there that I got that told me that and I was on methadone program before so I knew taking methadone when I went in there trying to detox in 21 days was not gonna work right so Wow this was 37 years ago there's 1984 yeah 37 38 years ago yeah This was 1984. Yeah, 37, 38 years ago, I guess. Yeah, it'll be 38 years in July.

Wow. After going through that, man, everything is a blessing, man. Man, life is amazing compared to what it used to be. I want to ask you a question about fears. We talked about it a little bit before, you know, the fear therapy, exposure therapy. Yeah. And really, you know, facing the fear, the only way out is always through. And exposing yourself to it, to feeling it, and then going more into it.

But you don't have to go look for it. It's there. It's just how you. To lean into it. Yeah, lean into it. Embrace it is what you said. What do you think people are afraid more of? The fear of failure, success, or the judgment,

the other people's opinions about them? I'm going to go back to FDR during World War II. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. So it's a mindset. It's being in that survival mode. I think that'll cover everything. We talk about dealing with fear, doubt, and insecurity. But I think it's hard to know what people are going through

because you can't paint it with a broad brush. But I will say that they're in survival mode. I guarantee you that. They're in survival mode where they're doing either fighting, fleeing, or freezing, which is numbing out or just not being there, right, in that kind of indifference. And so that's what I think. So when we think about it, it's hard to get into all of the complexes and the psychological terminology that we have for character disorders or psychosis and neurosis.

I think the main thing we need to understand is that they're in survival mode, so they're either fighting, fleeing, or being frozen and feeling like life is happening to them and they don't have the ability to respond to things rather than react to things. And they don't even know the difference between reacting and responding. I didn't. I was just reacting all the time. But then once I realized that I could pause and reflect and I could actually think about things before I did them and then even while I'm doing them I can reflect on is this working this is not and then adjust in real time and then afterwards true understanding comes from reflecting on experience so

reflecting on okay so I used to get high or I got clean or I got through this how did I do that and so when I talk about people being mindful of their behavior, we need more of let's catch each other doing something right. What works? Attitude of gratitude. Absolutely. Grateful heart. It's just saying, okay, as long as I'm breathing, there's more right with me than wrong with me. Life I used to live before, now there's still stuff to say.

This is nothing compared to that. But if you look at it and say, what's the lesson here and this is an adventure we're on an adventure then I come from that hope that Hall of Fame hope optimism and faith okay there's something here there's a between for me to be a service like you talked about be a service not nervous and then then it's a totally different experience. So it's my attitude and that's the self-regulation, self-regulated thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Well, I'm choosing joy today, joy now and never. I'm choosing compassion, I'm choosing love, I'm choosing to be present, I'm choosing to fully deploy myself. That changes everything. And so that's the habit, get into that habit of saying, okay, what is this and how am I going to relate to it in a way that's in alignment with my core values? Do I have core values? Do I have a worthy cause? What is my intention? So if you're trying to impact a hundred million people or a billion people,

if you're trying to impact a hundred million people or billion people, then you have to be engaged in that day to day. You have to have a strategy in which you are getting this progressive realization of a worthy ideal where your success is on a moment to moment, day to day basis, because when you get off, you get back on. You talked about it. That's all. It doesn't matter. It's a zigzag. It's not straight. So when you get off, all you got to do is get back on. You talked about it. That's all. It doesn't matter. It's a zigzag. It's not straight. So when you get off, all you got to do is get back on. Don't judge. What did you learn?

And keep it moving. I love this stuff, man. You've got some amazing wisdom and lessons and experiences that I hope everyone dives into more. You do a weekly show on Instagram, is that right? Or a weekly YouTube thing? is that right or a weekly like youtube thing i do youtube being at home with george yes yes and and last week i talked about this idea of a grateful mind is a great mind and it attracts great things to you so attitude of gratitude and i want to acknowledge titan' passing. And a lot of my teaching comes from,

he's been inspirational, he's been a person that has led the way to mindfulness in daily life or bringing this contemplative practice to everyday folks. And just really talking about it in ways that makes a lot of sense. You know, compassion, love, makes a lot of sense. You know, compassion, love, just smiling and embracing people's divinity,

seeing the greatness in everyone, and just training the mind and the heart to be open. You've got a course out right now, right? Yes, I have a course I've been teaching for the last three years. It's called the Mindful Athlete course online. And what I've done with it is so you sign up for the course, you're in it for life. And so we have actually next week we have a quarterly call.

So each quarter we have a call where people can get on it. But in the spring we'll have a six-week study group. This past November, October, November, we did a study group called Being Courageous. So what we do is we go over six weeks. Once a week we'll get together and we'll have an hour call. So we'll do a little practice and then we'll go over the homework, and I'll say a little something, but it's mastering those five superpowers I talked about. Mindfulness, effort, concentration, insight, and faith. And so we apply those to a topic like the last one, being courageous.

How to be courageous, how to feel the fear and do it anyway. And what's the relationship between being courageous and faith? You know, your courage, you know, it means there's fear. We talk about fear. You feel the fear and do it anyway. Or you have to have faith. Faith helps you to be courageous

because you don't know what's gonna happen, but you know something good's gonna happen if you just show up and show out. And you're true to your, you know, you just learn from your mistakes. You just kind of do that. So we go through it over and over. It's what I call circular learning. I read my book probably 47 times. Wow.

And this last time I'm reading it, it's interesting because I have this client of mine who goes into prison and he's using my book. And so we go over each one of those superpowers. And so, of course, me being a recovering perfectionist. You're going over it all the time. And each time I go over it, I learn something new. And I say to myself, man, this is a really good book. And I say that because I wasn't there when I wrote it. I just was expressing that yeah it was flowing through you it was flowing through me but I keep reading it and each time I read it I it gets a little bit deeper it gets more my psyche so when I said to you the best way to learn something is

to teach it because when you teach it what you give comes back to you but also you you have to you have to understand what you're saying in a way and then you have to present it to other people so it it encourages me encouraging encourages us to know that if you have something you share with your family your friends you talk about it it gets more into your psyche because you you repeat it over and over so you keep going over this idea that you embrace whatever comes up that's what i talk about embrace and generate the hope you keep going over this idea that you embrace whatever comes up. That's what I talk about. Embrace and generate the hope. You have to keep finding the courage to say yes

and to say, what's the lesson here? And then kind of move through that. So yeah, so I offer these things. I have a masterclass on dealing with anxiety during the time of COVID and I'll do more masterclasses and I'm developing a youth course. And the other thing is I'm writing with anxiety during the time of COVID, and I'll do more master classes, and I'm developing a youth course. And the other thing is I'm writing a new book.

It's gonna be about unlocking our potential or embracing our masterpiece, discovering the masterpiece within. Something along that line, but it's really more about how I got through that, you know, my experience and how I teach people. But the idea is you talk about this idea of being happy when you're doing something that,

when your work is happy, your work life is happy and that sort of thing, then you're happy. And my thing is that if you're being your authentic self and you're living and you're embracing that masterpiece within, it's going to be amazing. So no matter work, love and play, you're going to bring

this this aliveness to it yeah this quality of authenticity and and being present and getting beyond the illusion of separateness i mean that's what we need a lot now because we have people who are at each other crazy things and we just need to know we're all connected and the best way is to do it together and not stop demonizing each other and stop talking at each other but to realize that I and the other one and then how about just seeing that just like me that person wants to be happy just like me a person suffers absolutely so we have to get to a place and it's not polyamorous because I come from a really challenging background and all that stuff. I'm not a simpleton.

I'm not talking about anything that I haven't experienced or witnessed, and I know we can do much better if we can remember who we are because, like I said, if you don't know who you are, you're going to end up being anybody, and if you don't know where you're going, you're going to end up going anywhere. So why not decide to be yourself and to go where you want to go? The Mindful Athlete, the book,

Mindful Athlete Course, you got the Masterclass on Anxiety. They can get everything at georgemumford.com, is that right? Georgemumford.com, that's right. And they can follow you. What's your main social media platform you're on the most?

Instagram, Facebook? Instagram, mostly Facebook, YouTube yeah like you man I want to reach a billion people that's big yeah I probably won't do it at this lifetime but maybe I will never know I never know but to me I I don't know I asked you because I don't know where that number came from I just put it up there I want it something that's going to stir me and encourage me to just really get out of my comfort zone and to really just go out there,

get beyond the realms that I'm normally in and then just embrace more realms. So if I only got 20 people or 100 people, that would make a difference. But I know I'm reaching more than that. And it's not like I'm reaching it. I just want people to be themselves. I just want people to know that they have a masterpiece

and that they can develop it and only they can develop it. But my platform is to help them do that. That's great. Exciting stuff, man. I got a couple final questions. This is called The Three Truths. only they can develop it but my platform is to help them do that that's great exciting stuff man uh i got a couple final questions this is called the three truths okay so imagine you get to live as long as you want to live but it's the last day for you on earth and you accomplish everything you reach the billion people you do whatever you want to create and you have the life you want but for whatever reason everything you've created has to go with you or has to go

somewhere else. So it's not here available for us anymore. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three things you know to be true that you would share. And this is all we would have from your teachings and your information. What would you say are those three truths for you? You have a masterpiece that you can develop. Number two, only you can develop it. And number three, the quality of your life is going to be a reflection of how much you develop. It can be developed and only you can develop it. And to the degree that you develop it, the quality of your life and the quality of your service is going to be a reflection of it. If you only develop it a little bit, at the end of your life, you'll be like, oh, look at all this I did not develop that I could have. Yeah.

And you'll be frustrated or resentful or regretful and I hope at my last days that I can continue to be enjoy enjoy now and never and and it just be loving and it's president's I mean that's beautiful yeah I'm gonna acknowledge you George for how you have transformed your life and how you've used your lessons for service you know it's I've never been addicted to drugs or alcohol. I've never been drunk or high in my life, believe it or not, because I saw what it did to certain people in my life. And my brother was in prison for many years for drugs, for selling drugs.

Yes, yes. And so I guess fortunately I got to learn from other people and realize I don't want to go down that route. So it kind of scared me, but I think it helped me as an athlete and other things. So I don't know what that feels like, but I do know how challenging and almost seeming impossible it is for people to overcome addiction.

For a lot of people, it seems almost impossible for a lot. So for you to overcome that and wake up for yourself and realize I'm going to use myself for good and develop into who you've become now is really inspiring. And the fact that you're doing it at such a high level to serve people, anyone listening or watching, people of all spectrums of life, from high achievers to people that just feel stuck, I really acknowledge you for the gift that you've become and the gift you keep sharing to the world. Well, thank you. I'll take that in. I mean, that's powerful, but I believe that's why I'm here.

I'm just being myself. But being myself, being a service. So thank you for saying that. And that's my challenge is to continue to take that in. But I love helping people. I love everybody, man. So why wouldn't I? You love what you labor for and you labor for what you love.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is doing, getting better today. Expressing yourself as much as you can. That's greatness. It's just getting out of yourself and just being real.

Just being the best version of yourself at whatever you do. So it's about not what you do, it's what you bring to it and who you are being. So greatness is somebody who's going to show up and be themselves consistently and in a way where they're progressing. So they're getting better each day. That's greatness. It's every time you you do something it it changes people it it makes things better but it gives this realization that

we have this unlimited potential and that if i get better today i'm being great today but once again i'll go back to my quote from last week. A grateful mind is a great mind. And a great mind attracts great things to it. Absolutely. So greatness is being grateful and being great. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend

and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys. So share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.