 Hi guys, this is Maryleigh Ellis here with the 21 Convention and Damien Degas, day one of fantastic speeches, your first time speaking right? At the 21 Convention absolutely, yeah, number one. Great, we loved your speech though, I think we're going to have a hard time topping that speech. There's just a couple of things that I definitely wanted to ask you for, for our viewers out there if you didn't get to catch the whole speech. You talked a little bit about epigenetics, and what do you think is the best way to either fight the epigenetics or try and use it in your advantage? Okay, so I'll just be clear on epigenetics itself. So epigenetics is this idea that we can inherit things, either behavioral or physical, that are not genetically coded and not genetic coded. So sometimes they're just paid, like I mentioned before, you can inherit neuroticism epigenetically. But other times it can actually be physically deformed, is that we can actually pick up. But okay, so you've asked me how do we work with it? Exactly the same way we would work with any other type of genetic variants. So for example, you may be born tall, you may be born short, you may be born with great hair, you may be born with bad hair, you may be born with all sorts of different things. You may be like me and your hair starts to bend when you're 30, you get all these different things. So the way to work around them is first of all to never fight with them. So again, I'm a big fan of Buddhist philosophy, and fighting with anything in life is the surest way to become very dissatisfied with them. The key is to learn to work with and around what you've got, because we all have strengths, we've all got weaknesses, you know. I can work with men and women who are very attractive people, very intelligent, very intelligent and very attractive. But they've got other things going on that they use, they hold on to. Is it C, undamaged? Or C, this is a problem. That's where you become, if you label yourself, if you assume, hey, because I inherited being short, I'm going to have a short person way of thinking, or because I inherited neuroticism, because I inherited this ability to be scared very easily, or all these things. It's very easy to then say, hold on to it, and what can I do? I mean, we all know examples of any variance, we know people who aren't very attractive, people who are very successful in dating, we know people who aren't very intelligent, who have been hugely successful in the business world. And we know all these examples, the standards of variance in people, like I talk about neuroticism, and it's big, I'm quite far up that scale in terms of normal, but in the schemes of things, that doesn't mean I can't accomplish anything. As I talked about in the speech, there's a way around, there's a way to work around what you've got working for you, and not working for you. The key is to actually look for research, whatever you've got, find examples of someone who has whatever it is, neuroticism, tall, someone who's short, whatever it is, and look for examples of people who have done what you want to do, but feel like you can't promise you they're out there. Yeah, they're definitely out there. And that leads me into my next question. What do you think is the biggest mistake people make when they're trying to achieve happiness? To me, the biggest mistake people make, and this comes back a little bit to the talk, but the biggest mistake people make is they focus on these end point outcomes. So their whole lives get built around when I get this car, when this girl likes me, when I achieve this role at work, when I have this percentage body fat. The difficulty is that the control that we have over the world, the reality is the world is a very unpredictable place. You can get knocked over by a car tomorrow, you can get sick, you can, all these things can happen in your world. And the key is worrying about that, worrying about what you can't control is the best way to actually teach yourself, they have very little control over your world. Famous research was done one time. If you interview people who are clinically depressed and you look at how much control they believe over the world, it's almost zero. It's everything, nothing, everything's out of control. When you look at people who are hugely successful, how much control they believe they have over their lives, it's over everything. It's they believe they have control over the way people think, over the weather, over the stock market, over everything. And so it's about perceived control, what we believe. So the biggest mistake we make is we set goals where we don't have complete control over what does life teach us. So you don't have much control over that. That's perfect. That also goes also into my next question. You just keep rolling these one right into the other. I don't even need to say anything. It was, what do you think about the difference between the influence versus control? Right. So as I was just saying, our control over the world is actually very small. In fact, life is depressingly full of lack of control. Things go wrong all the time. But we certainly get better at influencing the world around us. So another mistake that people make, which is perfect, right into this, is they become people who life, the world around them influences them. So they are a result of the world around them that's they might say, well, my world's like this and it's made me like that. That is not the path to being successful, happy, anything. The best way to be successful is to be someone who focus on influencing the world around them. You know, I can't go and do a talk like I've done just now and have everyone in that audience like me. I have everyone in that audience think that was amazing. Some people are gonna listen and go, I'm not convinced. That's human nature, I don't have control of that. But I can influence and get better at influencing as many people as possible and that becomes my goal. Can I influence as many people as possible? Can I influence as many people? How can I improve? Not can I control and make sure everyone, because you can't. We could have a room full of people who have just listened to a talk just like mine. What influence will I have? Okay, that's fantastic. I don't know, everybody in there seem to really like what you're doing and talking about. You got such just great, great feedback from the audience and their questions were great too. So go to the actual interview and you'll see those questions. The last question I wanted to ask was just on the topic of goals, you like to set short term goals rather than long term goals. How do you feel about that? And what do you think people should do? Okay, so you know, I've always believed, I mean, I started out with the typical way of thinking is you set these long, big goals. And what I found was that you usually don't achieve them because they're always overly optimistic. We get excited and we get optimistic when we set goals. We all do that as human to them. What happens is you get this reach for the stars and get to the moon concept. And then what are you, your whole life, you're a failure. Because you always fail to achieve what you want to achieve. So what I like to focus on is the next week. In one week, you know what's gonna happen that week. Okay, you know what you want for that week. What I want today and what I want in five days is not very likely to change. And what we can do in that week is we can actually plan it, we can plan it very specifically. Again, only things we're in control of planning, like our time, right? Yeah. We're in control of our time. Not like getting a raise this week. Yes, exactly. It's gotta be stuff you're in control of. But when you set that, you can, every week can be full of these little wins. So if you go through a week, for example me, I've got to have two wins a day. A win is I go to gym and I meditate. Two wins done, right? A win is I go here and I do a really good job, right? That's like a win. Being here, it's doing something really great. I need at least two a day. I'll usually shoot four more, but you could plan that out in a week. And these little wins, they add up. When you become someone who actually does what I win, by the way, is moving towards something you really love. And when you do that consistently, you get there. And are you moving towards happiness then? Exactly. Great. Exactly, yeah. So this is the 21 convention. This is Damien Dica. If people want to find you, if they like you, where do they go? So the best place to find me is at a school of attraction. So schoolofattraction.com.au. I do do life coaching. I run that through my name, DamienDica.com. And you can find me there. But if you're interested, get in contact with me. I love responding to emails. I love giving feedback to people. It's not like I have to charge for it because this is my passion. Great. Bye guys. See you later.