 Hi, I'm George Cao and I'm excited to be here with Alex Basely today. I'm really looking forward to having him share a particular writing exercise that has been helpful to many of his clients. Let me first say hi to you Alex and then I'll share your background. Alex, thanks for- Hello. Hi, George. Yay. Hey, it's great to be here with you. So Alex, you have such an interesting background. You have been a commercial diver doing underwater welding and at the same time you have been 20 years as a Reiki healer and a meditator and for more than 10 years you've been helping people clarify their calling, right? You help people take their thousand interests and experiences and the challenges they've been through and all of that and just bring that to a unifying focus that they could turn into a business or into a career. It's called the big dream program, right? Correct. Yeah. Correct. Anyway, I'm just excited for you to share- Thank you so much. Yeah. Well, before we get into that writing exercise that we were just talking about before we started recording, tell us about kind of who your ideal client is and or one of your ideal clients sort of profiles. Who is that person and what does that person come to you for help with? You know, I'm probably not terribly unique in the sense that the business that I now have the big dream program these past 15 years was an answer to my earlier younger self. The younger self who was doing a job that he did not like underwater welding, being underwater. I'm really skinny to begin with and being underwater all day is really cold. Holy cow. But it also just wasn't, I'm going to use the word spiritually fitting or something. It just, I just felt like I was meant for something in this world and I didn't know what it was. And I don't know how many people experience the pain of that, but certainly the people that come to me as clients do, it's a form of depression, it's a form of physical pain I think when you're, mental pain for sure. When you're doing something day in, day out for eight hours a day or more and it feels like a waste of time. Like you're not, this is not what I meant to be doing with my life, but I don't know what and I remember spending weekends over years and years and years reading self-help books, reading anything, journaling, anything to try to figure this out and it took me a long time. I'd say it took me 10 years of that. I was underwater for nearly 10 years and in that 10 years I spent the grand total when I added up on my hours of a half a year of my life has been underwater. And although that there were cool aspects to that, certainly it's a whole other world and it is nice to have experienced it. I'm some glad to be out of it and so that's kind of a long answer to your question, but is when someone feels like they have some kind of greatness inside or at least some kind of a connect with the world doing what they're supposed to be doing. I think we feel when it's missing, even if we don't know exactly what it is. There's a lot of pain that goes with that and if it goes on for a long time it can often become illness too, physical illness, sickness. It's a cloud in families often and now I'm going from my now lens that I've worked with lots of clients. There can be a lot of dismal feelings that one brings home from work they don't like to home. I just want to say this is so common. I mean, I think I don't know if those watching are familiar with the recent Gallup, well when I say recent, really the past couple of years, right? Like when they survey just working people all around the world, Gallup, we're just known for their surveys. It's something like 80% of all working people are dissatisfied with their work. Like they don't feel like they're engaged, right? So it's wild. This is more of the norm than it is anything. Than the fringe. Yeah, exactly. And I suppose a lot of people would approach this kind of problem differently. I'm certainly not the only opinion on the block. Thank goodness. There needs to be quite a few flavors of how to deal with any human problem or challenge. But particularly for me and thereby most of my clients, all of them. The problem then comes that they have about 1107 ideas about what to do next. And they have journals, you know, full of them. They have books on the shelf, same as I did, right? That's why I totally get this and totally empathetic. It's like, I see you, I get you, I get exactly what that feels like inside, right? No matter what it felt like for me. But they have all these ideas. Should I be a carpenter? Should I work with my hands? Or maybe I should be a yoga teacher. Or maybe I should go back to school and become a whatever. And a lot of these decisions have feel like there's a lot of risk to them. Certainly financial risk if we're going back perhaps to university or to study something or take a big expensive course. Or else just time risk. Like I don't want to make the wrong decision. What if I choose to be the yoga teacher and I don't like it? And what I found, what was the biggest help for me was that all of these kind of ideas, what if you package them all together and see what they look like if they're all in one package together? And I know you do this work too, George. So we have some overlap here. I'm so glad we're both, I'm so glad you're here. Well, I actually don't really do this work as much anymore. Most of my clients come to me with the marketing help. So yes, I'll be sending people to you for this kind of thing. I'm delighted. It's a kind of a pain that I usually am pretty successful helping people figure out. And so basically my mantra, I suppose, or what people kind of laugh at me for in a good way, I think, is that I tell them for heaven's sake, don't choose. If you're trying to choose between being a teacher and being yoga and being a carpenter and whatnot, don't choose until you've heard me out. Just let's talk about this for a little bit. And then I try to see what happens when you put things together. Like a story of the woman who wanted to teach yoga, but she was also into wild edibles and that we could, and from a philosophic saving the world standpoint, that if we could learn more about how to forage and feed ourselves, she had all these wonderful ideas about that and knowledge. Also loves canoeing and wilderness camping and stuff, you know. So should I be a wilderness guide? Should I become a Red Seal chef and do wild edibles? Should I don't choose? Let's talk about is your way to put them together. How about the wilderness yoga connection? Whereupon all of the people come for a retreat. They go out for a weekend or a week and they go into the forest. Whereupon they eat wild edibles and get all of these things. They do meditation. They do yoga. And of course they canoe to get there. Right. And so when we put ideas that were kind of normal-ish, maybe the wild edibles is a little bit fringe, but that's wonderful. But if you take ideas that are fairly normal and you stick them together where they don't normally stick together, you suddenly create something highly unique. And that's when the feeling of integrity starts to happen inside. Like, oh, all the bits that make me George all fit in this package. Right. And I would argue that even from a marketing financial standpoint that it's a pretty good foundation to start on when you're terribly unique. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's, you know, one of the the gods of marketing, Seth Godin, right? He calls it the purple cow, right? Which is cow, not K-A-O, but C-O-W. It's like, you know, imagine you're driving along a field and you see a bunch of cows and, you know, you drive along and you don't really pay attention because you've seen cows before. And, but then suddenly there's a cow that's purple. You're like, what's that? And you pay attention not, not because the cow is waving you down, but because the cow is naturally unique. And, and you're saying that when you are able to put all these things together, your marketing message is going to be unique. It's, you're not just another yoga instructor, right? Exactly, exactly. Yes, for sure. And so that's what I've been doing for all this time. I find it so rewarding. Yes. And, but like this leads into the other bit that we were talking about. Yes, the writing exercise. Something I want to share. Just before I do, though, if anyone is, well, for anyone who's gotten this far in our interview and thinks, yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Let me give you a tip for what to do with that piece of information about blending stuff together. Well, certainly you can come to my website and, you know, I have e-kits on this matter and so on, one of them's free. Um, but is to ask this question. Instead of what would I like to do, which lends itself to thinking ideas like carpenter, accountant, yoga teacher, it lends itself to labels. Instead of what would I like to do? Try a different question. How would I like my life to be on a Tuesday? Try that one. Think it through. Brainstorm it through. I'd like to get up at this time. I like to meditate in the morning. I like to do X, Y, and Z. Answer that and then move to Wednesday in your mind and say, well, if I did that on a Tuesday, would I want to do it all over again on a Wednesday? Maybe so. But when I walk clients through day by day like that and then into week by week and so on, what always happens is that even for the most introverted person, which I am, I'm an extreme introvert, even for the most introverted person, we need connection with people and desire connection with people. And we like for our art, whatever that is, to be appreciated in the world if at all possible, whatever that is, our message, our expression. And so when I go through this Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday with people, people will always start to add things to that list like I connect with a bunch of like-minded people. We'll show up in some format on this list. It might be on a Wednesday night. It might be on a Thursday morning. It might be every day, whatever. That's the opening to and then think, okay, well, if I'm with like-minded people and it's on a Wednesday evening, now I think of my top three or five interests, I'm canoeing, blah, blah, blah, whatever they are. And then think, is it possible I could create an experience for people like that, that kind of personality of people on a Wednesday night? Because that's when I want to do it. That blends two or three or five of these things together. What could that look like? And then brainstorm it. That would be my tip for anyone wanting to give this a start. That's very cool. That's very cool. Thank you. Using time as the canvas rather than concepts like. Well, that makes sense because time is our canvas for our calling. It is, we are here in limited time and it is, yeah, that makes sense to draw that, like draw it like that. Right, right. So this writing exercise, you were just saying how much it helped you and then you started sharing it with your clients and helped them a lot. But yeah, yes. Yeah. So, so like to connect these threads, I've been at the work that I just described for a long time and teaching workshops and traveling around Canada and the States and so on. And to be honest, George, I'm a reiki master. I teach meditation. I should know better. I burnt out. I burnt myself out. I did candle at both ends. I wasn't paying as much attention to my mental health, to my rest as I could have. Probably some, I'm always working on self healing. So probably there were a few factors from early life that were purging out, whatever the causes. I went, I went down and how it looked was I started dropping more and more balls, more and more emails not responded, not getting back to clients, apologizing to, you know, try to fix it. But then another three days would pass and I found it harder and harder to engage with my inbox, harder and harder to speak with people even, even with friends. And in hindsight, it's all very clear. But at the time it was all happening and I was starting to freak out and like a lot of us, I depend my money on my business and I'm dropping my business. It's falling through my fingers like, Sam, I didn't realize at the time, but it's classic burnout plus depression kind of thing. And on top of that, I felt like a fraud really, because I'm a healer, you know, first, despite all this big dream program business underneath it, I'm a healer. I do a lot of energy work with most of my clients. So kind of felt like, Jesus, what kind of a healer, you know, ends up in this predicament. So long short, long story short, George, it lasted a year and it was a big mess. It really frigged up my life. My income frigged up friendships. There's one friendship I still haven't been able to fix since. Anybody who's been through anything like this or even remotely like this will be nodding their heads going, yeah, that's what happens. And all of my healer friends, all of my resources, my books, my Reiki, my meditation, nothing could fix this for me personally. And I didn't know why. And so this went on for quite some time until really I couldn't do much more than sitting, sit on the couch. It was a really, really tough time. And then this one morning, this is what I'm going to share with people and they can try it for themselves. There's one morning I sat on the couch, phone rang and it was a friend calling worried about me and I couldn't even answer the phone. And I sat down on the couch and I thought, oh, I just don't have the capacity to do anything. And then this, this thought went through my head, George, and it's saved my life, I suppose. It came out of nowhere and it was just this little thoughts and it basically said, yeah, that, that, that sounds true, all right, but you did just have the capacity to brush your teeth. And I had this goose bumpy sort of feeling come over me and I thought, yes, that's true. I had just brushed my teeth. And then the second line was, and you just had enough capacity to make a tea for yourself. True, that's true. And then a few more ideas started coming and I reached beside me, grabbed my journal and my pen. And by the end of that day, I can't just remember now, but it was at least a hundred lines, if not more, that I had written, I have more than enough capacity to brush my teeth. It's true. I don't have enough, more than enough capacity to answer the phone, pick up my business, deal with a client, make any money. All of those things are true. I'm not trying to avoid that issue or be Pollyanna about it. What I just noticed was that at the time I thought, I'm Fox Newsing myself. It's like I'm only picking the bad parts to notice here right now and the bad parts are bad. But it's not the whole picture. So I thought, well, at least let me be honest with myself. It's true. I can't do all those things and I feel just so guilty and horrible about it. But it's, I have more than enough capacity to brush my teeth. I have more than enough capacity to make a tea. I have more than enough capacity to stand up. I have more than enough capacity to sit down. I have more than enough capacity to sit upright. And I started to think about people that could not do those things. Or if I were on my deathbed, how friggin good it would feel to be able to sit up on a couch. Holy shit. And so I wasn't trying to make myself feel better. I was just trying to get a clearer picture of the bigger picture. By the time that day was done, I was absolutely on my way out of a complete burnout and depression and amazed upon the next day. I dug out the journal and I started again. And I just anything that I had just done, however simple it was, I wrote down. And it was only in hindsight that I realized that in energy healing, in Buddhism as well, and I'm sure most forms of healing, there's a kind of an adage that what we focus on grows. If we could use a terrible example, we have two children and we pay attention to one and we don't pay attention to the other. We can imagine how that's going to work out, right? Living systems need attention. So what if all the good parts of me that are strong enough, thank you very much is a living system and I've been giving it zero attention. So from a Reiki standpoint or an energy healing standpoint, I realized what I had been doing. So I started this religiously writing this list every day and because I couldn't do much else, I was pretty good at it. Within weeks, I was back to a kind of a semi-normal life. I was getting my relationships back. I was getting being out in the world back. I still couldn't pick up my big dream program business. I felt too vulnerable about it, but I still needed to earn money. So I sent an email to all my neighbors on my cul-de-sac street here and said, if you need any handiwork, I charge X per hour and I could use the work. And I booked months worth of walls and shelves and plumbing and everything on the neighbors, but it just felt good to be able to be in charge of myself again, I guess, and my results. Every day I did this exercise. What it led to was I did pick up my big dream program again. It was better than when I had set it down. I've been able to fix most of the troubles that I caused at that time, not all. I have some scars, as anyone does who lives, but I became very curious about whether this would work for anybody else. So by the time I started having clients again, my big dream program work and stuff, I started sharing this a bit to see what would happen and the results blew me away. I just couldn't believe it. I felt almost cocky about it. Like I thought, man, there's hardly a depression or at least a dark feeling that can't be changed with this thing, at least for the right person. I became very committed to sharing it as much as I could. And so not only with just dark times, but it's just a strength builder. So I came to call this exercise the capacity generator. If there's some kind of capacity we don't feel we have enough of, whether it's strength or love or anything else, we can put that word into the thing and then go list 25 ways where we do, in fact, have a tiny bit of that thing to see what would happen. And so it wasn't just people that were having a really tough time. It was other clients who just wanted a bit more strength to do bigger things. They would take on this exercise and the results were just wild. George, I'm like, wow, it's awfully meaningful, I must say. Yeah, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, there's so much here. Okay, I pause the recording because I had to change rooms here, but I'm looking forward to, this is too good to complete the conversation so quickly. Wow, that is a powerful thing you've created, a tool. Thank you for sharing it, genuinely. I encourage those, anybody watching this, you could tell how much value Alex gives, how much caring he has for all of us. And so if that was useful to you, I just wanna say, I hope we'll go to Alex's website and buy one of his e-kits just to say thanks. Okay, so this is powerful. And you actually have a, well, you have an e-kit on this, right? I have an e-kit on this, George. So from my point of view, I have a business and I need to earn money and all that. I like to even earn lots of it sometimes when I can. But that being said, I wanna make a difference, George. That's how I'm wired. That's what I want to do. This e-kit, it wasn't just the word capacity we used, that we tested this out with a lot of people over hundreds of thousands of lines in the end. We use different words, a person that doesn't feel they have enough love. Well, that's true maybe, but I do have more than enough love to hear this video. I do have more than enough, I are someone who doesn't have enough support so we can change the wording, you know? And so I put together an e-kit and quite honestly, I priced it fairly, but I didn't price it cheaply either. I did a 10 module e-kit teaching all of this and I was charging $111 Canadian for it. And I may again, depending on when a person is listening to this. But here's the thing, George, that the climate, the people who are out doing amazing work trying to ensure our climate healthiness, survival even, people who are out there on the front lines helping with new immigrants, people who are helping with peace, people who are helping kids in school cope better by bringing mindfulness or EFT and all the people on the front lines out there, I want them to have a chance to know about this kit. If they don't like it, that's fine. If it doesn't work for them, that's fine, but I want them to know about it. And I think these are the people doing the work that all of our lives and at least quality of life will depend on. Down the road, I want to reach them, I want to support them more than the people that I have now. So that's a long way of saying I took the kit instead of $111, it's now $10. And there's a coupon code right on the webpage. How about $11.11? Yeah, that's a good idea. I didn't think of it at the time. But no, I mean, gosh, even if- So that's a start. Thank you. And I mean, for those who can afford it, I feel like $111 is worth it for a tool that can change your life. And okay, are you still there? I'm still here. Can you hear me? Yeah, give me a second here. Okay, we're still here. Good. Sorry about that. So the, yes, I have the eKits and then I'm developing more, especially now, this is a very current thing in my business that I'm putting particular focus on to try to get this to the right people. So I have group program about the starts then depending again once someone listens to this. And I have one-on-one sessions dedicated specifically to this work. So even if a person doesn't want my help with what to do with their lives kind of thing. Yeah. That's kind of long and short of how I'm trying to share this. What is the eKit? Is to tell us specifically like when people get it, what do they receive? Right, right. It's called the capacity generator eKit, if I didn't say that already, I might have. And it's basically 11 modules covering 10 days. And then the modules are like written text or tell us more about it. Oh, I beg your pardon. There are videos, about five to 10 minute video in each one. And I explain more than what I could explain here. Also some of the energy kind of science behind it and so on. And then there's a place for each day. What we learned, this is critical in case I don't say it again. It's what we learned is that 25 lines a day is a magic number. It is a threshold. People that were willing to test this for me years ago and do lots and lots and lots of lines. If they did fewer than 25 a day, it probably worked. But it would be like me doing one push-up a day. I'm just not seeing the results in the mirror. Kind of it's probably working. So we found 25 lines a day was ideal. And all a person has to do, and the eKit explains it, is take your journal or your tablet or whatever around the house with your through the day and just take note of something that you did very easily. I have more than enough capacity to lift this glass. You don't have to write all 25 in one sitting. No, it can be throughout the day. People fall into two camps. They like to do it all at once or they don't like to do it all at once. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, Alex, I know there's a lot in that eKit and I'm gonna get it myself. So thank you so much for what you've done here and just for everything you've already shared in this video. I hope those who are watching this are inspired and if you have any questions, obviously feel free to comment below and I'll make sure Alex sees it. And I will put the link to the eKit and to Alex's big dream program. Both will be in the links of this video or the notes of the video. And last- I'm so grateful. That's great. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, and lastly, please do feel free to share this video with other people that could benefit from that kind of, I mean, again, anybody who is feeling some burnout or depression or at the risk of that, please do share this with them because I know that this may, who knows, may save their lives. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I care about this work so deeply that even if a person has listened to this video, it's if you don't want to buy the eKit or don't want to anything that I'm offering, that's totally fine, but I'd like to hear from you. Like if you tried those lines that I just shared and you've got some benefit from it or some experience, some perspective, I want to hear it. That helps me help more people and it also helps my ego quite frankly. Being an entrepreneur can be kind of a lonely experience. So if we have an impact, it's awfully nice to hear about it. So feel free to reach out regardless. Yeah, knowing that we are making impact is like life for entrepreneurs. I mean, for those who are here for the meaning, for the impact, for the service, not just for the money. So please, yes, anybody who tries this and finds it helpful and of course, please do, I'd like to say support because I believe that all of us, I see this whole thing as an entrepreneurial community. We're supporting each other with comments, with our purchases, with everything. So if you can and are able to, well, $10, $11 is totally worth it. So I would just encourage everybody who found this helpful to go and get the capacity, generate E-Kit, the link is in the notes of the video. So thank you so much for this interview and for your work. George, I'm delighted to have the chance to share a little bit more broadly than what I could do in my own circles. I'm very grateful. Thank you so much. Thank you.