 Hello, Nashant. It's been a long time since we have seen each other and AJ and I thought this would be an interesting episode and something a little different than we typically do. But this is gonna be a sort of a revisit of you and your time with us at AOC and what you've been up to since then. And then of course, in talking about the work that you're doing now, how you came to find us again and how this conversation then had developed and why we're sharing it with our audience. So welcome back and welcome to the show Nashant. Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. And this is kind of like a blast from the past for me because I haven't seen both of you in like 15 years. And so it's incredible to hear or see from afar your journey and kind of seeing where I developed after I met the both of you. And so, yeah, happy to share this time with you. Well, we should set it up for our audience because you mentioned it was 15 years since you had last saw us or first had run into us. So we should set that up because that would be very early in our company's history. Sure, sure. I'll kind of start off with how I met the both of you. And so just as a reference for the listeners, I'm 37 now, so I was about 22-ish, which feels like eons ago when I met the both of you. And so I live in New York and so I was in Long Island at the time. And I remember when it came to the so-called dating scene or being out there in a public arena, like a bar or club or lounge that if there were attractive women that I felt the anxiety and thoughts coming up and beating me up. And it was a very uncomfortable environment for me. It was one of the areas of my life I wanted to tackle and combat my insecurities around that and so forth. But I didn't know anyone in my life that could join me in that journey. So it was, I think it was like a Saturday night or something like that. I just said, you know what? I gotta get out of my comfort zone. Looking back on it, that's what I was doing. I didn't really label it that way. So I drove my 1988 Toyota Camry with roll-down windows and I think it even had a tape deck into Manhattan, which was like 45 minutes away, parked in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and got there probably around like 830-ish. And I went into this lounge bar kind of thing. I think it was called Fat Baby. If I remember correctly. I remember that place. I walk in and I think, if memory serves me right, I must have ordered a drink or something along the line. And I was just standing on the side and parts beating out of my chest. I'm all alone. Never put myself in that kind of a situation. And I saw this young, who would appear to be a young kid or on my age who walked up to these two women in the corner of the bar and from afar they were smiling. He was laughing and joking with them. And then he walked away and then he happened to pass me and something inside of me was like, hey man, how'd you do that? Or something along those lines? And he smiled at me and he's like, I'm a dating coach. And if I remember his name, I think it was Kevin was his name that was part of the team at that time. I knew other members of the community at large and that dating community and coaching. And so I mentioned them and he's like, yeah, I know of them. And then I threw that at, apparently the art of charm was in that place at doing, I think you had students at the time and I guess you were doing some work with them. And then that led to the connection and meeting both of you. And then I think I signed up for some coaching or a workshop with the both of you and as well as the rest of the members and had that little bootcamp experience. And yeah, that was my, that's how that happened. So I think me meeting the both of you, the universe wanted it to happen because I couldn't have, I couldn't have planned that my first interaction from getting out of my comfort zone that night was going to meet so-called dating coaches at that time. So. Right on. And thank you for sharing that Nishon. I want to set up a few things for our listeners because over the last 16 years, when people find out about the art of charm and they begin listening to the podcast, then it sort of leads them to finding out how we became and the road that we had taken to become who it is that we are today. But back then, we are just what we are talking about and you mentioned the community. This was the beginning of sort of where internet culture was stumbling into real life. Well, let's put it this way. Once the internet gets built, who is going to be the first people who are going to conjugate onto the internet and start chat rooms and things like that? Well, it's going to be a bunch of guys who are nerden out and want to discuss certain topics. And so what are a bunch of young guys who are getting together in a chat room going to be discussing? They're going to be discussing, hey, what does everyone do in here to meet the ladies? Okay. And so of course, a bunch of young guys are going to begin talking about the ladies and how to meet them and what they need to do. And what we're also looking at here is at the very beginning of the internet, you're going to have the guys who retreated to that social environment just because they weren't having too much luck in real life. And perhaps they were very analytical. They were getting much into the craze at the time, which was the internet blossoming and blowing up. And it was very exciting to be the first ones on the block. And if you remember correctly, when all these social media companies were getting built, the hype around them and being the first one there, the first kid on the block to start your account, your profile and to get followers. I remember, and during right before this time, Sean, I remember how my space was blowing up and I don't even think Facebook was actually. Now you're really dating with Johnny. Facebook wasn't even a thing yet, but the e-girls were becoming a thing, right? Teela, Tequila and all these people and they were getting fans and followers and there was all this excitement around all this new technology. And of course the first ones there were the guys and they were discussing these things. When you put a lot of young people in that environment who were searching for something, you're also going to find a lot of people who are gonna take advantage of that situation. And for myself, just before the art of charm, I was working as a bartender and club manager, playing in bands, very active life socially. And I got introduced what was going on in the internet in this, we'll call it the pickup scene for lack of a better word. It was a lot of young men looking for answers. And I remember reading a lot of this stuff, thinking how it was a lot of bad ideas. And as somebody who managed a club who was a bartender who led a very active life, I'm like, there's a lot of young men who are going down the wrong road. And it's not about tricks and gambits and things like that. It's about developing yourself into an authentic human being that is attractive, who has aspirations that people want to be around themselves. We have termed as being a high value man, and a high value person. This is how the art of charm was starting to get born in those ideas. And at that time, my doors of the internet were opening up and I was seeing these things and I wanted to get involved. At that time, I didn't know how I was going to get involved, but I realized that there was a lot of young men who were looking for answers. And in fact, I started seeing that culture seep in to my working environments at the bar, young guys going out, trying to be more social, putting themselves out there. And it was an easy thing from being behind the bar, chatting with some of these guys going, here's what you're gonna do, right? Here's how you're gonna go over there and talk to that girl. And here's what you're gonna say. And here's the attitude and the mindset that I want you to have. Seeing the results of that and seeing these guys get excited because they had broken barriers that previously they were unable to get over. Well, there's a couple of things that I wanna highlight because first off, when we talk about this online culture that was developing around dating, there was a status involved to being someone famous in this culture. And that status was gained by telling these incredulous stories, right? These adventures. And these young men were congregating in forums and listening to podcasts and trying to hear about these adventures. And when the show was birthed, we were in this world and we were inviting these people on the show as guests to share and to learn about them. And it was so interesting to see how these incredulous stories, these incredible feats of going out and having this social time and meeting all these beautiful women didn't translate when we actually talked to this person on the podcast. And then when we brought video, it didn't translate even further. So a lot of these leaders in this space, a lot of these people who built these online status for themselves, whereas Johnny was saying, we're not only leading men astray, but they themselves weren't living up to any of these principles or values that they were espousing. So there was a lot of young men around this time who were pretty disillusioned by this image when I was being painted online in the dating community, in the pickup scene, and then what was being taught and how it wasn't working for them. And we started the show to garner, well, what is the good and the bad? Like what actually works and what kept coming up over and over again was a mindset piece, right? But yet we're all drawn to this world by strategies and tactics. Like what can I use that'll allow me to overcome the mindset work that I need to do? And of course, it was very easy to sell people on this image of, well, you just go over and say this one thing, you just have this magic line, you just do this one trick. And all of a sudden, you don't have to worry about all of your insecurities. You don't have to worry about the fact that you're not whole, so to speak, you're someone else. You're pretending to do something completely out of character. And when we were in that bar that night running a program, we were just starting ourselves. We were trying to rabble rouse in New York City and trying to make a name for ourselves in the scene as people who were espousing the right values, who were living up to not only being good at talking to women, but just being all around. Like how do you have a social life that draws people in? How do you build the professional network that grows a company from scratch in a field that no one's ever thought of or created? These were all values and strategies that we were trying to execute on ourselves. And I think the universe coalesced and brought us together. And then when you actually joined us, we happened to be filmed for the Today Show. You had an opportunity to be part of our media hype surrounding the company. And of course, time has passed fast forward 15 years now. And we've been doing this podcast, not only on dating, but around, how do you become a better version of yourself? And for many young men, this dating community was the first touch point with self-development, was the first touch point with, oh, wow, I can work on myself. I can be a better person. It's not just about getting the job, getting the car, buying the external things that give me validation or seeking status, but I can actually work on some of these beliefs and mindsets that are holding me back. I can set bigger goals for myself. And all of a sudden, they're now learning about psychology for the first time. They're now learning about neuroscience and how the brain works and influence and persuasion, and how the media influences us. But everyone's touch point was, how do I get better with women? How do I actually improve my dating prospects? That was actually the thing that, when I look back on it that appealed to me back then, even at a young age, was more of that mindset piece because I actually didn't really care too much about, oh, I'm gonna go get the girl or the hot girl over there. For me, what bothered me so much was, I had so much insecurity and anxiety in that kind of arena that I didn't want my mind to limit me in that way. I just wanted the capability to feel whole whether that person over there likes me or not. But just to be able to move in that direction and not let my mind limit me. And so I always was attracted to that kind of deeper inner game, I guess you can call it, and the relationship with the self more so than the outcome of the result. And I think that was the good parts of that so-called community or even what the beautiful things that both of you share is when you touch on the mindset piece and becoming a better version of yourself or overcoming any kind of limitations that your own mind is putting on you in those environments or just in life in general? So for a young man, when you're developing, you're in your late teens, 20 years old, early 20s and you're starting to spread your wings and when you're young, there's a moment where you think you're invincible and that nothing can stop you and you have the world at your feet and you're ready to go. And then you leap out of the nest and you start to fly around and you realize that there are some limitations that come with being you. And we all, so you could say that we all get a poker hand and we have to play that poker hand to the best of our abilities, right? And so you gotta look what you have and if you don't have the greatest cards, you need to start developing yourself but also even if you have the best cards, you still don't know how to play that hand very well. You have to learn that. And for men, one of the very first things where they start to realize the hurdles that are in front of them comes with the opposite sex because as a young man, your hormones are firing away and you are programmed at all costs, no matter what the procreate, that is in your DNA and it drives you. So of course, you get to the, you go out, you can't deal with your hormones anymore, they've pushed you out and now you're at a bar or a party or at a social vet and you see that group of beautiful women and they're laughing and they're carrying on and all you're thinking about is I have to go over there and say something and introduce myself and that's when you realize that there is a mental piece to keeping you from going over there and then there's also a skill piece because even if you make your way over there, what are you going to do to entertain that crowd once you have their attention? And so that first hurdle is just going over there and for a lot of young men, they're like, okay, I got that and for some, they need to work on that as well. But for the guys who do, then they get over there and all the girls turn to them as the guy says hi and they're like, and, and you're like, well, I hadn't thought that far ahead. So now that you have all their attention, you have to entertain them, right? You have to be this high value guy who's intriguing, who has captures their intention, who draws people in and that's a skill set in and itself. So for men, when they start to leave the nest and they go out there and dealing with the opposite sex is where they begin to learn what their limitations are. Now, what's interesting about that is the cognitive distortions, the flawed thought patterns that they run into that hinder them and create that barrier to getting what they want in that moment also begins to seep in in other areas of life. The only reason it's noticeable and at a conscious level with the women is because they're forced to go right up against that wall. In other areas, the internal drive isn't as strong nor are there consequences for things to go badly so socially devastating and mentally devastating. So for that guy who walks over there, he gets over the hump of just walking over there and then they all turn and they're all staring and he blanks out and the girls are like, well, okay, and they go back to their circle. The guy is standing there, his friends are looking at him. At that moment socially, it is for a young man who's never done that before, it could be so devastating in that moment that that episode will carry with him in his mind as long as he allows it. And for some men, it can be years. Yeah, and just to comment on one of the things that you had said earlier about, there may be some men out there that at some stages they feel invincible and then they go face life and then they don't experience that. For me personally, I never felt invincible at any point in my life. I was insecure, depressed, anxious. I kind of fell in that spectrum of things. And so for me, when I would enter into those arenas, especially in that early age, it was if only I got that girl over there, then I'm whole, then something's okay with me or impressive or trying to build up that image of look at me kind of thing here. And I had glimpses into, hey, that's not necessarily the case, there's something going on inside of me as I'm relating to women, or attractive women in particular, that's often the opportunity there is to continue to use that as a mirror to look at myself and try to transcend any kind of limitation, my own beliefs or past experiences might be putting onto me. Well, the one last piece that I want to just mention before I pass it over to AJ is we're also discussing on this podcast, we have two different generations here as well. So I'm Gen X, the internet, computers, the video games that I had growing up weren't all that enticing. And so real life was more exciting. So for me, it was skateboarding, playing in bands, playing guitar, like going to shows. It was very easy for me to just be out in real life, being social and learning those things. Now, when it comes to the millennials, all of a sudden you guys had video games and internet access and things technologically that were much more enticing and advanced where you guys safely could throw yourselves into and enjoy worlds that were virtual, right? And that could go on for, and you could sit there for hours, days, months, years. Some are still sitting there, Johnny. Yes. Well, I think, and then the evolution of that, you look at Gen Z and the introduction of video and short form video. So we went from reading other people's third party stories of what they were doing to be successful in their dating and social life to then watching YouTube videos of people wearing outlandish things and doing outlandish things to get women's attention and thinking, again, that if I just do these external things, right? If I just get this woman to like me, I just get this external validation that I will be made whole. And what I think really set us apart in the beginning and why we've carried on after 15 years and many of these companies who started in the space didn't carry on was that we knew that there was more to it than just strategies and external tactics and trying to outfox people. It was more about, well, who do you actually wanna become, right? And you think about art of charm, like what is charm to you? Well, charm is having elastic impact, right? Leaving people better than you found them, thinking about the impression you're making on the world around you. And that's your social life, that's your professional life. That's how you feel about yourself, that internal mindset piece. And if we fast forward to today and we'll talk about your journey now post working with us, it's not surprising to me that that internal mindset piece was so interesting to you and the work that you've done on yourself and now the profession that you find yourself in. So you reached out to us, I was traveling abroad and you had been doing a search for some videos on YouTube and you found out that not only are we still doing our thing, but we've been influenced by the acceptance commitment therapy community and bringing some of these strategies into our own coaching programs to help people get over their anxieties and get over those internal fears that they're feeling. So let's talk about what happened after AOC for you and how you are here with us today. Well, I mean, I took quite a journey. So as I mentioned to you earlier, I kind of fell in the spectrum of feeling more anxious, depressed and insecure in my life. And even at the age of 20, I dealt with anxiety and depression and kind of even in my early 20s because of a myriad of factors, personal history and high school college, family background and so forth. And so I was always on a search to try to understand why we human beings suffer and kind of how to end that within myself. And through my early 20s, I was always in the bookstore reading hundreds of books on spirituality, which actually kind of stumbled into spirituality. And a lot of spiritual teachers kept talking about, hey, it's not necessarily the circumstances of the life that you're in, but it's your mind's relationship to it or thoughts and beliefs. That was very foreign to me in my early 20s, but I kind of got a sense of it that, when I'm angry, anxious, worried, fearful, that it's something my own mind's doing to me on the inside as I'm relating to life and the world. And through that journey, I learned a lot about thought and how a lot of what goes on in between my ears may feel true, but there are actually lies that I'm believing in, whether I picked up those lies or beliefs from growing up or from media or society or some other avenue, and that there is an opportunity to learn as a skill to step back from your mind, to question your thoughts, to see thoughts as thoughts as an essential skill. And the more and more that you do that, which kind of leads into the clinical work that I do with people, you can experience more clarity, freedom and inner peace in your life despite your situation. So whether you get the relationship or not, whether your body is healthy and fit or you got a severe medical diagnosis or some other challenge that you're experiencing in your life that the more and more you deal with how your mind relates to it and question it and step back from it, those challenges could be either variable or they just kind of release themselves and there's a lot more freedom. And so really my own personal inner journey led me to understand the nature of the mind, its limitations, how that is a primary source of the suffering that we experienced, how we could take our power back from it by questioning it or just stepping back from it through something like meditation as an example. And then the more inner peace you have then through that you can then express authentically how you like to move in your relationships or work or other areas of your life. And I think the big hurdle for many of us is moving from this external circumstances to the internal. So if you could just share a little bit of your story of how you went from, man, I really would love this girl to be paying a bit more attention to me or to impress my friends by being able to talk to this person to like, oh, wait a second, like there are these beliefs and emotions and thoughts inside of me that are actually leading me astray. And if I wrestle with this instead of worrying so much about the external I can overcome that hurdle. As I mentioned, when I was 20 years old I got diagnosed with anxiety and depression at that time. Junior in college, especially my junior year of college came home and I have one older brother and he was getting married during that summer. And at the wedding there was a couple of hundred people and I was one of the best men and I was gonna give a speech because I'm the brother. And I was feeling on that day of his wedding my heart beating out of my chest. I was feeling a little queasy in my stomach and automatically I was like, of course I'm a 20 year old kid. I've never talked in front of hundreds of people kind of thing. And I equated it to that as the reason why I was feeling what I was feeling. But during that summer I was still feeling my heart racing out of my chest and I was feeling queasy, I was vomiting, nauseous. I was in and out of the hospital, got two endoscopies done to check my stomach and what's going on. And everything came out negative towards the end of the summer and one day a doctor walks into the room as I was in the hospital and he's like, yeah. So all your medical tests are coming out negative and you know that heart racing out of your chest that's actually anxiety. And what you're experiencing is psychosomatic symptoms from depression. And I was like, whoa, you know I'm just a 20 year old kid and didn't know anything about the inner world or the mind and all that kind of stuff. And that led me into therapy for myself. I went on and off for a number of years in the beginning from like age 20 to 24 meant like twice a week in the beginning. I remember being in college and driving an hour and a half to my therapist's office like twice a week. And immediately the first like water worse was like, this happened to me in high school and this happened to me when I was a kid and my family this and my family that. And it was wonderful and it was great but somewhere and that was a lot of relief. And so when many people think of therapy they think I'm just gonna go talk to someone and then you know, as a safe confidential space and that was very valuable for me at that time but eventually along the journey I remember I was going through something difficult in a relationship situation and kind of feeling this kind of broken heart kind of scenario that now I realized my mind created more so than anything. And I had this epiphany where it's like, well, if I ever have a situation in a relationship that doesn't go well or I lose a job or something happens to my health or some like, do I have to go to therapy for the rest of my life? You know, I just have to go and talk about it. And that led me onto this whole kind of other search and different spiritual teachers came on into my life. A popular one was Don Miguel Ruiz. He's popular for a book called The Four Agreements. And I like his other book more. It's called The Voice of Knowledge and what I learned through his work was kind of fundamental truth that I had no idea is how we human beings experience life and function is that when we as human beings look out through our lives we don't necessarily see the world as it is. We see our story about it. And when I use the word story it's equivalent to thought or belief about it. So if I say, hey, Johnny, AJ, you guys are the most loving, nice people in the world. Well, that's my story about you. If I say, hey, Johnny, AJ, you guys are the worst despicable human beings on planet Earth, that's my story about you. And that originates in here. And one of the things that I learned through his work in particular is that a lot of what goes through and the stories that I believe are lies but they feel real, they feel truthful. That really served me in that realization. And the more and more I realized it I was like, okay, I feel my suffering is getting lighter but I would still react in the world. You know, I might get angry or blow up on someone I cared about because, and then afterwards, oh, it was a thought. It was a story. It was a belief. I didn't know what to do with that. And then eventually a process called the work of Byron Katie came along in my life. Byron Katie I think is in her late 70s now and she's been spreading her particular meditative work where you can learn to give your emotions a right to life on paper. And when you're able to do that you identify the stressful thoughts that you're believing and thinking behind the emotion. Because we're much more aware as human beings like, oh, I feel this fear, I feel this anger, I feel this anxiety, I feel this disappointment but we're not necessarily conscious of the beliefs that are behind it or that the beliefs are the primary influence of those feelings that you're having in the first place. That was very foreign to me. I had to go learn that because quite naturally go, I feel the way I feel because of my mom or dad or friend or lover or I lost my job or I have this thing going out my health. That external thing is causing me to feel the way I feel and it feels very logical when you're in it but when you kind of take an inward journey you begin to realize, well, how is it possible that some other human being could be in the same situation yet they don't experience it that way? And what I learned is that the stories and beliefs that I have that are conscious some most not conscious are running the show and that we can actively learn as a skill to take power back from our mind, to step back from it. And the more and more I did that in my journey the more literally the more clarity, freedom and inner peace I had. And there's other parts of my journey. I have an autoimmune condition where I live with chronic pain and have a skin condition too because of it. And I've been crippled at the age of 28 walking with a cane was 125 pounds. And so I've been in these really difficult scenarios where because I had these skills to question my mind or step back from it and take my power back from it that I experienced even in those difficult circumstances a bit more clarity, freedom, inner peace. And a deeper sense of wholeness that didn't rely on the external because especially with my health issues is like, well, I might not be able to walk out of bed today. And so there goes the idea of getting the girls so to speak or a career or at least previously or something on the extra to validate me or make me feel whole. And so I was kind of forced to by life to touch into a D word sense of who and what I am beyond that. Now I'm okay today and I'm on some medication it's helped helps and don't know how long it will but because of this inner journey now the expression of whether it's relationships work or other avenues in my life can come from a more heart centered authentic discovering who I am place on a deeper level rather than I need to feel whole by getting that thing because I learned a long time ago, oh, that doesn't work. Well, what's interesting to me is the seeking of certainty. So the human mind puts us in a position to seek certainty because uncertainty, fear, freezing it could lead to you losing your life it's a survival mechanism. So one of the ways that we seek certainty is by creating these stories. And many young men found us 15 years ago seeking certainty in their dating life. It's uncertain to walk up to a stranger to lay it out on the line and hope that they end up liking you hope that they go on a date with you or hope they wanna be friends with you, right? So we seek this certainty and we very frequently first reach for strategies, right? What are the hacks? What are the tricks? What are the strategies that can get me to that certainty? But we still feel uncertain internally. We don't know who we are we don't really understand what all these thoughts and emotions are that are swimming around especially as Johnny was talking about hormonally in our 20s, right in our teens as we're trying to leave the nest. And yet at the same time the more we grapple with the internal the better we become a communication. Here's who I am, here's what I'm about here's what I'm passionate about here's what I value and ultimately the better we become in relationships. But in starting out and starting this company we couldn't say, hey we're just a mindset company come work on your mind with us. Because we know that most people don't reach that conclusion first the first conclusion is I need certainty and I need some strategies to overcome this hurdle that I have in my life where I'm feeling really uncertain sometimes so uncertain I have anxiety I have fear and I'm frozen. And in all of this work that you talked about on your own personal journey the work that we hope to inspire by bringing guests on the show and the work that we do with our clients it's so interesting I would all three of those things the mindset piece, your ability to communicate and then of course the relationships that come out of those communication fall into place the sooner it is that you actually feel whole then seeking the external validation status and chasing those external things and even going through tragedy, heartache, suffering with disability and disease that you know is creating a ton of uncertainty in your life. You still can look internal at the mind and go okay how can I use these tools to unpack the thoughts and emotions that I'm feeling that are then projecting these stories outward and through these stories we really create the suffering in our lives, right? And as you said someone could be in the exact same position and not view it as suffering versus you with the story that you bring to the table viewing it as the largest hurdle you're ever gonna face can't move forward. Yeah, yeah it's a huge realization I had through the support of different teachers and so forth and even the clinical field I mean that it's what we're believing and thinking that's the primary source of what we're experiencing emotionally as well as what influences how we show up in our lives. And so when I eventually to continue to answer the question of how we came together again once I decided to become a clinical psychotherapist to give back in this way to support others that are interested in let's say the meditative style of work that I offered to begin to shift their relationship to their own thought processes and minds and belief system. When I was along that journey someone had recommended a book by Russ Harris who's a popular member of the acceptance and commitment therapy. Think by profession he's a physician but then turned psychotherapist and he wrote book so one of the popular ones was The Happiness Trap and it was an introduction when I read it because I always kept reading books. I was like I know this, I know this stuff and I gathered it from different wisdom traditions through meditation and all that. And so I found it awesome and fascinating that I guess since the 1980s this community known as acceptance, this style of therapy acceptance, commitment therapy was there's a lot of clinical research around it and they were touching on human suffering from a whole nother angle. And they were talking about language and how once we as a human species are in language that there's a constructive side to learning language and there's a destructive side that it wasn't, it's not you or I per se that are crazy or something like that that this is part of learning language and that can project out and sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's not and we have to learn as a skill how to utilize thinking in a constructive way when it's constructive way and take our power back when it's destructive. Once I stumbled across a YouTube video of the Both of You interviewing I was DJ Moran who's a part of that acceptance and commitment therapy. I just had a huge smile in my face and that I saw both of you once again after all these years and then I reached out through emails like, hey, how are you guys doing? I love that you love acceptance and commitment therapy and we'll have to chat more because that's a primary source of the work that I do too. You know, it's funny that we're talking about this because what we're discussing is how to use our minds correctly. How to use our minds to get the things in life that we want to build as I've been saying for years a life worth fighting for that life that you desire and that you will do anything to put together to have, right? We all have that vision of what that is are you willing to go out and fight for it? Now I was talking generationally earlier and I don't know if you guys had this but for me late night television as a teenager, as a Gen Xer you would see commercials for Dianetics. And so the quote about that and everything around that with the commercials were always about you are given this mind but no instruction manual and how to use it. And as a teenager that was always incredibly appealing to me because you're just sort of blown away but you haven't had enough life yet to understand what that really means. And as you get older and begin to start recognizing your limitations and where you need to develop yourself you start looking for those answers. And it's funny because I think all of us had came to some of the same conclusions of cognitive behavioral therapy which I really enjoy acceptance commitment therapy which we have reconnected over. Like to me these are the true ideas of the manual of how to use your mind. And as you mentioned how do we use it to move forward rather than falling into the traps that come with it that hold us back. And the other part is we were all raised in an environment that is going to be strong in some areas and weaker on other areas. And you have to discover where those weaknesses are and then what you're going to do about them are you going to build them up and get better or are you going to find a way to avoid them and play in the world where you're strong. There's many different ways of going about it but you still have to discover that if I was raised in an academic focused household well then I'm going to be stronger in those areas and maybe weaker on socializing or sports but if I was raised in an athletic focused household well then I'm going to have all that opportunity to place my time and efforts into my physical skills and a hand and eye coordination but then again maybe I might not be so good in math. And personally I was raised in a very arty household and so music creativity was the center of my world and as a teenager with a lot of energy skateboarding was my physical outlet but as I got older and started recognizing my limitations then I started to understand the areas that I was weaker in and then began to try to round those areas out or build those up to the best of my ability and I found great utility in CBT and ACT and to be able to do that. You know we come out of the room and we have these emotions whether it's anger, disappointment, fear and no one gets the handbook who gets the handbook, how to deal with emotions and some have a very loving supportive environment growing up and some have and I've heard it in my clinical prides really horrific ones and so to see that there's this availability through modern psychotherapy and certain therapeutic models like acceptance of commitment therapy there is a way or a tool that could be supportive in dealing with the challenges of the human experience no matter what you're going through and that we can begin to actually learn it that it's a skill overall there are many little skills but overall it's one giant skill that you can learn in welcoming your emotions taking power back from your thoughts when you're limiting, moving in a direction that might be meaningful for your own personal life whatever that might look like beginning to touch into a sense of self that's more grander and whole despite your personal history and some of us have had really really difficult and challenging histories and learning to be more present you know when you're able to develop that skill to be more presently here and now we kind of realize like wait other than what I'm thinking and believing I'm actually okay in reality and touching into that and that centeredness and grandness and the here and now can be supportive and helpful just to be at ease in our own beingness but also to take meaningful action whatever that looks like in different arenas I think the fascinating part for me is this ancient Eastern wisdom now melding with the science, right? Yeah, it's cool. These ancient works before we understood how the brain worked the structure of the brain, neuroscience chemical reactions going on in the brain they were able to pass down this wisdom to unpack suffering and ways of looking at how the brain is operating and give you tools as you say, right? I actually differ with Johnny a little bit I don't know that instruction manual is as informative as just laying all the tools out and we know for some of our clients CBT tools are really impactful for some of our clients acceptance commitment therapy tools ACT tools are really impactful but really allowing you to take the tools at your disposal and I'd love to talk a little bit about mindfulness too because this is an area where we've had guests on the show talking about social media we're in this always on mindset work is facing us with notifications on our phone and Slack and email and it feels very difficult at times in the modern world to really slow things down to be present with your thoughts and emotions and I'd love to talk a little bit about the mindfulness that you utilize in your practice and then that exercise that you brought up that was really transformative for you around not only identifying the emotion but then getting to the stressful thought behind it I'd love to wrap with for our audience because I know that they're struggling in these areas and every time we've talked about meditation they're like, I'd love to start but easy for you guys glad you guys are meditating it just doesn't work for me and I hate hearing that because there's so many different ways to look at mindfulness and meditation and even if this one strategy hasn't worked for you it's still an area of self-expiration that I would hate our audience members to be turned off from. Yeah, I don't even even in my own clinical practice I don't even use the word mindfulness too much I know it's been very popularized I use the word meditation a lot and I know meditation can be a practice like I actually like I'm gonna sit with myself for five, 10 minutes and be focused on my breath but actually in the way that I share it it's more of a way of being in life over time that life becomes a meditation and one of the things that we can begin to realize that meditation is not just one thing so those people that say like or the people that I've encountered that go oh I've tried meditation but didn't really work for me I kinda question what they mean by work for me usually when I hear them they say well I tried meditating and I just kept thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and so I felt like I was doing it wrong right or I was meditating and I felt really uncomfortable and so I didn't feel zen like or peaceful and those are some of the myths that I break about meditation that meditation is not about feeling calm it's not about feeling relaxed sometimes it's a side benefit through practice over time but it's not the primary aim and so when I share meditation or mindfulness it's really about targeting four processes that we human beings go through or can skillfully begin to incorporate into our lives and so one is that there's an opportunity to enhance self-awareness and the thing that you become self-aware of as a human being through meditation is we only go through a few processes in any given second of our lives I got the breath, I got the five senses I got feelings and sensations in my body and I got thoughts and images going through my head in any given second and what you first learn when you try to sit with yourself whether it's the breath or just listening to the sound is that there's one aspect of your experience that dominates you and that's thinking, that's thought and thought pulls you away from the present moment and pulls you into an imaginary future that hasn't happened yet or a past that's no longer here and sometimes that past is not so pretty and can create suffering or that future can create worry and anxiety and so you can begin to be self-aware of that and then as a skill you can also learn to contact the present moment kind of going back to earlier the mind has a constructed side and destructed side so when my mind is not being helpful or useful and creating lies that appear real we can begin to shift our awareness and attention to the skill in the here and now come back to the safety of the here and now which can look as simple as I'm a human being sitting in a chair I got the breath, there's the ground there's laptop, there's some sounds and that's way kinder than whatever my mind might be saying about the future and then we could also through meditative practice target these skills of learning as best as we can to be a neutral observer of our sensations in our body as well as our thoughts and I'll kind of start with that second part like why would I wanna be a neutral observer of my sensations or enhance that capacity well usually when we're trying to move towards meaningful things in our life whether it's oh I wanna talk to that attractive person over there and I just wanna say hello or I wanna ask for a job promotion or I wanna do something new and it's totally unknown the heart might race a little bit you know you might feel a little queasy in your stomach your chest might tighten and naturally, cause it's almost like even where biology can have a hard wire to move towards pleasure and away from pain when that occurs in our physical body we just go okay I'm just gonna not go in that direction so I can soothe myself and feel okay but one of the things that you can enhance as an ability is to begin to shift your relationship to those sensations cause all sensations or feelings they come and go in their nature you can just check your experience even intense ones then you don't wanna let them dictate whether you move in that meaningful direction or not and then secondly you can enhance this capacity to see which is the most revolutionary thing I think a human being at any age can discover is seeing thoughts as thoughts and the more you begin to see thoughts as thoughts as opposed to thoughts as truth or thoughts as facts the more you're able to see like my mind's being helpful here and my mind's beating me up here or oh this is an old thought that I took on because my mom or dad when I was growing up said it a gazillion times like I'll just make up one like I'm not good enough just to say as an example let's just say if that thought keeps coming up in different scenarios like is that really my own thought or was that handed to me because of a personal history or some experiences I had that were challenging or that's just one way my mind's limiting me and I need to enhance my ability to go hey that's not necessarily me even though my mind's claiming that's me but that's actually just a thought amongst other thoughts and when we're able to build that ability to shift our relationship not easy it's a skill we can discover this capacity to move in more authentic ways and then lastly when I'm sharing a meditative work with my clients and meditation I say this is kind of the deeper essence of meditation that you could touch into which is discovering who and what you are beyond your mind so usually when it comes to our identities we go I am my job I am my relationships I am the amount of money I have in my bank I am my body I am you know that thing that happened to me in the past I am the judgey inner critic that comes up and beats me up and one of the things you can discover in meditation is oh wait that's stuff I took on in my life it's not my essence it's not my essential nature and different traditions use different words for what it is so some in like theological tradition oh you are spirit some science people might say oh you are consciousness other traders might say hey you are awareness or you are the noticing being but one of the things that is valuable from a psychotherapeutic standpoint of just living life to discover that sense of self that is grander and bigger than any of those other things that we typically identify with is there is a sense of wholeness that could be tapped into and especially if those things like hey I got the body and I don't got the body anymore I got the relationship and divorce just happened or I got the money and now I am broke well if I am not defining myself by those external things that is useful because those things are going to come and go at some point in our lives and so we have this capacity to touch back into a deeper sense of wholeness and then go after all those things if you are interested in it if it is coming from a whatever an authentic place might look like for each of us you know go for the relationship go for the money go for the body but it may come from a different place when you touch back into this deeper sense of wholeness and so I see meditation as a practicality there is many other reasons why I share meditation but those are kind of four primary reasons it is self-awareness learn to contact the present moment as a skill helping ourselves become a neutral observer of thoughts and sensations and then discovering who and what we are beyond our minds and then through all of that more clarity, freedom and inner peace is a possibility I just want to add really quickly there was something that Steven Hayes had said that stuck in my mind and this saying or his metaphor for the mind was so powerful it was like once he said it it's like everything kind of clicked for me which is the mind works like a calculator without subtraction or delete right so you're it's just absorbing it's just taking things in there is no control over what it is taking in and not taking in it's just absorbing and you have to work with all of that everything that is coming in you have to overwrite it compensate for it work with it there is no getting rid of it and when you mentioned just that saying of you're not good enough right it doesn't matter where that came from your mind picked that up and your mind is grappling with it and unless you compensate for that there's no getting around it and that has to be accounted for the mindfulness practice the meditation this gives you an opportunity to see what's going on up there and to have an understanding of that it's not about eradicating it because there's no subtraction or delete it is having an understanding of who you are and maybe that might be in your head but that doesn't not mean that that's who you are and your actions are going to dictate that but your actions have to take in consideration that thought and work accordingly yeah and so in essence meditation really is a shift of relationship right like so I'm not good enough is showing up can I help myself see that as a thought and not necessarily a truth which is where earlier when I mentioned Don Miguel's work it's like oh that's a story wherever I picked it up from that's a story my mind's making right can I see it as a thought can I step back from it enough skillfully so that it doesn't impact moving towards meaningful directions in my life can I also touch into this grander sense of self that hey that's just one amongst many other identities or thoughts that came along in my life journey and I don't have to define myself by that and that's really beautiful that we could touch into this through meditation or mindfulness practice touch into this place inside of us so to speak or experientially recognize inside of us oh wait I don't have to define myself by my past my mind sure will try to it will bring up stuff from like 20 years ago or 10 days ago or it'll create a fearful future as to why I can't do something give all convincing reasons but I could touch back into this observing presence that I am watch that come and go sometimes harder than others some thoughts or beliefs are way stickier than others and we could unlearn that unwind that and have a little bit more freedom and the real kind of recognition is that well clarity of freedom inner peace comes from taking power back from our own minds that's the primary place and that's the foundation of the confidence that leads to you talking to that stranger asking for that promotion going after that relationship and this understanding that once those thoughts continue to bubble up they become beliefs and those beliefs influence your actions and then you can end up like some of our clients later in life frustrated by well man I'm in my 40s or 50s and now I have all these beliefs about talking to strangers or that I'm not good enough with women and that I shouldn't have pursued that career and just the simple fact of bringing this mindfulness into your understanding of how the brain works the thoughts that are coming and going just like passing cars on the highway next to me here and you have the ability to latch on to certain thoughts to detach from certain thoughts and just label them as just another car going down the highway doesn't have to define you Right and you use the word confidence and I think what many people get stuck on is I have to feel a certain way and that means I'm not anxious I'm not worried, I'm not stressed physically or anything like in my mind and really true confidence is that we're able to begin to welcome in whatever we're feeling whatever we're thinking without letting that dictate our lives that we can begin to step back from it open our hearts to it step back from our minds from it and then still move in that meaningful direction so it's not getting rid of anything it's a shift of relationship to what we're experiencing internally and then giving it everything we got and whatever area of our life that Act in the face of that discomfort Yep Right and that's really the first step in our X Factor Accelerator Program around these acceptance commitment therapy principles are how do I understand the thoughts that are leading to these actions that aren't necessarily getting the results that I'm looking for in my relationships in my life and the people surrounding me or what I'm going after and then how can I still act in the face of that uncertainty in the face of that anxiety in that discomfort of having never done that before to put myself out there and those actions are in line with my core values what I really care deeply about so not the memetics of the car and the outside desires or what media is pumping through my social media that I need right now but what are those core values that light up the meaningfulness in my life that I'm after regardless of what happens externally to me? I see it in my clinical work with clients where they want to live more honest, authentic lives whatever that might mean whether it's in their work or their personal relationships and it's actually damn hard for us human beings to live honest, authentic lives and if we kind of go why that is we realize fear tends to run it and or discomfort in the body shows up when we're trying to move towards living more honest, authentic lives or the mind comes in and beats us up and that uncertainty that you mentioned when we are in the unknown every single moment we're in the unknown and because the mind is highly built on the illusion of control and likes things in categories and nice and neat and that's just not how life works that can feel frightening for the mind so it keeps us safe and comfortable as opposed to moving to those meaningful things but like I mentioned something like meditation or different kind of practices along those lines can support in dealing with the discomfort that may show up in the body or the thoughts that may arise so that we could face uncertainty head on as best as we can and sometimes we're not gonna be perfect for sure and then we just get back up and we still keep moving forward over and over and over again and we find out that hey I am way more powerful than my mind gives me credit for It was so great to reconnect We love asking each guest what your X factor is what do you think makes you unique and extraordinary? I just think it's just that through my own personal journey of overcoming suffering and my health issues and the challenges of dealing with my own life the thing that makes me extraordinary was I just kept moving forward and learning that there is this possibility for us human beings to experience clarity, freedom, inner peace and if I were to say there's something extraordinary about me it's just hey I got a big heart wanna give that out give that out to as many people out there that are suffering and I do it in my own clinical practice and yeah and that there's this opportunity for clarity, freedom, peace for all of us that are open and willing to do that hard inner journey so yeah I think just I don't think there's anything in particular that makes me unique or extraordinary but it's just that the more and more we question our minds the more and more we question those limiting beliefs authenticity in the heart gets a place whatever that might look like for all of us and for me it looks like expressing itself as a clinical psychotherapist and having a blast from the past right now and connecting with the both of you so yeah well it was great connecting with you thank you for joining us yeah happy to be here thank you for both for having me