How to Reprogram Your Subconscious and Create Your Life

You mentioned that as a coach, you're pushing people to do to do more and it feels maybe hypocritical, you know, if you're just kind of stuck in your day-to-day and you're not pushing.

I had a similar experience like that where I was talking to a friend of mine at the gym at our gym and she came up to me. We've had like two or three conversations. She came up to me and she was like, Hey, I just want to let you know that like all the conversations we've had we've had have been really impactful. I really appreciate our friendship. And I was like, thank you. Like that means a lot. She goes, and I I quit my job. I was like, I didn't like don't put that on me. And that was when it really hit me that, like, all right, you know, in my mind, this podcast is still such a passion project. And it is. But the things that I've shared on social media, the conversations that I have, like they do have a tangible in person impact. they really do. And so for for someone to come up to me that I, you know, didn't put a whole lot of thought into and share, like, no, that that actually catalyzed a change. It made me take a long look in the mirror.

And yeah, I actually quit my job too a couple of days ago. Yeah. Taking another sabbatical. Okay. I've done that a couple of times where I feel like I'm not really in the place I want to be professionally. And in order to recalibrate, I think it takes a f big step back. And fortunately I have savings. I've, you know, put some money away. I've been really frugal with my expenses. And I have unlocked an opportunity to take another step away from my software work and focus all my energy into this and just kind of letting things happen to me.

I wasn't expecting to hear that from someone. And when you hear that, it really forces you to think about your actions. And I think being held to that level of accountability is only gonna make you better. And that might be a big reason why you've chosen this profession of yours.

Samurai Success was designed for one purpose that it was selfish. And it is it continues to be selfish. I'm gonna be really clear. it provides the opportunity for me to be my best every day of my life. It forces me, it obligates me, it honors me. I have to respect it. And when I don't, there are those days where I don't. Mm. But when I do, man, it is a life fulfilling prophecy. And that's that just warms my heart and it warms every part of me. Cause I know one day I'm going back to the Father and I have to be able to explain the gift he gave to me, what I did with that. And I have no challenges, no regrets, man. I'm gonna be very clear about that. So that's the way I wanna live. I love that. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

I wanna start at the beginning. you grew up ad you were adopted and you had a couple of different religious perspectives. and I guess before we get started, I I should preface all of this with David and I just met at a FIFA watch party through a mutual friend. We happen to find out we go to the same gym. and I was informed about a book that you wrote, Swords of Illumination. And so some of this conversation is gonna be kind of directed around the book. I'll obviously share it in the show notes with a link so everyone who who's interested can purchase it.

But this is really a a journey of a young boy, Yoshi, on his quest for seeking his and understanding his destiny, his ultimate destiny, destiny of becoming a samurai. And I think if I were to sum it up in just kind of one concept, it would be largely around identity. the sort of the end of the culmination of the book, without spilling any of the details, it's sort of how your destiny is is not one thing but sort of the amalgamation of everything. It encompasses every part of your life, the ten spokes of the bicycle. and then obviously the center being meaning and so I forget. There's some core concept that's the hub and then the spokes from around it. But anyway, where I'm going with this is there's a lot of noise in the world. There's a lot of influences that you have. And it's your goal, your objective to sift through the noise and deem what is truly you. Coming from an adopted family, having different sort of religious views projected upon you, how are you able to really peel, you know, peel back the layers of that onion and unearth what is you versus what is the adopted parents want for you? What did, you know, your religious leaders want for you? How did you ultimately figure out what is noise and what is true?

So I I've There's a great quote that we have at Samurai Success that says, "the "the intensity of the events that happen in your life are correlated to the stubbornness of the individual recipient." So because of that, pain to answer your question. is how I got through that process. What I mean by that is from a very young age, my mother especially made sure that she was very clear that even though I was adopted, I was chosen. So I wasn't given up. I was chosen by my parents. Beautiful. And that is the story that kept, you know, in my head, my programming, if you will. that projected, my God, you know, A lot of people that I've met who are adopted have a very different story about that adoption. Why did my my my biological parents give me up? What was the whole thing? What What was so wrong about me? and stuff like this? Where I haven't had that because had a very strong influence that says I was chosen by my adopted parents.

And that was I think I had one event with my mom when I was very young that I had to do a lot of work around because I said some really nasty things to her that you're not my mom and I could just see her 'cause her quest this lifetime was being a mom. Yeah. And I broke that with her, you know, and I really ugh but then we healed that part of us and thank goodness we moved through you know through that. My brother was born eight years later. So we had this huge gap between the two, you know, kind thing. And he and I had taken very different paths, kind of stuff. But that story is what really taught me about we're we're making all this stuff up. We can have any story we really want. Yeah. And if I create the story that really represents who I am, then I'm going to be in alignment. Even if it's not what everybody else says is positive, I'm still going to be in alignment with that. And so by having that story be that different is what's really shaped everything else that I through that pain level that just says, Hey, and As I get to a level of pain, it's an opportunity for me to have a different choice. Yeah. That's really how I live life now.

I love that. 'Cause it and it's so true. We are creating our own reality. We are every choice that we make, we are we are fabricating it. And you can choose to fabricate the the you know, the negative story or you can choose to fabricate the positive one. And it's really about how do you frame it. Yeah.

And that sounds so easy because we're just having this conversation and they goes, you know, you just change your story. Well, your story is so imbued and embedded really into something called programming. Yeah. And neuroscience is teaching us that the way we manifest, we create things in our lifetime, only five percent of what we're manifesting in our life come from the conscious part of our brain. That means ninety-five percent of all these experiences of events that you're having in your life and being attracted to are coming from your subconscious. If you just replace subconscious with word programming, it'll make conversation today really easy for our whole audience because this was a new concept to me thirty five years ago when I started studying neuro linguistic programming. The identity between the software and hardware of your brain and how the verbiage really changes that whole thing and how that story is your programming that teaches you this is how you approach this, this is how you react and respond to different events. And all that stuff is created by the time you're seven years old. Wow.

Yes. Did not know that. It's traumatic when you hear it for the first it's like, come on, that can't be true. Right. I will tell you, when you get into a pressure situation, you will revert back to being a small child with the same amount of resources that you had at seven when that programming was instilled around that particular subject. So you could have fifty more years of new resources. But if that programming is there, it clicks on and it pulls you back to that place where you didn't have all those resources. Yeah. And you will react and respond like you're a seven year old child, a five year old child, how that person would react and respond to that. Not with all the great resources you've learned over your lifetime, because that's the conscious part of your brain. Wow. So getting that in alignment is what this work is about. Yeah. And that first step is just understanding that. Understanding what is the baseline and then from there. Yeah. The awareness, right? First level of change. Yeah. Absolutely.

How do you get beyond that programming? How do you sift through all of this subconscious, non what do they call it? Like non non con unconscious agreements, I guess, that you make. How do you sift through that and determine what is true to your core and what is bullshit that other people are trying to encourage you for their own selfish reasons?

So my understanding about why our soul has journeyed to this incredible place. This this virtual reality, if you will, is because it's here to experience what it says it is. Because in the other dimensions, you can't have that experience. And one of the things that allows for that is something called the law of polarity, the law of contrast. So let's imagine that every single person, eight billion of us around the planet, are all five foot nine or six foot tall. Every single one of us, there's no deviation. What would be the purpose of a word called tall? Or what would be the wor purpose of a word called short? those words wouldn't even exist anymore because there would be no reference point for that. So contrast is such an important part. Now that's an important concept to remember because that's why pain exists. It's why suffering exists. Because without those elements, right, and again it's always reciprocated to the individual's stubbornness. So your level of stubbornness may be different. I hope for your sake that it is 'cause my gosh, the universe has this amazing way that if you don't get it the first time, it creates this feedback loop. And that's really the answer to your question.

In this midst of this experience that your soul has come here to do, it's also giving you the opportunity to be able to say, Hey, I have a certain belief about something. I then move into the experience of it and I get some feedback that either reinforces that or it's it deinforces it. And it's all through feeling states. I feel good, it reinforces it. I feel bad, it is something's missing. I'm I'm missing. So you have this constant feedback loop from the universe if you can listen to it. And if you can trust yourself in listening to it. And that is probably the biggest challenge for most of us is that we don't trust ourselves to listen to the internal master inside of us that I want to help people get back to. So we stop listening to these all these, you know, wonderful, I think well intentioned most of the time, talking heads that wanna tell you how you should be thinking. Yeah. We should stop doing that, Anthony. We don't need to teach our people what to think. We need to teach how to think. And we're missing such a huge opportunity for our society to do so.

Hundred percent. And that that last point shines through a lot in the book, but I pulled up a quote around how you you just reference how sort of feelings are the guide towards your truth. Absolutely. But it is the right one because it is true to you. Do not ignore your feelings, Yoshi. They let you know when your actions are incongruent with who you are. But when those actions run counter to your identity, then your feelings serve as an alert system. The pain you feel in your heart lets you know that this particular action does not correspond to your identity.

And that is really the power of that's why we have this these feelings. Yes. It's to to keep us on track. without getting too too caught up in the feelings, I wanna you've mentioned spirituality, you've mentioned religion. I wanna hear a little bit about what are your religious and spiritual beliefs today and kind of what was your journey unearthing those those beliefs over the years.

So in my younger age, adopted into my Methodist family, if you will, they were pretty good in 1967 when I was born to be able to match up, you know. Pigmentation color, things like this. They they had a lot of biases around those things. But religion was kind of starting to shift a little bit where since the child really didn't have an indoctrination, that multiple religions could be possible. Well, this one I went into a Methodist family, but that family actually had connections with a Jewish family and a Catholic family. Okay. And a really strong s sense of both those things. And the things that I I noticed about that and why it was so important that wasn't the religious indoctrination of it. It was what they were willing to and allowed to have conversations about. For my Jewish family, when I spent a lot of time with them and Passover and things like this, talking about money and business was part of the prolificness of every conversation. In my Methodist family, you never talked about money. And I was like, What the and and cath you know, Catholic Catholicism was there was a very different co and I was like, I'm getting different storylines. Yeah. Why am I getting different storylines? What's this of course that's led me to a whole life about discovering this, about stories mean things, but we're making them up. Yeah. And that was the fascinating part of that a that experience when I was younger to really kind of sift through.

Now remember, I'm talking about several aspects of myself because there's this soul part and there's an ego part. So let's just stay w stay with those two sources. So when feelings come through us, we have this current belief system that is inaccurate. That says when you have a feeling, it's the truth of things. Feelings do not tell you the truth of things. They tell you a truth about where you're located in the learning curve around the subject you're talking about or you're immersed in. It is so we tend to then go, but I feel this way and I want to be passionate about it, and this is the truth. In this physical realm, Anthony, my understanding is there is no such thing as an absolute truth. Right. That's I mean hence the ambiguous truth. Exactly. That's why I was so excited about 'cause like here's a cat who gets it, right? He's serious it's like maybe he doesn't know why that happens, but there's a good sense you do. 'Cause there's a part of you that doesn't resonate with that. Yeah. Here's here's a truth about things. If there was the truth about anything in this physical plane, you could get an answer to something and it would do this thing whereas like that's the end of the conversation. You could no go no farther into that conversation. There's no more adventure into that question. That doesn't exist here. As a matter of fact, one of the big things in quantum mechanics that we just discovered after 35 years of theorizing about the Higgs-Boson concept, we now know proof of it. Well, that proof created 10,000 more questions. Right. That should illustrate enough to even the the the third grade mind like mine that there is no such thing as an absolute truth. There's always a new beginning of another end of this, this ends, this begins. There's this constant reaffirmation. But we're so self righteous in our society today about this is the truth and you will do it this way. We've got to move away from that.

Yeah. Well so talk to me about ego, right? 'Cause that's kind of the whole concept of of of ego is, you know, you are you know, the the and ego not being, you know, arrogant, right? But ego being your s understanding of self, right? And so that that can have both pros and cons, just as everything. You know, it's all about the dichotomies in the world. but you know, that that ego plays a role into how you how you understand the world and then how you place value on things, right? But also on what you deem is the truth and why you think others should believe the way that you do. Why do you think it's so ingrained in the human condition to feel we need to convince others of our truth and that being the truth as opposed to our truth.

So studying those three dimensions of human aspect, the physical realm, spiritual dynamics, and how they integrate into one thing, our ability to manifest. there's this amazing belief system that seems to happen within all human beings is that we want to believe and we want people to believe in us. So that one belief system really creates this this strain of what I'm telling you, if you don't believe in me, then you're challenging my identity. Mm. And so once we confuse our belief systems with who we are, that's the challenge. And that's why book chapter one, basically, and and the sword number one, if you will, is Sword of Identity, which is the most powerful belief system you're going to have, but it's not all the belief systems that you're going to have. Yeah. Your identity is the core. So that identity, mission and purpose, that hub you were talking about earlier is then creating those spokes of those role distinctions of the other areas of finance and business and relationships and friendships and all those other ones at the wheel. But your hub, your core, when you truly understand that and you design that, then everything springs forward from that place. So starting there is important because when you start to start out on the outside and start thinking your money or start thinking your business, this is when there's a failure strategy. Because you get to an end of that and you're like, well, who am I now?

And that's where a lot of people are coming out of corporate America. Their milestone chasing mentality. Exactly. The whole ego is driving that. Yeah. And I love the way you presented this. It is my belief that being able to create a hybrid between the soul and the ego in this physical plane is such an important aspect. Yeah. I'm not white wearing white robes. You're a spiritual no, stop that crap. I don't want that label. I don't want that identity. Yeah. But there is a spiritual master inside each and every one of us. That I don't have to share with you or I don't. As a matter of fact, that spiritual master doesn't want to share anything with you. It just wants to encourage you to find the spiritual master inside of you to share with you. Our ego wants to go, but let me share with everybody. Let me tell you my truth of things. And that's not how I understand it really works. 100%.

I I don't remember where I heard this, but someone said l they don't like labels because labels are lazy. Right? When you assign a label to something, then you do not have to come up come to a conclusion about an individual. Like for example, if if let's just say you were a priest, right? If you were to assign that label on you and and David is priest, David, I don't have to do any cognition to understand who you are at your core because there's been some sort some third party that's presented this label that has then decided who you are objectively. Right. And I think that's so true. I feel like labels are incredibly objective and they don't allow for any interpretation and I truly think that they just exist so that people don't have to think. Right. Which kind of ties back to this concept of, you know, we're not teaching people how to think, we're teaching people what to think. Right. And you see it in media, regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, it's you know, both sides, all parties are equally responsible for telling people what to think rather than thinking that you know, telling encouraging people how to think. So in your practice and samurai success in your coaching, how do you distinguish between telling people what to think versus coaching people on how to think?

So teaching, coaching, mentorship, in our realm of things, our philosophy is that we're not doing any of those things. We're really reminding you of what you already know. So in order for me my get my brain to be able to do that, then I can't talk to your ego because your ego doesn't know most of this stuff. I have to speak to your soul. So if I speak to your soul, your soul knows everything. There is nothing it does not know. it may have chosen to forget certain things because it's it's in order to be able to create a specific identity, right, as opposed to who you really are, just a belief about who you are, you have to create a limited perspective through your belief systems in order to be able to experience that. Because to experience everything that you really are, divinity itself in this limited space, is so tough that the brain just usually doesn't do well with it. It just freaks out and it just shuts down. So it's taking divinity and taking in individual aspect of that and exploring that part of that. Yeah. That's the belief system. So as soon as you come into this physical realm, it's everything about the God of this place, the Newtonian machinery of this place is your belief systems. And as you believe, so shall you receive. So make sure that your belief systems are very powerful because that's what's designing your destiny. Yeah. And that's the whole reason for the for the work that we're doing.

Love it. changing gears a little bit, I want to hear what is your perspective on God, divinity? Do you believe heaven is on earth? Like what is your worldview?

I believe the Lord's Prayer is very much intuitive about this. And it says very clearly that I'm gonna forgive my trespasses first, forgiveness for me first, because if I don't do that, I can't forgive you. Yeah. Right? Or the events that we had between us. So we've gotta start here. And that's a missing part of so much of our indoctrination and and our religions and everything else like this. We could go off on a tangent about the intention behind all that, but let's forget all about that. Just really focus on what you can control. Because I'm a control freak. Yeah. And I like to be able to take that responsibility. It's like I can change that. And the whole point of the ego is that I wanna use my ego as opposed to my ego using me. Mm-hmm. I wanna use my soul as opposed to my soul using me. And I wanna integrate that into an identity that really is in service. Yeah. Samurai, loosely translated, means in service of others. But if you really study samurai like I have and and the arts of the samurai, you understand the discipline and the training they spend every single hour of their day for mastery to be able to wield those tools so they could truly be in service to their danchu. And when you understand that, that means you've got to train you first. All the podcasts that seem to be out there today, all the training and coaching is about, let me teach you, let me tell you what you need to be doing. We're missing out on a huge opportunity to really integrate the soul into this, that it already knows that. Hundred percent. And when you by the way, you want to talk to entrepreneurs, you better help it be their idea because they're never gonna implement this something stop their idea. So we just step back and went, That works. Let me just talk to their soul because their soul already knows. And and you know they fight you, you know, you're ego like I don't wanna do this, but then eventually goes, Okay. Yeah. And and the worst thing you can say to me as a coach is you're right. Or I'm right. What we're really looking for is that's right. I see. That's the game changer.

Yeah. I think that's also one thing that that draws me to the the podcasting platform intrinsically is that by having a lot of guests on, everyone has their own take and I feel differently when you know, based on what one person says or the other. And the feeling I get is not because if I feel warm and fuzzy or feel really drawn to what someone said, it's because he's right and and the other person's wrong. Right. No, no. It's that what they're saying is resonating with me because it's truer to use your language, truer perhaps to my soul. Yes. Right. Versus what the other person is saying is like maybe that's in alignment with others, but not perhaps not to myself. And I think that, you know, you talked about how kind of what what catalyzed samurai success was ultimately a selfish goal. I feel the same way. You know, what's catalyzing this is kind of selfish. It's that I want to be able to learn and I learn best through conversations with extremely bright, brilliant, beautiful people. And why not seek that out? I can find that. I can have that. But I do think that there's there's so much truth to your truth is uncovered through the feelings that you experience and when you resonate strongly with something that someone said doesn't mean that everything else is wrong, but it may not just may not be right for you.

In the spiritual realm, there is no such thing as right or wrong. Everything is neutral. once it comes into this physical realm, that's where we have been giving the ultimate power in this planet. Which is for the very beginning of the Adam and Eve story, where Adam started naming things. And when you name something, you create meaning. Mm-hmm. And the great quote here is "nothing has meaning but the meaning you give it." That's how powerful you are as an individual. So I know there's a lot of conversations going on right now with the tribe that just listening to this, going, What do you mean? There's facts and there's I can tell you that your interpretation of those facts is still your experience and has everything to do with your beliefs and your programming that you have. If you want to change that, you've got to learn how to change that programming. And that's what this tool is about. Love that.

Going back to you mentioned about control, I found the quote in the book, which is Yoshi asking in puzzlement, quote, so I should not care about the results of my decisions. You should care about what you can control. Your decisions, you can control. How others receive or interpret your decisions, you cannot control. And it goes on a little bit further, but I think that's so powerful because I had a short clip I posted maybe a month or so ago about creation versus consumption. And ultimately, consumption, you know, scrolling through Instagram, whatever, YouTube, even, you know, everyone who's listening to this is a form of consumption, right? So consumption obviously is not bad. However, it's an a relinquish of control. It is saying, I am not controlling the world around me. I am subjecting myself to other people's ideals. now that can be great for learning, that can be great for gaining new perspectives. However, what it slowly starts to do is chip away at your understanding of my ability to control the world around us. Whereas when you create, when you put something out there, when you're coaching and mentoring your clients, right, and you're seeing the tangible impact you're having on, I would I would guess it's not just their business, but I'm sure there's healing happening in their family lives, right? There's healing in their relationships and all of those spokes of that wheel. I'll put a picture up of the wheel so everyone knows what we're talking about. but you know, that that is your ability to control the world around you. And at the end of the day, that is how you create heaven on earth, right? It's by, it's by you understanding deeply what you want, what your values are. and I love how much this book talks about values because I've been asked by my coach and by some friends very recently, you need to really understand your values. You really need to put them in writing. And I have never done that. Not yet. and so I I love I love that this is one of the many things that is encouraging me to do just that.

Totally by coincidence. What's that? Totally by coincidence. Absolutely. The I mean coincidences and serendipity is how I thrive. God, you're you're in it then, maybe. Yeah. It's the best way to live.

So I'm I'm curious to hear a little bit about your journey. Like, you know, Yoshi's values changed a lot throughout the course of his time at the School of Aspen. And so, you know, are there any values that have held true throughout your entire life? And if you could just articulate some of those values that are core and really driving your mission today, what are those?

So my core value is being samurai. Samurai loosely translated means in service of others. But that's a really interesting thing because the the training that I do every single day is training me. So much of our consumption world, ego-based consumption, right, is under the belief that knowledge is power. Very clear. Clearly in the book, it talks about this is not accurate. Right. It says knowledge is powerful, but you have to be able to apply that knowledge. Right. That's the real power. Right. And then timing of that is wisdom. Yes. And that is so beautiful about a value system that says, yes, go and get the knowledge base, but you've got to apply it. Yes. And I will tell you it's really fascinating because we just reached 10,000 copies. it's been we just celebrated our third year of it being published with the book. And we're we saw this really interesting trend with the data, which says everybody was going audiobook. You know, entrepreneurs, you know, they're on the fly, they want to listen to something, they don't want to, you know, ingest it. And then it switched in twenty twenty-five, just about the end there. It was all of a sudden the audio book started dropping and the hardcover really started taking a big tr leap in the in the sales and the soft copy. And all of a sudden audio this year has actually dropped a third. And we're like, what is and just this month, what's happening? Well, people are actually starting to apply the work. They're grabbing the physical copy of the book, which was always our dream. Yeah. And they're actually taking notes. They're writing those things out, just like Yoshi did in the book. Yeah. And they're writing this stuff out. They're writing their their value systems.

Let's talk how about how powerful your value system is, because this has never been taught to us in a in a formal format. Right. You got to go to a spiritual way down in the into the deep things of spiritual to be able to get to your value systems. But your beliefs and values, your beliefs are like a thermostat. And they set the tone for what you're allowed to do this lifetime. Now remember, most of your belief systems and every single subject, those ten categories of balance, have been set by the time you're seven years old. Your brain changes at seven. It changes from a very theta based frequency, which allows information into the subconscious part of your brain into a much more beta strategy. You're becoming more of a mental adult. Now we know that the frontal cortex doesn't you know get go until twenty six, but that doesn't matter. Seven years old, most of your programming is set. How do you change that? That's the difficult part about getting into that space, is really getting to a place where you're like, I'm still re-resourcing that seven-year-old child to be able to make decisions when I'm 45 years old, and you are because that thermostat tells you how much you're allowed to do. So, like a thermostat in a room, right? You have an AC and you have a heater connected to it. Now that thermostat says, Hey, if I set that at 70 degrees and all of a sudden it starts pumping up to 80 degrees, what's its job? It communicates through that thermostat and says, Hey, things are too hot. We gotta cool things down. And you cool things down through the AC. Okay, it's set at 70 and now it goes down to 60. Ooh, it's too cold. I gotta heat things back up. And if you w listen to that metaphor, that theme, you start seeing human patterns because that theme thermostat now is your belief systems. If that amount of money you're allowed to make every single year is set at $70,000 a year or $50,000 a year or $200,000, it doesn't matter. As soon as that's set. As soon as you start taking making too much more money than that ever that's set at, you're gonna cool things off. Self sabotage. Hmm. If it goes below that, it says you should be making a hundred thousand dollars, you're only making seventy, it heats things up. I gotta get going, I gotta be motivated. And you see this pattern that happens, and that thermostat is controlling that.

So would you say that that thermostat can exist to serve and hurt you?

Well, as a matter of fact, it's all neutral when it was designed. So how we use it is what determines that right, wrong, good, bad, what it works, it doesn't work. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

Another theme that's come up a lot is money. And I wasn't really intending on having this conversation with you, but I'm curious, like, what is your take on on money? I've been wrestling with my relationship with money and trying to figure out, you know, obviously we need we need money in this world. We it's just, you know, a necessary part of life. So when you're thinking about, you know, your values and, you know, that thermostat and staying attuned to your your truth, how does money fit into that picture and how do you, you know, set a goal for yourself, you know, or or a a hope for, you know, your financial independence and you love motorcycles, you y you know, there's there's so many fun stuff that you want to be able to spend money on. I'm in the market for a bike right now 'cause it's been a while since I've owned one. Yeah. I I'm realizing I might have to wait until winter, until the prices go down, buy something then just because I haven't had a chance to ride this summer. Obviously if I had one in my garage, I'd be riding it to the gym all the time. But you know, like to go on a long extended ride, I feel like a lot of my energy has been elsewhere. True. Which is great. There's a season for that, season for other stuff. But anyway, my point is there's this necessary evil about it. There's sort of like we are subject to this this you know, institution that requires us to, you know, provide money for services and get money for services. So how do you maintain that balance and that order and the equilibrium of that thermostat in your life while still maintaining high sort of objectives and goals for yourself and not letting, I I want to make this money detract from your values or when you start to make more, you you you self sabotage and pull you back. How do you prevent that from happening?

So that thermostat is really the key to the the answer to the question. But what goes along with it is the hierarchy of value systems that we were just talking about before. And both those link together to be able to create the machine that really runs what we call the chain of command. So the value of hierarchy, for example, if you put family at the top of your hierarchy of values, number one, and by the way, there's one, two, three, four, five, and and you can take any of the ten categories and you could start putting them right where those go. So this is a great exercise. We actually take people through. And you'll find that if you really listen to what's really going on, because your ego's gonna jump in there and no, this is where this goes, and it's not accurate. You really got to do the deeper work to be able to say, hey, if I got family number one and all of a sudden I realize f money is number five, I was like, financials, right? Kind of thing is number five. Then you're gonna put a lot more energy and effort in your mindset, skill set, tool set dil development of your family. So that value system is what prioritizes decision making. So that's why people in your life have been saying you really need to write down your values, because if you really want to understand how your destiny is being created. Destiny is being created by the decisions you make. And that decisions are being created by your value systems.

Elon Musk has just this incredible ability to attract money to him. Yeah. Right? And because he just has an energy and frequency to him that does not care about it. But yet people just keep piling money on him. And there's a very clear scripture around this those who have not, that shall be taken from them, and those who have, much will be given to them. What is this thing that's happening? It's a frequency that you're in. For example, I don't know, last time you were in the dating scene or stuff like this, or how to go get money from a bank. I want you to imagine going in and you're you know, you're hiding it because you got this great mask, you know, we all do, you know, kind of stuff, but we're desperate for this money. We're desperate. And you go into that bank. Now you think that banker doesn't feel that desperation, you are misled. You are projecting frequency to them. That just does us. And by the way, if you don't get that metaphor, then all you have to do is go into the dating world and do the same thing. I'm desperate. I have some needs here. I really got to go to that bar and make that. you are going to get shut down. I don't care how beautiful you're a great-looking guy. You get shut down because women feel that. Men feel that. We feel this stuff. When you're congruent with who you are, when your alignment of your beliefs and values are aligned, you create a frequency of coherence and that coherence is what attracts things to you. Yes. It's the focal point of your attractor factor. So be clear when you get past all this body mechanics and body things, you know, image and all this stuff, you've got to understand that there is this other element that we haven't talked about, which is as a as divinity, as your soul, it's a frequency. Yes. Nikola Tesla. If you want to understand this other third dimension, the universe, you have to think in terms of frequency, vibration, and energy. There it is. That's the reason why you said this. Because you are this generator of these frequencies that people pick up on. And in sales or in relationships, I don't care what area you're talking about, people sense this. Yeah. Now you might get away with it for a while, but people will pick up on it eventually, especially if you're in tune. You meet somebody who's very much in line with who they are. They got their value systems aligned. They got their belief systems aligned. You meet that person in their an empath, like I am. I'm gonna see through your crap so fast. That's why people come to us, because the truth shall set you free. It's hard. It's hard work. But if you don't get past your own lies, guys, nothing's gonna work for you.

Yeah. I have a life coach, and the thing that drew me in to him was we we met at a pool party when I was down in Austin visiting some friends, just catching up with them and hanging out. but there's one gentleman there who I was just overhearing a conversation he was having with someone and I was like, This man's like authenticity shines through, right? And so I started asking him a little bit like, What do you do for work? He's like, my coach. I'm like, hmm, we should talk. but it's crazy how how palpable it is.

Right. And obviously you describe yourself as as empathetic. And I think if you're you know, a a more empathetic person, you're gonna be able to pick up on people's frequency and energy a little bit more. But I mean, it is just astonishing how and and maybe that's because I've become a little bit more attuned to myself over the years, but it is astonishing how easy it is to tell if someone is just living a false reality. It's just like, brother, you need to you are not focusing on yourself. it's crazy. I'm I'm a big believer in the ether and electromagnetic waves are so prevalent in everything that we do, yet we can't see them. We perceive them, but we don't see them. And I think that is, you know, maybe not exactly electromagnetic waves, but some sort of energetic waveform that is truly connecting people, connecting the world. I mean, it's the same reason why, you know, plants grow when you talk to them. They grow more when you're within five miles of home. animals perceive that as well. Like they can literally pick up on when their their owners or you know family is is returning. Plants do that as well and they will grow more if you talk to them. They don't speak English, right? You know, it's not as far as we know. As far as we know. Well they maybe they they can hear it, but like but there's some sort of energetic exchange that is creating value and and adding 'cause they are they are photosynthetic. They need sun, they need water, and maybe they need some love and, you know, some some communication, all of that is is pouring energy. And that's how I like to think about more or less how I think about business too. And how I think about this. and actually it comes up a lot in here, which is if you're too objective focused, if you're too focused on the result, you're gonna lose you know the point of your choice.

Right. And if you're too focused on on nailing a deal with some sort of monetary figure attached to it, you're gonna lose out on the larger opportunity of what is the true exchange that's happening here, right? What is the exchange between this conversation we're having between yourself and myself, David? It's not financial. There's no financial transaction here, but there's clearly a positive energetic energetic change exchange. And if there weren't, what neither of us would be here, right? Agreed. Yeah. Okay.

So I want to get a little bit more pragmatic and talk about samurai success. So at what point in your professional career did you recognize this calling to teach, coach, and mentor others?

So growing up in the Florida Keys, I I literally spent more of my life underneath the water or on the water. By the time I was twenty nine years old. you've been diving for a while. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Just most of my life. So certified when I was twelve. You know, you can't really get certified when you're twelve, but I was. And you know I worked the system a little bit. Whatever you gotta do. But I just love diving too much. Or I was not gonna s I whether I had the license or not, I needed the training so I'd stay safe. Sure. But whether I had the license because then my tr instructor knew it, so I was like, Okay, we're gonna get you in there. So once I had that then I would just went crazy with, you know, scuba diving, shrimp, crawl f everything boat related, man, that's that's what you did there to make money, spear fishing, things like this. And some of the adventures I've been on and some of the people that I've been on who have been on the Discovery Channel with, you know, Shark Week or some of the, you know, camera people for w swimming with great whites with no cages, these are the guys I grew up with and that's a whole nother story. for one of the guys who used to jump on back of alligators in the middle of our ponds, you know, things like this. But anyway, That's Florida. Yeah, exactly. part of our our makeup or our programming.

But when I came out of the university, I thought I was gonna go into banking and as a matter of fact I thought I was actually gonna become an FBI profiler. I had really great empathetic skills, I could really read people really well. This is the kind of characteristics they're looking for. And I got sidetracked in politics. I spent five years there and one of the youngest women ever elected to the state house. I was her campaign manager, GPM leader of the Democratic Party later on kind of stuff. Now all my family are Republicans. So just imagine Thanksgiving, right? I'm working for a very liberal Democrat. You know, and I've got yard signs outside of my grandfather's house. my god, he loved me. David, it's not too hard to imagine this coming from Georgia. R okay, Rush Limbaugh listening guy. And I've I'm I'm supporting this candidate. Yeah. So it's just awesome. And then I went to work as the chief of staff, the Senate Appropriations Chairman, because that was my finan I was I was a finance person, you know, degree and things like this. But I spent a lot of time in f politics and I realized very quickly that politics was not a place that they was gonna change the world. It was it really like things status quo.

What drew you to it initially?

A friend of mine that I actually went to college with. He says, Hey, there's a campaign going on here. He says, I I know you know, we've worked together, we're part of fraternity brothers. He says, What would you like to get involved in this? So I was like, you know, I'm not doing anything, I'm spear fishing and stuff like this. So I came back out of the keys and went to work and okay. Worked for nothing, you know, just to be able to get in that. And so I spent a lot of years there, realized that didn't work. Got involved in real estate and I loved real estate. And I was the business manager for the number one selling agent in the world. Together we became that. He sold sixty-two million dollars in residential real estate, which today is not a big number. But then it was unheard of. You couldn't do this. Okay. And so he actually returned back to wanting to be able to get things Cuba was starting to open up at the time that I was at kind of the year that we were together. Okay. And he was from Cuba and really wanted to open things back up again. So he kind of got distracted from the real estate field. But while I was with him, I was on the on the road with him and we were doing these big seminars where I would get up there and I would teach team dynamics and organization. I think it was like 23 years old kind of thing at the time. And we'd just come off stage just the whole crowd was going crazy for us. My ego was on top of the world kind of thing. I'm living in a three and a half million dollar house. We're selling to celebrities meeting Sylvester Stallone, Madonna, Prince, all this all the heat players. I'm driving a 560 SL Mercedes down South Beach. I live on South Beach. Wow. Right? This little studio that's twelve hundred square feet. Now, studios are not supposed to be twelve hundred square feet, right? They're supposed to be six, three, right? Exactly. I'm living in this mansion of this thing. I'm living the life. I'm making ungodly money. I am miserable out of my life. I'm miserable like like I don't ever want to repeat that again, that kind of miserable, depressed. Like there's something so deep in me calling me that I just I had to listen to it.

So on this stage, we just walked off stage. The place goes crazy. There's five thousand people in the room. And I look I open up the and they're jumping around. These people are in Armani suits, their Rolexes, jewelry, and they're jumping around like little guy. I'm like, what the hell is happening? And I look past the corner and there's this guy, six foot seven of them, three hundred plus pounds, Anthony Robbins. I'd never heard of the guy before. I'd never seen him, I'd never any of his books, none of his tapes, nothing. And I realized, my God, there is a whole nother love human forms I don't understand. So I used my political connections to be able to call him and his Delmar. Castle the time. I left a personal on his personal call, you know, his personal cell phone, his answering machine at the time, if that gives away my age. And I said, Listen, I just want to let you know that I'm gonna become your number one sales trainer. I want to come to work for you, kind of stuff. He called me back, I don't know how many hours later. I kept the voicemail for years. He says, Listen, you cocky I won't say it, but cocky son of a gun, son of a bitch, you know. He says, My team just so happens to be in Miami. If you get past them, I'll consider hiring you. I literally, I I drove down to South Beach right to like two blocks away where they were staying at this this hotel and we met and the rest is history and went to work for Tony. So I I c stayed with my commitment of of being his number one national trainer and I found a really interesting way 'cause I was a sales guy. And so I realized I I'd actually gone into the San Diego office and I saw this big map. And it said when we were gonna return to these cities. And my sales brain went, Ha ha, I got it. All I need to do is keep those relationships from where the past city I was just in, and I just need to keep them for a eighteen months, twenty-four months. Just keep in touch with them, keep in touch. How you think it's going? And I had sales. As soon as I walked back into New York, I had sales because I'd been working the relationship for a while. Right. And then I was like, okay, New York and and and California. I I had this whole vision. And this I don't know how the universe works with you, but it uses this cosmic two by four with me. And it just hit me over the head because as soon as I started making those phone calls, I was so prepped. I was so excited. Because they had just gone out of this life-changing seminar, right? And I knew I had I had them, and they were just in this emotional state that And then then they started telling me how they were falling on their faces. really? Exactly. I was like, what the fuck? And my whole world was crumbling. I was like, What? they've just been to the mountaintop. They've been to the highest level, maybe the greatest coach of our lifetime. I give it all credit for the guy 'cause he's just phenomenal what he does. Yeah. And now how in that's not how are they not able to s sustain this? They had made huge life changes. They had left a marriage. They had gotten married. They had created kids. They had left kids. They had started new businesses. They had s the left business. I mean, life transformational things, not small things, man. Mm-hmm. And they were falling on their faces because it wasn't sustainable. So I started a fad diet almost. it was the warm bath syndrome. Yeah. Right? Feels really good while you're in it. And then it fades. It gets cold. Right. That was my introducing to programming. Okay. Because without that shift no book you're ever going to read, no movie you're ever going to see, no insight from anybody else is ever gonna change that programming long term. You've got to do the work to get in there and change it. It's designed this way.

So inadvertently, again before all samurai success and everything, I started coaching people. Wasn't even a term. We didn't have the word coaching then. That's just how old this is, right? And we started working with people over the phone and I was like, hey, we should apply what you learned at the seminar to the situation. And then their life started cranking up again. But it had to get this idea that change begins in the general, but happens in the specific. Yeah. And if you don't take that environment that you just went to that seminar, that movie or that tape or that book and you apply it and you you know you can apply and have the win with it, you're not gonna do that on a consistent basis. You use willpower, you use motivation, you'll use pain, pleasure, you know, inspiration to be able to do it, but it's not sustainable. If you don't change that programming, then it's not sustainable. You gotta use a lot of effort to be able to create results. So that was my origin story if you will to be able to go, hey, and by the way, when I went to Tony's team I said, hey, there's this opportunity to be able to do this thing and that we call coaching, they really were upset with me. I mean they were really upset with me. Because I think what they heard from me, if I could take it on from their perspective, was I didn't believe in what Tony was teaching and the seminar. And that was not accurate at all. Not true whatsoever. What I thought was amazing. But there was this this next level. Now of course, you know, Tony Robbins and you know he's got all these coaches today, you know, so so it's just a little bit ahead of my time with the conversation. But samurai success was born from that.

And truth is, I'm a terrible employee, to be honest with you. I really am. I just listen. Me too. Me too. So I was always destined to be my own boss, you know, kind of thing. Cause because putting up with me is a lot. There's no question about that. I'm high intensity. I want to live a different life. I don't live like most people's standards. And to be able to hold those standards is not an easy thing for people to be around. Yeah. So, but that's the way I want to live. I don't want to do it any other way. Yeah.

So Tom. Is Tom you in Miami? Are you my are you Miami Tom? Well done, sir. That's exact as a matter of fact, so many of those role distinctions in that book are an aspect of me. Yeah, I kinda figured well I'm hoping it's also an aspect of you as well. That's why it was written this way. Yeah. because if you can really resonate I love that you used that word earlier on, because that's that when you when your soul's really talking to you and it's using feelings, resonance is always the absolute truth of it your soul's talking to you as opposed to your ego talking to on your ego, use feeling states to communicate. Yeah. Right. And how to discern between those is a is a skill set that you have to be able to learn so that you know which source you're listening to. Yeah, absolutely.

I was Tom, reading this was yet another wake up call around why I wanted to step away from the software work because I also was finance that was my undergrad and I thought I was gonna go into private equity. I got my my first job offer for a a a little boutique firm. It was, you know, a fat paycheck, everything my career coach wanted and I remember calling my mom. Well, I called her quite a few times throughout the journey because the first call was that was the worst interview I've ever had in my life. It was just with their with their their head of like analytics and it he just grilled me with brain teasers the whole time. And they weren't the theoretical brain teasers that consulting interviews often ask, like how many ping pong balls would fit in a seven forty seven? which I'm sure there there's probably I don't know. I don't know if there's a real answer to that, like a legit answer. But they want to know you think. No, these were like objective answers, like there was a right answer and a wrong answer, and I just I thought it was the worst interview of my life. Sure enough, I got a call a couple days later, like, We love your interview. I'm like, How? I thought I fell face down. so went through a couple more interviews. Fortunately those were more behavioral. Like I got through the hard stuff and then it was just kind of like getting to know me, whatever. And I remember when I received the offer, I had this like unsettling feeling in my stomach of like this feels weird. I don't know why, I don't know what it is. And like my career counselor at my university, he was like, this is amazing, you gotta take this, and like he and I bumped heads a lot through my time at at tech. And I called my mom and she was like, Well, if it doesn't feel right, it's not for you. And I was like, That's what I needed to hear, right? Just like s one person in my life just like taking, you know, allowing me to take the foot off the gas. I ended up delaying graduation, getting into startups, which ultimately didn't really, you know, wasn't for me, getting more into software and going down that path. But I found that the programming that I was taught to amass wealth. you should have kids by thirty, you want the house, all of that stuff. It's like I I was so strongly encouraged to go in that direction that eventually when I felt like I just kept on doing this you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome. I eventually did the same thing over and over and over again and the outcome was the same. And it was maybe slightly to a lesser extent than your experience when you were living on South Beach. But you know, I don't think depression is a strong word for what I was experiencing. you know, laying on the couch crying in the middle of the day. I've mentioned this before on the show. And just like everything on paper looked really good. Everything on paper looked good. The salary was great. I had 3x'd since I started, you know, my first PM role, 3x'd my salary. the irony of it was I lasted one third of the time. So the net was the same income. But it really made me take a good long hard look in the mirror and say, what what am I prioritizing? What are the going back to the values, right? What are those values? And I feel the calling to explore this. I have no idea where it's gonna take me. but I do see a strong sense of Tom in in myself. And I like to think I'm the Tom that is now driving back to a family and you know a having a lot more direction in my life. I do feel like I'm attuned to that version of Tom much more than I am the the beginning of the book Tom. but I see a lot of myself in Yoshi too, and I feel an incredibly strong pull towards finding my destiny, not knowing exactly what that is, but I feel so so so magnetized, so attracted to just this unearthing of like what is my purpose on this planet. And I had a really good conversation with one of my tattoo artists just a couple days ago. He was sitting right where you are, and he framed it so nicely where he said, little bit of context. He came from the nonprofit world working with the Peace Corps and really trying to you know, like catalyze change in the world through this, this, this modal of nonprofit work. And he realized the people that have been the most impactful in my career or in my life rather are not the non-profits that I've worked with, but the individuals who have just been by my side or said something or stuck with me and really like allowed me to grow into the person that I am. And I think there's a lot of power in that, right? We're all searching, you know, that destiny doesn't have to be that you are the number one podcaster, the number one coach, that you're the top of whatever. It's like, no, if you are able to create and make a meaningful impact on someone, even at a very small scale, that that's adding a ton of value into the world. And that goes back to the first thing we were talking about about shifting that framing, right? You can you can look at it as like, I'm not, you know, I'm not a professional athlete, I'm not an actor that's changing the world, I'm not doing whatever. It's like, well, maybe you are. Just how are you framing it. Are you framing as you're not good enough to you know affect the entire globe, or you are good enough to affect meaningful people around you in every single day. And I feel like that's a good way to live life. It's just every day that you do have an impact on some person, on one person.

Yeah, and it's it's a lot easier to do that when you're clear about who you are, and that's that's such a wonderful conversation that you're having. I love the space you're in. I love that book came into your world at this time. it really is so it's so awesome on your part. and to attract it has a lot to do with frequency. frequency. So let's be clear about that. the probably the most profound lesson I've learned in this lifetime is that I love movies. I love music and I get so many insights from them. I'm constantly taking notes while I don't know if I really enjoy movies, but just the insights like I'll sit there and I'll pause the book. I'm like, that was so good and then it just goes on like how it just impacts me, you know, kind of stuff. So I can't go to the movie theaters anymore, which I used to love to do kind of stuff, 'cause then I'd have to go home and, you know, get the movie and buy it, rent it, whatever, get it on my V CR and you know get a tape of it somehow if I didn't have any money, whatever it did to be able to get that 'cause there were so many just wonderful insights and that's that's how the universe talks to me. I didn't realize it. Because it knows me and it always finds a way to communicate effectively based upon what I what I'm doing. Yeah. So my my wife is very different. She communicates differently through animals and stuff like this. And I know that sounds strange, but it's a lot of truth about how we live our lives. Yeah.

So the most profound impact I I heard was so much of my programm was I was supposed to go find out who I am. I'm supposed to be on a quest and under either in some treasure box or under a rock, there was some written note that says, David, you are this. And here's what I really found. You're not here to discover who you are. You're actually here to create who you are. That's that work. Yes. And I will tell you, if if you really don't see that insight, just look at the most profound people on this planet. They're not following the rules like you and I are. They have created they're self created individuals. And one of most profound things they do is they cannot be talked out of it. Yeah. So whether you like our president or not, that's a man who has self created himself. He is being rewarded because he is congruent with who he says he is and the actions he takes on a consistent base. Whether you and I think that's bad, good, he's the Christ, he's the antichrist, it doesn't matter. He is so congruent and congruency is what the universe rewards. If you're Mother Teresa, if you're Gandhi, it does it's congruency between who you say you are by design and the actions you take because of that. And those two things are incredibly important.

And if you take a look at something we call the differential triangle, if you're going from good, excellent to great, all the way up to the greatest of all time, and all the adjectives and superlatives you could use between those, then those are different levels. So when I started playing hockey, right, at forty years old, I'm not going to be the greatest of all time. That's point is already taken, Wayne Gretzky, right? Or some of the other and just the talent that it takes isn't something I'm willing to do. Yeah. And I would have had to start when I was four years old to probably get there, kind of stuff. And then I could have dedicated all that time and still not gotten to that place. Yeah. But that's not the destiny I wanted to create. Yes. My destiny is being really good or even excellent at hockey and winning a summer championship and 18 months of never skating before and being the assist leader. I took some of Wayne Gretzky's characteristics and I programmed my brain using this technology to be where the puck was going. In the books, every book I read about him, there was this key concept that kept showing up. Wayne always seemed to be where the puck was going. What? And I wrote that down. Yeah. And I literally put that into my brain through the I something called the IM Studio. And so now I I'd skate around the thing and intuitively, I know this sounds weird. But intuitively I started skating to the place and all of a sudden the puck was there. Yeah. And I was like, holy does this really happen? And it was. And the same thing with motorcycle racing or scuba diving or jumping out of I can build my brain to truly live the kind of life I want. Yeah. So self creation is the key to this. It's the same thing with destiny. Destiny is a place you end up at. It is not something that's predescribed. It's we've taught this or it says, hey, you have a destiny about you. We all have a destiny about us. Whether you're going to experience that destiny has everything to do with how you train yourself. Yeah. And how you work and how you do the experiences things. Because if you say you're a world-class athlete and you sit on the couch over there and eat Cheetos, those two things don't go together. Yeah. And so much of the work today is about who your identity, your I am statement isn't congruent with the actions you take with that. And if they're not, you're not going to create this congruency. And coherence that creates the frequency we were talking about earlier. Yeah, totally.

I I love that you brought up the the hockey parallel because it came up in conversation after we had a playoff game on Tuesday and we were talking about just like how none of us are obviously going to the show. No we're not there. So if we're not there, you know, I'm one of the younger guys on the team. Some of the guys are in their, you forties, they've got families and kids. Like they're you're you're not going to So there's that value hierarchy again, right? Right. But one of the things I realized early on in my hockey career was that I wasn't interested in taking it that far ever. I loved playing club in college. I loved, you know, I love getting back into it and playing in a competitive men's league now. it's amazing. But I also recognize the role that it plays. But I'm starting to understand that I feel this is really where I want to be in the show. This is, you know, yeah. This is and it feels really good to finally you know, after so much trial and error, find something that I'm ready to chase and I'm ready to go after. Nice. because I hadn't found it up until this point. And it's pretty powerful. But with that requires maybe a couple of rebirths. And I even put in my notes. I said, You're the goat of rebirth. You said you're not gonna be the greatest of all time in hockey, but you are one of the greatest of all times in rebirth. that's shined through in in your story and how many kind of pivots you've made. And so I'm curious, like I'm going through a massive rebirth in my profession. How do you navigate those changes? How do you, you get the confidence to to you know truly know that by this Phoenix falling, there will be something brighter that emerges from it? How are you able to do that time and time again? And now you're at a point where you're probably not experiencing a ton of rebirth. Right, you've kind been there. But for someone who is just starting to kind of recognize that value, what advice might you have? What can you kind of just share a little bit of that experience?

So yes, and by the way, for the rest of my days on this planet, man, I'm gonna be engaging in rebirth. So just so you know, man, that's that's the the power and passion I have for this because as you know, the a definition of a philosopher is just somebody who loves to learn. And that of all the things that are on this planet, brother, learning is my favorite. Yeah. It is just mind blowing to me. I mean I know there's a lot of sensual things we could talk about that are my I'm telling you, learning for me is just something that's so I'm so damn curious. Yeah. And I can't help myself. And I love that part of me, right? It gets me in trouble, you know. Like, you know, curiosity killed the cat and it's certainly wiped me out quite a few times. But having that ability to be able to move into that place, single thing that really has made the difference. When I approach a new learning curve, whatever it is, so motorcycle racing, car racing. Playing hockey, stuff I've never done ever before. Writing a best sell I've never written a book before. How the hell does that become a number one best seller? Yeah. Here's the key. When you move into the learning curve, you have to learn to do something. You have to learn how to get the hell out of your own way. And that means this is a role distinction. Sword number three, roles and outcomes. Very clearly, when I go into the learning curve, I have two questions I ask for any event. Who am I? And what's my outcome? That keeps me in the student role. When I go to all these club events, long-range precision shooting, sniper school, all these other things, you know who the best students in that room are? Women. They dominate the learning curve. Why? Every instructor I said, why why is she doing so? I mean, she's just killing it. How is that happening? And and every single learning curve I've gone, it's dominated. 'Cause they don't bring their ego with them. They stay as the student. They're not the teacher, they're not the evaluator of it. That's the game changer. Cause when you go in with your ego, you immediately start asking things like, Well, that doesn't resonate with me. That that doesn't do it. And it has this tone with it, like you're dismissing it before you've even experienced it. Yep. What is the point of an experience if you're just going to go into a situation to say and only thing you're doing is just saying how good you are at something you've never done before. Yeah. Only a fool would tell you what a wise person they are. That should not happen in the learning curve. So I have rules around this that are very clear that says when I go into that situation, I I go in as a student.

Ca can I give you a great example? Please. Do you know who Laura Stamm is? Sounds familiar. She was a figure skater who then taught the Red Wings, including one of the greatest of all time. … has drop at his name to The Red Wing, there's just the senator, it was just so phenomenal scoring, just machine. Anyway, she actually taught the Red Wings who kicked crap out of the Avalanche one year's. That was like and she taught figure skating to these ice skating people. And it took their ice hockey level to a whole nother level. So she had a s a workshop down in the univers or the Olympic Center down in Colorado Springs. Yeah, yeah, So I signed up for this months in advance because I needed to learn how to skate. I had no idea how to skate. So I was like, this is perfect. So she didn't show up, but her whole class of people did, right? So I get all my gear on and I'm getting on the things, you I'm walking through all the parents and stuff like this, and I get on on the ice and I'm liter I'm what, five nine with heels on, brother. That's as tall as I am. I'm literally the tallest person on the ice. This should be an indicator of something is happening here. And I look down to this person sitting next to me and he's looking up at me and you're like, What grade are you in? I I'm 40 years old. The closest one was nine and ten and twelve. No way. Now, as my ego says, Get out of here, Dave. You're you know, this is foolish. Cause we're doing stars, you know, or sorry, what's that thing where you just you know you launch your whole body and you land on your belly, starfish or something like this on the ice. I'm 40 years old, my body's not like a burpee? Something yeah, basically. But they would skate and then they would just throw yourselves on the ice and it'd slide. Okay. This was part of the exercise, right? Sure, sure, sure. So I get off the ice that first session and I'm I'm like, Whoa, this this is hurting a little bit in places I wasn't expecting. And the parents come up to me and they're like, This is so cool. Where is your child? Because you joined them on the ice. I'm like, crap. I was like, he's over there and I walked away. But you couldn't get me out of that student role because the universe threw everything on me that goes, Your ego, you should have hooked me. I should have been shamed. I should have been guilted. I should have been feeling stupid or outrageous. How dare you? What what are you thinking being 40 years old and and being on this? You cannot do that in the learning curve. If you do, it's the end of your learning. So I was like, No way. And that day two and day three, they all realized I was the student by the time. And they were like, you know, I haven't really thought. And it just totally changed the whole conversation. If you're really going to be good at learning, you've got to be willing to be outrageous. You cannot get in that shame, guilt. And that means it's easy to do if you just don't bring your ego. Yeah.

Was it Pavel Datsyuk? Is that who it was? Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. I didn't want to interrupt you, but I came to make it. Exactly. Because watching that manscape is just it's mastery. Yeah. It's and I love that level of learning. Yeah. Someone who has dedicated their life to that skill set is just it blows me away. And I I admire that in every person I meet. Because some of them we all have some level of mastery with that. Just finding it's the curiosity in me. Yeah. I started hockey at a pretty young age where I didn't realize this about the sport. But what I've come to realize that continues to draw me in is it truly feels like the only sport that can blend the finesse of a figure skating of a true artistic art form with the brutality of mixed martial arts and fighting and hitting. You know, like I'm so grateful I played, you know, up until I was twenty some years old and could hit people. Right. maybe get in a couple fights here and there. But it's it's beautiful. I can't think of another sport that has that that has that blend to the extent that hockey does. And I've realized that and that's one of the things that'll continue to draw me in.

Nice. Did you do Champ Champ U motorcycle school? I did. Yeah. How'd you know about that? I I don't remember how I knew I just know that that's like the goaded motorcycle school of I listened to High Side Low Side on occasion. Do you are familiar with that podcast? Yeah, okay. they've mentioned a couple of times and I've heard really good things. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about it. Well We can't I can't have you on and not talk about it. Yeah. It's truly, I will tell you of all the learnings I've gone through, the teachers I seek are have these two components and they're so rare. and that it takes me a long time to really find a great teacher, right? But then when I do, I hold on to them with ever with everything I have. Yeah. So the remarkable thing is like there's eleven different trainers there at at Champ U, which is a motorcycle racing school. And I'm on my GSA, by the way, it's which is a BMW GSA. It's six hundred, almost seven hundred pounds. Yeah. I'm riding against people on sports bikes that are half of that weight, twice as much horsepower, and I'm keeping up with them because of the techniques I learned at that school. Do you have bars on it too? yeah. I mean I've got that whole thing's laid out so if if I crash Yeah, I've got everything on there. But I took the bags off, thank goodness. Although people race baggers. yeah. No, no, I as a matter of fact, the guy that's there was one of the teachers who actually went to the Moto GP in just this last one and raced one of the baggers, one of the twenty five baggers. Wow. He was he and his brother the t the brothers, and I'm dropping his name, Corey, that race there, I think he came in nineteenth or tw just to say how fast these guys are. Yeah. That guy was one of our instructors. And the key concept that I was so admiring in them is that not only they great practitioners of the art, they're great teachers of that. And that rare combination is so that's what you're looking for in a great teacher, someone who can actually apply what they teach and they experience what they teach. I've meet a lot of teachers who can teach. I've meet a lot of people who can do the work, but they can't teach to save their lives. Finding that rare combination is what you're looking for in a coach, a mentor, an instructor. That's why when you're doing this and you're experiencing it, you're gonna show up with a different frequency of certainty about how things really work because you've experienced it. Yeah. Right. You know what you're talking about. That's the kind of people I seek out.

And that kind of ties back to, you know, when you are in a some sort of coaching, mentorship role or even just you know, sharing some stuff on on online, there's gonna be people who are taking that advice to heart. And if you are not a practitioner of it, that's hypocritical, right? You're kind of deceiving people. And that's one of the reasons why I like this role too, is because it forces accountability on me and it sets me to a higher standard. Whereas if I'm just journaling about this stuff or whatever, like, okay, that's okay. I can say whatever I want in a journal, no one's ever gonna read it. But if you put something into the world and you're encouraging to people, but you're not taking your own medicine, what does that say about you?

Well, and there's a lot of people that are okay with that because it does represent who they are. They'd rather, you know, manipulate or do anything else to be able to not have to do the work 'cause it's hard work. Yeah. they'd rather talk about it. You know, people who can't do teach. You know, we we all know this acronym or this this this metaphor. Yeah, medium. it's just one of those things like but that doesn't fascinate me. Yeah. It's just one of those things because they're very rare. When you find you just really gotta honor and respect what they do because that level of mastery, you know, it took so much time. That's that's fun to watch. Yeah. Yeah. And who doesn't just love the sound of bikes just ripping around the corner? Yeah. not to derail it too much, but yeah, we gotta get I I just love bikes. They're the best. okay, getting back onto the subject of well, more or less the topic that we're t discussing today, balance. So balance comes up, right? There's the the metaphor of the the bicycle where the wheel is is balance, and if you are out of balance yourself, the wheel will be out of balance and you'll fall off the bike. can you talk to me a little bit practically around how you are able to achieve balance in your life?

So it's so funny because when the book was published totally by coincidence, that wheel of balance is the center page of the entire book. I think it's page 168. I you know what's funny you say by the way, we did not design it that way. It is the center page because I remember like feeling a little bit of a like a a a seam, and I just opened it and I was like, And my first thought was like, you know how sometimes if they put photo paper in in a book, if there's like reference like I think Green Lights has like a like five or six pages that are just like photos, and so it's a different paper. And so when I first turned to it because of that seam, I was like, there's a image on this. I'll show the image here. There's an image on it. I was like, I wonder if that's like photo paper. No, no, it just is purely coincidental. Crazy by coincidence. Yeah, you're exactly right. Yeah. Well what's funny about that is that there's a symbolism by the way, that book is so full of symbolism. It's just it's just okay, good. real quick, I love the b the blend of the Colorado with the aspens. And then the obviously the ja like you obviously chose aspens over cherry blossoms, right? Which says a lot of like you pulling in your reality. obviously you're a big fan of Japanese culture and pr I imagine you've been there quite a few times. But and Akaido, right? Is that h am I pronouncing Aikido? Aikido. Yes. A a second degree black belt. Yes sir. Crazy. Yeah, I'm not fighting you. We're playing too much rage for that. Channeling a little togo in you. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. okay. But anyway, yeah, please, please, balance.

We're we're so there's two really important aspects of this, and that is because we're limited in this lifetime, having a complete spoke is not what you're after. It's a balanced approach based upon that center hub. That centeredness. Centeredness of the book. Centeredness is what creates balance. So your body, as you well know, sir, can get into a place of what would be called balance or homeostasis and still be really overweight. But it's still balanced. The real core is getting it balanced and then centered. In the martial arts, centered is the thing that determines everything. You can be off balance, on balance, but if you're centered and grounded, you are almost unmovable. And if you really meet a practitioner within this art who is centered, they're they can they can move anything. This is the metaphor for faith. And that is being centered. Truly know who you are. Decisions are easy. Because when someone approaches you with something that does not align with that centeredness, you go, No. Thank you very much. You don't scream and yell. You don't have to defend it. It's just absolute clarity. Because no no things don't distract you anymore. Like social media for me is something we've had to do because just getting the word out because I've made a promise to the universe if it shared this technology with me that I would share it with the world and I would want to honor that promise. but social media is a great way to get stuff out there. But I'm not on social media. You're not gonna find me scrolling through stuff. I know my brain too much. I know I have an addictive strategy. I use that addiction for healthy things as opposed to allowing that addiction to put me into unhealthy things. Yeah. So I've alcohol has just never been part of my world because my father was a drinker and stuff like this. And I saw the benef or the consequences, I should say, benefits and consequences. I grew up in the Florida Keys where everybody was drinking. And the whole weekend was, let me just get blown out of my mind so I don't have to take responsibility for what I did over the week, you know, kind of stuff. And I was like, Okay, thank you for that that that choice. I don't want to live that life. So, yes, my life is lot more pressure oriented than most people because I don't have those outs, but I then go find those outs through the learning curve. So I found addictive ways to be able to make me healthier.

Yeah. And I think that's also probably a massive factor into as to y your your thirst for knowledge. Right. It's if you have a maybe call it obsessive or addictive personality and you can obsess over the nuance over the the little tiny things that are gonna make you a slightly better writer, you know, a more knowledgeable philosopher. Like those are all the things that kind of drive towards that same that same objective.

Yes. As a matter of fact, then go, you know, then you go sit down with twelve, eleven, twelve practitioners that are just masters, you know, of racing a motorcycle and just the way they look at the world so differently. Yeah. That, you know, where most people would go around this corner this way, they would sit down and they say, What kind of corner is that? Is it an entry corner? Is it exit corner? What kind of bike are you on? What's doing this? And so my lead instructor, who is the the guy who does the whole track thing, he was like, You know, you have an exit bike. And I was like, I've been riding for twenty five years. I've never heard that turn. I was like, what do you mean? I have an exit bike. It says, well, it's really big and it's heavy and it doesn't have really the best brakes like a sports bike does. So when you go into there, you're gonna be chattering that bike going in, but then you wanna turn it as quickly as you can because then all your horsepower kicks in. Right. Right. So if I could do a V shape rather than a C shape, all of a sudden I was doing eighty percent going into that corner when everybody else was doing sixty percent. So I was going faster in the corner. Then they would get around because they're forty percent 'cause they're leaned over, they couldn't get on their accelerator on the edge of their tire. And then all of a sudden I was still standing up on my the top of my tire and all I did was go boonk and then all of a sudden I was twenty, forty, sixty. And by the time we were level with each other, I was at eighty percent of my max and they were only forty percent. So I'd literally go blowing by them with a much bigger bike and it was all technique. Right. But I had to get my mindset to change to adapt that new strategy. Because thinking that way isn't how I usually think. I've been taught you get over on the edge of your tire and just maintain that acceleration all the way through that corner and and then and just as fast as they are. Yeah. This showed me a totally different perspective, but I couldn't apply that without the mindset shift. And that mindset shift is programming.

This ties into your truth, right? Because when we think about an apex of a curve, that's like the objective apex, right? It's like if you were to draw the optimal line around or the optimal curve around a turn. But what you're saying is, well, it's not objective, it's not as objective as that. You have to consider the factors and the variables, which is what's my bike? You know, is it a lower power band, heavier, that's not gonna be able to corner as well, but it's gonna be able to come out of the gate a lot faster, right? And that completely changes changes the calculus.

Yeah. It all all ties together. Everything in life. There's so little objective truth. There you go. Yeah. And there's never one single thing. Everybody out of these podcasts, you they go, Tell me one truth about this or one thing that's gonna change that and all like, crap. And I I wanna do my best for it, but the fact is there's always multiple components. For example, after that corner, is there a straightaway? Is there another corner? Is the rain just started? Is it snowing? Is it ice? Is it any other conditions? Is it really hot? How greasy are my tires? What's my tire pressure? All those variables decide that I decide before getting on that track is how I should plan that. Yeah. And that's where most people kind of get they just get into it and they don't have a really good plan. By sitting down with just absolute experts of the field, they give you all the key characteristics. Those characteristics are what I want to reprogram into my subconscious brain so that I accelerate how I can become a master of that particular art at my best. Not their best, my best. And that's that's something to really consider in this conversation. That says, listen, I'm not looking to be the best I'm not gonna be Valentino Rossi on a Moto GP bike. That's not my goal. Yeah. But I wanna be able to ride safely with my girl on the back and be able to go fast as hell. Yes.

I wanted to br to bring this quote up on earlier about the the knowledge vs wisdom where it says the application of knowledge is the real power, the timing of that application is wisdom. Yes, love that. you touched on this already. You don't discover your path in life, you create it with the decisions you make. Great one.

Yeah, and that decisions are gonna be based upon your value systems and your belief about who you are and that really as you get to a decision point in this world, those decisions are reactive and responsive based upon your programming. Yeah. So free will is this really interesting dynamic that at the conscious level free will exist. But once it moves into the subconscious programming, it's programming that decides for things. So you're actually making decisions unconsciously. You don't have to be thinking about bring breathing, you don't have to think about blood flow, you don't have to be thinking about blinking your eyes. This programming takes over so much of this, or we go insane. Yeah. So it's structured this way, but understanding the structure, that awareness you talked about, and then how to use that structure at your benefit is what this work is about.

Yeah. Well, and I just want to say I I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I I said it before, but I'm gonna say it again. I was not expecting this. I was expecting I love it. Just yet you know, self help book. I was like, okay, a coach mentor writes a book, it's gonna be self help. I don't get me wrong, I like self help. I have plenty of self help books on that bookshelf. But I was exp I was so surprised and pleasantly surprised that there was so much just entertainment in this and I mean every seemingly every sentence was a metaphor. There is so much so much meaning just deep, deep into it. And you said that you didn't write the book. Can you share what you shared before we were on camera? Just because I think it's important to hear here.

Sure. So through my lessons through a spiritual coach I've been with last thirty plus years, I became very clear that there was kind of three ways that you could live your life. And that was where things happen to you, often known as the victim. And I've certainly played that part for some part of my life. Where c things come from you, where you kind of imagine yourself as the creator. You know, your ego's very much involved and this is happening for me. And just listen to me and let me tell you how to do things and I'll show you how to make that's a million dollar idea. All those phrases are where things are coming from me. And then there's this third part what I really strive to know and have done for a long time where things don't come or happen to me, happen from me, but they happen through me. And that's about literally getting my ego out of the way so that things can come through me that already exist in this place. The masters have been speaking this issues for or these concepts for thousands of years, man. This isn't new. It's just structured in a way that I want to approach from a very practical standpoint. Because if I said to you, in the absence of that which is not, that which is is not, you know phew what? But sometimes the masters speak in metaphors so that we can interpret it in our own ways. The masters have always spoken in parables because they haven't been directive like this is the way you need to do it. That violates free will. So we're not gonna do that in our coaching. Even though there are right ways to do certain things to get you to certain places in a more accelerated way, you still have to have it be your idea. And without changing that subconscious programming, that sustainability we haven't found very possible. Yeah.

It was entertaining to witness Yoshi's frustration with Daichi. Give me an answer. Sometimes I feel that way. But then obviously the the net of it is that Yoshi comes to appreciate the response because he uncovers his truth. He uncovers what matters to him. And that's ultimately the goal here. with that said, is there anything well, first I'll say Swords of Illumination. It will be in the description with a link to to purchase it or listen to if you want the audiobook. But you don't want that. You want the book. We want the book. I I also think part of the reason why I like buying books is because I I just like the more analog experience and being able to put your phone away, not having any electronics and just s sink it. And I dog ear so many books. I underline, I dog ear them. You know, you need a book for that. It's hard to like what am I gonna do? Screenshot the place and then that gets lost in my photos. I don't even know. Maybe there's a way to do it on Spotify. I haven't found it and don't really care to, frankly. But anyway, this will be in the description. but is there anything else that's been on your mind that you have a platform to share openly that you want to express right now?

So we're very fortunate working with the last almost year and a half that that first book is becoming a film. So we're actually in production right now and filming in Colorado with a lot of the lead actors here and stuff like this. And beautiful. Just a great and they're just bringing it to life, man. I I can't tell you as a as someone who has brought this through, right, to watch it come to life. Because I've always I've in my mind it was always a motion picture. That's how I kind of created it 'cause I love movies. Yeah. So it's it's now in production, right kind of stuff. We're raising money for it. We've got lot of stuff going around that. and that's quite the journey 'cause I've, you know, never created a film before, so now we're doing that. Love it. But the fun part is that the original book series was a three part series. So you have book one in your hand. We're right now writing book two, which is the next six swords. So there's six swords in the first one, which kind of a a lead into the seventh sort of which is about belief systems. Yep, yep, yep. But then the next that one plus the other five remaining are then put together and they come together in a simple, elegant formula called the chain of command. So that you can understand how you can diagnose your own behaviors, but also change your own behaviors. Well what's fun about this is the first series was then becoming a workbook was the third one. We were gonna put together a workbook. Well over the last couple of years we've gotten so much response from this that we turned that workbook into a workshop. cool. So I'll be leading the next workshop. So we have our Europe contingency going on right now, which has got fifteen members in it. And then we have the Americas going on right now coming up in September, the week of September 16th is when we start our next workshop. but we'll be doing these programs throughout the year kind of stuff. But if you really ever want to apply this information, because that's the key to it. Yeah. Having the knowledge of it's great. But if you truly wanted to apply it and actually have the work with me about it, I'm gonna be doing this last workshop for this. It's a full year program about doing this. This is intense work. But to really get to know who you are and start lining your life up with that identity is powerful work.

Beautiful. Where can I and others find more information on this?

So samuraisuccess.com is your best resource. Specifically, the SOFI program, Swords of Illumination is SOFI. Okay. And just look for what's called a discovery call. So if you plug on that, you get to our calendars and shows you how to do this, and then we take you through a step by step process. Everything's structured at Samurai Success because it has to be practical. So we take you exactly where the program program is, the price points, all that other stuff. And then they let you make that quality decision when the timing's right for you.

Beautiful. Awesome. Well thank you so much. I really appreciate the time, but I I just appreciate your genuineness and authenticity. It shined through when I first met you at the Little FIFA Cup, even though we only had a I'm not a big soccer fan, so I was like, I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm just here hanging out with friends. but it really it really shined through and I I I also just love the fact that there's so many parallels with scuba diving, motorcycling, hockey, there's just so many extracurriculars that we both share and so it's always fun that we get to riff a little bit on those things as well.

Absolutely. but genuinely appreciate your time and candor and willingness to answer all the questions that I have for you and dive deep into stuff that I I feel like is important for everyone to learn, even if they haven't read the book yet. yeah, massive, massively grateful for you.

Back at you, man. Thanks for this opportunity to talk to your tribe because I I said before the the showcase started that that's a lot of work that you have to put on and you've built a lot of trust and I really hope that we brought some value for your team today. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much.