Having experienced “the imposter syndrome” first hand, Joe Williams shares how he has learned to live intentionally today in order to reach where he wants to be in the future. He explains his concept of “Cre-action” and the 5 steps that action is based upon. We also explore the need for wisdom gained by being able to hold 2 things at the same time that are paradoxically opposite.
Transcript
Stephen Christopher 0:19 Hey, how's it going today Stephen Christopher with my awesome co host, Laura Sanchez for the exciting unknown podcast and today. I got to say it now today we have another absolutely amazing guest for you. I think that's just going to be a tagline. Unknown Speaker 0:34 I think it must be the podcast where we only have amazing guests. Yeah, Stephen Christopher 0:38 no kidding. So today we do have an absolutely amazing guest for you today. So the person that we have for you today, man, let's dive right into this internationally known speaker. He's an entrepreneur that took a telecom business public did a lot of other things in his entrepreneurial world. He has helped 10s of thousands of people transform their lives through different events that he's spoken at different events that he's run. He worked with Tony Robbins, from a very, very young age. And actually, when he was 33, he became the head trainer for Tony Robbins and did that through about the age 45. So spent a lot of years transforming lives through working with Tony Robbins, which that alone is a feat in itself. The in addition to that, this person has been through quite an interesting past. both of his parents went to jail a week before his 16th birthday. He had a kidney transplant, and in his early 30s actually went off of all the medication which was quote unquote, medically impossible. So essentially healed his body using his mind which if you've listened to anything that I've talked about, I love this stuff. I could go Whoo, for four days. But that's alone is a feat in itself. And then since then he he founded a company called the creative performance group, which helps people get their message out into the world. And so he takes the number one scariest thing that humans are afraid of, which is public speaking in a very, very short amount of time, helps them cultivate a message and create a message so that they're able to actually connect with an audience and not pee their pants on stage or just absolutely freeze up, which is actually where I ended up meeting Joe and 24th, or meeting this guest in 2014, when he helped me be able to actually stand up on stage and talk and not just freeze and run away. So this person has been through a lot and has a ton of ton of knowledge and a ton of ton of experience that we're going to pull out of today. So without further ado, Joe Williams, welcome to the show. Unknown Speaker 2:54 Thank you guys so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. You make me You make me blush Steven. Stephen Christopher 3:01 I try. That's my goal. That's not easy. That's not an easy thing to do for you. So, Unknown Speaker 3:07 actually, you know what, it's just the opposite man. I mean, I turned bright red, a fair skin, you know, I don't hide my emotions very well. So actually, it's just the opposite. I so appreciate it. I will. Let's have some fun today as well, in addition to all that, all that stuff that's happened and all that good stuff, let's have some fun as well. So I Stephen Christopher 3:26 understand, oh, you're 100% on board for that. So okay, let's go let's go this route. You know, Joe, one of the things that I've always loved about you is that you are really good at taking complex things and making them simple. I mean, you can teach people to overcome these fears, or at least step into these fears of things like public speaking in such a short amount of time. And and make it very simple. So let's go down this path, building a life by design and not by default. Because I think that so often we get caught up in, you know, we blink, and we're 10 or 15 or 20 years down the road, or we're 30 or 40 or 50 years old, and we're looking back and we're like, Okay, wait a minute, what, just what just happened. And when we start to have that level of awareness, we can start to then choose a little bit differently. After we get over the beating ourselves up and all that kind of stuff. We start to choose differently. So building a life by design is a skill that I think you have. Sometimes unintentionally and sometimes maybe not so intentionally done. But um, let's go down that route. And then I think we're gonna get to tied into some really cool stuff that's out in the woowoo world and also some stuff that is very much in the Newtonian physics type world. Unknown Speaker 4:54 Okay, so life by design. In other words, Stephen Christopher 4:59 I know that there are I knew that I knew that I didn't need a question because I just I knew I didn't need an actual question. You're Unknown Speaker 5:06 good, you're good. So you touched on this as part of my introduction. So you're right. My parents went to prison the first time for tax evasion when I was just turning 16 years old. that relates to your question in that, um, you kind of have to build a life by design, when you don't finish high school because you got to drop out to get a job to put food on the table and a roof over your head for your sister, who's younger, and you My sister is two years younger to the day. We wanted. I wanted her to be able to stay in school. So I left I left my junior year that would have been of high school, I actually never finished. And so from day one, I guess it really becomes about creating a life by design when you haven't walked the typical path. You know, I didn't go to college. I didn't run a direct career path like a lot of people do. And so you know, the advantage to that is I also didn't have some of the holdbacks. I think that can come from following a traditional path until you're in your mid 20s or early 30s. And then you decide to deviate. You know, I had the good fortune of not having to unlearn a bunch of stuff at younger ages that a lot of us struggle with. I will say on the other side of that, if you could imagine the first time I ever, you know, got on stage to speak to anybody, much less being around Tony and the first time that he asked me to speak for him, which was about 1998. I was 28 years old. You know, the, it was the word imposter syndrome that some people struggle with. I cannot tell you the levels of absolute horrific terror I faced initially getting on stage, being somebody who looked around and said, Who am I to talk to anyone about anything? I didn't even graduate from high school. Now as I got older, and really as it came into my early 30s, I think I realized, wow, that's actually something you can put forth. As a a badge of honor. I didn't talk about not graduating from high school, by the way publicly until I was about 3132 years old. I didn't keep it hidden. But I didn't talk about it a lot. I talk about just about anything, as you know, Steven very freely now. Even stuff my wife, you know, brings me on after the fact it says it can't believe you said that front of our friends. But yet, you know, I didn't have to struggle with a lot of that. Here's what though, to your to your question. Here's my real belief. It's going to sound cliche on the surface, then we can go deeper. I really believe and have from a very young age. This is one good thing I got from my parents, and I got a lot of want to be super clear, even though we start off talking about them having been in prison. Oh, my gosh, I owe a lot to my parents. I really do. They started us at a very young age, not just on a path of questioning the normal realities of life. In other words, when I was a kid, I remember I'd come home from school, and I'd say, Hey, you know, dad, Billy said this about me. And he would say, Joe, nobody ever does anything that doesn't reflect how they feel about themselves. That boy said that that girl said that that child said that because they had something going on. Always remember that no one ever does anything that isn't a direct reflection of how they feel about themselves. And he was quick to remind us, the opposite is also true Joe, though, remember, you'll never do anything. This is great life advice for all of us, you'll never do anything you would I will never do anything that isn't a direct reflection of how we feel about ourselves in the moment. So it started with, you know, basic self esteem type material and so forth. I took my first meditation class when I was 13. via my parents, it was something called the Silva method. I don't know if anybody out there remembers that from the 1980s Silva mind control. It was called where you learned how to, you know, meditate, reduce your heart rate go into alpha, wait brainwaves for creativity, and all types of things. So I had that from a really young age. And then I think that all is going to factor into our where conversation is going to go today because I know we're going to go down some traditional paths. Well, some non traditional paths, I will tell you by nature, I do tend to be a fairly pragmatic Person person. Steven, I think you would probably disagree you and I go into some rabbit holes sometimes in our personal conversations as friends just to like, Hey, man, let me tell you about this great book I read on the law of attraction and blah, blah, blah. But I really believe here's the truth. I believe there's a there's there seeing things in our world. There are there are hard and fast feeling and appearing and seeming rules and Newtonian physics and things like that. I believe there's also aspects that are for lack of a better term. They're unseen. They're unknowable, they are there yet they're undeniable. I've always felt there was a force of the universe that was behind everything. And I didn't have a description for it until I studied quantum you know, mechanics and some things like that. I'm not, don't get me wrong. I don't claim to be a quantum scientists or physicist by a stretch of the imagination, but I will say this, I've always known that there were like these things unseen yet. undenied These forces that were part of the human experience that you couldn't touch, you couldn't feel you couldn't taste. Some people couldn't name like some people call it God. Some people call it energy. Some people call it the universe. Some people call it, you know, Allah or Buddha or whatever. Yet, it was undeniable. And it was part of what shows up in our life on a day to day basis. I'm a very pragmatic person, Stevens, I started saying that, you know, yet I also like to take advantage of those forces that I think are really what the secret was about. The Secret was not just about sitting and creating a life that you love alone. It also took action to hard work to failure, it took success. It took perseverance it took all of those things yet why not also invoke as well as we can in our own way? Why not invoke those unseen powerful forces, the real power of the universe to help support us as well so I try to do both. And a life by design to be is nothing more than that is choosing The life that you want on your own terms, not hopefully not dictated by our past as well as we can I mean all of us struggle with, you know, issues that are passed from time to time. The real question is, what do you look at to create for yourself into the future? I know you and I've talked about the Stephen, you know, being around Tony and everything else. I've been a student of pop psychology, I think you'd probably call it really all of my adult life. And the one thing that I think we all can agree on is the more that we move forward to understanding how the human mind and emotions work is, you know, the Freudian model said that that very much we were taught we were creatures of our past, our past programming our past childhood stuff, or our archetypes and myths and things like that if you go Joseph Campbell and young, and yet one of the biggest breakthroughs the last 30 years has been to say, wait a minute, wait a minute in any given day. Most of what humans do yes is as a result of past programming. But yet there's this force in the future that's drawing us forward like a magnet. And it's a more powerful force in the human experience. I think that we've realized until recently, you know, it's an old cliche that your past doesn't equal your future. But this is really even deeper than that. Living deliberately is about saying, Where do I want to go? next week, next year, tomorrow, whatever it might be, and how can I live into that with my own unique gifts and, and and strengths that I offer in the world? Stephen Christopher 12:28 Yeah, and I think an important point to pull out here is that if people that are listening believe that there is this force, right God Source Energy universe, whatever it is, right? The field, the quantum, if you believe in that if you believe that thoughts become things in some way, shape or form, it's really important to pay attention to that the this is happening, whether we are using it consciously or we are allowing it to happen to us unconsciously. So you know, whatever those thoughts and those feelings that we're having, if we're unaware of them, we end up essentially creating more of potentially what we don't want. And that's an important piece because I think some people look at this stuff and they're like, Oh, you know, I don't believe in the law of attraction and all that stuff. But yeah, I believe that there's a god or there's universal source energy or something like that. But if you're not consciously directing that in some way, shape or form, well, it's still working. The laws are still working. It's just generally you're not getting what you want. You're probably creating actually what you don't want. Unknown Speaker 13:33 Possibly, possibly, uh, you know, you ever talked about this, but here's, here's the double edged sword with where you're going there because I've certainly gone down that my in my life, specifically in the area of health, you know, you mentioned this so my dad goes to prison when I'm 16 just get a mental picture of this. I'm 17 I have a snow skiing accident and about a week later, I get just the most violently ill I've ever been in my life. so sick that I after days, there was nothing left to regurgitate. And I would just sit there and just, you know, it'd be just horrid. I got to a hospital, they did a blood test. They immediately put me into into a room at the hospital, they admitted me. And they came Dr. Ben and they said, okay, young man. We know you've been using heroin. You can tell us and I said, What are you talking about? Because realize, I never knew as a child that I had any sort of kidney issues at all, you only use about 20% the average human only use about 20% of normal kidney function. So even if your kidneys are not working very well, and you're using say 60% You still don't really realize it unless you've had tests. And suddenly I had no kidney function whatsoever. My the toxicity the the been bu in toxicity blood toxicity was the highest that had ever been measured at that point at the Medical College of Virginia. It like the the hospital that I was in and they came in, they said you're using heroin. We know you got some bad heroin, that's what's happening. And I said, No, I have no I know I've never even smoked marijuana. I have no idea what you're talking about. And they did some more tests and they realized actually only had one functioning kidney it had shut down from the snow skiing accident. And so I had this issue. Then I got a kidney transplant from my father. They laid him out of hospitals, they said long enough to give me a kidney, and then put him back in and go on about my life. Very close tissue match. I'm 17 years old. So I've youth on my side, my body starts healing I start moving forward. One of the things that happens when you have a kidney transplant, any kind of transplant is you're put on immune suppression, drugs, prednisone, cyclosporin, Emir, and all these different powerful human suppressors. So you basically get, you know, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome from these drugs that you're on. And I was a young man, I was very healthy at the time. I was a distance runner. an ultra runner. I started, you know, being around Tony. So I was into his health ideas and things like that I was a strict vegetarian. And so I did well in my 20s. By the time I was in my early 30s, I was starting to have side effects. When I had the kidney transplant at 17. They said, enjoy this kidney, because you have 20 years. And I said, What do you mean, I have 20 years and they said, well, nobody's ever lived longer than 20 years, we kidney transplant, and anyone who has by the time you get to be 37 years old, you're probably going to wish you were dead for what these drugs are going to do to your body. And they weren't like they were the side effects were horrific through time. Um, and so by the time I'm 3233 years old, I have so much joint pain that I'm starting to look like it, you know, 70 year old man, I am gaining weight, like I can't control it at all, even though I was doing everything I thought right. And I realized one night when I was about 34 years old, that I had to figure out a way to come off of those drugs. Or we just found out that my wife at the time was pregnant with our first son. And I thought, I'm going to be in a wheelchair by the time I'm 37. And they said, Be happy because you're going to die. And you know, it seemed like so long in the future when I'm 17 because it's 20 years late, but now it's coming up quickly. And so I sat there one night, I remember I thought to myself, I've got to figure this out. And that was really where I developed my what I call Cree activity process. So the process of deliberate creation, when you want to take thought and make it theme, what is the process that you go through? I've always been a systems thinker. As you said, I tend to take really complex stuff and bring it down into something that can be worked with. And so I thought, I've got to figure out how to get off of immune suppression and keep the kidney, which was, as you said, it was medically impossible at the time, my nephrologist said you're just going to have to deal with these nephrologist, as a kidney doctor said you're going to have to deal with these side effects. It's not going away. Get ready. So I didn't tell him. I didn't tell my wife and I started doing some research. And I, what I did first and foremost is I stayed up all night one night when I made this realization, writing down who I wanted to become what my life was going to be about. And I just wrote pages and pages of a description of wanting to live into and be physically in this case. Unknown Speaker 18:23 And so the next day I started doing some research. Again, I didn't tell my wife at the time, I didn't tell her to follow just, but I got lucky enough about two weeks later, the universe smiled on me. And I got introduced to the starzl transplantation clinic Thomas starzl, Dr. Thomas starzl, did the first ever kidney transplant in the United States. He's got a transplant clinic named after him at the University of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, the starzl transplant unit. And I saw an article in Wired Magazine, believe it or not, and it said if you have had an organ transplant, and you've been on immune suppression for a number of years, you've not been had any rejection, you might be able to be part of a trial being done at the starzl, you know, Transplant Center, about weaning off of immune suppression, they've theoretically it's possible, but blah, blah, blah. I jumped on the early Internet, and I jumped. That wasn't early, that would have been 2004 to be clear 2003 let's just say, and I went out and I found the starzl unit, I called him up, I engaged with them. They helped me through the process. And over the course of about four months, I weaned completely off of all immune suppression again, without telling my wife at the time. And without telling my doctor, I went and had secret blood tests, making sure I wasn't going into rejection for this kidney, around everything going on in life and working and being on the road with Tony and everything else. And sure enough, after about six months, I pulled my wife aside one night I said, I gotta tell you something, I'm really sorry. But I stopped taking my immune suppression and she freaked out a little bit. But by that point, I was all okay. Until about six months after that I had my checkup with my doctor and I said, Hey, by the way, just so you know, I haven't taken my immune suppression out about a year. And he his eyes got like this big around, grab my chart and started going through everything. And he looked up at me and he said, Well, thank you for not telling me cuz I would have sent the you know, the police out to your house to commit you for insanity, because that's not something you should have done. So thanks for not telling me but you're out of the woods. Now, you know that right? And I said, that's what the starzl people said. And he said, Can I write a white paper on it? And that was kind of the story then of that. And, you know, it's pretty common now that if a person has an immune, or I'm sorry, a transplant, kidney transplant or liver transplant, really it's very easy with they can now set them up to where they can wean them off immune suppression and part from the work that we did back then. And so to answer your question around about way, when it comes to your health, that's really where I think Think, you know, it becomes the idea of have I attracted this into my life because I did something wrong. That was Steven, kind of where you were starting like he can the forces at work whether you want it to be or not, and you could attract the wrong thing. I don't know if I completely agree 100% of the time, especially when it comes to people's health, because here's what I can tell you. I've done a lot of work with transplant patients of different types since then to try to give them the inspiration they need, whether they can wean off of immune suppression or not. You know, it's a long road that we all have things that we're going to face. But you know, I've talked with with friends that had cancer, and they said things to me, like why did I bring this into my life? Why did I attract this into my life? What did I do? That gave me this disease? And I think that is that is the destructive underbelly that people need to be careful with. In all of this, because I don't know whether it's true or not Steven, and that really doesn't matter to me. Here's the question, does that thought empower me or not? And I see a lot of people that have faced health things like I've had, where they get caught into the side of let me figure out why I made this for myself. And I personally just think I don't care whether that's a true thought or not. It's a very destructive thought if you're not careful, because the truth is, it doesn't matter why. It doesn't matter why you have this disease, maybe some for some outside person who knows better than you what you need in the world to show up as lessons. Maybe this is a lesson they've given you in some way. But don't use this law of attraction and so forth, to necessarily make yourself wrong, especially when it comes to a disease or something maybe you've attracted, that's not what you want it to be. Don't dwell on the Why do I have this instead, shift to the What do I want? Because all of this comes down to creating what we want, which cannot be ever done by the dwelling upon what we've got. That we don't want it's kind of like that old story Wayne Dyer used to tell you know, of the he didn't they didn't figure out the law of how to build a boat, the laws that govern how to build a boat out of steel. It is not that it is not the sinking of things that ever helps us understand the floating of things. Yep, it was it was all these other things they had no idea existed until created what they want. So I think that's very similar here no amount of dwelling on the Why did I attract this? Why did I create this will help you overcome it and get back to health, vibrancy, that vitality and so forth. You've got to stay focused on that. So long winded answer I apologize. But hopefully when they could, you know when some side so yes, you've got to direct the force I believe, consciously. I think one of the lessons we're all here to learn is what is our own, what is your own? What is my own? I have my own like we talked about your own Way of deliberately creating if that's something you would like to do, if you'd like to take thoughts and things and charge the ethers to bring into your life, the circumstances, condition and people that support you and your journey. I'm 100% a believer that happens. But I don't think that dwelling on the Why have I gotten something I don't want? It just doesn't get us anywhere. Just shift the focus and move to where you want to go instead. Stephen Christopher 24:22 Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree completely. And, and part of what I want to make sure people are paying attention to is that sometimes unconsciously, we're still creating, and that can actually be creating what we don't want. So Sure, Unknown Speaker 24:36 absolutely. So Stephen Christopher 24:38 why is why is this job so hard? Why, you know, why can't I? Why can't I run a successful business? Why can't I break the million dollar mark? Why can't I do this? So they're thinking about that and that's actually what ends up essentially getting created through this path of, of creation. They're just doing, they're literally creating what they don't want, because that's what they sit there and think about Unknown Speaker 25:00 Yeah, and what you know, like in the example you just gave, what they're also doing is they're asking a lot of questions that the answer to which is not necessary to get to where they want to go. Yeah, you know, I mean, the quality of life is we This is Tony Robbins one on one i'm not saying anything you guys have not heard before the quality of our life is in direct proportion to the quality of questions we asked to direct our focus and our thoughts in that direction. And so yes, the question why does my life suck? Why is it so hard? Why is this up? You know, I just got it this weekend. Steven, just a side note. I know you and I both are big fans of like Tim Ferriss work. And that Tim right his four hour workweek came out. I hired him to come in and speak to a group at Robbins right as the book was released. Great guy. Tim Ferriss has this awesome little freebie giveaway PDF, called 17 questions that changed my life and it's questions like, what would my ideal self do? questions like how would this look if it were easy to do? Brilliant Questions, you know, such as questions are such a powerful force and a simple force, that to your point, that is something to really consciously direct the questions we're asking ourselves on a daily basis, unconsciously and consciously. Stephen Christopher 26:16 Yeah, yeah, I think we get caught up thinking that we need to figure out the answer when really it's more about letting that answer unfold in a really cool way that we may or may not even be able to create, based on our our mind and our experience our knowledge today. I mean, the hence the whole name of the podcast, the exciting unknown, the really cool stuff happens in the unknown. And so it's just asking those questions and then letting it unfold. And then trusting intuition and then trusting you know, the, whatever you want to call it, the laws of the universe plus the, you know, the laws of like Newtonian physics. Unknown Speaker 26:50 That cause and effect in other words, there's cause and effect when you say Newtonian physics, I assume that's what you mean cause and effect. You know, I do this That happens, that's Newtonian. And then there's the, I'm going to have a thought and that thought alone is like planting a seed that will grow into a tree. That's more the more that kind of quantum side that's just kind of the unknown yet fun to fun to play in, as well and to consciously direct to your point. I want to keep coming back and really, really put an emphasis on your point of conscious direction is really the thing that you're after here. Stephen Christopher 27:32 Yep, yeah. Do you want to go down the road a little bit of this Cree action that you kind of mentioned, I think that would be a cool thing. based on you know, what you've what you've learned from it, and it gives people kind of some action steps when it comes to this conscious creation. Unknown Speaker 27:52 Absolutely. Hundred percent. So Cree activity is the word that I coined again. It came out of honesty. It came as a result of my experience with my kidney transplant and then the drugs, the the medicines getting off of them. What I thought is okay, given everything I know about, you know, law of attraction as well as cause and effect, given everything I I'm trying to do here, if I had to put it into a system that I could follow, what would that system be? And what I came up with is five words, five steps, five words, and they're very simple words, in an order that can be actioned upon on a daily basis. So step number one in creativity is in my world at least not saying you should adopt my words I'm suggesting this is something for each of you as your listeners and you guys to think of what would your words be, but my word was imagination as a starting point and imagination has always been to me. Oh my gosh, it's a playground. of of possibility. I I am definitely guilty of being a dreamer. There's no doubt about that yet. I'm also really hard worker Stephen as you know, as well. I tried to blend the two. But you know, I always have I think I missed my calling that I probably should have been like a Disney Imagineer. So, you know, we talked about how I got started speaking when I started speaking that was in 1998. I had been a businessman really, up until that point, I'd started over 12 companies by the time I was 25. Most of them were massive failures, to be clear. Couple of them did pretty well. And in 1996, when I was 26, the telecom company that I was a partner in long distance reselling, if you remember that business in the 90s, I was a partner in one of those, and we took it public in 96. I was the 26 year old I mean, think about the times. Netscape happened right in the same month that we went public. Um, that was just the start of the.com bubble. And so I was on the front end of the company as well. Are these young No wonder kins were suddenly taking companies public. And I realized within six months of us going public that I've made the most massive mistake of my life so far, because I am not cut out to run a public Corporation and shuffled from meeting to meeting and being offices, I can do it. It's not my nature. And so, you know, I think this is probably going to relate to other questions we might get into about what do you do when you realize you've gone down the wrong path? What do you do when you realize you're not living your calling, and you're not living your nature, it was in my world at that time, that's when I looked around. I thought, This is not my nature, to be in meetings. I don't have an MBA, I don't have I was still struggling with that whole imposter thing. And so I thought, I gotta get out of this business and do something else. And so I took about two years to sell out of my portion of the company to get totally out of it. It was, you know, a pretty big deal in at that time, but it was perfect as well. Because the The long distance market had already started congealing into, then what we knew it was going to become, which is it's all free as part of your phone bill. I know that sounds crazy to all you young people who are listening. Unknown Speaker 31:12 For long distance is a giant business guys. It was huge in the 90s. Like, if you were anywhere, that's where you wanted to play, then it became the internet, but we were on that front end. And so I got out of it. And I thought to myself, I'm gonna take like a year off, my daughter had just been born. And it was 1998 I thought, I'm gonna take a year off and I'm gonna figure out what to do with my life. And around that time, a friend of mine who had been a Disney Imagineer. You know what I mean by an Imagineer? right is the Imagineer. They're the people who figure out how to build those crazy rides and all that. He was the top creativity consultant and author in the US at that time. His name was chip Thompson, Charles Thompson. Great guy wrote a couple of awesome books on creativity and what I learned from him was the power of then what became creativity which was imagination as a starting point. You know, there's all kinds of cliches that we have our world. You don't get a lot from life because you don't ask that of it. I think that's imagination. That is what are you willing to dream could be possible for you in your life as a possibility? that's step number one imagination. Step number two intention. What's your intention? Meaning, what's your Why? What are all the reasons why you want that thing you can dream of? So I think what a lot of people missed with the secret the movie secret brilliant movie, by the way, Jerry and Esther Hicks Jerry's passed on now Esther obviously is still around Abraham Hicks, those of you that are you know, fans of their books and stuff, believe it or not, they're old friends of the family for my parents. Actually, I got exposed to them at a pretty young age because of that, but Esther Hicks would say you know, it's the y which charges that which you Say you want in the world, you've got to have the idea. But it's not enough to just have the idea. She said in the movie The secret, you've got to know the reason why. So that's intention. imagination. Step number two intention. Step number three. Step number three is attention. So you've got intention, and then you've got attention. In other words, what are you focusing on daily, that your daily actions and more I see your head shaking? Hopefully, that all this is all making some sense of why I chose those words. Because otherwise what I find is in the world of of law of attraction stuff, they get mixed together and jumbled. And so to me, they had specific meanings. Attention meant daily focus. So that was my daily meditation. That was my manifestation meditation that I do. Not every day at all. Frankly, I've got a specific one I do. We can talk about that because I can refer people to one that I use. It's Wayne Dyer. It's the olden from Wayne Dyer. The meditations for man. Testing, I still think that's one of the best ones that are out there. He recorded that back in the 1990s. If your listeners go out and just google meditations for manifesting or manifestation meditation Dyer, they'll be able to get the audio and listen to it. It's one of the more powerful ones I've ever found in my life. And so that's attention daily, daily, what are you doing to give attention to that which you want to create against even to your point, so you're focused and you're deliberate? Then you've got action. This is where the Jo pragmatic side came in. And I had to, I had to sneak action back in there. So what are your daily at What's your plan? I tend to work in 12 weeks, that two month back to Weekly plans. That's my rhythm, for lack of a better term. And then the final thing number five is celebration. And I don't just mean have a party. I mean, give thanks to all of those who helped you along the way. If they're living and they're alive and they're humans. Give thanks to the unseen forces for having your back when you invoke That's kind of the way I've used celebrations. So imagination, intention, attention, action celebration. And then you repeat. That was by Cree activity process, I really should probably write a book on this because, you know, I use this myself now for almost 20 years in that format. I've taught it a bunch of times I taught it years ago to some of Tony's you know, platinum partners and stuff like that a couple of times. But other than that, I don't really teach a lot outside of here. So those five things, imagination, intention, attention, action, creation, and then repeat. And that, to me became a rhythm for creating what I wanted, but I still I still use to this day. Stephen Christopher 35:43 That's awesome. Unknown Speaker 35:44 That's awesome. Yeah, I love it. Unknown Speaker 35:46 Yes. Is that bringing the pragmatic side a little bit more? Stephen Christopher 35:51 I was waiting for it. I missed it, right. So unlike too much, whoo, I'm like, Okay, wait, bring it back to exactly the real world. So That's a great combination of those two. Unknown Speaker 36:02 Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I always thought for myself. And again, if those words don't jive for your listeners or for you guys, cool renamer That's why when there's so much about each one of the five, I wanted you to understand the reason why. So figure out the right words for you or use those words, and then just get really just try to get better and better and better at invoking all five of those things. Stephen Christopher 36:25 Yeah, yeah. I mean, Laura, and I talk about it all the time about how the world doesn't need another 10 step program on how to grow a business to a million dollars. It needs more, we need to we need to help people become better at creating within who they are as a person, right? So identify maybe why they feel certain ways why they act certain ways. What do they actually truly want? What do you have, what do you really actually desire without all of the old past things about what you think you desire what you think you should desire based on your parents and your school and all that kind of stuff? Yeah. To help people start to understand who they are better, and then give them the tools to move down the path, kind of give them the framework, which is exactly what that is. Unknown Speaker 37:09 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I agree completely. We don't need another course necessarily. We don't need a book necessarily. You know, I think we don't need a lot of content, necessarily more right now. I think what we need is more community. Frankly, as we sit here, as we're recording this right now, in the world that we're in. I think we live in a world right now, especially where we don't need a lot more content, we need a lot more of his community. And we need some, some action, some execution, some doing this, of that, which we already know, a lot of us kind of are drowning in a sea of content, looking for that next idea, that next process, that next thought would really what we probably need is a to get around a group of people that lifts us up rather than drag us down. That's a whole other side of all of this that we haven't touched on yet. But I believe that people that we spend our time around are like ships in a harbor. You know, a rising tide floats all boats. If you're around a group of people that are supporting you and becoming your absolute best, you'll have a tendency to rise with that peer group with that environment with that community. And if you have a group of people and you're spending all your time around people who are draining you, who are vampires energetically, who are taking from you. I'm not saying you have to completely cut those people out of your life. Although I am very good at doing that. No matter how long they've been in my life if they have become toxic, I will take a look at how much time I spent around them. Here's what I am saying. If you're going to spend a lot of time around people that are taking from you better have some way to put yourself back up independently outside of that. Because you can be a hero around a group of people that are sucking from you your energy and your gifts and your talents and your love and your heart and your empathy and your and your soul. And your love. And it's not a good or bad thing as to whether or not sometimes you're married to those people. Sometimes those people are your parents. Sometimes those people are your kids. Sometimes those people are your co workers and you need to make money to support your family. I'm not saying you got to cut it all out completely. But I am saying you got to fill yourself back up. So get around a group that raises all boats rather than pulling them down. Stephen Christopher 39:25 Yeah. And there's plenty of those people out there, right. You just have to start looking for them. I mean, I know, at times in my life, I felt like I didn't know where those people were. Just start asking better questions. You'll find them. Unknown Speaker 39:37 Yes. Stephen Christopher 39:38 Especially in today's world. I mean, absolutely. You know, 25 years ago, there was no internet. There was no Facebook, there was no like, you had to hear about it through somebody else. Now it's relatively easy. Unknown Speaker 39:49 You raise a great point 2530 years ago, we were all a lot more a prisoner of our immediate surroundings. Now Let me also go back. Again, a lot of us are also drowning in this, this cut activity, that we've gotten the distractions that come with the technology that we've got at our fingertips now. But yet by the same token, we have so many more opportunities to find inspiration out there. If we look for it, than we ever had 30 years ago, it was hard to find it 30 years ago, you know, you were lucky if you stumbled across a copy of thinking Grow Rich, or how to win friends and influence. You know what I mean? Like, that was the pinnacle in the early 90s. And now it's just it's everywhere. If you look for it, again, to your point, Steven and Laura, that you keep making deliberate conscious direction of that is still as necessary is that ever was that I would probably argue more necessary now than ever. Stephen Christopher 40:51 Oh, I agree. I think we can get we can get lost looking for the answer, right. And there's so many answers out there. Now. As soon as we find one We think is going to work. We find 15. Others have some good marketer that says, Oh, hey, do you feel like this? Do you feel lost? And you've been looking for the answer while I have it? You're like, Oh my gosh, I just found the answer. Unknown Speaker 41:11 So different. So now I don't know. Unknown Speaker 41:14 I'm not about don't find the answer, find an answer. Yeah, we find an answer, and then execute on it. Put some action into it. I think to your point, a lot of people are so dabblers in life. There are very few people that are it's always been that way was that way back when the 80s and 90s when I you know the 90s when I got started with Tony, we would talk about dabblers versus masters. That's more true today, frankly, than it even was that in fact, more so. More people dabble. They go in inch deep and 100 things. And then they wonder why they never go a mile anywhere. Stephen Christopher 41:52 Yeah, well, it's easy to get it's easy to get an inch deep and 100 things now because you can sign up for 15 different apps for free, that teach you how to play the ukulele. teach you how to do this. That's what our environment has taught us is that you need to have a breath, right? You got to know a little about this a little about this. And in order to be valued, the more you quote, know, the more value you offer. And so Okay, I'll know a lot about all of these little things, and I have a conversation to a certain level. And then the availability has just reinforced that. Yeah, Unknown Speaker 42:29 yeah, yeah. Yeah. Which is why I think it's important to develop your own ways of doing these things in the in the world, hence my own creativity. And then whatever you guys come up with you are your own creativity processes, just have something which is your truenorth you know, for what are you going to actually go deep with, find an answer that you want to go deep with that jives well with where you are right now. And make sense right now from all you know from the past and then go deep with that thing and Then, and I'm gonna say this and this is really now going to sound crazy. But then don't be afraid to quit. when things don't work. I can tell you, I stuck with that telecom business far longer than I should have. Because I had thought, Okay, this is it. This is probably the last business I'm ever really going to have to build. If I play my cards, right? I can retire by the time I'm 30. And so I had a lot invested in that notion that this was it. And so I didn't quit. When I really should have gotten out of it earlier. I should have gotten out of it before it ever went public, frankly. But I didn't. So lesson learned. So by the same token, once you go deep, but you got to go deep to find out when to quit. That's my experience. If you quit shallow, you quit too soon. So you got to go deep. But just because you go deep does not mean you got to be foolish in your consistency. You know the remember that old quote from what says that long fellow who is that foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of mediocre minds. Brilliant, quote, foolish consistency, is the hobgoblin of mediocre minds. Is that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow? I think who said, I don't remember. I'm probably not getting that. Right. It may have been Emerson, I don't remember. But foolish consistency is the hobgoblin. So you got to be careful with that as well. But you got to go deep. It's paradox. Life is paradox. I've always thought one of the one of the signs of maturity for myself, always been how good am I at holding two seemingly opposite notions as both true, both valid, both important at the same time? Can I make that paradoxical balance? And that to me, was something I strive to come to with maturity. And I think there's something at least that was the way it seemed to me when I was a young man, I'm not so young anymore. Someone I guess would say 51 is young, but you know, it doesn't feel that way necessarily. I started, like we said, I started young. So you know, I was trying to live up to a lot So I think that's, that's a paradox, that's life as well. We all have to come to our own place of peace with a lot of these, these concepts that if you go too deep into them without thinking, you know, the answer, which you're always going to find is that you don't know the answer. If you decide what the answer is for you, and then you, you know, you get let yourself off the hook. So you can say, okay, I've come to peace with what paradox is for me, doesn't mean I'm going to struggle with it from time to time. But I know what the goal is the goal is to be able to get to where both I can hold as valid, true, important and as possible at the same time. Stephen Christopher 45:37 Yeah, I think that's awesome. Yeah, it definitely makes sense. And I think a point that I keep seeing and pulling out of this is, we have to learn how to decide what we really want and who we really are and stop listening or looking for this answer out there. The answer is not out there. The answer is in here and then you have to test things and try it. And you know, the whole point of life is to experience things right expression and experience. And so we have to test and try these things to see if we'll actually like them and not just sit there and listen to what somebody else tells us that has a similar personality or similar background tells us that we will like there's way too much of that floating around just waiting for the right thing to come along, as opposed to being intentional with creation. And I think, I mean, I don't know, Joe, now that I'm thinking about it seems like in the last 1015 years, the amount of intentional creation is, is really far down even when you get into things like the secret. You know, everybody's trying to create cars and houses after that. They missed the whole point about what do you what do you actually desire to feel and what do you actually want to create? Right? Unknown Speaker 46:53 And just because we decide what that is for us does not mean That we will then face struggles with that decision that that that will happen. None of us is perfect. I mean, you know, in, in, in in 12 step programs, you know, there's a saying which is the goal is not progress, I'm sorry, the growth goals not perfection, it's progress. And and this is the way a lot of this you make a decision on what's right for your life. Also know what's probably going to come with that at some point is you are going to struggle was that the right decision or not? That is part of what comes with any decision is Did I make the right one? It's It's It's the complexity of being human. So the shocked when did I make the right one comes up. That doesn't mean you throw that decision out. What that means is the human struggle is real in the moment. And so I'm going to be with it. I'm going to take a breath. I'm going to go to sleep, I'm going to meditate. I'm going to I'm going to journal. I'm going to try to come back to equilibrium here and figure out how all this now balances out for me. Unknown Speaker 47:59 No, but It's only done through your own truenorth. Like you said, Stephen Christopher 48:02 Yep, yes. For anybody listening, take the time, put in the time and the energy and the effort to start to figure out what that is. And in on the same token, don't put too much pressure on yourself to figure it out perfectly. I mean, dude, I've been looking for my purpose for 40 years. And and I still barely even know what it is, but I have things that I'm moving toward. And those are the things that I'm desiring and I'm moving towards with choice, and who knows exactly what it's gonna look like along the way? Well, and I think what we're hearing from Joe, and what you've just said, is that you know, your purpose. Yeah, you're always gonna look for your purpose, because it changes we change as human beings and your purpose when you are 16 is to make sure that your sister can say in school and you're putting food on the table, so you make certain choices based upon that purpose. Now when you're 51, you have way different ideas of what your purpose is and what's important to you. So it is always a an evolution I think. Yeah, Unknown Speaker 49:07 yeah. Yeah, I mean, the closest I've ever thought to be a, you know, myself personally coming to a purpose is just like, at some point at some age and by the way that age is probably 35 to 45. For most people, you kind of got to take a look around and go Okay, everything I've done and everything i've i've been good at everything. I've sucked at everything, everything. What do I feel like maybe is a gift I can bring to this world? And then if you can narrow that down to one thing that's going to be about as close as you come to a trajectory for a lifetime. Yeah, I think it's a complete misnomer. That that there is one thing that we're all meant for. I I've always thought that was silly. You know, yet, I have a notion that in my life, probably because of what I struggled with starting out, speaking, giving present, I had the most intense stage fright of any human you've ever met in your life. And a lot of it was that imposter syndrome stuff of Who am I? I didn't graduate from high school. I am nobody from this little town in Virginia. I had no, I've had no real gifts. Now, when I look back, I see, wait a second, my parents got me started meditating when I was, you know, 13 that was really a gift. I mean, there were a lot of gifts that were outside the norms. But comparing myself to other people always made me question myself. And so I think because standing up in front of a group of people and having something good to say, and saying, Well, you know, Jim Rohn said famously decades ago, if you want to be a good public speaker, have something good to say, and learn to say it well. And I remember thinking myself, you know, Probably in the early 2000s Gosh, if there's one thing I seem to be really good at, it's helping people free themselves to feel like they have something good to say and they could say it well, and that way they can contribute to the lives of others through speaking presentations, books, coaching, authority work, whatever that might be, you know expert being an expert at something some people call it my friend Brandon calls an expert. Whatever that is for you have something good to say and say it well seems to have been a trajectory that for some reason I was thrust into and I have a knack for I love doing it never seems to get old. And so that's kind of become my, my life's work over the years. Stephen Christopher 51:41 Awesome. Well, I can certainly speak from my own personal experience that you're extremely good at it. I mean, I didn't tell the story when I The reason why I met Joe. Besides seeing him at a Tony Robbins Robbins event, was that I one of the companies that I had owned and started one fastest growing company in Colorado, and got up on stage to accept the award. had this little five minute speech I'd written out I had it on a no card. I was saying it all day, the day before the whole time driving down there. They called us we went first. I got up on stage with my business partner at the time, he said the dumbest things ever cuz he freaked out too. And then, you know, he looked at me to say my part. I, like, looked at a little card, thought about it, walked up, looked up and saw like 300 people in the audience and walked up to the mic and leaned in and said, Thank you, and then I fucking booked on stage as fast as I possibly could. And that was the moment that I said to myself, I said, Okay, hold on. I desire to be an entrepreneur and I desire to be some sort of a, we'll call it like a public figure, right? Like I just feel drawn to be a an inspirational piece in a community. And that was the point I said, Okay, wait, I need to learn how to communicate in front of a group of people. And sure enough, somebody will within the next six months, he came to me and said, Hey, I'm going to see this guy named Joe, I'm going to do this little thing you should come with me. And while I did, so I put out the attention. The intention that to learn how to do this. And then that's how, that's how we got connected. So you certainly are very good at what you do. If I recall correctly, I probably got most improved in the class from the first day to the last day. It was, yeah, it was one of the scariest things I've ever done. But now look at what you've done. I mean, and how, how much more comfortable you are, whether that's online with social media, it's getting up in front of hundreds of people and speaking. Yeah, yeah, I mean, look it for anybody listening. You can do anything that you want. That's the easiest way to say it. You just have to desire to do it. And then the resources are out there. It's not like 3040 years ago, where you're so limited, like the resources for pretty much anything you actually desire to do or learn more about is already there. Unknown Speaker 53:56 Yeah, you know it to be clear to you You know, I consider that this this skill of being able to move groups of people emotionally to do something differently in their life. I think that's the lever we all have to measure ourselves to when it comes to presentations or speaking. But my goal is not to make people you know, great professional speakers, even though a lot of my students have gone on to do that. It's the master skill of leaders. Anybody who's considered a leader or wants to be a leader, has aspirations or leads a company or whatever, it's a skill you must have it is it is required, you know, you must be this tall to ride you. You've got to have that in your back pocket if you really want to lead on a large scale. It's the master skill. I've always thought of leadership. And so that's really where I think most of our the work in this arena, you know, has led me whether it's, you know, teaching people to give presentations that were you know, people around Tony's world In the corporate arena, which I've spent, you know, decades there as well working with people, whether it's celebrities and and, and well known, well known pioneers in the business space, let's just leave it at that, that I work with to help them in their presentations. It's it's the skill you've got to have, and they struggle with it as much as you do. And so, but it's something that can also be acquired. It is a learned skill. It has to be found, though through your own distinct strengths. And polish off rough edges, yes. But you have to be able to build on your own unique strengths in that area. You can't just put on a face and act like some great speaker or presenter or leader you've seen and show up and be the most powerful you that you can be. That's not the way it works. There's a lot of imitators out there. They're just they're following the wrong path. What they really need is a coach, somebody who's been there who's done it, who's done with other people who knows how to polish off the rough edges, more importantly knows how to get you in your string, which is all we did, Steve Even when we work together, and we still do, you know, in our friendship now in our mastermind now and stuff, so, yeah, Unknown Speaker 56:06 yeah, it's a never ending journey. Unknown Speaker 56:09 For sure, for sure for sure. But you can make a lot of progress very quickly as well. To be clear, it's one that does not have to be a never ending journey with no progress. You make a lot of progress in this arena and a few days. And I think that's probably why I gravitated to it is I didn't realize that was the case because it took me years of trial and error. And then when I started working with people, I realized, wow, in three, four days, we can actually get a really big increase in this area. And then once you have it, it's like riding a bike. You might get a little rusty, but you can always you know, kind of how to get back on and take off and ride away. Or it's like learning to swim. That's the other thing that I equate this skill to, you know, we teach our kids to swim so they don't drown. And so I teach people how to be powerful communicators. So when they're put on stage where they're put on the spot or they're asked to do it, they can do it. Stephen Christopher 57:00 Yeah, awesome, man. Well, I actually I think this is a perfect time to begin to wrap up, Laura, if you have any other questions, I would say share those. And right before that, Joe, why don't you tell people seems like a perfect segue, tell people where they can find out more about you what you do connect with you, if they are interested in something like that. Unknown Speaker 57:23 Yeah, so probably the best thing to do, Stephen is anybody could just who's listening could go get a free copy of our book that came out last year called the impact awakening, and you can get that at the impact awakening.com the impact awakening.com just go there and get a free copy of our book called The impact awakening how to go from having a calling to changing lives. So related to the latter part of this conversation if you know if you have this kind of itch somewhere in your life and you think, you know, I feel like I'm meant to do more I meant to teach I'm into, I'm into I'm into coach, I meant to write whatever it might be. That was really The The, the focus and goal of the book is help people have number one, a message that moves people learn how number two then to communicate that powerfully, that's the skills we've been talking about here at the end. And then thirdly, if you want to scale that Into an Impact business, meaning speaking, coaching, consulting, book writing, type business, how do you do that? And so that's what the book is about. Stephen Christopher 58:27 Awesome. I love it, man. Well, I'm certainly an advocate of the work that you do. So if anybody is ever interested in that type of thing, I highly recommend hooking up with Joe. It's hands down, in my opinion, the best. Awesome. So Laura, any other last questions? Do I have one question Joe, you were talking about when you were in your telecom business, and you woke up one day and said, Oh, my God, this is not for me. I don't love it. I'm not where my skills are. And can you talk a little bit about? How did you then get out of it? How did I mean? I know you said, I sold my interest I invested over two years, I took some time off. you delve into that a little bit more in terms of what was your thought process? What were you exploring during that time trying to figure out okay, I'm here, and now I'm going to get out of it. But I don't know what's next. Unknown Speaker 59:23 Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for asking. That's something I know we touched on quickly. What Laura to let me let me give you an example. One example again, professionally, but I can also give you a personal one if you would like as well. Let me tell you what I mean. So yeah, it happened in my 20s. But let's fast forward let's let's come recent. So a 2012. I'm head trainer have been head trainer for Tony for at that point since 2003. I always forget the year that I became head trainer. 2003 I believe it was so I just know that I'm not happy anymore. I'm not happy traveling around leading events for him I would leave six to 10 wealth mastery and business mastery events a year, as well as Leadership Academy date with destiny I spoke at and I would fly all over the world in my own personal speaking career. I was I had been away from home at that point for at least 10 years I've been away from home 250 nights a year on the average year, all over the world I was I was in within united mileage terms I was I was called a Global Services, my million miler on united like, I wake up in 2012 and I go, Unknown Speaker 1:00:44 I'm not happy. And so I pushed through 2012 So to your point, not happy, not happy, not happy, I think, Oh, no, what is happening to me. And then 2013 I take the first six months of the year off and I think to myself, I got to figure out where I'm going next. Got everything. And I've made it to the pinnacle. There's not a lot higher than here that I can go probably, uh, I mean, what's my endgame? Let's just say get to the point where my career allows me to buy a private jet and have assistants Fly Fly with me everywhere just like Tony does. And every night is spent in the Four Seasons or better hotel. I'm still sleeping in somebody else's bed and sitting on airplanes for a living. That's why I felt like it'd become and I wasn't happy with it. I'd miss my daughter growing up completely. My son was at that point about 10 years old. I knew he was going to need this data around more and more. I had gotten remarried at that point. And I wanted to spend time with Allison, my new wife. And so I thought I got to figure out what to do. And honestly, you know, to answer your question, roundabout way so it was a real struggle for that first six months to 2013 of like, just what am I going to do? Where am I going to go? And finally I got a glimpse of something that might work. And I thought, okay, I'm now committed from June through December, I had already committed to do events straight through for Tony. And so I lived up to that commitment. I did those events, the absolute best of my ability, even though I wanted to quit three different nights, I called my wife Allison. I've never told anybody this publicly. I called my wife Allison, while I was at events for Tony, as well as for other clients. And I said, I'm going to leave. I've done I can't take this anymore. I'm at pop point. I can't I'm getting on a plane and I'm coming home. And she said, No, you're not. There's not the man that I know. That's not the man. I'm married. And she said, you're going to stay You know, you're going to because of who you are, Joe, you said that you're going to finish this thing. Finish it. Don't leave on bad terms. Don't leave somebody in the lurch. She's right. I don't like hearing that. But she's right. And I got up there. I did my thing. And when I parted then I didn't really plan on coming off the road permanently with him. It was a problem. Have a couple of months then that I was able to say, you know what, I'm not coming back out on the road, I'm doing something else with my life now. And it was a journey of just I don't know whether this is going to work or not. But I know I can't keep going where I am. And that was in 2013, and to 2014. And then I won't go into the details. But that also happened in my first marriage. And we got to a point where both of us realized what are we doing? We're great friends, we raise children, well, together, we actually work pretty well together. But what are we doing? Truthfully, we're not meant to be together the rest of our lives. And it turns out that was true. That wasn't even easy figuring it out. But I found Allison and Allison and I got married and and Emily found her incredible husband, Rob, I'm so lucky that I have him in my children's lives. You know, I mean, it's something that a lot of people who get divorced could say but we both realized the same thing. And it was Didn't you know, wasn't hard. It was really hard. A divorce is really hard. But that shouldn't mean that you back down from it. So I hope that answers your question, again, in a roundabout way, but it gives you kind of I don't know what the right answer is, I found something was approximately right. I didn't back away from the fact that it was going to be real fnr in both cases really hard. Right? All right. I'm not going to continue hanging out in the old way. Because it's crushing my soul. My lights gonna go out is all I could think of within that those last couple of years on the road, my life is gonna go out if I continue this way. And I know that Tony would agree with this, by the way, he and I've kind of talked about this and roundabout way since then. We are still friends. He saw it, he thought at the time. And I like to think hopefully that you know what every case I face down that demon I did the thing was right. Unknown Speaker 1:04:45 Yeah, that's awesome. Very powerful. Thank you. Stephen Christopher 1:04:47 Yep. Yeah, I think there's a lot of people listening that are probably near that point. Or starting that point. Like we just feel like there's, there's something missing and there's something or there's either something missing or To the point where it's soul crushing, Unknown Speaker 1:05:01 right? Yeah, yeah. Right. Right. Right. And or that there's a calling. Yeah, that there is a calling to do something else, you know that that's kind of the way it shows up as well. You know, it's it's, it's sometimes I don't know what else it is. But it's not. This is the way it started for me in all those cases. I don't know what else it is. But it's not this. I can tell you that. Yeah. And so from there, you just you just put one foot in front of the other. And you, you continue going, and you find a way. If you've done all the other things here that we've talked about, hopefully, and it's never going to be as easy as we made it sound. Let me be clear, but yeah, that doesn't mean that we back down from the challenge either. Yep. Yeah, it's Stephen Christopher 1:05:42 always easier in hindsight when you tell the story. Unknown Speaker 1:05:45 It is Stephen Christopher 1:05:46 way easier. Awesome, man. Well, dude, this has been fantastic, Joe. I really, really appreciate it. We'll have Laura do her little recap of some of the biggest takeaways from this one I'm feeling there will be a decent amount of them. Or at least some really good ones. And then Joe while she gets ready for that, is there any, any other last little thing that you want to share with people or just any other like parting thoughts that happened to come to mind? Unknown Speaker 1:06:14 Yeah, only because I wrote this down is something that I wasn't sure whether we could get into but here it is. You know, we didn't touch on daily practices and things like that. For five years, six years. I did the Course in Miracles daily work every single day. I do some sort of daily work every single day right now. It's the daily stoic. My favorite daily work right now. It's a book by Ryan Holliday, who wrote the obstacle is the way a great book for a daily practice. Just three, five minutes check in on something. Of course in miracles there was a big there was a quote that I've lived by for a long time from that. And I wanted to make sure I got it right. I wrote down the major mutual miracles. Is there strength and releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation, and lack? scarcity is a mentality all of these possibilities that we've talked about during this last over an hour is all about living in that possibility and abundance, which is really our natural state. I always used to say when I did wealth mastery for Tony, nobody ever comes out going, Hey, Mom, you got 20 bucks. You know, our natural state is one of abundance and joy. When when you know there's also needs and things I get that I've had kids but it's it's a natural state. scarcity, lack deprivation, those are illusions, scarcity of not just money and and and, and, and financial items, but scarcity of choice, scarcity of circumstance, that is an illusion. And so to have some way, the real miracle here that we're talking about in the Course of Miracles talked about as well as a lot of other works is The real miracle happens when you awaken to that abundance you awaken to that prosperity that's all around us in any moment. And we just let go of the of the illusions, of scarcity of isolation, of deprivation of lack. Right now, as we sit here in the world, this new world that we live in, you know, the isolation, a lot of people, so many people are feeling it's an illusion. It's not real. I know, we're not getting our connections in the same way as we have. But the world's changing. We haven't we haven't gotten our connections in the same way as we did 200 years ago, 300 years ago for some time now. So it's going to change and to look for the miracle. And the miracle is the realization of that, which is our natural state. Beautiful. Stephen Christopher 1:08:45 Well said my friend. Well, Joe, again, thank you so much. Really, really appreciate the time and all of the knowledge and just fantastic information. You jumped on us. Thank you. Unknown Speaker 1:08:55 Thanks so much for having me, guys. I appreciate it. Stephen Christopher 1:08:58 No. All right, Laura. Take it away. Unknown Speaker 1:09:00 All right, you said I got to do How many? Stephen Christopher 1:09:03 You get to do as many as one? Oh, you get to do two, you get to do three, four or 2342. Okay? I'm gonna do three. Okay. All right. Oh, gosh, let's switch three. I'm gonna start someone at the end, which, and we didn't spend a lot of time on this. But for some reason, this really hit with me. And maybe it's because of that pattern that we're seeing in some of the messages that we're getting from our speakers. But Joe said it in a very different way. And he was talking about wisdom and wisdom for him was being able to hold two things at the same time that are paradoxically opposite. I don't think that's the right way to say that, but right. So it's that same and both, right. It's not making a choice. It's not only one path, it's two paths, or it's two things that can both coexist, even though they seem like they can't. So that Really, really stuck with me in terms of seeing that as using that as a tool going through this journey. The other thing was obviously his reaction. And just the fact that for it was a blend of what we talked about the beginning right, that blend between the hard fast What do you call it? neutronic. What do you mean Tonia Newtonian versus the unseen or the universe, that those five steps that he laid out in terms of imagination, intention, attention, action, and celebration. I think those are, again, great things that our listeners can use as they try and really blend in, Hey, wait a minute. I know I have these hard facts. And if I do this, I'm going to get this but I want to have more than that. And then I think the last one really dealt with the imposter syndrome. How acknowledging that you have it can be almost like your superpower that could be what you share with the world is I have this and look what I have done. And I think oftentimes we don't see it that way. Instead, we see it as a fail failure of gosh, you know, I have this, nobody else has it. And even if they have it, they've overcome it, but we don't really do anything with it. So that was really empowering, I thought, Yeah. Awesome. Cool. I love those takeaways to you out there listening. We appreciate your time so much. Thank you so much for hanging out with us and listening today to this amazing interview with Joe Williams. Make sure to stay tuned. In the next couple days. We'll be releasing and recording the connected dots episode where Laura and I are going to have a little chat about what we learned what we implemented what we tested from this episode with Joe. And until next time, embrace the exciting unknown. Oh right. Unknown Speaker 1:12:02 That was great.
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