On today’s Creating Wealth introduction, Jason invites Memphis and Little Rock market specialist, Jeremy on to the call. Jeremy talks about his interest in physics and what’s going on in these two real estate markets right now. Jason invites Peter Sage from Extreme Entrepreneur to be today’s Creating Wealth guest. He is a serial entrepreneur who started his first business at 17. Fernando also joins as guest co-host with Jason and the two ask Peter a series of insightful questions. On the show, Peter shares insight as to why he had a drive to become an entrepreneur, how to find your passion, your why, and much, much more on today’s episode.
Key Takeaways:
2:30 – Jeremy talks about the double split experiment in physics.
13:20 – What’s currently going on in the Memphis and Little Rock market?
18:30 – Jason introduces Peter Sage and Fernando on to the show.
28:30 – Get in touch with what you’re passionate about. Ask yourself questions about your life purpose.
39:40 – Why is it that some people struggle to change and others don’t? Peter explains.
61:30 – How do we prevent ourselves from falling back into the same old routine?
68:20 – Peter talks about his purpose and his why.
73:20 – Peter talks about his space-based solar power energy project that he started.
78:30 – Pharmaceutical companies are not interested in curing diseases, they only want to maintain them. This current medicine model has to change.
Tweetables:
“Money doesn’t solve problems at any level, in fact, money creates a whole different set of problems.”
Mentioned In This Episode:
Start with Why by Simon Sinek
The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Transcript
Jason Hartman:
Welcome to the Creating Wealth show. This is episode number 490. 490. You know what that means listeners, this is a 10th episode show. So, we’re going go off topic a little bit and talk about something of general interesting our guest today will be Extreme Entrepreneur, that’s what he’s known as, the Extreme Entrepreneur, expert in human behavior, world class speaker, philanthropist, really interesting guy, and that is Peter Sage. So, he’ll be up in a few moments, but first I’ve got Jeremy who is a really interesting guy here and we’re going to do a show probably on the Holistic Survival show with him more broadly on some of his interests and content, but he is one of our local market specialists, he helps us with our Memphis and our Little Rock markets. I actually don’t want to talk to him too much about real estate today, but we’re going to talk on that for a moment, hey, are you there? How are you doing?
Jeremy:
I’m here. I’m doing well, Jason. Thanks for having me.
Jason:
So, I wanted to have you on today, because I think as a good intro to Peter Sage, you know, we’ve been talking for a long time and when you’ve spoken at our Meet the Masters event and our Creating Wealth events, I always kind of joke about how you’re so interested in quantum physics and some of this really fascinating stuff and I just finished a book and I think Fernando is really interested in this stuff and the listeners have heard him on the show a few times and he may have recommended this book to me, I can’t remember, but it’s called Biocentrism and I tell you, it was fascinating. I was just blown away by some of the things in there. One of the things, of course, they talk about is the very famous double slit experiment. Tell us about that if you would and what does it have to do with anything really? It’s really pretty significant.
Jeremy:
Yeah, well the double slit goes back to 1803, a man name Thomas Young first preformed it really to answer an age old question, is light a particle or is it a wave? Basically, the way you do it, it’s a pretty simple experiment. You have a plate with two slits in it and then you shine like through those two slits and observe the pattern that’s displayed on a screen on a back end and if that pattern is basically two bars, then you can conclude that light is a particle, in other words it’s like little globules or photons that come out in discrete points and either go through the left slit or the right slit.
Jason:
The ah-ha here is what happened. Did the light act differently whether or not or the photons I guess I should say, whether or not it was being observed, I mean, that’s mind boggling, right?
Jeremy:
Right, well when you shine light through it, you see an interference pattern, so you think light is a wave, things are done, right? We’ve come to the answer. Where it gets really interesting is when you fire electrons through and we think of electrons as being little discrete points of matter like marbles, so we fire individual electrons through the double slit and we’re still seeing an interference pattern, which is kind of weird because does that mean that the electron is going through both slits at the same time, in other words, making a clone of itself and going through both slits of the same time and then interfering with itself to create an interference pattern? So, to answer this question, the scientists decided to put a detector at the double slit to figure out which slit it’s going through. However, when they did that, then the interference pattern went away and the electron went back to behaving like a particle. In other words, it passed either one slit or the other slit as if it was aware that it was being observed. Very, very strange. So…
Jason:
Yeah, that is just spooky weird. I mean, in the new age community and in the scientific community is kind of odd maybe that these two are really married together in ways, but there’s kind of this philosophy that everybody is connected, every thing is connect, all matter is one, and another big part of it, of course, these are giant issues, we could take hours to discuss, but another big part of it is that time, time is an illusion. It doesn’t even exist. What were you going to say there? I just wanted kind of bring up those big questions for a moment.
Jeremy:
Well, as we’re developing the double slit, the technology has developed to the point where we can do what are called delayed choice versions of the double slit experiment where we can fire photons through the double slit and then delay our decision about whether to observe them until after they’ve passed through the double slit, but before they’ve been displayed on the back wall and what we’re finding is even when we decide at the last second to observe the electrons after they’ve passed through the double slit, once we open our eyes and take a look, they still behave like particles.
It’s as if they went back in time to the point where they left the gun and then decide to behave like particles based on a future decision to be observed and that’s when things get really strange in terms of our perception of time. So, breaking this down, you fire electrons through the gun, they pass through the double slit, all this time the detector is off, just before they hit the back wall, we turn the detector on, decide to observe them, and then they go from behaving like waves to behaving like particles at the last second as if they went back in term retroactively and decided to behave like particles from the point they were fired and there are actually experiment including the delayed choice quantum eraser version of the double slit experiment that confirm this.
So, bottom line is, it’s not anything in the experimental apparatus, in other words, interference with the detector or anything physical, what’s causing the particles to behave or the electrons to behave like particles instead of waves is the observer’s conscious knowledge of how the apparatus is setup and whether the electrons are going to be observed or not.
Jason:
So, does this tell us all matter has consciousness, is that what we’re alluding to here?
Jeremy:
It seems to imply that. It’s almost crazy to even say that. I mean, does an electron have a highly complex computer built into it so that it an look forward in time and base its decision on its nature, waves or particle, based on a future event whether it’s going to be observed or not observed and then you can get really crazy with this and scale this up to a cosmic level. I mean, imagine an astronomer on earth is observing light from a distant object, a quasar that’s billions of light years away and that quasar emits photons that pass by a dense galaxy that gravitationally lenses the photons and they can either pass one way, the other way or both ways around the galaxy, so essentially what you have is a double slit on a cosmic scale and if the astronomer decides to use a two-telescope apparatus, in other words, observing which path the photon pass as they go around the galaxy, then they decide to act like particles retroactively at a point billions of years in the past conversely if you decide to use a screen apparatus and not ascertain which path they’d pass, then he sees an interference pattern. So, that’s a mouthful, but it’s almost like you could scale this up on a cosmic level and time has no meaning.
Jason:
Look it, we all had experiences in our lives where we’ve had ESP, where we’ve experienced extrasensory perception, okay, telepathy, we’ve experienced coincidences that just are almost too crazy to be coincidences, right. We’ve all had these experiences one time or another, we’ve all had experiences with precognition where maybe in a dream we’ll dream something and then it’ll happen and there’s a lot of talk about the law of attraction and years ago I got really interested in something call holographic brain theory and really I got interested in it as a way to achieve goals, as a goal achieving mechanism, so suffice it to say a couple of things, number one, it’s an amazing time to be alive. It’s an amazing time to be alive.
Okay, number one, but number two in five or ten years because the technology is increasing so exponentially right now and it always has, but especially now that we’re going to look back and this just five or ten short years, this is not far into the future in my opinion, we’re going to look back and think, well, of course, this was this way, we didn’t understand it at the time, but it’ll seem obvious in the future. We’ll act like, yeah, of course, like why didn’t we understand, you know, which are the things we don’t understand today yet. Look at how things have amazed us in the past technologically. So, it is really, really incredible. Thanks for talking about some of this stuff. What if, if anything, does it have to do with investing in Memphis or Little Rock? How about that for a segue?
Jeremy:
Well, I’m driven by intellectual curiosity, real estate is a great business. It’s a means to an end for me in terms of building wealth and generating income, but the bigger picture is we all have things that we’re very passionate about and I think beyond real estate business and entrepreneurship, you know, each of us needs to know what drives us, for me personally, science, astronomy, and just in general intellectual curiosity is the fuel that drives me each day, so..
Jason:
So, if any of our investors listening by a property from you in one of your markets, will you give them a free double slit experiment?
Jeremy:
Oh, absolutely! Buy property from me, I will give you a breakdown of the double slit and all its glory from Thomas version in 1803 to the quantum eraser version in 2007, you got it all, baby.
Jason:
What a deal. That’s is a direct response hook. That’s what internet marketers call it, right?
Jeremy:
Exactly.
Jason:
I bet you haven’t heard that folks on any other show. You know, usually it’s a free report on Jason’s ten commandments of successful investing or something like that, but here we know our listeners are at a much higher level, so we want to appeal to their higher intellect, so that’s great.
Jeremy:
Hey, Jason, it’s not just quantum physics, if they want to hear a talk on dark energy, dark matter or the Carrington event, I’ve got all that too, buddy.
Jason:
What’s the Carrington event?
Jeremy:
The Carrington event occurred in 1859 and it’s an extreme solar storm, in fact it was a perfect solar storm that had a significant global footprint. Now, at that time, there was no technology other than the telegraph and telegraph operators actually experienced sparks flying from the telecrafts and being electrocuted and in some cases starting fires, because of this extreme solar storm. The catch is if a Carrington level event geomagnetic storm were to occur today, it would destroy the power grid and the fall out would be as much as 1/3rd to one half of the population of the civilized world that die off over a period of five to ten years as a result.
Jason:
You know, I’ve talked about that, basically an EMP taking down the power grid and putting us back into the stone age. We’ve done several shows on that on the Holistic Survival show, that is a scary fascinating concept and I’ll tell you, folks, you know, it’s not weird or silly to just be responsible and to have some basic preparedness. No one here on my show is saying, well, on the Holistic Survival show people are saying it, but go live in a woods with a shotgun and a can of beans, that doesn’t sound like much fun, but it’s just responsible to have some basic preparedness. You can do this for like $200 per person in your household. It just makes sense.
I mean, this is just prudent and smart and it would take a long time they say to bring the power grid back up to replace all those transformers and stuff like that, so either solar storm or a weaponized version with an EMP blast, an EMP-type bomb, an electromagnetic pulse is what that means, by the way. Fascinating stuff, but in our daily lives in investing, let’s just bring this back around and then get to Peter Sage, what’s going on in the Memphis market, in the Little Rock market? You know, Arkansas in Little Rock is our only market in Arkansas, but that i the most land lord friendly state in the country. We’ve had lots of investors going in there since we’ve opened it, what, almost, maybe eight months ago I want to say?
Jeremy:
Yeah, we’re coming up on the better part of the year now since we’ve launched Little Rock and it’s an exciting market to be in a linear market similar to Memphis. Like you said, it’s the most landlord friendly state in the country. If a tenant is even one day late paying their rent, the land lord can start the eviction process and if they don’t vacate within a certain period of time, having not paid rent, it’s a crime. You can literally be arrested, finger printed, mug shots, and in some cases put in jail. So..
Jason:
Wow.
Jeremy:
Only state in the union where that can happen.
Jason:
Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. So, not that you even want to do that as a landlord, I don’t think I would unless I just had a tenant that was quite literally a criminal, the thing is the fact that they know that possibility exists, it just gets them to behave in a whole different way.
Jeremy:
That’s exactly right.
Jason:
So, yeah. How is the market there and how is the market in Memphis? We’re working on an upcoming Memphis tour, you know, that’s why I wanted to have you on today. Property tour, distress property tour.
Jeremy:
Yeah, the Memphis market is strong and it’s getting stronger by the day. The fundamentals are obviously still there in terms of the percentage of the population that rents, over 50%, so you have a high tenant pool. Obviously with FedEx here, AutoZone, International Paper, St. Jude, you got a strong core of jobs hat are really driving Memphis. In sports, the Memphis Grizzlies are contender this year, so if you’re into professional sports like I am that’s a great thing. The biggest thing is the numbers. I mean, you still can get a property here at a price and at a rent rate that is well above the 1% rule and it gives you those fundamentals in terms of cash flow. So, I’ll tell you, we get a lot of competition. Hedge funds have come in here, we still have other turn key providers here, so I think the biggest indicator for us unfortunately is that we have to fight everyday to continue to acquire new inventory, which is both good and bad. It’s bad in the sense because we would love to have a steady stream of properties, but it’s good in that it tells you that stuff is not staying on the market very long, it’s getting snatched up, and people are buying both retail and investors.
Jason:
So, give us like a sample property in each of those markets, which one is more expensive. Is Little Rock more expensive than Memphis?
Jeremy:
They’re about the same, I would say they’re comparable. In terms of, you know, an example property, we just finished up a property on 17 Berkshire in Little Rock that we actually put under contract yesterday and this is a, this is a three bedroom, two bathroom house, 1,200 sq ft. Rents for about $1,000 a month and we sold it for 95. So, that’s one example of a property in Little Rock and then in Memphis we got a couple of properties that we’re wrapping up. We’ve got on on Seminary Cove and 3101 Seminary Cove and this one will sell for about a $109,000 and it rents for $1,150 a month. Fantastic property. It’s brick. It’s four bedrooms, three bathrooms, huge kitchen, huge den with a fireplace. Property that you would envision living in yourself. It was a retail property. So, 2,000 sq ft. So, those are the kinds of properties that we’re doing. Stuff that sells between $95,000 and let’s say a $120,000. It’ll rent anywhere from $1,000 to $1,200 a month and just through off some really great cash flow.
Jason:
Good, good stuff. Well, thank you so much for joining us and talking about some of this interesting scientific stuff, it’s quite fascinating. We’ll get you on the Holistic Survival show and do a whole show about it.
Jeremy:
That sounds great.
Jason:
Sometime, so let’s do that and folks go to JasonHartman.com, take a look at properties in Memphis, in Little Rock. I’d say in Memphis we’re coming up on way over 100 transaction. We’re probably close to 200 transactions in Memphis so far. I’m just guessing. So, we’ve done a lot of business there. Little Rock great to do a lot of business there as well, so there’s some good properties, great rent to value ratios, landlord friendly markets, go to JasonHartman.com, click on the property section and check them out and let’s go to our guest today Peter Sage and again, this is a ten show, so we’ll talk a lot more in depth about real estate on non-tenth shows. We just kind of go off topic every show that ends in a zero. We discuss something of general interest. We know we have a multidimensional audience and this is why we do that. So, our next show will be very focused on real estate investing and personal finance and economics and all of that good stuff, okay. Let’s get to our guest, Peter Sage.
It’s my pleasure to welcome Peter Sage to the show. You’ve probably heard his name, he is the founder of Space Energy, former chairman of London Yes Group and member of the Entrepreneurship Advisory
Board for Insead and he has had many businesses, many adventures, and is just an all around very, very interesting guy. I’ve also got a co-host who actually recommended him to the show today and that is a client Fernando. So, welcome to both of you and Peter, what are you up to nowadays?
Peter Sage:
Great question. First, thank you for the invite and for the opportunity to be able to share and that’s really ties in with the answer to the question, because right now most of my focus is really on about being able to take a lot of the lessons that I’ve learned as a serial entrepreneur for the last 25 years and with a passion in personal development and understanding human behavior and bring that to a wider level of awareness to hopefully help people either get through some of the frustrations that seem to be so prevalent in today’s society or help them get through to the next level that they’ve been trying to get to with maybe some shortcuts through some of the mistakes I’ve made or some of the lessons I can help people along the way with, so that’s really where my core focus is right now is sharing my message.
Jason:
Well, one of the things I really like about your work is that if you’re talking to entrepreneurs about how to manage their mind, if you will, and manage their psychology, that’s so important, and most of the speakers and guru’s out there that are doing this, they just have had one business, their own info marketing business, right? But, you really are a serial entrepreneur, I mean, how many companies have you been involved in?
Peter:
I’ve actually lost count. I think it’s 22 or 23, somewhere around there that I’ve started, actually, I’ve started all of them apart from one which I bought and so the rest have been all startups. I’m a startup guy. Some of them have been greatly successful international household names, some have been, you know, dramatic failures that have wiped me out, some should have probably stayed ideas when I was drunk, and pretty much everything in between.
So, I’ve had a huge sort of array of experience in different industries. I don’t have a trade as such, my trade is business and that’s really what’s really, I think, has helped me understand a lot of the different aspect, because when you come to talk about helping business owners, you know, I coach at a high level and almost every single time people come to me and say, I’ve got a problem with the business, I need to hire a top business coach, and almost every single time, I’ll pin it back to an issue with the psychology of the business owner and not the business itself. It’s always endemic to the psychology of the business owner. You clear up that and the business takes care of itself. I mean, there’s certain strategies and specific sometimes that are required in terms of an issue in the business, if it’s a certain marketing aspect they’re looking for, but nine times out of ten the systemic problems in the business have nothing to do with the business, they have everything to do with the mindset of the business owner.
Jason:
I would agree. That makes a lot of sense. Tell us about some of the businesses, you said some were very successful household name-type companies, maybe just give us a little bit of a primer, a sampling, if you would.
Peter:
Certainly, I mean, my first business was selling toys on flea markets, would you believe it, 17 years old I was Pete the toy boy and…
Jason:
I watched your video about that, that was great.
Peter:
I did a self-publishing business, I had a casting agency, I was one of the first people in the 95 to actually pioneer database casting instead of filing cabinet type casting. That went very well. I had a nutrition company, nutraceutical company, anti-aging company called the World Wide Health Corporation and that was a big success. I sold that in 2005. It just got re-sold a couple of years ago. I’ve been a very large change of health clubs and fitness centers called Energy Heath and Fitness. In fact, we just opened our 100rd club last year. I’m proud of them. It’s a good legacy. I sold out of that a little while back and I’ve had ideas where, you know, I did a like a CNN news set, which I had a replica news set and was traveling around the country doing news casting for different areas that was tying into the casting agency. That was a dramatic failure.
I think the negative news actually helped the demise of the business, but yeah, I’ve had other business ideas that I’ve tried and swung the bat at. Land development was very successful, hypoxi refurbishment company that was very successful and sometimes I’ll stop a business because I’m no longer passionate. The business is okay, but I’m bored. If I’m bored, what am I doing it for? You know, it’s not about accumulating anything, it’s about expressing passion, so if you’re not doing that anymore, then you’re working off the wrong metric.
Fernando:
Peter, I first listened, I first heard of you listening to the Bullet Proof Executive podcast with Dave Asprey and I just loved your message. I resonated strongly with the podcast and I actually had my wife listen to it and my kids had to listen to it.
Peter:
Oh dear. Now they hate me!
Fernando:
So, I really liked it. I do have a question or several questions related to that if you could expand on some of the concepts. One of them that I really tried to expose to my kids is the concept of the emotional IQ and the financial IQ and how you actually apply it and use those concepts to your bank accounts and use an analogy for how bank accounts works. So, can you expand on that a little bit?
Peter:
Certainly and for the listeners here that may not of had the opportunity to listen to the Bullet Proof podcast, I’ll give a little bit of context. What I say to people a lot when I’m working with them or what a lot of my observations are is that most people whether it’s in life, in careers, in business, are usually cashing money. Most people are chasing money, because they are under the illusion that by getting more money it’ll solve their problems.
Now, I say the illusion because most people believe that because most people who don’t have money, their immediate problems are usually associated or attributed to lack of money. You know, trying to pay rent on Friday or make the payments on the car, so they think money will get rid of those problems, because they’re immediately connected where as obviously everybody who has been down that path knows that it’s not true.
Money doesn’t solve problems at any level, in fact, money creates it a whole different set of problems, but if you’re chasing money and we’re coming to the end of the year here on this particular date of the recording, it’ll probably go out in the New Year, but in terms of the start of year, 2015, there’s a lot of people making New Years Resolutions, a lot of people want 2015 to be different to 2014 and unfortunately, the challenge there is that most people, you know, going out to make 2015 different are looking for a better career, they’re looking for promotional work, they’re looking for a new business or a new business opportunity, what they’re not doing is changing themselves to become a person of higher value, because we have an emotional bank account and we have a financial bank account.
The challenge is that most people emotionally bank account usually follows their financial bank account. You know, you’ve got no money at the end of the money and your emotional bank account is low. You suddenly get paid and your emotional bank account goes up. The challenge with that is that it’s the wrong way around. We need to raise our emotional bank account first and become a person of value in order for the financial bank account to be increased and the reason for that is money is simply a byproduct or a consequence of adding value to someone or something else. It’s just an arbitrary medium of exchange. Most people don’t understand that the only place in the universal that money means anything is in the mind of man. Nothing else keeps track of it. It’s a conceptual fabrication that has allowed us to value or correlate different levels of exchange.
So, if you are going to receive any money, it’s always because you’ve given something for it of value first. You never want unearned income, so from that perspective, if you haven’t increased your own sense of self-worth and you’re going out trying to earn more money, it’s almost futile, you’re chasing your tail. So, when I talk about a financial IQ or a financial bank account and an emotional bank account, then most people are running out with a low financial bank account, a low self-worth, trying to get money and it’s like sitting in front of the fire saying, you know, I’m cold, please give me some heat and then I’ll go fetch you some wood. It doesn’t work that way.
So, if you can understand that money is nothing more than a byproduct or a consequence of the value that you add, you can stop chasing it and start asking yourself the question how can I become a person of value and that’s where you start focusing on investing in yourself and focusing on how you can you contribute more to somebody that’s worth something to them rather than running around with the hand out thinking how can I scratch a deal together to make a few bucks. Does that make sense?
Jason:
That makes complete sense. I remember Earl Nightingale telling me at age 17 that example of don’t be in front of the empty fire place and say give me heat and then I’ll give you wood, but I think the challenge for people is that this is kind of a morphs, you know, it’s not a develop yourself, I mean, great advise obviously and you know, give value first, don’t have unearned income, but I think a lot of people struggle with the lack of specificity with that. Do you have any advice for them?
Peter:
Get in touch with what it is you’re passionate about. You’re not going to be a person of value if you’re walking around resent what it is that you’re doing or you’re doing it just in order to get a means to an end to get some money. It’s hard to turn around, you know, what I’m not saying here is go give up your job and follow your dream. I mean, that’s just Disneyland thinking. That’s going to put more pressure on people that can’t handle that level of uncertainty, but if you have an excuse that says I’m not going to focus on what it is that I actually want my life to be about, because I’m too busy chasing out my tail trying to earn a living, then you’re never going to get out of that quick sand.
If you, instead say listen, right now, these are the cards I’ve been dealt with. I am in a job that I don’t really like, I’m struggling for a lifestyle I can’t really afford, but I’m not going to give up the level of vision I have for what it is that I want my life to be about. I’m going to start broadcasting at a level of what it is that I want, not what it is that I don’t want and start shifting from that particular place that practical people can start doing now and not tomorrow, but most people have forgotten to get in touch with the sense of what it is that they want, because they’re too busy to focused on avoiding what they don’t want hence they attract more of it.
So, what is you’re good at? What is it that lights you up? If you were to ask your best friend and say, hey, listen, what are am I good at? What am I known for? It could be you have a certain way with being able to communicate to people and mediate, yeah, in which case, you know, you’ve got a whole different angle there of avenues to explore. It could be the opposite of that, you’re actually very direct with people and there’s a whole different aspect. One is more political, one is more direct selling. There’s a whole different way, are you good with children? Are you more of a learner, you’re good at figure out problems, are you good with numbers? Are you good with – there so many things that we have inherent predisposition towards that most of us suppress, because we’re too busy settling for something that’s going to put a buck on the table.
So, focus on what are the gifts that I got, do an inventory of the gifts that you have. The problem most people is they have such a low-sense of self-esteem when they look in the mirror, because they attach their self-worth to their net worth and if their net worth is always a moving target and the self-worth is never going to be off the table. It’s never going to be off the floor. You are not your bank account. You never have been, you never will be, but if we start making that fundamental error, we’re going to be walking around like a walking crap magnet attracting stuff that is never going to serve our true purpose. When was the last time you sat down and asked yourself better questions? You know, what am I passionate about? If I could only spend my life doing one thing, what would it be?
Start exploring possibility rather than settling for the fact that, yeah, this is what I’m going to get, because the economy is where it is. I can give specificity, but obviously we’re talking 300 million people in the US. It needs to have some level of universal component to apply, but people need to come from a place that no body has the right to tell you you can’t do it. If you’re coming from a place, what is it that I’m here to do, it’s certainty not to work in a job that I don’t like for 40 years to retire and be forgotten.
Fernando:
Yeah, I think this concept starts early in people’s lives. This is not taught in school. I’ll probably argue that the opposite is taught in school where you’re following your pattern and you get stuck into that pattern and that’s pretty much what takes all your thinking. You don’t take the time to stop and reevaluate things at a very deep level and you have some thoughts about how this can be taught earlier in life and I ask you how can kids get the understanding of how important it is to know, you know, what their passionate about and not get lost in the academics, spending so much time in trying to do repetitive work in school just to achieve a certain grade and move on from there on this repetitive motion, you never get out of it.
Peter:
Great question and the answer certainty isn’t going to come in the main stream from traditional education. We all know that school is fundamentally geared towards teaching people how to pass tests and work for somebody else. It’s always left for the people to have their own spark of interest to go and follow that and those flames aren’t usually fanned from the academic system as it stands today. It’s more geared to drill process and conformity than it is celebrate individual uniqueness, so it really comes back to the parents and the challenge is most kids these days, you know, don’t come with an owner’s manual. When parents have a baby, there’s more instruction with their DVD player that they walk out of Sears with than when they walk out of the hospital.
So, everybody’s trying to figure it out. We’re all just grown up kids at the end of the day, so as a parent still dealing with their own stuff, one of the things I’d recommend is look, one of the best things you can give your child is a level of self-esteem and you get self-esteem very similar to how you train a dog. You train a dog, excuse the parallel, but you train a dog by positive reinforcement, not by making it cower in the corner every time it does something wrong. For kids to be praised and to have any negativity reframed it in a way that serves the lesson or serves or leads to a better or a higher level of looking at it is what the parents, in my opinion, would do better to do rather than tear down the child because they got a B instead of an A.
All the kids are looking for is approval, recognition, love, connection, validation, and if you can find a way of giving them that, you know, if they get a D, celebrate it wasn’t an E. Encourage them to be better so that next time it’s a C or a B and start putting that level of spin, you will build their level of self-esteem rather than put pressure on them to think they have to earn the right to be loved, approved, or validated. If they can be condition to find that from a place of knowing that they’re already good enough, then you’re really going to start giving them permission to find what they’re passion is rather than feel judge for going to do it or feel silly or trapped that the fact it won’t be approved of at whatever level of approval that they seek.
Fernando:
Peter, I know that you have an incredible story. You drop out of school when you were 16. You started your first company at 17. How did this idea of trying to prove yourself and having maybe difficulties with self-esteem play the role when you were that young? What was going through your mind and what advise do you have for people who are maybe that age.
Peter:
For me, it was all in retrospect, because at the time you don’t see it. I didn’t see the patterns I was running until long after the fact and for me it was really a case of my parents, you know, we were hard working, we lived in sort of counsel accommodation, and they saved enough to try and get me to a private school, which was quite against the norm in the neighborhood that I was in.
When I was ten years old, my mum sat me down and said, look, we can’t afford to keep you in the private school, you’re going to go to the state school system, which is a bit of a lottery when it comes to how well you’re going to do. At least in a private school just like if you’re going to Cornell or Harvard or Stanford or whatever, you’d expect a good education, because it’s forced upon you in a way. The system supports that whereas in the traditional education, it’s usually a coin flip. The teacher are there focused on getting you through the system to gradate not on expressing and bringing the est out of you.
For me, the parents got into a situation whereby they were worried that they just lost the guarantee university place for their child, so I was condition at the age of ten years old in the summer holidays between the two schools that transition. My mum and dad were like, listen, if you don’t work hard, you’d probably end up emptying the garbage of the people you were just at school with. If you don’t work hard, the teachers aren’t going to push you, you won’t go to university, you won’t get a car, all of this stuff. It scared the bejesus out of me, it really did, but in the moment, an overachiever was born, but it was born out of fear, it was born of I have to do this otherwise I’ll sleep on a park bench in winter.
So, for me, the two edged sword was that I felt like I had to prove something. I developed an unconscious, consistent, question of how can I achieve more, because that as the root to validate myself from my parents and everything I did from ten years old I excelled at. Was I happy? No, not at all, because as soon as I achieved something, I’m asking the question again. How can I achieve more? It was always raising the bar, so I didn’t see that until I looked back into sort of my later 20s when I was sort of doing a lot of deep work around covering the patterns that we run as kids and as adults and for me it was a case of, if I had known I was good enough at the time, I may not have achieved as much.
I was millionaire at 22 and all this business success, absolutely stressed out of my brains and miserable as hell. I was an idiot to work for. No body liked me, but I was achieving, because I felt that was the path. Where as if you can turn around and show somebody that that they’re already doing enough and now they’re free to go and do what it is they want, because it’s something that they are passionate about, not because it’s something they need to prove themselves.
So, parents need to be careful when they say, it could be an off hand comment. If daddy says you’re not good enough, yeah you’re going to take that with you for a long time. You’ve got the parents who have chosen the careers for their kids, you seen this in many different cultures, in advance. You get people that try to prove their worth to their parents sitting in careers 20-30-40 years later that they just don’t enjoy. It’s a travesty of freedom of individuality. If you want to chunk it down, most of the patterns that I see that are limiting patterns that people run whether it’s in business or life, come from the place where we perceived we either did or didn’t get love from the place we most wanted from as a kid. We still carry those patterns around, then chances are it’s going to be affecting us right now unconsciously even if we’re 65 years old.
Jason:
Yeah, it sure is. Peter, just a very kind of general question of the ages for you. So, there’s a lot of latitude on this one, but can people change? I mean, why is that some people struggle, struggle, struggle, and some people just seem to improve themselves, change themselves to what the world wants, so they can get what they want and achieve great goals and live happily ever after? How’s that for a question?
Peter:
See if I can understand the question. You’re saying, why is it some people do that and why do some people struggle to change?
Jason:
People who are struggling will generally say that they want to have success, they want to achieve things, they want to make a difference, they want to contribute more, they just can’t seem to get themselves to do it, I guess, for reasons unknown, at least to me where as some can, some can just do it. I mean, is it that simple? Just do it? Nike? You know? Did we go back to that or is there a lot more under the surface than that?
Peter:
I was going to say, on the surface, yes, underneath the surface, there’s always a lot more. That comes from the patterns that we are running, again, usually linked to self-esteem and also the fact that you’ve got two different aspects here that are very rarely discussed. You’ve got strategies and skill sets, you know, if it’s just a case of, you know, I’ve got the want to, I’ve got the desire, I just don’t have the how-to. You know, if I want to see a sunset and my strategy is to run East, it’s not going to happen, no matter how badly I want it. You’ve got the strategy side, but then you’ve got also another side that’s rarely talked about and that is level awareness, levels of consciousness, you know, whatever language you want to put on it. I don’t want to get too esoteric here, I want to keep it real, but you will usually have people that stop growing emotionally round about teenagers and then play the same patterns for a long time to come.
So, if you’ve got for example a situation where you have and say if you can bare with me on the example here, it’s quite powerful. If you take a glass water and if you fill that water with something that the stuff inside that glass, yeah, if you imagine a glass half full of water, if you imagine the stuff inside the glass is the stuff of your life, is the content of your life, it’s your job, your career, your family, your money, your no money, your religion, your hobbies, whatever, it’s the stuff, it’s the story. It’s all the stuff. The glass that holds the stuff of our life is the context.
So, we have the content and we have the context. Now, what most people do in life when they’re not happy with the content of their life, because they’re always trying to change it. So, they’re always trying to stir the stuff of their life and in their 20s they’re stirring it like mad and in their 30s there’s a little more of a pattern to it, we’re kind of falling into the same routines. 40S and 50s, we’re still stirring and we’re saying, I don’t like this clear stuff in the glass, I want blue, I am sick of this transparent level of clear, it’s all boring.
Jason:
Changing the content, again.
Peter:
I want blue, I’m going to hang out with blue people and drive a blue car, eat blue food, get blue job, yeah, watch blue films, whatever. It’s all about changing what they have. The challenge is you see other people that don’t have stuff going on, but instead of changing the content, they shift the color of the glass. Now, if you were to change the color of the glass, how you hold the content of your life to blue, instantly everything that was in your life would appear to look blue, but you didn’t change anything.
You changed the way you held it and what causes people to change the way they hold stuff usually is a significant emotional event. Either they hit rock bottom or their spouse leaves them or they get fired or they lose something that’s precious and realize that there’s more than money to life, whatever it is, if you get a significant emotional event, it could be a health issues, it could be a near-death experience, whatever it is, and all of a sudden it did nothing about the content of their life changes, but everything about the context changes and then, of course, everything in their life changes as a result.
Jason:
Yeah, absolutely. So, I love the context/content example. It’s kind of that old thing of, you know, fish they live in water, but they don’t see the water, so we sort of the context is kind of invisible to most people, but what you said is very true about in an event will usually cause that big shift rather than rearranging the furniture in the living room or changing the color of the liquid in the glass concept, but I guess maybe the trick is and maybe you’re going to lead us right to us, Peter, and it’s brilliant the way you’re doing it, is that we have to be able to at will change back context without suffering hopefully from some big negative event like a terrible crisis, our significant other leaving us, a near-death experience, whatever that is, to shift that at will, so that we can make transformational change. How do we do that? How do we change that context without going through a real low?
Peter:
Well, there’s two ways. One way, which I just said, a significant emotional event is usually where you link massive pain to your existing condition to the point where you hit threshold and want to change, that’s a hugely what happens when you don’t listen to the signs for long enough, whether it’s a mini heart attack, because you’ve been eating too many cheerios or whether it’s something else, but there’s usually an enough signs on route whether it’s that gut feeling that says you shouldn’t really be doing business with people or whatever it is, so that’s the pain side. The way to shortcut that is to go for the pleasure side and that comes back to what we mentioned right at the beginning which is passion.
If you can ask yourself, if you can stop sleeping awake, if you can wake up from the hypnosis that most people are in where they’re walking around as a giant reaction machine to life rather than a proactive engaging machine to life, then you’re going to start being able to tap into that level of spirit that causes you to go out and be the person you want to be. You don’t have to wait for a heart attack before you put down the Pringles, you can get inspired by tapping into that level of passion.
So, ask yourself the question, what’s most important to you in life? Is it being able to see your grand kids get married, in which case carrying on smoking 20 cigarettes a day is probably not going to get you there, but if you’re not focused on what it is that you really want at a level that means more to you then appearances and surface level keeping up with the Joneses, then you’re not going to tap into that level of truth that’s inside that compels you to put down the cigarettes.
So, it’s about being able to tap our passion. Now, here’s the insight I want to lead people to, if you want to chunk it simple, we have two predominant centers in the body, we have a thinking center, which most people usually assume is somewhere in the mind or the head, but we also have a feeling center, which is call it the heart, the soul, the gut, it doesn’t matter. Most people will justify all, you know, all the stuff with the thinking center and the reason for that is the thinking center has access to a whole range of different tools, because it communicates in language, reasoning, deduction, logic, association, metaphor. It has access to a huge range of tools.
Now, the feeling center communicates in a very different language. It only knows two things, yes, no. Feels good, doesn’t feel good. Move towards, move away from. Occasionally it can be neutral as well, but generally speaking our instinct, our gut feel, our sixth sense, our soul, our heart, will tell us nine times out of ten will tell us the right thing to do, but then our mind kicks in and if the mind is sat across the table from the heart, the mind will usually win, not because it’s right, far from it, but because it has access to way more tools in the debating class than the heart does, so therefore if you want to tap into passion, if you want to move forward with congruency, there has to be alignment of the heart and mind.
There has to be alignment of the thinking center and the feeling center. From that place, you’ll go and create change that will last, but most people have only alignment with one of those and it’s either the heart says, you know, something, I really want to do this, I really feel that I could start my own business, I really feel that I would be great working with kids, but there’s no agreement with the mind, because the mind kicks in and says, ah, you know something? You don’t have the qualifications or what if this happens or blah blah, you know? Your mums always right saying that you should just settle down for the job and get what you get at the end of the week, so we sell out or if the other way around, the mind says, you know, I’ve been to a positive development seminar, I’m going to do this, I’m going to change, I’m sick of this. That’s it, I’m going to sit in front of the mirror and say, I am a millionaire in waiting and the heart says, you know something, not feeling it. Yeah, you got rent to pay on Friday, I don’t see the self-esteem reflected back.
So, you have this disparity between the two. The challenge is what unites the heart and the mind faster than anything else is fear, because we know exactly what we don’t want and we feel it. So, what we broadcast as a signal, we’re walking around vibrating with total congruency about what we don’t want is it any wonder that’s what we attract and keep perpetuating. If we can see, no, I want to start attracting the right kind of stuff in my life, I want to get on a track where I don’t want to have a heart attack to push me over the edge, get alignment with the heart and mind about what it is you do want and start moving our feet. From that place, you can create change that lasts.
Jason:
Okay, so, we should be in fear in order to get alignment?
Peter:
No, absolutely not. If you…
Jason:
Yeah, because we’re going to attract what we don’t want, right?
Peter:
What you don’t want, what I’m saying is the challenge most people use the machine effectively in reverse. You will move towards congruently what it is that you’re in alignment with with the heart and mind. Now, it doesn’t care if that’s what you don’t want or whether it is what you do want. Just like gravity doesn’t care if you’re a good guy or a bad guy. You step off a building, you’re going down, but most unconscious of that will inadvertently broadcast or have complete congruency with the thinking and feeling center about what they don’t want, because that’s what aligns it faster rather than say, wow, let me consciously now align what it is that I do want and start moving forward to make the machine work in my favor.
Jason:
Okay, I like what you said about making doing the affirmations, right, you used that example of, I’m a millionaire, I’m a millionaire, and it just doesn’t work because the heart doesn’t believe it. So, that doesn’t work, so how do we move that needle and make that belief, you know, in the congruency with the heart and the mind, which is what you’re talking about. Any more examples of that? Because I think that’s just a wonderful way to put it.
Peter:
Certainty, the challenge that puts the parameters around this, the border or the barrier to which we change is usually our comfort zone. Now, the thing with the comfort zone is that, I mean, if people knew what it was, they’d be very keen to get out of it, but it’s so limiting to our potential, but we get into this habitual level of living inside a comfort zone, through fear of what may be outside of it. Now, if we suddenly have this revelation, no, that’s it, I’m sick of tired of being sick a tired, I’m going to move forward. If we start, you know, trying to move too far outside of that, let’s say a mind takes a flag and plants it in the sand, you know, 200 yards outside of our comfort zone and says, I’m a millionaire. The heart is not buying in, but if you want to buy in, you place it just outside. If I’m used to earning $80,000 a year, then let’s stick to a $100,000. I can stretch that and get by and I’m okay. So, take smaller steps and build up habitually to start getting out the comfort zone you’re currently in.
Jason:
Because that’s believable to the heart or the subconscious. Maybe you want to say it that way too.
Peter:
Exactly.
Jason:
So, that’s a believable thing, but then, Peter, what do we make of these people that have not done incremental things, I mean, they’ve done exponential things. How do they do that?
Peter:
Again, they have a big enough why. Your heart will buy into the why, yet the mind won’t just, see for me, when I set goals, I set goals from a very different place, I don’t set traditional goals of trying to improve myself incrementally. I have two organizing principles and distinctions when it comes to goals. The first one is this, if I have any idea how I can achieve the goals I set, they’re too small. The how is none of my business.
Jason:
Love it, love it. That’s good. So, if you can plan that out and draw a mind map or a flow chart as to how, then the goal is too small.
Peter:
Absolutely. Why are you setting yourself up to something you know how to do? Where’s the growth? Where’s the room for magic? It also ties in with the second principle, which is the real purpose of setting a goal on my perspective is not to achieve the goal. So, if you’re setting goals to achieve them, it’s because you think you’re not enough with the goal – with not having what you think it is the goal represents, so therefore you’re coming from a place of lack.
For me, if you go to nature, look at the two rules that nature operates by. It operates by growth and contribution. Anything that doesn’t grow and contributes is taken out of the food chain. We just think we’re different, because we’re too egocentric half the time, but if you come from a place saying, well, you know something? For me, it’s not about achieving the goal, that’s not the purpose of setting a goal, the purpose of setting a goal is to see who do I need to become in order to achieve the goal, then if I miss it by 3 degrees, I’m not going to beat myself up if it means I’ve already grown another 10.
Jason:
Zig Ziglar said a great thing about that, he said, you know, it’s not what we get by reaching our goals that counts, it’s who we become by trying. I’ve always loved that quote.
Peter:
Every time, I’ll give you one other metaphor I think people will relate to. This is that imagine for example that you entered a competition three months ago, you were bored in a line, you picked up a leaflet that you filled out. It was a competition for around the world trip and you filled it in, you dropped it in the entry box, you forget all about it.
Anyway, you get home, there’s a voice mail saying you’ve won the trip and it’s an incredible around the world trip, 20 destinations all on your bucket list. We’re talking Machu Picchu, the pyramids, you know, the Northern Lights, I mean, all of these amazing things. First class, Learjet, cruise ship, five star hotels, you get the deal, yeah, three-six months trip. It’s like a lifetime. You can take two people with you. It’s just off the charts. You’re so excited, just put yourself there for a second and get in that frame. We do want we do as human beings when we experience a level of emotion, happy or sad, is we want to share it.
So, we pick up the phone to our best friend as we say, hey, guess what, you’re not going to believe what’s happened, I’ve won this amazing trip. I’ve checked it out, it’s all real, it’s booked, the tickets are on the way. I leave in two weeks, unbelievable. I’ve got all these destinations, we’re going to go, and before you say anything else they cut you off, they say, hang on a minute, well, what’s your final destinations, where do you end up? You’re like, well, hang on a minute, I don’t know. Let me tell you about the trip, we’re going to all these places. He goes, no, no, I don’t care about them, where do you finish? You’re like, well, I don’t really care, I’ve not looked that far ahead, I just want to enjoy the trip. That’s life.
For most people, that’s life. There’s so busy focused on the end destination, they completely missed the fact that this life is a trip and as a result of that, we get upset about all the different places because we are ignore the magic in it. The goal isn’t about where you’re ending up, the goal is about who do I need to become as a result of this that can compel me to become more of who I am and the best version of me possible otherwise why am I here?
Jason:
Yeah, great question.
Peter:
I know as I said earlier, it’s certainty not to spend 40 years of my life working nine to five in a job for somebody who doesn’t care enough to about me other than give me wages I’ve probably never met, so I can get to the end and I can get watch and wonder what happened.
Jason:
Right, right yeah. That’s unfortunately what so many have done with their lives. Peter and Fernando, please jump in here any moment. I don’t want to dominant the conversation, but Peter I do have one question. I’ve really enjoyed Simon Sinek’s book on Start with Why and his corresponding TED talk as I bet you do too, I just have a feeling you like that, you know, developing that why, do you have, you know, any more advice on how to find the way or is the why created, is it something we manufacture for ourselves or is it something we find, I ask myself that, you know what, I sort of struggle with why, you know, like in the financial world, I don’t need any more money, but it’s kind of a nice challenge and there are things you can do with money, you know, it’s not a need thing, it’s got to be a why thing, what can I do, what can I contribute, what influence can I have with it, right?
Peter:
Absolutely. You come back, I think it was 2007 and the biggest selling nonfiction book in the US was the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren and the reason that was so compelling for so many people is because there’s such a lack of purpose in most people’s lives. You know, we’re know we’re here for something better, so you’re saying is there a way to find the why? Well, ask better questions. Most people have no clue how to ask themselves empowering questions and question direct your focus, questions direct your thinking, it’s the way you get to program your own Sat Naf and so, ask better questions.
When was the last time you sat in front of the mirror turned off your iPhone and said, you know something? What really lights me up? What am I passionate about? Actually hold that level of self inquiry long enough to get a congruent answer rather than distract yourself with what’s the latest post on Facebook that no body cares about. It’s about asking yourself better question, lead yourself through, because the why is there. I told you earlier, the heart speaks in two tones. Yes, no. It will tell you, but it’s very faint.
You’ve got to shut the mind up in order to hear it because the mind is very loud, so if the mind is speaking, you’re never going to find your why, you may try and rationalize it, you may come up with some esoteric sounding level of why you think you can justify doing what you’re currently doing while something else based upon the fact it balances out on a SWOT analysis, but that’s not, you’re not going to get closer to understanding your truth of that coming from the heart. We all know what lights us up if we sit and think about it long enough, but the other thing I’d encourage people to do is to not get caught up in searching for their purpose, because then the mind kicks in again and takes you on a merry go around.
The analogy I’ll give there is if you take a honey bee for example and you get a honey bee that is, if you were to ask a honey bee what it’s purpose is in life is, most likely if a honey bee could understand the question, it would turn around and say, well, my purpose is to make honey, that’s what honey bees do, but you and I are no different. You and I from a higher level of awareness would know that the real purpose of a honey bee isn’t to make honey. The purpose of a honey bee is to play a vital part in the ecosystem of life on a global scale by pollinating flowers and it’s on route to collecting it’s nectar to make its honey.
Now, if you could imagine a honey bee sitting there to its friends saying, you know something, I just don’t think it’s this honey thing, I think there’s something deeper to my life, I’m going to go and sit here. I’m going to go fly up and sit on a mountain top for awhile and figure it out and I’m going to collect any more honey or make any more honey until I figure it out. I mean, it’s ludicrous. What would happen in that scenario is the real purpose of the honey bee would never get unfolded, so rather than sit there and wonder and beat ourselves up about what is the why, keep moving your feet in the direction of where your heart is telling you you lit up and allow it to present itself in a way that may show up rather than make it into this big, what am I doing this? Why am I there? That’s just a counter balance to the frustration to the fact that you’ve been listening to the mind for too long, if that makes sense.
Fernando:
Peter, what you’re describing reminds me of the work of Eckhart Tolle. He’s a highly acclaimed spiritual leader and teacher. He..
Peter:
I know Eckhart very well.
Fernando:
Yeah, so I read his The Power of Now book. I resonated strongly with it. In his case, he also found, I think, his message when he hit bottom, if I remember correctly, he found himself sleeping on a bench park after going through some real tough times and he asked some deep questions and he came back with the answer and his answer is really the concept of The Power of Now is to live in the moment and I do understand the concept and I know that suffering has to do with living in the past or the future as far as your thoughts are concerned, but the difficulty I think for me and probably I would say for most people is the day to day awareness of being in the moment. I understand the concept, I know how important that is, but how do you, for lack of a better word, prevent yourself from falling back into the same old routine and when I hear an inspirational talk like you just did, how do I keep this on a day to day basis as part of my life?
Peter:
What a wonderful question Fernando and if you permit me, I’ll share with you what I believe to be my answer. I remind people, I don’t have any answers, I only have my answers, and if they’re happy to point in those directions that are helpful, then that’s great. I’m not here and certainly not at the emotional level i used to be where I needed to be right in order to feel good about what I’m saying, but there’s three general ways that I’ve found that will allow people to move forward in that direction. The first is the rarest and that’s what happened to Eckhart Tolle when he was at his rock bottom and he was depressed, he was in bed, and he had suicidal thoughts, and actually came up with the phrase, I can’t live with myself any longer, and then actually his ego dissolved in the understanding of the duality that’s revealed in that question of I can not live with myself, which means I can’t live with myself, there must be two with me.
That awareness is what triggered the disillusion of his ego. Now, that is the basis of most high level spiritual teachers throughout history that have affected people. They have an experienced beyond the normal, but that’s not available to 99.9% of the population. The other way to do it is immersive experience. If you go and become a monk or a zen master, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time living in monasteries with zen masters and studying the different ways monks learn and I’m certainty not a zen master, my lady will vouch that I’m certainty not a monk, but there is a way to be able to do that if you do a full on immersive experience, but again, that’s not available to most people, which leaves the third way and the third way is to little and often, you know, we’re cybernetic creatures, we’re creatures of habit by design, yeah, it has to be little and often.
You will condition yourself, because your body and your mind are 24/7 constant giant adaption machines to external environment or internal environment for thoughts. We’re all familiar of the concept that if we as an adaption machine physically, are constantly 24/7 adapting to our environment. If that environment is McDonalds six times a week, your body is going to adapt to it, trust me. If it’s going to the gym six times a week and doing live, fresh juices, it’s going to adapt to that. If it’s sleeping two hours a night for a week, you’ll adapt to that in a way that burns out your adrenals. If you’re sleeping long, you get the point. So, we’re used to the physical aspect to where the body will constantly, 24/7 adapt from the day we were born, to the day we’re dying to the environment we consistently introduce it to or condition it to, but what most people aren’t aware of, they usually forget, is that the mind is exactly the same.
If you go to the gym and you’ve never trained arms and you’re trying to lift dumbbells, you’re not going to get fit or strong, you’re going to get sore, but overtime, your body responds and you’re going to build your biceps. If you are trying to go into a meditation state and get into a Theta brain wave state and all you’re normally used to do is watching TV and doing social media, yeah, you’re not going to get to a zen place, you’re going to get to a frustrated place, but if you can do it over time, that’s why consistency is so important.
I have a morning routine where by, this morning I have a meditation room in my house, I go and quiet my mind. I seek repose. I sit in silence, it conditions to mind for you to be able to control it, because the challenge is most people identify themselves with their mind and they can’t separate that where as it only takes a little bit of self-reflection to understand the truth that of course you’re not your mind, just as you’re not your body.
There’s a sense of you that’s way beyond that, that’s far more powerful. The you tells the body to move, the body will move, but you’re not your body, because you got a very different body and that’s the one where you’re five years old or when you’re 90s years old, but it’s still the same you. It can’t be the mind, because the sense of you because so alive when you’re standing on a beach looking at the sunset holding the hand of somebody you love and the mind is in complete silence, but you feel alive. So, you can’t be the mind. That essence of who you are is behind that and if you can get in touch of that even if it’s for a little time, yeah, even if you go into the gym and just lifting a couple of weights everyday, you’re going to respond. So, don’t try to pray for instantaneous enlightenment. Odds are against you.
Fernando:
Makes sense.
Peter:
If you want to go and live with the monks and spend 20 years on a mountain, then be my guest, but that’s available to most people that have a family, kids, and a mortgage to pay, but what is available for everybody is to spend a little bit of time everyday, five minute, ten minutes, look up the heart math guide and get into a state of coherency and train yourself. Get into a state of where you used to be in quiet and turning off the phone, even if it’s leaving it at home when you go to a restaurant. Start to condition yourself, so you can unplug on your terms rather than get sucked into life on its terms, which is way too fast moving for most people these days and stress is usually a result versus becoming a master of our own thinking.
Fernando:
Peter, one other thing I’d like to ask you, you know there’s some big questions that I think most people question have, why are here, what’s the purpose of it all, I remember watching Tedx Talk that you had where you describe the unbelievable gruesome week long marathon you undertook across the Sahara Desert.
Jason:
And the pictures of the feet. That was bad.
Peter:
Don’t do it!
Jason:
Good advise.
Fernando:
But my question is, it seems that something as extreme as that bring you to a place of quietness and self-retrospect that allows you to answer some of these big question and I’m curious, did you get to your answer to why are we here and what’ the purpose of it all?
Peter:
Certainty not in the desert, although the question why am I here was certainty asked on two, but it wasn’t in context of the bigger picture, trust me. Obviously, I’ve thought of that. I’m a philosopher. I’ve studied some of the great minds in history and I’ve spent many, many years looking at different levels of questions, existence and evolution, philosophy, theology, religion, spirituality, and so that question obviously is usually the ultimate question and, again, I have an answer, and it’s the only answer for me. What I’m saying and what I’m seeing a lot is the real purpose of why I feel I’m here is to become the best expression of who I am that I can be and that is a journey, it’s not a destination as we said earlier.
Buddha wasn’t born enlighten. He was born Prince Siddhartha who then became a monk who eventually became Buddha. Who are we if we’re becoming better day by day, if we’re trying to be a better father or better athlete, a better person, whatever level, that’s the path why we’re here to express who we are and walk our truth. I believe, you know, the reason I’m here is to walk my truth. Now, my truth can evolve as hopefully it should do. We don’t get to vote on whether we mature physically. That’s non-negotiable. No matter what the pharmaceutical and the beauty and cosmetic industry will try and tell you, but whether we mature emotionally is a choice and it’s a choice most people have forgot they have.
So, if we can evolve and be committed to our truth for whatever that is your heart will tell you, your mind will tell you, but your heart will tell you what that is, then to become the best expression through those two laws of nature that I mentioned earlier to become a better person by growing emotionally, spirituality, physically, etc, and also being able to contribute. I’m a great believer that true power, true greatness is expressed in your portion to your willingness to serve beyond yourself. If we can get out of our egotistical what’s in it for me and stop walking around all, why am I here? What can I get out of life? And start asking the question, what does life want from me? We can start shifting our level of thinking to start getting in touch with the energy of those questions.
Will we ever find it? I don’t care. I’m happy to live in the space of a question, certainty at that level and sudden to the fact there’s an intelligence that beats my heart and heals my cuts that I can’t stop that is obviously a lot smarter than I am. If you want to put it into different levels of context, then here’s a game, I don’t want to take too much time here guys, but let me finish on this idea.
If you imagine asking yourself the question of, you’re a slug and you ask yourself what’s the purpose of life, you’d probably say is to munch lettuce leaves and leave sticky trails, because that’s about it. You go to an ant and you ask an ant what’s the purpose of life and it says, oof, look at that slug over there. What a boring life, no. An ant, the real purpose of life to be part of a colony, be part of a team to have structure, order, hierarchy, all of that stuff, you know, purpose, that’s the real meaning of life.
Now, the slug has no conceptual understanding of the life of an ant, but as the ant crawls over the toe of a hen, you ask the hen, yeah, what’s the purpose of life and the hen looks at the ant and says, look at those, complete autonomons, dealing with pheromones, serving a queen they’ve never met, you know, all expendable to the bigger cause. No, that’s not where it’s at. Now, a hen, a hen is where it’s at. I get to strut around, I’ve got freedom of choice, freedom of will, yeah, I’ve got all different aspects of life that I can strut around and be with other hens. What a much, much better life. Now, the hen has no conceptual understanding that it’s in a poultry farm. It’s just awareness isn’t big enough just as the ant has no conceptual understanding of the life of a hen.
Now, we look at the hen and think, pfft, hen, lunch, but we have conceptual understanding of what’s the next level above us. It’s not because we’re not intelligent or smart, the hen thinks it’s far smarter than the ant that thinks it’s smarter than the slug. It’s just that our base isn’t big enough. So, if you can surrender to live in the space of a question and say, listen, I don’t know what the answers are, but I’m not going to get caught up on invalidating my life as a result of that. So, if I can come from a place of saying, I’m just going to live the best life that I can live with the best person who I can be and wherever that takes me, I’m sure it’s in tune with why I’m here, then it’s not a bad deal in my book.
Jason:
That is very well put. Very profound. No question. It reminds me of this saying, you know, human beings are the only beings for whom being is an issue and you’ve addressed a lot of these big questions about that today and about other things. So, that’s just fantastic and I know we’ve got to wrap up, but I just want to quickly ask you before you go, Peter, about your energy company. I mean, you really get involved in some fascinating businesses and you’ve been very successful about that. Can you give us an update before you go?
Peter:
Certainty. If you’re talking about thinking big and how..
Jason:
That’s thinking really big.
Peter:
Yeah, when I said earlier the purpose of the goal is, you know, if I have any idea how I can achieve it, it’s too small, well this qualified, but yeah, it was several years ago I came across the concept of space-based solar, which for those listening that have come across it is a validated concept of being able to put solar panels instead of on roof tops where every night it gets dark and therefore energy is intermittent, if you were to put it in orbit where the sun never sets, you can transmit that energy 24/7 like a radio signal, like a cellphone signal, back to earth to provide constant, clean, deliverable energy on demand, broadcast anywhere on the planet in real time.
I looked at that and I’m an entrepreneur, not an engineer, but I understand business cases and it was an ambitious attempt. I put an incredible team together and over several years, we pushed space-based solar as a technology to a point of commercialization whereby we got it to several governments involved and it’s now on the energy agendas of places like China, places like Japan, places like India, and I’m very proud of the role we were able to play in being able to move space-based solar into the 21st in a way that it’s going to be accelerated from it’s commercialization.
Now, as a cherry for ourselves to bite, it was too big, but you have to be able to partner with a government I think at that level and, again, we hosted symposiums in China, we worked extensively with different levels of government representatives certainty in the US, and we very proudly to say took the baton and pushed that forward. Will it happen in the next ten years? It’ll certainty have a lot more traction than it did. Will we see the first commercial application of space-based solar power in the next 20 years? Yes, absolutely. It’s an inevitable technology. There’s several futurists, George Friedman being one of them that thinks space-based solar will provide a majority of the world’s energy within the next 50 to 80 years and it makes sense. I’m very proud of what I’ve been able to do to be able to push that forward. I’ve put a lot of my personal fortune into that.
And right now, I’m also focused on being able to put a project, which I’ve very proud of in Rajasthan to build out Indian ground-base traditional solar farms to help put 250,000 families into a clean energy environment in India and really, again, that’s where I’m focused on the energy side, but as I said at the beginning, everywhere I look and talk about practice what you preach, my heart tells me for the last, you know, 12 months, that everything that I’m doing is leading me towards being able to focus more on sharing my message with people and helping them.
I’m writing a book right now called I Am: The Power of Reinventing Yourself, which would be out in the first quarter of 2015, which is going to be a game changer for understanding life and I’m working on, I’ve got a mentorship program, which I work with high-level CEOs on being able to help them shift their consciousness as well as their business. So, that’s really my focus right now, but the energy side is certainty something that I’m also passionate about being able to help people, because goodness knows the world, the country, and the planet need it.
Jason:
Fantastic. Well, Peter, very, very interesting. You’ve got an incredible adventure ahead of you and an incredible story behind you. So, keep up the good work and keep doing great things and thank you for joining us. Fernando, thank you for co-hosting. You were right. Peter’s work is phenomenal. I’m glad that we got him on the show.
Fernando:
One more question, Jason, if you don’t mind. I’m sorry for interrupting, but this is kind of an interesting. Peter, one of your companies is the World Wide Health Corporation. Do you have any break through anti-aging product that you’re coming out with that we can use?
Peter:
Well, the World Wide Health Corporation I founded in 1997. I sold it in 2005. It’s still going strong. It was actually re-sold to another big company couple of years later, but I mean, health is one of my passions and I can tell you that the cutting age of the sciences that I spend a lot of time at, you know, everything from the quantum physics, non-linear dynamics, chaos theory to advance theoretical and particle physics is a lot of my passion right now, just understand the nature of life.
In those areas because of what’s been happening over the last, you know, experiential levels of growth in the last few years, there are so many new and exciting discoveries around aging and anti-aging. What has to happen is that the old God needs to move out of the way, you know, your traditional pharmaceutical-based model is nothing about, you know, treating symptoms. It’s like when people tell me that say, oh, I’m sick, I’m going to the doctor. I’m like, well, no disrespect, but why would you go to a doctor if you were sick? You know? A doctor has never studied health. If I’m sick, I want to get healthy, I want to see to somebody who has studied health and doctors have never studied health, they’ve only studied sickness. Now that’s not..
Jason:
Doctors are great if you’re actually like bleeding. That’s when you go to a doctor.
Peter:
Yeah, immediate implications of trauma, pharmaceutical has a very valid place, but doctors, it’s not their fault. They are some of the most kind, congenerate, considerate, and people want to help people, that’s why they got into the profession, but they’re trained and their training is funded by pharmaceutical companies who are studying sickness and how to maintain and treat symptoms of sickness, not cure anything. So, that old God has to move out of the way. If you want to health and anti-aging, go talk to somebody who has studied it.
Again, with the internet and the freedom of information out there, there’s some very, very exciting stuff that’s coming out. I don’t want to mention anything specifically here, because it’s not the place for it, but it doesn’t take a lot of you to start looking at different aspect. I was approached twice today, today, by business opportunities looking for funding on clinic trials of stuff that is just off the charts when it comes to most degenerative diseases now. We’re not far off guys from a real revolution in that.
Fernando:
That’s great.
Jason:
I would agree and I’ve been studying the longevity stuff for awhile now. We’re actually a new show on that, it’s called the Longevity and Biohacking show, so Fernando, I’m glad you asked that question before he left us. That’s just a fascinating area.
Peter:
The last thing I’ll just leave on with that., guys, is that magic pills, potions, and cures, and discoveries are absolutely no substitute for doing what I said earlier, the little and often day to day stuff. If you’re getting up and having an espresso versus a live green juice, then you know, you’re on a certain track. Diet and exercise is something you can take charge of in a heart beat. I have a whole straight talk on health and vitality, but some that side, it’s still about not substituting ownership of that for ourselves. You know, that’s personal responsibilities is the core of everything we’ve spoke about this last hour, but again, thank you gentleman, thank you Jason, thank you Fernando for the invite, it’s always been a pleasure to share and I hope this has been of some value.
Jason:
Thanks Peter.
Fernando:
It’s been excellent. Thank you.
Announcer:
This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, all rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email [email protected]. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of Empowered Investor Network Inc. exclusively.
