Interviewer: Boom. Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here with an incredible audio master class for you today: Free Your Mind and Heart; Live the Life You Desire, with Kip Brooks. Now who is Kip Brooks? Well, he’s a certified trainer and master practitioner of neurolinguistics programming and holds certificates in leadership development, neuroscience, mental and emotional release, and hypnosis from the Association for Integrative Psychology.

He’s a bestselling author, international speaker, and a breakthrough coach and cofounder of Mental and Emotional Freedom. So, get ready to dive into this master class after we thank our sponsor. So, Kip, say what’s up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know.

Interviewee: What is up, Fire Nation? This has been a long time coming. I said this is actually something you don’t even know, JLD, is I set this as a goal when I first heard your podcast years ago.

Interviewer: Whoa.

Interviewee: I guess 2014. I was like, “I’m gonna be on that show.” I was like, “I’ve got to be a part of that” and then actually – interestingly enough – lost everything, literally lived out of my car for a little while – not because of anything on the show – but–

Interviewer: But you followed some advice from the show. You lost everything. You became a bum.

Interviewee: Yeah, and then, yeah, from things that I learned from following the show and everything else I learned, back on top and better than ever. So, yeah, a lot of people don’t realize that I did that because, actually, friends at the time didn’t even really know. Very few people had any clue and, yeah, climbed back out and so grateful for it. Yeah, I wanted to start this off, actually, with giving a huge gratitude to you, JLD, for the work you’re doing and I’d like to say it’s helped me tremendously. I’ve learned so much from past guests and yeah, I’m so honored to be here and hopefully be a part of the same journey for somebody else.

Interviewer: Well, listen brother, I receive that gratitude and I really appreciate it and I just want to say congratulations. Goal accomplished. You are now on Entrepreneurs on Fire four years after setting that goal. So, Fire Nation, what goals are you setting? Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, guess what? You land amongst the stars. And I know some of you guys cringe when I say that because it’s kind of corny, but hey, I love it. So, it’s my show.

But Kip, what I want to really turn the spotlight and focus on today is this master class that we’ve created for Fire Nation. And the title of this master class is Free Your Mind and Heart; Live the Life You Desire. These are things that I feel like people really do want. What do they really want? They want to live the life they desire, but a lot of people don’t recognize that comes from freeing your mind and your heart. We’re going to kind of be going through that process today.

So, the first thing I want to dive into around this topic is overcoming depression because this is something that is so much more prevalent out there in the world today that people talk about, No.1. No. 2, it’s so much more prevalent in the entrepreneurial world than we talk about. That’s No. 2. And, for me, a lot of people say like, “John, you always sound so happy and upbeat and energized on Entrepreneurs on Fire” and I am because I’m talking to great people, but that’s not me 24 hours a day. I have my ups. I have my downs.

I have my low points, my struggles, my times that I’m just like, “Yuck.” I don’t even want to get out of bed in the morning because it’s just living life. It’s being a human being. So, Kip, let’s talk about overcoming depression. What’s the process around that?

Interviewee: Step No. 1 of anything really is you know we have a five step process to get people through whatever they need to overcome and get them to their goals – even if they’re not technically trying to overcome anything in their mind – but to get anywhere, we’ve gotta overcome something, right, to get to some new territory and step one is awareness. Now typically, groups like Fire Nation already have a pretty good awareness because they’re here, right? They’re looking for more information, a better way to do things.

With depression or any mental and emotional issues, it’s tapping into that, figuring out where it comes from and a huge part of it so often – it’s so sad – it comes from comparison. You know we’re always comparing to, “Oh, they’ve got the better car. They’ve got the better house. They have the better family” and it’s all these comparisons and – when we do that – we never come up as the winner, right? You know I love it.

One of my mentors, Jack Canfield, once told me he said, “If you’re gonna compare yourself to John McElroy – his tennis skills – well compare your skills to not exploding every chance something doesn’t go your way to his.” He’s like, “Keep it fair.” And that really opened up my mind. I said, “You’re right.” I won’t go into all the boring statistics and everything. You can Google those all day long. But yeah, depression, anxiety, and all these “mental disorders” are on the rise and especially with social media because everybody only puts on social media the good stuff, right?

Very few people get 100 percent real there and it’s like, “Hey, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad.” So, it’s even more in our face. It’s constantly comparing ourselves to thinking about what we don’t have and not looking behind the scenes of that. But being able to overcome it just starts with getting that awareness and realizing where it comes from and then changing our language.

Interviewer: Let me jump in here for a second, Kip, because I’m such a big believer in this, Fire Nation, that I want to give you kind of my perspective as well. There are words that I do live by. There are a lot of words that I live by, granted, but these are definite words that I live by – compare and despair. If you compare yourself to other people, you are just going to despair. I mean I get it. It’s normal. It’s part of being a human being to compare, but if you just sit around and do that, you’re gonna drive yourself crazy because like what?

If somebody compares themselves you know they’re just starting their podcast today to me, of course, you’re gonna be a little despair of what I’ve accomplished. But if I compared myself day one to other people, I would have despaired. Or what if right now, today, I compare myself to Mark Cuban or Richard Branson or Elon Musk and I’m like, “Oh, my God, look what they’ve accomplished.” It never stops. When you play that comparison game, it literally never stops. And Kip, I’m a huge believer that you should be comparing yourself to one person and that one person that you compare yourself to is you yesterday.

And if you’re winning that comparison, you’re winning at life. When Kip hit the lowest points that he hit, then all he had to do was compare himself to yesterday and say, “Hey, am I a little bit better than that lowest point?” And then over time – over these four years – now guess what? He’s joining us on Entrepreneurs on Fire talking about his journey. So, Kip, back to you. Let’s talk about this and let’s then move into turning it all around.

Interviewee: I love the word focus as well, you know follow one course until success and that’s a huge part of it. Where are you focusing? Where is your language directing your attention? I have a huge background. I’m a certified master practitioner and training in NLP – neurolinguistics programming – and I know some of your past guests have been as well. And in that study – in the study of NLP –they’ve discovered that there’s two million bits of information coming in at us every single second. Now more studies more recently actually say it’s way more than that two million bits, but all the studies say that we are only consciously aware of 126 bits.

So, if you think of like a waterfall of information coming over at you and it’s two million drops every single second, you can only drink 126 of those droplets. One of my mentors – Dr. Matt James – says, “Imagine two million toothpicks falling and you can only grab 126 of them. Which 126 are you grabbing?” When we’re comparing ourselves to everyone else, we’re focusing on what makes them good and what makes us look weak or focusing on our shortcomings.

And if we change that, we have the ability. That’s the beautiful part of it is we have the ability to change which 126 we’re grabbing. It’s our hand going in that pile. It’s our eyes looking into that picture. We just have to gain that awareness and communicate with ourselves a little differently and build rapport with that 126 of our choosing. Once you do, I mean it’s so simple, but it’s so impactful and often that’s what gives everybody their aha moment where something switches and, boom, their life starts changing in that moment.

Interviewer: So, I want to talk about mindset versus mind state. I mean these are things that I don’t think people really talk a lot about – the difference between actual mindset and mind state. So, can you maybe talk about those two words and then what actually you’ve found through studying them?

Interviewee: I came up with mind state actually just over a year and a half ago probably during a presentation for a supplement company and they wanted me to teach something a little different to some of their people coming in and their sales team to reach those higher levels. It’s like you know we’re teaching them all this positive thinking and all this mindset stuff and they’re hyped up at the event or the training and then they leave and it just kind of goes away. The issue is we hear all the time, “Positive thinking, positive thinking.”

There have been books upon books written about it – movies, songs, everything – and it’s a beautiful idea and I’m totally for positive thinking. The problem with positive thinking is you actually have to think about it and when you’re already in a negative mindset, already kind of in a negative place – and I’m not even talking about true depression, I’m just talking about even being down, feeling blue – you’re already thinking negative. So, to think positive, you’ve got to really rise up and it becomes a combative state going on in your mind.

The main problem is when we have any mindset whatsoever our body takes on a posture. So, if you ask someone you know, “Sit like a depressed person would.” Everyone’s shoulders slump forward, roll in a little bit because you’re trying to protect the heart subconsciously, and head stoops down and you know you just kind of curl up almost in a fetal position. And you get in that position and try to think happy thoughts. You can watch a happy movie. You can do whatever. You can’t break out of it. So, what I started figuring out is, “Well, we can reverse that. Get people to stand in a positive body posture in a power stance.”

We have a youth empowerment division of our company and – in these camps we run for kids – we teach them it’s like, “Stand in your superhero stance.” And in that stance, the same thing, you can’t experience those low feelings. So, that becomes mind state because it’s like a Trojan horse that you’re sending into your mind through your body because – at a cellular level – our minds know, “Okay, when I’m in this particular body posture, this stance, I don’t feel the way I’m feeling.” And as long as you hold that posture, those feelings will begin to shift because your subconscious mind cannot make you or your body a liar.

So, it’s gonna give in so as long as you hold that stance. And it was actually taken to a level of going into mental institutions and working with bipolar and manic depressives and all they did is they assigned a staff member to each patient and had them follow them around and make sure they kept a smile on their face the majority of the day. And within two weeks, they had manic depressive – they claimed – were completely cured with no other treatment just wearing a smile and walking like they were happy.

It’s so powerful and people come up to me at sales trainings I do or even just out and about who happen to know who I am and they walk up to me and it’s like, “Oh, I’m having this trouble in my relationship or whatever area in my life.” And as you’re standing there, their shoulders are slumped forward, they’re looking down. They’re not standing in an empowered state and you just fix that posturing for them and it’s like a switch. Automatically, there’s a brightness in their eyes, their language changes. It’s magical and it’s so simple and anyone can do it.

It’s just being consciously aware of, “Okay, what am I feeling? Okay, am I posturing that? Am I mimicking that behavior or am I acting as if? How do I want to be?” and take on that posture. That really helps shift that mindset so the positive thinking is much easier to pull off.

Interviewer: Fire Nation, one thing that I’ve actually started doing every single night – and I don’t honestly know if this works – I think it does because I feel like I wake up a little more happy, but as I’m laying in bed and I’m just about to fall asleep – I can feel myself starting to drift off – I just smile. I smile and I don't know when I started doing this. It was a couple years ago. I just kind of smiled even if it was a bad day or even if I wasn’t necessarily feeling great. I just smiled. I just put the corners of my mouth upwards and I smiled and I do this every night, I smile. And I wake up and you know that’s that.

And again, I’m not saying this has been some amazing change for me. I’m not positive, but I’d like to think that, hey, if I’m going to bed with at least or falling asleep with a smile on my face or having recently been on my face that my dreams might be a little happier, that my mind state and my mindset might be a little bit better and that when I wake up I might be. You know it’s just these little things can really matter and posture too. Posture, I mean like that’s why I do all these interviews standing up so my diaphragm is expanded and my shoulders are back and I’m being able to bring the JLD French out in me and I’m just flailing my arms everywhere.

I’m not hunched over my computer sitting down like, “Ah” like I’m just back posture, shoulders back. And honestly, I smile. Right now, I’m smiling and I wonder if you could just tell that a second before I actually wasn’t smiling, but now I am smiling? You can hear in the voice. Even when you can’t see my face, you can hear my smile. So, just think about those things, Fire Nation. Try these things because sometimes they will just make huge differences for you. Sometimes they’ll make very small and imperceptible changes to you that maybe you don’t even recognize for weeks or months or years but, believe me, you do these things they really do add up.

And one thing that I see a lot of people struggle with – especially in this day and age, Kip – is baggage and just their inability to release the baggage that they may have had from you know any certain things that have gone throughout their life. I mean I definitely had baggage coming back from war. I dealt with PTSD after spending 13 months in Iraq. There was definitely baggage there and I carried that with me and I still – to this day I’m sure – have legitimate baggage from that. I mean there’s always gonna be residue from these past traumatic experiences. So, what do you have to say around releasing baggage?

Interviewee: It’s much easier than we’re told. You know look at the majority of commercials now are all about medication, right? We’ve shifted from bringing any kind of healing or curing from inside and taking it outside. We’re looking for the solution out there somewhere and we have so much more ability in our bodies and in our head than we give ourselves credit for. And in all honesty, we’re just not taught that way and we trust doctors in these commercials instead of looking for other solutions first. Typically, people go through the medical world backwards, you know.

They start with the meds and maybe even surgeries and then – when that doesn’t work for different illnesses – then, all of a sudden, they start looking for natural ways. It’s like, “Oh, you should have started there. You would have saved yourself so much.” And with baggage, my cofounder and wife, partner, my rock, we both have battled our own depression. I was suicidal at eight years old. She was severely depressed through her teenage years and that’s what brought both of us here. You know we spent years on meds and things just believing that and so many clients I’ve worked with in this area and students have had the same thing.

You start to take that baggage on as not just a baggage where you keep your issues, your skeletons, but it actually becomes an identity. And then once you take it as an identity – taking ownership of it – and it starts to own you. Once we can shake people up a little bit and get them to realize that, “No, that’s not you. Those are things that happened, absolutely, and many times it’s horrendous things.” I’ve worked with clients with so many different phobias and PTSD and so many other things and it’s we’re not saying anything about you know you have the right to go through the emotions in the moment, it’s when those emotions stay around for years and years. That doesn’t have to happen.

The problem is we’re not taught this unless you go looking for it and know it exists you know these techniques. And once you begin to release that baggage, it’s just it’s freeing. The reason why we hold onto baggage so much is you know everyone knows we have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind and our subconscious mind – one of the prime directives of it – is preserving learnings and then self-protection. So, it goes in kind of like a big claw machine where the kids are in an arcade and they’re trying to scoop up the toy with the claw. The problem is it never picks anything up. But the unconscious mind, subconscious mind, is a lot like that.

It’s just this claw that goes in on any significant, emotional event and it’s trying to pick up that learning. The problem is it doesn’t know the difference between the emotion and the knowledge. So, it scoops up all of it and it packs it in and – as a society – we’re taught that when we start going through emotions – especially in the States – we’re taught to sweep it under a rug, medicate it, drink it away, whatever, don't deal with it. Especially for men, but even more so now for women than it’s ever been because they’re stepping into the workforce, coming on strong, and they’re supposed to “be these strong, independent women.”

So, they’re packing it away too and, actually, women have the highest rate of depression of any age group in the middle aged community where they’re working into these executive positions because they’re not allowed – or they believe they’re not allowed – to deal with these things. And so this baggage just gets packed away even more and then – when it rises to the top – the subconscious mind will actually present it later on in life when you are ready to deal with it and in Hawaiian cultures and other aboriginal cultures, they actually celebrate when that happens.

They’ll actually have ceremonies when it’s big, large, pieces of baggage that have come up. But in most culture now, we’re taught, “Oh, no, that’s bad” and we pack it back down more and it becomes like holding a beach ball under water. You can hold it just under the rim, but the harder you try to push it down, the more the pressure’s gonna push back and – sooner or later – you’re not gonna be able to hold that air under the water and it’s gonna come out and it’s gonna come out at an inconvenient time most likely.

So, being able to deal with that, having the proper tools to just see things differently and communicate them differently to yourselves and to each other is so empowering and allows us to actually pick up on what those learnings are because usually, the emotion is actually packed so tight around it and it’s so intense that we never even recognizing the learnings. It’s a cheesy quote so many people hate, but it’s like, “There’s a bright light.”

From everything, “There’s a bright side. There’s a silver lining.” And there really is. It doesn’t necessarily take away the pain of what happened, but there is a learning in there and it can be something very empowering. It’s just we usually can’t see it because of all that emotional baggage that’s piled up there and our limiting beliefs that come from those events.

Interviewer: I mean, Fire Nation knows, Kip, that I love corny quotes. So, keep those things coming. You’ll make me look less bad and less corny. But just let’s sum this up for us. In one sentence, what is one, single tip that you can give us about releasing baggage?

Interviewee: Visualize yourself in that instance, in that event, and then actually disassociate from yourself which means basically step out of your body in that picture. Step out of it and visualize yourself just walking around it. That sounds so ridiculous to people until we actually run them through it and then they’re like “Wow, I just felt this pressure release.”

And actually, the further away from it you walk and the more you walk around it, even I had a colleague of mine once run me through a process where you stepped out and walked over to the other person’s side of it and he’s like, “I’m gonna help you see the other side of it.” I was like, “There’s no way. I’m in the right.” Then I walked over to it and I was like, “Oh, wow. I was a little bit of a jerk there.”

Interviewer: Fire Nation, there’s always the other side. I mean you know you try these things because you just never know. I mean I just gotta say that for people that are just unwilling to accept change, for people that are unwilling to try something, then how’s that working out for you? If it’s working out for you, great, awesome, but if you are struggling, if you’re having struggle with depression and this weight, this baggage you know this is around here, then it’s worth at least giving it a try because it really just might work. And Fire Nation, we have some more value bombs coming your way. We’re gonna take a quick little chat with Billy Jean and then we’ll be right back.

So, Kip, I love this quote, “Conscious mind is the goal setter, unconscious mind is the goal getter.” So one more time the conscious mind, that’s the goal setter. It sets the goals. The unconscious mind is the goal getter. It goes and accomplishes and gets those goals. Talk that out a little bit.

Interviewee: The subconscious mind is basically a five year old. So, it needs to be very simple for the subconscious mind, but there’s certain rules that apply and we need to put a date on it, but we talk – Most people set goals as, “I’m going to” or “Someday, I’ll” or “One day I will do this” and well, to the subconscious mind it’s like, “Well, okay, going to means I’m not doing it now. One day is not today. Someday is nowhere on the calendar” and so it never feels the urge to take action.

So, if you actually state your goals in the present saying, “I am currently enjoying this. I am so happy and grateful that right now, I am living in my mansion in Malibu, looking over the ocean” and say it like it’s happening right now. Once again, like we mentioned earlier, the subconscious mind will not allow us to be a liar. So, if we hold onto that and focus on that picture and really keep it ingrained in us, our subconscious mind will start triggering the behaviors of the person that has that to go and get it.

When I work with different clients on this, that’s one of the things they’ll bring up is like, “Well, that’s a lie. I can’t say that.” It’s like, “No, no, no, no, no. It’s not a lie. It’s telling the truth in advance. If you really want it and you’re willing to put in the work to get it, then that’s all it is. You’re telling the truth in advance. You’re not lying. Make it happen. Make it the truth. Don’t shy away from it because right now it may not “be true.” Go get it. Make it yours. You can’t have that desire if it’s not possible for you.”

Interviewer: I think a lot of people – especially the entrepreneurial world – do a really job managing stress. I mean we have so much on our plate. You know sometimes when we’re solo producers, we’re trying to do everything You know we’re trying to create our content, run our website, do the backend, do the frontend, be the face, you know be the this, be the that, and there’s just so much going on and it’s so overwhelming. So, we – as entrepreneurs – need to become good at managing stress because it’s just part of life. It’s part of the day-to-day that we signed up for. So, how do we become better at managing stress?

Interviewee: One of the prime directives with the unconscious mind – the subconscious mind – is it takes everything personally and we, as people, tend to just follow right in with that and usually stress typically comes from doing something you really don’t want to do, agreeing to things we don’t want to do. And because we program ourselves – you know we’re programmed from a very young age to – oh, be polite and it’s nice to do things for people and it’s fantastic. I love helping other people. I love doing pro bono work. I’m very passionate about what I do.

But we need to get selective, for one, on what we agree to. The quote of, “If it’s not a hell yes, then it’s a no.” And I think I actually first hear that on your podcast one day and I love it. I read the book, followed it, and incorporated it in my life. And that’s the biggest thing people need to do. Now stress in the moment, there’s gonna be stress, but there is good stress and bad stress and people usually label it all under one, but there actually is good stress and it’s motivating. Bruce Springsteen is stressed before he steps on stage, but he says he’s like, “That’s when I know I’m ready.” He’s like, “If I don’t throw up before I go, then I don’t love it enough.”

So, there is the difference in being able to recognize what’s the good from it and what’s the “negative” from it. And in those states where things like anxiety start kicking in or just high stress – however you want to call it – it’s actually a process like we just talked about – that disassociation technique – and with something that’s future-based because we can’t be stressed about something that happened in the past really. That becomes guilt. What we’re stressed about is something that’s about to happen. Well, it hasn’t happened yet, so we have complete control over the steps we take to get there.

So, kind of visualize yourself going 15 minutes or so past that event and just really take ownership and visualize this bright, beautiful picture in your mind of it completing successfully and then just lock that in and live there. Enjoy it and then come back to now and see the steps along the way you took to get there. It’s kind of like the reverse engineering process that they teach in Harvard and so many other business schools now of visualizing the way you want it, achieving the goal, and then just take the steps backwards, see what happened, and then – when you get back to present – turn around and just walk up the mountain and go get it.

Interviewer: I think those last three words, Fire Nation, are so key. Go get it. That goes to actually taking action, Fire Nation, being a person who’s putting one step in front of the other to achieve those results. And these are some things that you really have focused on in your journey, Kip, is both taking action and achieving results. So, I kind of want to move into that but – before I let you loose in that area – I want to just go back and highlight that one thing that you said that has been said on my show multiple times because it’s so true, Fire Nation.

If it’s not a heck yes, it’s a no. And guess what? That’s gonna change and evolve over the years because what’s a hell yes for me back in 2012, 2014, 2015 is not still a heck yes, a hell yes, here in 2018, 2019, 2020 and beyond. So, that’s going to evolve, but just make sure that you realize that when you’re saying yes to things that – right now in this moment in time – it is something that you are like, “Hell, yes. Let’s do this.” Otherwise, something else is gonna come around and that thing should be a no – so back to taking action and achieving results, Kip. Take that away.

Interviewee: With New Year’s resolutions, right, everyone sets all these major goals and then January 1st comes and they’re all pumped up. They’re ready to go and they go get it or they go after it. By January 15th 80 or 90 percent of people have fallen off and those things were a memory. They’ve gone from gym memberships to heating Ho-Ho’s on the couch and a big part of the problem with that is because the goal is so huge. You said, “Oh, I’m gonna dispose of 50 pounds” and that’s the only goal or “I’m gonna make $10 million” and they’re starting at zero.

Well, the problem is that’s too far. We’re gonna lose interest. Like I said, the subconscious mind is a five year old, short attention span. So, you set that big goal – that beautiful picture of what life is gonna be like – the avatar for yourself of what your dream life is – but then figure out the small goals to get there. And it’s about taking the steps and staying on course, but also it’s about being able to look back and celebrate. One of the big things that I’ve worked with a lot of health and fitness coaches to help them be better coaches to their clients and one of the biggest, most awesome tools I’ve ever taught is so simple. It’s celebrate at 90 percent.

How many people can never get that last five or 10 pounds off? It’s because we’re so close that it’s like, “I look good enough.” So, when you get to that last five or 10 pounds – you know that last 10 percent of your goal whatever it is – celebrate there like you just accomplished it and then set the new goal with that last 10 percent as the first 10 percent of the next step. And shifting that way of looking at it – that new perspective on it – just keeps that momentum going and keeps you pumped up and still gives you the celebration because – once again – that five year old that’s running your life – that subconscious mind – wants that celebration.

It wants the confetti at the birthday party. It doesn’t see anything else beyond that. It wants that celebration and doing that triggers the behavior – anchors it in – of wanting to do it more and accomplish more. So, you set these smaller steps along the way and those smaller steps – as you accomplish them – it’s about that celebration and it’s building that momentum and creating that mindset – that lock on of –“Yes, this is worth the effort” because otherwise it’s a whole lot of work with not a lot of payoff because we’re not focusing on the steps that we’ve accomplished already.

We’re just looking at, “Oh, I wanted to get 50 pounds off and I’ve only gotten 35. I’m still 15 short.” We look at it that way of what’s missing. So, we change that and it’s like, “Look. I’ve already accomplished all this. Now it’s onto the next step, onto the next step.” I’ve done that in my own life so many times. So, I was given the honor of I was on a team of coaches. Two hundred and fifty coaches were selected out of a possible almost 10,000 to go in. We were hired by the President of Paraguay and go in and teach heartfelt leadership to his nation.

We worked with politicians, worked with corporations there and it was transformational for me probably 10 times more than it was for the people I was teaching and working with there because – while I was there – I just kept thinking I’m like, “Wow. I’m the kid who was suicidal. I’m the guy who a couple years ago was living in my car.” It’s like, “Now I’m here with diplomats and all these other people.” It’s like, “How did I get here?” That was way too big of a goal to set, I set it out when I first heard about it, but then started looking it’s like, “Okay, what steps can I take on the way to get there and keep that momentum going?” And that gives you the belief of you know, “I can accomplish this step.”

I can’t do this all in one leap. You know I can’t leap from one end of my bedroom to the other, but I can take multiple hops to get there or even steps or – if I have to – baby crawl all the way across. I can do that. I have more than enough confidence to handle that. Then I’ll get to the other side of the room. And actually going like that, you’ll see more things along the way because you’re not focusing on this huge picture that’s so far out and so unrealistic. So, you’re seeing things in the moment as you go along and you learn more along the process.

Interviewer: Fire Nation, momentum is so hard to achieve. You just have to start small. Get that initial momentum going and – once it starts – it’s so much easier to maintain and to grow and to start that snowball effect. And Kip, we could talk about a lot of things right now, but how I want to wrap this conversation up right now is talking about the importance of rapport – so kind of go into that. Why do you see that as something worthy of chatting about right now? What is the importance of rapport?

Interviewee: Everything is communication and the meaning of communication is the response you get. Rapport is the connection we have in communication and things like depression and anxiety and stress and all this have often been referred to as being out of rapport with yourself and that’s the most important person you can ever have rapport with. You can have the best connection with your wife, your team at work, your kids, but you’re really not going to if you don’t have a good rapport with yourself and you can’t love anyone more than you love for yourself.

And I fought with that for a long time because there was a long time in my life – in my teenage years and things – where I was like, “I hate myself, but I love so many other people.” And then finally, I figured it out it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I can’t show up for them like they deserve – like I want to for them – because I don’t feel I’m worthy of that.” So, I started connecting that rapport with myself and – as a survival technique – actually I learned rapport kind of through environment growing up in abusive situations and things. I started realizing that if you connect with people it’s like, “Wow, if I can make him laugh or I can make him like me, I’m not gonna get punched or I’m not gonna get messed with.”

And now I take it in it’s salespeople have to build rapport with their clients and a parent needs to have rapport with their kids – a high level of rapport. And so many people say, “Oh, I’m not in sales. I’m a stay at home parent.” It’s like, “Okay.” One of my favorite quotes is, “If you’re a parent, then you need to be a far better salesman than that drug dealer on the street when it comes to your kids.” And it’s all about building that rapport. You have to build a trust and an openness and line of communication with your kids, with whoever’s in your life. I say it all starts with the communication we have with ourselves.

And as you have the better communication with yourself – because once again like we talked about – things that are too big picture get hard to focus on, get hard to really go after because we’re like, “Oh, I have to build rapport with everyone?” It’s like, “No, don’t look at it like that. Focus on the rapport with yourself and – as you start to communicate with yourself better, you start to like yourself better – it shows in everything we’ve already talked about like your body posture, the tone of voice you have, just how you interact with people is gonna be totally different because of that rapport level you have with yourself.”

And as you do it with yourself – as you communicate with other people and interact with them – automatically that rapport just start just shining out and connecting with them because there’s something about you they like and they don’t even know what it is. And there are different things with matching and mirroring and all the things where you can connect with someone even faster, but I’ve found time and time again that the better rapport I am in with myself, the easier it happens. I mean you think about it.

You walk into a place and you look all grumpy and your lower lip’s sticking out and your face is all red and you just look like you’re angry at the world. Who’s gonna talk to you? No one’s gonna want to. No one’s gonna approach you. It doesn’t matter what the situation is. It doesn’t matter what kind of car you drive or how attractive you are or anything else because you’re not gonna be that attractive in that body posture. So, it’s getting that communication correct with yourself first and the rest will fall into place.

You know I’ve had it happen so many times. My kids – the school they go to – just going through the interview process to get them in because it’s this really nice, private school here locally and just through a few minutes meeting with someone they’re like, “Hang on. I want you to meet the founder.” And then the founder comes in and starts talking to us about redoing their entire curriculum, teaching these processes through each area of school from the physical education to math class to science class and all these other ways to get in and teach it without actually teaching it so the kids are just in that kind of environment and absorb it naturally.

We didn’t go in for that. I had no clue and she trusts us right off the bat because of that rapport. I’ve gone into the DMV – the most miserable place on earth if you ask most people – and within a couple minute conversation with someone – just small talk – but the way I would carry myself the person’s bending all these rules and changing different records on the computer to actually save me money on taxes and license plate fees and registration.

And that stuff’s all set and she’s like, “Oh, no, no, no. I can change this because that’s just not right that you should pay that much just because of the car you drive.” “Are you serious? I didn’t know that was a thing.” She just offers it and it’s beautiful. The world really starts changing and it becomes like a magic wand, but it all starts from just how you communicate with yourself and how you choose to see your life and the world.

Interviewer: Fire Nation how are you gonna choose to see your life and the world and I really want you to recognize it’s a choice. It truly is a choice. So, Kip, this has been a great audio master class. I love talking about freeing your mind, freeing your heart, living the life that you desire. So, let’s wrap this up with a nice, little bow and give us a parting piece of guidance and then let us know something that we can do to find more about you and then we’ll say goodbye.

Interviewee: Focus on exactly what you want. Don’t listen to the naysayers. It’s all been said so many times over and over again, but it is so true. You wouldn’t have the desire for something if you weren’t capable of doing it in some form. People get locked into like, “Well, I love basketball, but I’m too old to be running off and joining the MBA.” I say, “Okay, but what can you do that’s close to that? You could coach a team. You could volunteer somewhere. You could get around and get in that energy and then ideas will pop up sooner or later and you’ll find something.”

And people get locked in too many times of, “Well, I can’t do it at this level or in this particular way that I’m most knowledgeable with or most common way of seeing it like being the star player.” They don’t even think about the behind-the-scenes. You know everybody thinks about the lead singer. No one things about the producer behind the scenes really making the magic happen or the songwriters. There are so many other layers to everything. So, it’s like really explore it and don’t be afraid of that. Dive in. Take an improv class, take a cooking course, explore the world, explore your life. You’re gonna be doing this for the rest of your life. Why not be happy with it?

Like Jim Carrey has said, “You can fail at something you hate, so why not fail at something – if you’re gonna fail at anything, fail at something you really love.” And the best ways to find me is all over Facebook and Instagram and probably the absolute best way is MentalandEmotionalFreedom.com. If you put slash Fire, I have a lot of special gifts coming for Fire Nation because it’s such a celebration to make it to this point and lots of other things going on in our life and business that we’re super excited about it. It’s like this is gonna be a celebration and our tribe is gonna celebrate with us. So, we have 30 Days to Empowered Positive Thinking.

It’s shifting your mindset to seeing possibility and opportunity in place of obstacles. It’s a fantastic course, so simple, a couple minutes a day walks people through to start changing a lot of this mindset and perception we have of things. And then I have some other things coming after that, but it’s like I didn’t want to dump everything on them at the beginning because then it’d be way too much, but it’s gonna blow some people’s mind some of the stuff that we have in store for Fire Nation.

Interviewer: I love all of this. And Fire Nation just one thing that I really want to highlight from what Kip just shared. You can fail at something that you absolutely hate. You can. You can fail at something that you hate doing, but you can also fail at something you love doing. So, why not choose to do something that you love, something you’re passionate about, something you’re curious about because – if failure comes – it’ll be in that area and then you can learn from that, improve, adjust, tweak, pivot, and move forward. I mean a great example for one of my buddies – Louis House.

He was on his way to the NFL. He was playing in the professional league up in Canada as a great linebacker and guess what? He was going there and then he got injured and he missed that high level of competition. He didn’t think he could ever get back there so he said, “What other things could I do now that I kind of the NFL is out of my grasp?” And now he was able to become skilled and he trained himself in handball and now he’s on the USA National Handball team and he represents the United States all around the world and then things like potentially the Olympics. I mean this is now an Olympic sport.

So, crazy things when you kind of think in that perspective and, Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. You’ve been hanging out with KB and JLD today. So, keep up the heat and, of course, head over to EOFire.com and type Kip, K-I-P, in the search bar. His show notes page will pop up with everything that we’ve been talking about today. These are the best show notes in the biz – timestamps, links galore – and, of course – and Kip correct me if I’m not getting this completely right – MentalandEmotionalFreedom.com/Fire. Is that it?

Interviewee: Yes.

Interviewer: So, Mental and, A-N-D, MentalandEmtotionalFreedom.com/Fire. But of course, we’ll have all those links on the show notes page as well and, Kip, thank you brother for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flipside.

Interviewee: Thank you so much.