JLD: Light that spark, Fire Nation. JLD here with an audio masterclass on training your brain for success. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Dr. Shannon Irvine on the mic. She is a doctor of neuropsychology and the host of the Epic Success podcast. Dr. Shannon uses the brain-based science-backed neuro coaching model to help entrepreneurs train their brain for success.

Fire Nation, we'll be talking about hard-wiring that brain of yours for success, removing blocks that keep you stuck, three things that make a successful person's brain actually function, and so much more, when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Shannon, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know.

Dr. Shannon: What's up, Fire Nation? So, excited to be here. What's something that everybody doesn't know about me? I once punched a cameraman out on the sidelines of an NFL game.

JLD: There's going to be YouTube footage of this. Where is the YouTube footage?

Dr. Shannon: I was an NFL cheerleader at the time. This cameraman, I didn't see him. We were in the middle of a dance and I just clocked him. I didn't know he was there, but he went flat on his back.

JLD: Is that a no to YouTube footage?

Dr. Shannon: That's a no to YouTube footage, yeah.

JLD: That would have been so classic. I love it. Fire Nation, as I shared during the intro, Dr. Shannon's got a lot of things to share with us today and a great right hook, so beware.

Dr. Shannon: Yeah.

JLD: Now, let's talk about training your brain for success, Shannon, because that's going to be our focal point for today. That is what this audio masterclass is going to be all about. Let's just start off with talking about the actual hard-wiring of our brain for success. What does that look like?

Dr. Shannon: Absolutely. I think it's important for everyone to know, all the entrepreneurs out there and the change makers, that one of your biggest secret weapons, like literally your competitive advantage, you've had the entire time and you didn't know it. That is the three-pound brain that's on top of your shoulders. However, its design, its wiring is to keep you safe and familiar, and it automates everything that not that you want, but that you have repeated over and over and over again. In terms of automation, there's no better system on the planet than our brain. It automates that thought, that thinking process that you constantly are in the process of, whether you realize it or not.

Really, what you automate you create. That is the big takeaway that I want you to hear, that once you start to take your thinking off autopilot, truly become the creator of your thoughts and start creating the thoughts that create the success that you want in your life, in your business, in your relationships and all the places, you start to become honestly unstoppable.

JLD: One thing that I love sharing with my audience, Shannon, is that there's so much magic in this world, but unfortunately for most people, all that magic happens outside of their comfort zone. People love to stay in their comfort zone. They love just to wake up, and as you and I were actually kind of joking around pre-interview about, how we're doing a little Groundhog Day right now, whether we like it or not, just because the coronavirus and COVID-19 and all this jazz. The reality is, though, we still need to push ourselves and say, "Hey, what can we do today or tomorrow, or at least some day this week, that's outside of our comfort zone? How can we push the envelope?"

Because that's how we get better, Fire Nation. Guess what? I'm the process of writing a book right now. My brain doesn't want to write that book because guess what? I need to think new thoughts. I need to stress that brain. That brain wants to conserve energy. It doesn't want to use energy. It wants to conserve energy, and it's hard. It's so much easier for me to sit down and say, "I'm going to play a game of Settlers of Catan on my phone right now" because I love that game and it's easy and it's semi-mindless.

You roll some dice and that happens. That's my comfort zone, man. I got a cup of coffee. I got my Settlers of Catan. I'm making things happen. But getting out of your comfort zone, Fire Nation, is where all the magic happens. Shannon, you know this. We all have blocks. You have blocks. I have blocks. How do we actually remove those blocks that is keeping some of us stuck right now?

Dr. Shannon: This is where like I really want you to lean in and listen to this because we are always searching for like, "What are the 3%? What are the top dogs? What are the people who are really making it doing that I'm not?" We're always looking for that secret outside of ourselves, that piece of the puzzle that we're missing. We think it's strategy. We think it's all those things. We think it's the latest webinar funnel or whatever, but the reality is all the webinars, all the funnels, all that works, it's truly the person operating that that is the difference maker.

Left naturally, our brains are wired to survive. Think tiger. We're all experiencing this right now. There was a tiger that walked into our space recently and it's called COVID-19. We're all in this. Your brain's doing exactly what it's wired to do. There's a tiger in the room. All the neurochemicals are kicking in, fight or flight.

We think, as entrepreneurs especially, something's wrong with us because we're in overwhelm or we're in procrastination. Hello, video games. Or we're in that feeling of perfectionism, everything has to be perfect before we put it out to the world, or even that feeling of imposter syndrome, of like, "I can't put myself out there because then I'll be found out and then no one will actually listen to me." All those things are exactly what you just described.

They are your brain's way to keep you safe, to keep you from taking that big step, to take you from writing the book, because it doesn't align with survival. It actually, to your brain, looks like a risk. For your brain's sake and for your success, we need to move your mind from thinking that that future state is a risk or is a type of a threat to it being what your brain sees as safe and familiar so that you can start to create it.

Really, it's constantly looking at two things, constantly building into your brain the things that you want because your brain really needs to believe it before you'll see it. We go around really wanting to look for evidence and wanting to see it happen first, see the money in the bank, see the followers, see the things, and your brain is saying no, like you need to actually believe it before you see it. We can talk about that process, that success path building.

But to your question on how do we get rid of these blocks, these things that keep getting in our way, some of the things that I mentioned, and really the exact same way your brain automates anything is we reverse engineer that and we go through the thought process of removing it. There's four steps. If it's all right with you, JLD, that I break them down for the tribe.

JLD: Let's break them down.

Dr. Shannon: Okay. We call this in my neuro coaching model, we call this the mind matrix because it's kind of like the matrix where you're like going through these four steps and you come out on the other side kind of a completely different person. The first step – And it's so simple. I really need the listeners to hear simple is powerful. Simple is super potent when it comes to brain rewiring. The first step is literally recognizing it, but there's four R's.

So, the first is recognize, but it's recognizing what you're actually saying to yourself, not what you're – Nobody goes around saying, "I have imposter syndrome." Right? They say things like, "Who the heck do I think I am to do this?" So, what are you actually saying to yourself? Super important that you recognize that main thing that when you go to take the risk, when JLD goes to start to type, what is the thing that he's saying? What is the thing that you're saying, and I'm saying to myself? And I'm going to use a concrete example because I think a story's better than just teaching.

So, when I was about to start my podcast, the Epic Success Podcast a few years back, I'm sitting there and I'm getting it ready. First three episodes, doing the Pat Flynn style thing. And I had this fleeting thought, you don't have enough value to bring to the podcast. And you know how those thoughts, they just come in and come out and as entrepreneurs, we tend to just try to push them down and outperform them or out hustle them, or we just try to ignore them?

JLD: Big time.

Dr. Shannon: But remember what you automate, you create. So, if you're ignoring them, they're just automating stronger and stronger and stronger.

JLD: So, true.

Dr. Shannon: So, when I was creating my podcast that thought fled through my mind. So, first I recognized it. I'm like, "Wow, I just said to myself, I don't have enough value to bring to the podcast." That led me to step number two, which is you got to record it. You got to write it down, pen to paper. Please don't resist me. I'm as technologically advanced as most people, but when it comes to your brain, you want to engage the systems that are going to pull this thought out of your subconscious mind, into the conscious mind so that you can rewire it.

Our friend, Tony Robbins says, "What you focus on grows." So, a lot of people will say things like, "Oh, well I don't like to focus on the negative," or "I don't want to pay attention to that." You all, 80% of your daily actions and decisions right now are being governed by that automated process in your subconscious. 80%. We think we're 100% in control of our environment. 80% of that is being totally run by the automation in your subconscious. That fires before you even have a chance to think.

JLD: Wow.

Dr. Shannon: So, if that's the case, I don't know about you, but I don't want that think – I want to focus on it and get it the heck out. I don't want to advocate for it. So, when I'm recording it, I'm writing it down. It's pulling together your limbic system, your prefrontal cortex, your memory system of your brain, your amygdala. It's bringing it all together, and when you combine those by pen to paper, it actually fully pulls that thought out of the subconscious. So, you write it down. And I wrote down, I do not have enough value to bring to the podcast. And that leads me, and you, to step number three, which is refuting it.

Here's the thing, that belief really comes from a core thing that happened to you when you were a young adult or maybe even a young child, that kept you safe. Remember that's what our brain tries to do, kept things familiar for you. And so, somehow back then it served you. Somehow it served you. Now, you didn't choose it and it's not your fault, and that's the good news.

You don't have to beat yourself up over having these thoughts. You don't have to feel like something's broken or something's wrong, because you didn't even choose it. It automated because your brain is wired to do that. So, maybe it happened at 12, or 16, but this thought of not being enough or not having what it takes, those kinds of concepts, got automated and is on autopilot. So, don't blame yourself.

But what will happen in this third step of refuting, you're going to actually read it out loud to yourself and your logical adult brain, prefrontal cortex, a hundred percent, will naturally start arguing with this lie. Because you just haven't challenged it since you were whatever age that it created automation in your brain.

So, back to my podcast story, I'm sitting there saying, "I don't have enough value to bring to the podcast." I said it out loud, and my natural mind went, "Well, that's BS." I'm like, "I've been helping six, seven, and eight figure entrepreneurs, massively scale in their life and their business for 10 years now. I've created a nonprofit 15 years ago that has helped hundreds of thousands of orphans in Africa, you know, all the things.

Your natural mind is going to start and we like to call that the logical mind. My logical mind kicked in and I start writing down all the things that are true, because the belief that's not serving you is a lie. We can kind of put in those camps. And you're actually writing down, I've done this, I have this, and I’ve done this. So, you're just really writing until your logical mind can't come up with anymore.

And then, I've got to kind of trick your brain a little bit, because we do have something that is from our cave days called a negativity bias in our brain. We see nine times more negative than we do positive in our environment about ourselves. That is a beautiful system when we had to survive. We wanted to actually see the tigers and the snakes, so we were conditioned to really look for those things. And when things are going great, we aren't conditioned to be on alert for that. So, that's called negativity bias. So, we've got to skirt around that in your brain while we're rewiring it. One of the ways we do that, in this refuting step is mirroring.

So, with mirroring, we're going to be able to pause that system for a moment. So, how we do that is we pick somebody in our life that's a ride or die. If you're a parent, probably one of your kids, maybe your spouse, maybe a really great friend. The kind that you would jump in front of a bus for kind of person, ride or die. So, you pick that person. For me, I picked my son, Max.

I love both of my kids, but that's who I picked. And so, you would pick someone, and then you are going to, out loud, not to their face, in a room where they cannot hear, but out loud you're going to put that lie on them. So, in my scenario, it looked like this. I, out loud with my pen ready, I said, "Max, you don't have enough value to bring to the world." Now, obviously he doesn't have a podcast, so that wouldn't have made sense. But, yet, although he does have a YouTube channel.

JLD: Yeah. Love it.
Dr. Shannon: He's my little entrepreneur. He's going. He's only 12, I'm like, "Woo, go baby." So, when you do that, I don't know about you, even just hearing me say that probably got you a little like, "Uh-uh like uh-uh," in my Southern, I'll cut you if you hurt my children, thing.

JLD: I will cut you.

Dr. Shannon: I'll cut you, came up. And so, I'm like, "He can do anything. He is amazingly made, but God is powerful in his life." I just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote about all the things. And that tends to take more volume because we can just so easily see it for other people when we can't see it so much for ourselves. And so, that, those two things combined, that logical, this is what I've done against the lie, and then the mirror truth when you put it on someone else, really gives your brain all of this truth that you now get to go to the fourth step, which is to use to rewire.

And the rewire step is so simple that most people think, "Aw, that can actually work," but literally the rewire step is every truth that you wrote down from your logical mind in every true truth that you wrote down about the person you put in. You change that to the first person instead of the third person and you record yourself reading those truths. You listen to it in the morning, you listen to it in the evening. Right when you wake up, feet not on the ground yet, pop the earbuds and listen, right before you're drifting off to sleep, pop the earbuds and listen. And the reason for that is our subconscious mind takes over at night and categorizes and automates. That's what dreams are. Your dreams are part of automation.

So, that's its job while you're sleeping, your subconscious job is to sort through the thoughts if they've been repeated enough, they start automating. So, that's what's going on. So, now you're actually automating truth by choice, being the creator of your thoughts versus just the victim of them and in the morning, right when you wake up, same thing, you're actually starting your day that way. And if you'd love to exercise and it's a big part of your life, I always pop them in right after exercise because your subconscious is actually more toward the surface too.

That's why we get that high from working out. And this step, this process, this mind matrix takes about 67 days. And we can talk about that process and what's going on if you'd like, but really, if you've held a belief since 12 or 15, that you don't have what it takes, that you're not enough and in the process of 67 days through just doing this process and listening, you can start to shift things. I don't know about you [inaudible] [00:17:46] but I want to do this all day long because I want to actually choose what goes in now.

JLD: Fire nation, once you can choose and once you can control the inputs and of course then which is controlling the outputs, why would you ever go at any other path? And if you think Shannon is even close to done dropping value bombs, I mean, obviously we have so much more value coming your way. We're going to be talking about building a money mindset of a millionaire entrepreneur, we are going to be talking about steps to remove overwhelm, which I think is super relevant in today's world.

Two different things that the brain is actually hard wired for, that is usually the anti-thesis for an entrepreneur and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors. So, Shannon we're back and I think the most enticing thing that I teased before the break was this money mindset of a millionaire entrepreneur. It takes a certain mindset to get to that seven figure plus status. How do we build that?

Dr. Shannon: This is my favorite thing to talk about because I believe, and I know you do too I know we share this belief that we have these callings and these missions that we have to get out to the world. And we talked before the break about what to do to remove the things that are the governors and the breaks that are kind of slowing us down. But the difference between somebody who's hit that multiple seven, eight figure mark, and someone who hasn't is truly 100% in the way that they think.

And you can see evidence of this all around you in the sense that people that you follow and people that you're modeling after, I'm thinking of like different people who do webinars. You'll be doing a webinar and you won't have much success with it, but it's not the webinar that's actually broken because our dear friend, Amy Porterfield does webinars and they are multiple seven figure, eight figure webinars. So, it's not the system. It's the difference in the way they think. And we talked before the break about how your brain needs to believe it before you see it.

In my world and the neuro coaching model, it's all around building a success pathway and all seven figure entrepreneurs, whether purposefully or accidentally have done this, they've built a success pathway in their mind, they've believed 100% that it was going to be done. They could see it, they could taste it, they could smell it, they could feel it, and they were driven for it, in the midst of not seeing it in their world yet. I mean, and that's really a definition of an entrepreneur. Putting something out that hasn't been seen before. But the difference is when evidence comes up, that contradicts that. Something isn't goes exactly right, or you get different feedback or it doesn't perform the way you want.

Those that are in that seven figure mark. Use that as fuel to figure out, it's just like an information piece, it's the things that actually creates more success versus the excuse to not keep going. And the reality is, they, and myself and Johnny, we all really do spend time being really aware of the thinking that we're creating and making sure it aligns with our future version of our self that we want and actually leaning into that future version of yourself now. And one of the things, one of the characteristics and traits that you see all the time in a millionaire and above entrepreneurs is they're speaking it into existence way before it actually exists.

And so, in the brain, what that's doing, just like we were removing the network that had been built. If you picture in your mind freeways, and if you've ever been to California, LA, or even if you haven't, but you have freeways in your city, you can picture a freeway, the cars are going one way, you can't really go opposite of it, it just goes. Well, that's what a neural network looks like in your brain. Thoughts are energy. When we repeat a thought enough, it no longer is separate cars. It's like one big car. You can't automate, you can't get out of it.

So, those negative beliefs are automated. Once we started doing the mind matrix, it literally prunes those away. In the success pathway it gets built exactly the same way. One thought at a time, from the future state of who you are, believing it over and over again in the same way we brain priming, just like we remove the beliefs that aren't serving us, on the other side, we actually build them through audio day by day by day. And it's different than just visualization. Not that that's bad, it's different than vision boards.

All those are good things. They're like a piece of a puzzle, but your brain needs to see it, and feel it, and taste it and hear it. And I'd love to give you a story about some research that I was involved in. Just to show you how this can be demonstrated because we are so conditioned in our culture to see it first and that's the difference between us. We believe it before we see it. We were doing some research around success and brain priming.
They don't call it that in the neuroscience world, they call it something different. That's just a phrase that I created, but they were training these brains of these athletes. And one Olympic athlete agreed to work with us, which was really, really cool. And I was observing, I wasn't doing the research, but I was observing and it was the most powerful thing. So, he agreed to do it. His coach came in, so basically what we did is we scanned his brain before. He's a swimmer and he wanted to add a change in his stroke.

So, not a new stroke, but just a change, initiating from a different place of his body that was supposed to make more efficient, which would give them the two tenths of a second edge in that sport. And so, we scanned his brain before, and we also did a muscle conductivity test to see – There's a small twitch muscle that needed to grow in order for that initiation to happen. And so, we scanned him before. This is very common in research when it comes to brain wiring and success path building, that you can see our brain actually building the memory of success before it's even happened.

So, there's tons of research that's validated this. This athlete and his coach came in. We trained the coach because he had a trusted relationship, and we just had him literally show his brain every single day through all modalities, visualizing, imagining, taste, touch, feel all of those modalities. So, it was very three-dimensional. Every single day for the same amount of time, he would be in the pool. He never got in the pool for this, ever.

And 67 days, the same thing we talked about before, he agreed to do it. We scanned his brain before, scanned it after. His brain after, we could see the learned knowledge in the memory center of the brain, which is not uncommon in research now. That's how I know the brain needs to believe it first. However, the muscle conductivity tests showed a 96% muscle growth in that small twitch muscle, and he had never stepped in the pool.

JLD: Wow.

Dr. Shannon: 3That's the power that's available to you to create the success that you want ahead of time. And it's truly as easy as being in the practice of brain priming every single day until you see it manifest in your future state. And that's why I tie money mindset to it because if you – The evidence around you right now, the bank account, the sales, all those things, are just evidence of the pre-programmed beliefs that you've had from the past that are manifesting in the present.
We think we're creating in the present, but the reality we're creating from the past forward. So, their brains, our brains, we have to – If we're as passionate about our calling and our mission as we say we are, and I'm going to call you out on that a little bit, not you Johnny –

[Crosstalk]

JLD: I get you.

Dr. Shannon: – But everybody. But we're saying, "I believe this is my mission. This is my calling. I have to impact." Well, if that's you, then there should be no funnel. Nothing else should be more important than training your brain right now to believe it right now, before you see it, before you see it in the bank account, before you see your first client, before you see it happen, because it will manifest itself in the most beautiful and miraculous ways.

And it's not always the way we exactly map it out. We like to have all of the pathway lit up. Usually it shows up in totally crazy ways that you could never expect it, but that's just the abundance that's already available that we're just limiting.

JLD: Fire Nation. So, much value is being dropped. I mean, breaking down this entire process. And, still, Shannon, this is just kind of a fraction of your overall neurocoaching model, which is kind of hard to believe because we've been chatting for a while now. So, let's really bring this home.

Dr. Shannon: Yeah.

JLD: Break it down for Fire Nation. What exactly is your neurocoaching model, and what do you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from everything that we chatted about today?

Dr. Shannon: The big thing I really want you to take away, and I'll break down the model, but the big thing I want you to understand is that you are the creator of your thoughts and your success. And you can create the thoughts that create the success that you want.

So, the model itself is how our brains wire anything. So, it wires failure and it wires success the exact same way. And so, I call it – In the model, it's called the Stepped R process. You have a situation that happens, right? You have a thought about that situation. We know from neuroscience, the thought center fires before the emotional center. We know that. It's a fact now. So, this is where people want to say, "No, it's intuition. It's all those things."

No, that follows the thought. So, getting to know those thoughts that are happening and firing are so important. Once you have the thought, it fires the emotional center of the brain. So, it's a nanosecond. Trust me, it's very closely tied, but situation creates the thought, which creates the emotion. If you repeat that enough times, it becomes belief. That's why we do the brain priming because we're were actually trying to automate belief in your brain.

From belief is where we make our decisions and take our action and create our results. And those are the steps that we walk you through in the neurocoaching model, being able to, in every situation, because we're integrated human beings, so how you show up in your business is how you're showing up in the rest of your life. You can't separate that because the brain controls all that.

So, as you lean into this work, as you really step into training your brain to transform your business and your life, you start to really go through this model, using the Stepped R process and recognizing just tiny little thought errors, and then reorganizing them so they work for you. You work through the mind matrix. And then, we do brain priming around where you want to go and removing those limiting beliefs.

And it's a powerful, powerful work. I like to tell people that brain training like this through the neurocoaching model, it really allows you to get source, meaning your brain-based, source-based transformation, versus symptom-based shifts. Because we can always try to outperform or hustle in the moment, and it might work for a little bit. But you can't outperform or out-hustle your subconscious. You really got to rewire it. And when you do, it rewires for your whole life. So, every piece of your life improves.

From my clients, I'm always asking, "Tell me your experience." And they're all massive six, seven, and eight-figure entrepreneurs, and the immediate thing, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. My business grew by 300%, but my life, my friends, my relationships, because that's the richness that we're doing it all for anyway. Right? That's the thing that gives us the fuel.

So, it really is, as we said at the top of the interview, your biggest secret weapon, and your biggest competitive advantage, is leaning into this work, slowing down a little bit so that you can speed up in all the big places you want to speed up in your life.

JLD: Man, I'm taking so many notes over here, Fire Nation. And, Shannon, finish this sentence for me. You can't outperform or out-hustle your –

Dr. Shannon: Subconscious.

JLD: – Think about that Fire Nation. You have to rewire it. That is such a powerful sentence. I mean, of all the things I've been taking notes on and writing down today, that is such a biggie. So, Shannon, you've done a great job with us here today. And, again, just one quick roundup. What is one thing you just want to make sure that Fire Nation really can just walk away with and say, "Yes, this is a huge take-away." Then share with us how we can connect more with you, with what you have going on. And then, we'll say goodbye.

Dr. Shannon: Awesome. So, I think the biggest takeaway that I really want you to know, the things that you want, those big desires, those big dreams, those big visions, are 100% in your control. You can't control other people, but what you can do is control the thinking and really create the thinking that will create what you want most in life and gives you the power to remove the things that have just put the brake on. So, many entrepreneurs, they've got the pedal down, right? They're going, they believe, they're trying. And so, it's like they've got on the gas and then they've got the foot on the brake because they haven't removed these subconscious speed bumps.

And once those start to get rewired, you actually stop going in circles, like you're feeling right now, with the foot on the gas and the brake, and you just go. And so, being the creator of your thoughts and really leaning in to training your brain is the difference for all of the things that you want out there in your life and your world. And how to connect with me, I mean, I think the biggest thing is to hang out with me on the socials at Dr. Shannon Irvin or head over to our website at Dr. Shannon Irvin dot com. We have a really cool brain priming audio that's amazing, and really goes after the main, big speed bumps for most entrepreneurs and retrains your brain around that without you having to do anything. So, that's available for you there too.

JLD: And what's the best way that we can do that. Is there a URL for us?
Dr. Shannon: Yeah, absolutely. That's at drshannonirvine.com/rise.

JLD: Yes, Fire Nation. And guess what, you know this, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and you have been hanging out with SI and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And if you head over to eofire.com and just type Shannon in the search bar, the show notes page will pop up with everything that we've talked about today. Best show notes in the biz, but of course your call to action is to head over to Dr. Shannon Irvin dot com slash rise.

Dr. Shannon: Oh, actually, it's slash fire. Why did I say rise? It's slash fire, it's Fire Nation. It's slash fire.

JLD: I was like, "I'll let her slide by with that, but we're going to have a one-on-one –"

Dr. Shannon: But no, it's definitely fire.

JLD: – But we're going to have a one on one conversation after. Dr. Shannon Irvin dot com slash fire for new Fire Nation. And Shannon, thank you for sharing your truth, your value, your knowledge with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.