The WAY to WOW Shows
Foster Care to Fostering Care
November 8, 2023
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[0:11] good afternoon and welcome to people making money one of the way to wow shows I'm your host Kevin bemel and I'm very excited to have a guest with me today dasama Gordon um through all the health things that you know have been going on with me desama has been a real trooper in rescheduling I think you were on um schedule to be on the show at least twice before um so be before I I um formally introduce desama I just want to remind you that we are here uh every day

[0:46] at 12:30 p.m Pacific Time 3:30 p.m eastern time and we talk about all things related to professional success wealth building and how to really really lead a successful life that's that's kind of our remit as we used to say um in in in the military um and so one of the things I like to do most is have someone on the show who can really broaden our perspective of what success looks like I I I you know if you're you

[1:22] know like me my parents idea of success was about you know this big and it consisted of make a lot of money right and um while there no you know nothing wrong with that certainly um sometimes the you know pursuit of lucer as they say doesn't necessarily make for um an a rewarding life and uh so I'm I'm very very happy to be able to uh bring to you desama Gordon she's an author a filmmaker a teacher um she is is an

[2:00] expert when it comes to Flow State which if you go back to our YouTube channel um I did a show about um Mii chicken mihai's uh he he was kind of the the founder if you will of that concept of flow and it is really an essential idea to to living um a a life worth living if if we say so without further Ado because I I really want um desama to have as much time as possible to talk dasama welome welcome to uh people making money thanks for coming on thank you so much Kevin first of all I love I love your

[2:36] whole topic people making money because we're in such a weird time on Earth where you know we're in this interesting economy and a lot of things are going on and and I and I'm really looking forward to this conversation today well good good so um you know typically when I have a guest I sort of challenge them to go back as far as they're willing and and talk talk about you know I I I know for me when I when I was a boy growing up you know I wanted to be an astronaut I think every every kid you know of of my generation my age did you because I watched you know the moonshot and all

[3:12] that kind of stuff and of course I never I never got close to that but I'm I'm I'm always curious to hear what people wanted to do when they were young and and you know how that kind of and and and as a starting place because then we can kind of see how that played out over there career yeah that's a good question I'll tell you when I was a young young person my mother wanted me to be a lawyer I think um so so you know when your parents kind of plant like a seed you're like oh maybe but I remember I always had this very gregarious like

[3:48] personality so I I kind of felt I'd like to be probably like an actress or something like because I just like to make people laugh and and I was a little bit of a goofball and and so as a young person I think my my aspiration uh it changed several times but I do remember always having in the back of my mind like I wanted to do something to make the world a better place and when I was 12 uh well before that I'll say when I was seven my mother lost her mind and um she became schizophren schizophrenic so actually ended up growing up in foster homes and it was really interesting uh

[4:23] early on I I learned a number of things through that uh but one of the things one of the Foster mothers actually she was an extended part of our family EV eventually took us in and she gave me a book it was when I was 12 years old it was is called how to be like women of influence 20 of the greatest women of the 20th century and she gave me this book and I really attribute a large part of how my life unfolded to that to that book probably because it was the first Glimpse that I had to positive mentors in specifically with

[4:58] women and successful women um especially where I had come from and and it was just you know not a lot to look up towards and um and also my grandparents my grand both of my grandfather grandfathers were in World War II and um like my one of my grandfather on my father's side they came over from England because it was during World War II they were Jewish and it was a really um big bold move to become you know leave the country come to where they could have more safety and freedom in America and I think in our family having that military kind of sort of brought to me this feeling like you know we're here

[5:34] to be of service and I always had that inside of me and then you know it kind of like changed shape over the years but I remember when I was like in I think in seventh grade I took my first video production class so I got really into film you know at that time I had so much fun it was me and my little best friend at the time Jason and we went around school in like SE seventh grade and we got our friends out of class and interviewed them in the hallway and I just remember having so much fun being on camera talking to people and and just that introduction to like film making at a young age and you know a lot of people I've talked to that are into different things it was usually an early Glimpse

[6:11] that got them into it and um even one of my acting coaches one time said like if you look to like the books that you read as a kid the cartoons that you watched whatever it was those early those early kind of programs sort of shape who you become and and I remember watching like reading rainow and you know those types of things and then I ended up growing up to be an author and you know I do think that it's just so interesting to see how like the early exposure does shape who you end up becoming and I can see that for myself and for many others so you brought up something I think um that's that's ve

[6:48] very important and and that it resonated with me so when I was I remember being in sixth grade I was going to a school in Santa Barbara called Laguna Blanca school and we had the library was like this very small separate building and in in the winter when it was raining it was very cozy inside and I read book after book about successful people and in many ways kind of like what you were saying I think they became my mentor I one in particular remember I read a lot about was Walt Disney and how how often he failed and yet in the end right he he

[7:25] not only succeeded spectacularly but in a way that um you know really brought such tremendous joy to so many people's lives so it's it's interesting that books were kind of your Mentor as as well has that has that um how has that um affected not just the the the the book itself but the idea of books as mentors how has that affected what you've done um you know in your life because you you mentioned you know the idea of being that that you're an author right so absolutely you know it's very fascinating because I think like

[8:03] there's many people who read book I think there are two kinds of people there's the people that are readers and people that are not readers and I've known people that are not readers and I'm like okay I don't understand that but basically the readers that I know more than more often than not attribute a great amount of success to the reading and the books and it's because you just get access to information that you never would normally have now in today's age we do have like YouTube and like know you Google stuff and so it's much different now but I you know we probably you and I came from a generation I know I'm on the cusp um where like Millennial

[8:38] cusp is where I remember we didn't really have email even in college you know and like there are people today that didn't have ever one moment of life without an iPhone you know so like there's different types of people and the people that grew up without all that technology like myself although we did have computers in school as a young person but they weren't a big part of things it was it was really like books were the thing you know and we still went to the library had to like check out a book and and so that whole aspect of like actually how pivotal books were for our generation and for the generations like before me that it it's different now

[9:15] because I think so many people they're learning online and it's like video based which is a little different type of learning but there's even research that shows that when you read it and also write it it activates a different part of the brain than when you um watch a video for example it doesn't mean that one is necessarily better than the other but it's activating different aspects of your brain and so when we talk about Flow State we're also looking at like different aspects of the brain to become activated and when you learn to access different parts of your brain we'll call

[9:50] it I mean there's different ways of understanding that but like neural networks that are at work for us that we can start to Branch out into access of intelligence that's beyond the normal realm or beyond the normal range for somebody who let's say doesn't read or doesn't have access to certain types of information because of their experience up until now so like for me and even like if you talk to people like Oprah I mean that's why they start like book clubs is because they recognize the value and importance of reading and how doesn't matter how many videos you watch or podcasts necessarily that you listen

[10:26] to but like reading is actually still and it's never going to go out of style in terms of like the importance of that and the effect that it has on your brain development and even people like you know you hear stories of the top Warren Buffett and the top um people in the world and one of their number one daily routines is reading let's say like 500 words or or whatever their thing that's like a requirement of doing their day is like reading is usually at the top of that list and so I'm a huge advocate but I think the the biggest thing that I'll say the takeaway of it is like exposure to new ideas in a way that you normally

[11:03] wouldn't get access to especially someone like myself growing up in the foster care system you know and like to have access to stories about people who you know came from nothing and became wildly successful and impactful I would never have known about that and for myself and the way that my mind learns when I hear that anybody even if one person ever did something it tells me I can do that too now now I also have a belief we can do anything no matter what but like you know that's like the story of Hussein I think it was Hussein bolt or whatever whoever that broke the four minute mile you know in the Olympics and

[11:40] everyone believed it was impossible until he did it but then the year after he did it like hundreds of other people did it so it was like unlocking within the mindset of all these people oh it's possible now and then all of a sudden everyone could do it and that's kind of how things work in life so like once you learn at least one other person that exists has done something all a it's like available to us now and so that's the power that that stories and books have have upon our development and the way that our life unfolds yeah so I'm curious you mentioned the book about the 20 successful women was was there one in

[12:15] particular that that you still remember is is still kind of an I you know iconic for you to this day you know that's a great question I actually would say the whole book was so impactful because each the way they formatted the book was that each woman represented like a character a a quality of of greatness so like one for example um I remember Mother Teresa was in there right so she would represent love and compassion that type of energy right and then they demonstrated with her story how she embodied that and then another person let's say like Amelia aart she was like

[12:51] courage right so she you know and so then there was like Oprah was in there and and I trying to remember the word she represented but she her story impacted me so much because she had come from a very different but similar childhood you know she her mother was 14 she had to give her up there was like all these aspects that were kind of like sort of similar in in her development in the early age and then she grew up to be such a success so when I learned of someone like Oprah for example at such a young age that like she came from a really really hard start with a not perfect childhood and then she grew to the success that gave me a glimpse that

[13:28] like okay so it has nothing to do with this environment that I'm in I actually can create this success no matter what so like it planted the seed and then those other ones like for example um I remember an Frank was one of them and you know she was one of the people in the Holocaust and she survived and and just the idea that someone could survive such atrocity and then come out with such a beauty and and to make a contribution through her memoirs you know it gave me this other perspective that yeah I could I I kind of help a lot of people by sharing my story in the way

[14:03] it's a different story of course but in a way that she did um and that it's almost part of our responsibility that we share so that that's how we carry like a torch for the other G the new generations coming through to like help them through whatever difficulties that they're facing yeah absolutely so so you're you're in um I think junior high high school you're making videos so as as you're you know comping High School what what was you decided to do as you you know you're taking that step into you know independent adult life and and you know career and all that well I was one

[14:41] of those children that I changed my major about seven times in college so it wasn't like I know what I'm gonna do like it wasn't like that at all it was more like okay let's see and so I I knew my my first Passion was I want to go save the because at the time there was this big thing about the Redwood um forest and they were clear cutting the trees and there was this woman that was living in the redwood tree for two years Julia butterfly Hill she had camped out in the tree to try to like stop the logging and I had this deep passion like I'm here to save the world too like and so I did this whole fundraiser to try to like help this like woman who was doing

[15:17] this um kind of protest to like stop the logging and so I was originally thinking to move to California because I had this passion of this Tree Mission and then but my grandparents um they lived in Florida so I really at the time because I had grown up you know separated from my family I decided you know what I want to be near my family so I decided to go to college in um bocaraton where my grandparents were retired and and then my other sisters kind of all congregated so it was our first time being together after having our childhood separate and um so in college U it was the first time

[15:52] I got to really get to know my sisters um and we lived in the same town and we even went to the same un University in in Florida and so but I I changed my major a number of times I remember like I started out I was like okay I'm going to be because remember I told you my mom wanted me to be an attorney so I was like okay I want to be an attorney so I was going to do pre uh social science or whatever and then and then I wanted to do environmental science and then I was going to do Health Science and then I was like you know I want to do uh something else so I went and I did a study abroad in in um Spain and I studed International Business and I got a a a

[16:28] certificate like a minor in international business in Spain in Madrid and then when I came back from that European trip I I changed my major again but um at the time I had me and my boyfriend we created a club at at the at the university called entrepreneurs United and it was like this club for entrepreneu young people and we used to bring in like motivational speakers and I thought okay we're gonna do something in business but they didn't really have like a entrepreneur degree right so basically I was like okay I'm going to do something with business and at the time I was already doing the business uh international business as a minor so I

[17:03] went with a communication degree because I felt well if you can learn to communicate I think that can help you in anything that you decide to do because I remember one day when I was changing my major for the seventh time I was running um on the track behind the university and I remember thinking to myself you know what I really want to study I really want to study how does energy work like why don't they have a degree of that like I was just so interested in like how do we get energy and like so this was like the budding kind of seed of like where my life ended up evolving to this like lifelong dedication to this concept of flow and how does that work

[17:39] and you know I I started in Toast Masters when I was in seventh grade as well so like giving speeches I was always really attracted to oration and to be able to communicate and but I still hadn't put together the full picture of like okay what does it look like this this career right and so that was the beginning and then I remember after graduating um with the communication degree and I actually got the student of the year award one year for stumping my organic chemistry professors asking them questions about the nature of the universe they couldn't answer me they even asked the top people

[18:14] in the whole College nobody knew the answers to these questions so they gave me an award student of the year for stumping everyone and um but it was interesting because I realized there's a finite amount of information you can get from college actually and that there was just like so much that I still wanted to know and so I came out of college like all right now I'm really gonna start figuring out what I'm gonna do now because I got this degree and I still have no clue and so I kind of started you know exploring but I remember I I was doing a job right out of college and I was working like a it was a corporate

[18:50] type of job in sales I was recruiting travel nurses and I was really good at it but I was so good at it that like it took me like one hour to do the whole day's work and so the other seven hours I was just bored to death and I got really depressed because I was in this environment that was kind of stifling my creativity and and and I just felt like there was no purpose to life and I got actually quite depressed and it hit me so hard that I went into like a a year-long depression that affected me on many levels and my relationship that I had at the time and many things but I believe that that was a big one of the biggest blessings because it led me to

[19:27] ask the deeper questions of like what would I do with my life with my time here if money was no object and that I could just literally do what I wanted and that I was passionate about and as I asked those questions it led me more in this direction once again which was like I wanted to be able to serve that was something early I knew I wanted to be able to make a positive impact I really love health and wellness and that was something that that I knew and so those little pieces started to come together and I remember I got this message and it was like Google gole inner peace and I like who did Google back in 2004 right

[20:02] who knows I just Googled inner peace and I I ended up finding a yoga teacher training actually and so that was my first yoga teacher training even though I had been practicing yoga my whole life because you know as an athlete we we did a lot of different you know yoga types of practices but basically I did a yoga teacher training when I was 24 and I ended up um starting that and it healed me on so many levels because I had so much Trauma from this childhood and I had been hit by a car and so I had scoliosis and the doctors had told me there's nothing you can do to heal scoliosis you just have to like manage the symtoms and and I always had in the

[20:37] back of my mind this feeling like no there's got to be a way to heal this and I met a yoga teacher who told me that she had healed her scoliosis with yoga and it gave me like I said earlier like that that glimpse of like I can do that too and so I just dedicated my time and my energy to like learning how do we heal ourselves with this amazing ancient science which back then wasn't that commonly popular like not a lot of people were doing yoga 18 years ago but there were people doing it but it wasn't mainstream like it is today now 30% of Americans have practiced yoga at some

[21:12] point and and it was interesting so it got me uh really in back into my passion of life doing that yoga teacher training changed my life so dramatically I I for the first time my depression went away and I was like singing and dancing and I felt joy and I felt this energy what we talk about which is Flow State which is like this joy and this High vibration this feeling of interconnected to everything and this this like being able to access wisdom and intelligence that I didn't know before and that it just would come through me and this feeling

[21:47] of Flow came through that practice in such a way that that it started very early in in my path as a teacher to change me in such a fundamental way that it inspired me that everybody needs access to this information like this is something they should teach in to children they should so I actually even started teaching it to kids I was teaching in the schools and in the hospital in the private schools and lots of places teaching um and and kids really have fun with yoga but I I developed a whole DVD line like there was a whole bunch of stuff right away that that I did and I can share more about the early part of that but but it

[22:23] was very interesting because like it was just coming from this feeling of like everyone needs to know about this this is literally like the medicine of everything and why don't people know about this so one of the things that strikes me as I listen to you is um you you you accomplish so much e even at an early age um I I can imagine that people are watching this and thinking to myself well you know dasama can do this because she's

[22:58] extraordinarily self-disciplined and extraordinarily self-confident but I I I I don't have that kind of discipline I couldn't do that so how how do would you respond to someone who who would essentially attribute you know attribute to you um you know this this High degree of of self-confidence and self-discipline that's a great question you know honestly I wasn't always like that like that's something you build as a muscle I remember there was a time where I actually cuz I had a big drinking problem cuz my parent my mother the reason she lost her mind was cuz she was

[23:33] an alcoholic and she was addicted to crack and it was like she had all this problems so I ended up getting into drinking early um in middle school too like I was drinking like sneaking out of my whatever home that I was at and going and getting drunk and I even got arrested for drinking twice at school and got suspended in um nth grade and in 12th grade so I got in a lot of trouble I was like in trouble with the law and all all sorts of stuff so yeah the idea that it just came naturally is not is not the case it was more like um it saved my life so so for example when I

[24:09] got into sports and even though I had all this trauma and I had you know I was getting in trouble with the law and I was drinking and I had a lot of issues psychologically physically emotionally but that when I when I joined a team for example I joined the running team and I for the most part I was like okay I'm on this team I got to show up for that I can just like not go so like that like literally just like committing to something and I'm the type of person that if I commit I'm GNA do it like I'm not just going to go sometimes not go sometimes you know like if you're going to go to school you're going to go to school every day hopefully you know or if if you have a job you go to the job

[24:44] every day so like everybody has those things in their life that they do commit to or that they do have discipline with and then they give them themselves a lot of slack and the other stuff because they're like well I'm like I'm already so tired you know it's the mind that talks you out of the like Translating that discipline into your other areas of life like you you know if you're a human in America especially you probably brush your teeth every day mostly hopefully you know like you do these things you take a shower like there are these things that we put into like okay that's that but like when I look at discipline

[25:19] because I've been a coach my whole life and when I look at discipline I'm like you know if you can be disciplined in any one thing you can be disciplined in any other thing it's really just a mindset so if you're like okay I'm brushing my teeth every day you got to look at that like okay you made a habit of that so what I actually ended up doing because I knew this early on and your question is really relevant and perfect because honestly I had that same issue with a lot of clients so they would come and then they like one of them would be like you know when you're telling me to do this I'm doing it but when I'm at home I'm on my couch and I was like yeah I see what you mean so basically what I found was some people

[25:56] are more intrinsically motivated and some people aren't having that as a natural tendency okay no problem so what I found though and that science has shown is that we can actually condition ourselves to create new habits and it's really only the habituation that creates the discipline so we have a habit of brushing our teeth that's why it doesn't feel like extra work or we have a habit of taking a shower like right we have these habits of things that we do that we know we got to do so you just have to do that with any new thing that want to add into your list of things that you do every day that you know you need to do so if you

[26:32] look at it that way if you go okay I know for my health and well-being I should do some form of exercise every day or like I need to do my yoga every day or I should at least do 10 minutes of stretches after I run you know when you know that that thing that whatever it is is going to really make your life better and then you still talk yourself out of doing it that's a mindset issue so then that's when meditation comes in is you go okay so how do do I work with my mind my mind is working against me okay so you have to like treat the in yoga we actually from the ancient thousands of years they've written about

[27:07] the mind and they they often call it like that it's like a monkey because the mind it just does whatever like it's just all over the place and so if you allow the monkey to rule your life you are at the mercy of this monkey mind and so what you have to do is learn to train the monkey mind and even in my first book journey to Joy I have a whole chapter and it's called training the monkey mind and it's talking about that so it's like okay your mind is like I don't want to do workout today or I'm GNA lay here or I'm gonna eat these Twinkies whatever the mind is doing you have to look at it

[27:42] like a separate entity it's like no that is not who I am who I am is the better version of me who I am is the one that eats healthy and that does what I know I need to do and that like does things that are good for me and the people around me that's who I am in my highest self so how am I showing up okay am I showing up in the highest self or like the lower self right now and like really in that observation of self which we often call that you know mindfulness or you can call it like self-observation but just like observing your own mind and your behavior and your choices then you corrective you have to be your own

[28:17] like inner coach unless you hire a coach which is what a lot of people hired me was but it's like if you can be your own inner coach it's like you do your own self-correction so when you see yourself Talking yourself out of the thing that you know you should do then you got to discipline yourself like you would if you had a new puppy not puppy peeing on the floor you're like no we don't pee on the floor and we don't you know be lazy and and we brush our teeth every day and we we exercise because we know it's good for us and not only because we know it's good for us but because it actually feels good and so it's also that tendency towards making time and space

[28:53] for things that we know feel good and usually in the beginning let's let's say exercise doesn't feel good sometimes like if you're new to yoga and you're like it's hurting because you're all tight and a lot of people say I can't do yoga because I'm not flexible but it's like the people that aren't flexible are the ones that need it the most because they need to stretch and so it's never comfortable those first period of whatever couple weeks or what have you but as you get past the pain of the starting blocks and then you start feeling better and better and then you're like wow and then you get to this point with any new habit where it not only is no longer

[29:29] discomfort but now it's actually enjoyable and that's really with any new habit whether it's waking up early exercising doing things like reading whatever it is the beginning it's like there's like this phase where it's not the best not super enjoyable and then you get through the hump of it and then all of a sudden you're like I don't know how I could ever live without this and that's with any new habit and there's so much science and psychology research that's been done about habit forming and some people say you know it takes 21 days some people say 60 but it's somewhere between 3 to six maybe up to

[30:04] eight weeks but there's a period of time that you need to do something consistently and what it does is it starts to rewire the neural synapsis in the brain and so you when you create these new neural networks and the Brain starts being like this is who we actually are this is what we do every day that's when something becomes automatic so it's like when you drive to work and you don't have to think about the turn you're going to make because it's so automatic you've created that neuron Network and now you just can go through and and do it without thinking that happens with any new habit if you stick with it for long enough

[30:43] consistently so so interesting um questions racing through my head too um so what do we do then when you know we're we're we're working on building a habit right and we you know we fall off the wagon so to speak um you know like we're we we make a commitment let's say to exercise four times a week and it's now you know

[31:20] Friday and we've only exercised once that week right and and the week is over in another day or two so we're not going to make our four days a week right what do we do about that to keep ourselves on track it's a good question you know there's a few things that I think are effective when I first launched the 30-day yoga challenge which was my attempt to get people to do a Daily Commitment that would create these neuron networks that would create the new habit in 30 days felt like okay if you could do something every day for 30 days even if it's only two to five

[31:55] minutes that you would create this habit now here's the thing that I noticed was that it works and what really I think makes it work is that if if it's bite siiz right so if you tell yourself I'm gonna do an hour four times a week and then you're busy and you can't do it you're setting yourself up for failure and then your psychology is like oh no I'm a failure and then it's like I can't actually achieve my goals and then it actually is a spiral in a bad negative Direction because you kind of set yourself up for failure whereas if you

[32:31] set yourself up for Success which is more like okay if even if I do five minutes that will count right let's just say that because everybody knows if you have two days left of the week and you didn't get all four exercise days in um you're not gonna make it but if you said Okay I want to do five minutes a day it doesn't matter if it's 11:55 you could still get that five minutes in that day you're not going to have to say I I I I'm a failure today you can fit it in you have to make it bite-sized enough that you can fit it in now if you're busy you have a family you have work you have all these obligations and then

[33:07] you're trying to be like and I'm GNA do an hour a day of exercise and an hour a day of reading and you know you just like setting yourself up for like a failure and then that's not nice to yourself so it's like part of self-love is setting yourself up for Success so giving yourself more like ler goals in the beginning and then if you do more than that then it's just bonus so if you were like okay I'm to do 10 minutes a day four days a week that's doable no matter what right even if you do it while you're talking on the phone you know like you can multitask with certain things right so like you can always get it in if you keep it doable enough and

[33:42] then the other part of it is accountability partners and that's another thing that I created with our community like when we do the 30-day yoga challenge or any of our kind of like things that we do you know other people are doing it at the same time and we have like Facebook group or an app or we have different ways that like people are seeing each other doing it this is also why teams and sports work so well because if you know you got other people that are doing it and they see you and you see them and you're accountable to that you're like a thousand times more likely to do it because you're like okay they kind of G to notice if I don't show up and so there's this part of the human

[34:17] psychology that wants to like show up because of the knowing that whereas if nobody knows you never let anybody know about these goals that's why they also talk about writing your goals down and even like announcing them publicly to be more accountable even if you just announce them to your spouse or your family but somebody outside of yourself should know about your goals because then you're held accountable to those in a bigger way even if it's just on a psychological level so these are some of the little sort of hacks that you can do that I think you will always set yourself up for Success both intrinsically because of the way that

[34:52] the mind works but also with your time schedule because most of the time when people talk themselves out of something or they don't reach their goals it's because time management and just really not actually creating uh a winning opportunity for themselves that they could definitely succeed at right so I I mean I'm guessing you didn't learn about um you know how the mind works um how how to build habits how success works you know in a Communications program at college so how did you go from okay okay I you know I

[35:27] graduated from college I have my communications degree I have my minor in international business I'm I got myself trained as a um as a yoga instructor um how did you go from there to you know author filmmaker and and someone who can speak so cogently about these ideas that's a great question I would say there's there's a few parts to it first of all I have an insatiable appetite to understand things so I'm actually so grateful that Google exists

[36:02] because actually whenever I think of something that I don't know the answer if I can't get it immediately just from like asking source to like give me the answer I Google it and I'm always researching and I will read like five articles just to make sure that the information is aligning between the sources and I always go to the best sources I've worked with Harvard and Stanford and a number of highlevel professional kind of like experts in different fields and uh I'm just constantly in this insatiable hunger of understanding things so like if something I want to know doesn't um like

[36:37] if I don't know the answer right away I'm like looking it up I'm reading a book I'm listening to podcast and like I really feel that one of the basic human needs that we all have is to grow and to evolve and if we're not growing and evolving which includes gaining more information and understanding about how life works then we get into this like stagnant more or less like that's what leads to depression and stuff or like you know these types of stuff that happens inside of us it's because we're not growing we're not evolving and we feel stuck and so it's part of the Flow State idea

[37:12] right it's like kind of like the continuous expansion of our awareness our our knowledge our understanding of how life works and everybody is driven in a different direction with that like so some one person might be super interested in understanding like new recipes to make for dinner and that that still s like serves that insatiable hunger for growth if you're learning new recipes every day and you're like oh my God and then you're making them for your family and everyone's like ah we love this new recipe like I do that too sometimes like I make these because like it's fun now on like social media on on

[37:47] reals or Tik Tok or something you you'll have like a one minute video that teaches you how to make a new recipe so I'm like I'm going to try that tonight so I'm like made like Whip It Up make sure it's an easy one I whip it up and I'm like wow and so all of a sudden like I felt that I grew that day because no matter what happened I got this new recipe that I love and that was something so like even if you grow in these little ways a little hack like yesterday I watched a I like I like these little hacks sometimes there was a guy T he's a psychologist he was talking about how to reprogram your mind and your Consciousness and you do like

[38:22] little like things differently so one of the things he said was when you wake up at the morning brush your teeth with the opposite hand than you normally do okay so this is already very hard you know but it's it's rewiring your brain so it's like teaching you you do you can do things with the other side right the embit dexterity it starts to like open both sides of the brain and you do that and then while you're brushing your teeth with the other hand you're looking at yourself in the mirror and you saying to yourself in your mind I love you I love you you're looking into your own eyes and telling yourself that you love yourself and then the third part of it is when you get done with your teeth

[38:57] brushing you do 25 deep deep breaths inhale exhale very slow and this is just a way this is a very simple example of of a simple way of starting to rewire your Consciousness your neural network into doing something that it doesn't normally do and when you go outside of your comfort zone and you start doing things you don't normally do this is how we grow and then all of a sudden we start feeling like oh if I could do that then I could do this and if I could do this and I could do anything and then you start to like really feel and that's where confidence comes from is like I

[39:32] could do this little thing which was like the tooth brushing okay like I could do this little bit bigger thing you know I committed to this goal I and I did it every day for 30 days so maybe I could try it for 60 or maybe I could try a bigger goal me you do these bite-sized little little steps and and one of my favorite stories uh that was like actually Will Smith was talking about cuz someone had said how do you build this iconic extraordinary career like you've you've created like how do you start out and do that and he said I never start out like

[40:08] if you're gonna build a wall you never think I'm gonna build a wall all you do is with every brick you think I want to put this brick in the most perfect way that I can in this one spot and then everything you do has to be like that so it's like everything you just show up in that thing whatever it is and you just do it to the best of your ability each time and that's how you create an extraordinary life so I'm I'm gonna go hopefully deeper for a moment on something um I I had a friend of mine call me um a few days ago um pretty upset um he he and

[40:47] his wife have a teenage son and he's been having a pretty hard time of it of late and it finally got to the point where he told told his mother if if uh if I have to go back to school I'm I'm literally going to kill myself and it wasn't uh it wasn't like you know it was like I'm going to and and and so my my friend was asking me was he he said you know when we were growing up the idea that we would go to our parents and say something like that that that was so at

[41:22] least from his perspective defeatist he just couldn't fathom it and so his question was essentially you know what's wrong with kids today or what's you know what's wrong with society today but I mean I I can I can understand I think a little bit where he's coming from um what do you because we have seen a lot more depression with young people you know a lot more um emotional problems with with younger people what do you think is is is the root of that because you give such a a

[41:59] positive message a can do empowering message and and and yet and and not that this is your responsibility of course but but so many young people seem to not be able to I don't know somehow grab on to that that's a great question I'll tell you first and foremost that it's a huge passion of mine as well I actually started a whole initiative called the children of the future because I think I mentioned so when I started as a yoga teacher 18 years ago I was teaching

[42:34] children and in the schools and and I realized even back then this was 18 years ago there was this huge obesity epidemic so back then it was about weight you know people being overweight but it's now become what's known as a mental health crisis so the US Surgeon General in 2021 during the coid pandemic they declared children Children's Mental Health a national crisis and they were showing over 50% of children reported mental health issues over 25% of them reported having been suicidal and it's a huge it's a huge crisis it's not small

[43:11] and this is help you know affecting other demographics as well another big one that we're working with is the veterans community they said over 30% of veterans with PTSD are also suicidal and so we're at a time in history where there's it's what I would say is not the best way to say but a perfect storm in the sense where it's like a number of factors have become so intense for people and they don't have the resources or the guidance or education or what they feel is the support perhaps to figure out how to get out of it and I know because I was there before when I told you when I was super depressed I've

[43:46] had several times when I was also in my own journey of suicidal and I don't think I ever got to a place where I actually thought I would end my life but I felt the what they call Rock Bottom where the Rock Bottom is like can't get any worse like you just feel so bad that you're like what is the purpose of even being alive and that that low low feeling so in the teaching that I at the Flow State institute there's this philosophy um and and it's related to what we call the emotional tone scale and there's like different vibrations correlated to every emotion so let's say

[44:21] the lowest emotion is suicidal right it's like where you just can't imagine why do you want to live and then there's ones above that so like above that could be like depressed above that could be angry above that could be Melancholy above that could be neutral and you keep going higher and then you get into like happiness and joy and love and like then you're at the very high so you're in flow and everything is beautiful and you're like oh life is so great so it's like there's this huge huge scale and when people are at the low end of the scale typically there's a number of reasons one of them I would say there's

[44:57] a correlation between this and gut health most people don't understand this your gut is where you produce over 90% of your happiness hormones and people in this day and age are actually being poisoned by a lot of the food like the they see that all the chemicals in the food in fact number of countries are Banning American food from even entering their country Europe is doing that Japan it's because there's so many chemicals specifically in um processed food but especially for children and a lot of the ones that have sugar and these cereals and it's literally like slowly poisoning

[45:32] the children and and people in general so let's say your gut health is where you produce 90% of your happiness hormones but all you have in there is like poison and toxins and sugar right so like right away 90% of your happiness is getting zaed from that okay so we'll just start there now in addition to that you have a number of other factors stress is a huge huge one most people don't realize the kind of stress children are under even if you don't take into consideration like testing being stressful which it is and they have this huge pressure on standardized testing scores for children my sister

[46:08] was a fifth grade teacher and I know she said they spend 30 to 50% of the entire school year preparing kids for these tests and they give them so much pressure that because if like if you don't do well you're gonna like fail and everything so they feel so much stress and then on top of that they have bullying they have kids that are not nice they have situations going on and then they have social media that's also a comparison and and a very competitive place that does that really deteriorates confidence and then beyond that then you also have these unrealistic standards being set in the media in films in TV

[46:43] shows and in the media in general showing what life should be like if you you know so people are like looking at Kardashian lifestyle and going like oh my God my life is horrible because I don't live like that nobody lives like that they don't even actually live like that they're pretending it's a show but like there's this very blurred line between what is real and what is not real now and there's this augmented reality there's artificial intelligence there's all of this like blurred lines between what's real and what's actually not real and so as a child having this like B like a barrage of this confusion

[47:18] on top of having toxic gut chemistry that's affecting the hormones on top of all this other stuff it's no wonder that there's a huge problem here and and in addition to that they don't actually teach mental health or coping skills as a primary class in school right so they teach you history they want you to know about the Battle of 1492 but they don't teach you how to manage your own mind or emotions and so that's where the children of the future initiative that I started actually we got a letter from vice president kamla Harris about this and we have a number of nonprofit partners that we've been working with to

[47:53] solve this because actually to just give children this understanding as a knowledge base is my is my intention with this movement is that actually if you you know if you're going to teach them history they should also learn how to understand their mind and and like some skills could be very simple breathing you know a little bit of what we talked about earlier mindfulness to be able to observe what's going on in the monkey mind so that they don't feel like it's them and they can actually feel oh I have some control over this it's not just like you know I'm not at the mercy of this and and to give them those skills and when I've seen that in

[48:29] children they are actually sponges for this information and then they run with it and the children that are introduced to these types of um knowledge they ended up one of my favorite stories was a young guy I actually was doing some charity work I went down to Haiti when they did had the big earthquake and I got to teach yoga to the children who lost their homes there and there was this one young guy in Haiti he lost his home they were like you know homeless and and we I taught him yoga and meditation years later I found out that he kept doing it every day after that he did he changed his life so much that he

[49:05] ended up getting into an American University and he got a full ride scholarship to go to school coming out of the rubble of disaster and he was like not everybody did that so the difference was he had the discipline to do the meditation but he kept meditating and as a result of him gaining this type of control of his own mind and emotions and to be able to direct his focus into what he wanted to create with his life he was able to create this remarkable Life coming out of nothing and it just goes to show anybody can do that especially in the children but adults as

[49:42] well and that it's just a matter of them having access to this knowledge and information and the resources which is what we're so passionate about with the initiative with Children of the future but I do that with adults we do that with the veterans we do that's really my passion in general because it's like if you can you know knowledge is power if you can give people the knowledge that they can change their life that they can rise out of nothing like I talked about in the beginning when I learned the story of Oprah or I learned about Anne Frank when I was a young person it gave me that fuel and that was all I needed to know if that person could do it I can

[50:17] do that too and and every young person needs to have that at least one inspiration of that and then also the guidance on how to get there and and the nice thing is in this day and age because of the internet and the media that it is accessible to to everyone it's just a matter of um you know there's got to be the Strategic implementation which is what we're working on now so I mean listening to you one would think that you know you live life at you know hypert Tempo all the time right

[50:56] um and and yet and I really loved what you said about the Kardashians not even the Kardashians live like the Kardashians right it reminds me of um people when car people used to tell Carrie Grant all the time H I wish I could be Carrie Grant and and his response them would be I wish I could be Carrie Grant right because in in the end he was really just archabald leech he never you know he never he never became a different person right so um how how do

[51:31] you um take H how do you do the self-care that you need let's put I'll put it that way so that you know you can be at Peak Performance when you need to be knowing I I presume and maybe I'm wrong that we can't always be at Peak Performance will burn out that's a good point you know I think that there's a different type of way of seeing what is Peak Performance for me I have a lot of energy but I also do a lot of things that give me more energy because I love to have energy because I told you even I wanted to

[52:06] study energy when I was in college I'm like I love energy um and also because it's the opposite of depression you know so it's a good thing to have energy but um but so the idea that we are in this Peak Performance it it's different for everybody so like for some I have friends that run like six marathons back to back I mean there's just like extreme you know and then they have friends that Peak Performance to them is that they got up that day they had a nice breakfast they they have their kids got some food too everybody's got food we did our day you know so like there's levels but like when I think of Peak Performance what I like to think is okay

[52:42] what are my goals what am I aiming to create with this life and then then working backwards what is today what can I do today that would optimize that outcome right and so each day like I make time for exercise every day I I always do I I just feel better so like even if it's a walk with my dog you do something every move yourself every day I also really love breath work I love meditation um we even developed these new little bracelets that um we're getting ready to launch this really exciting thing for bright future foundation on bright future.org and we

[53:18] have these little bracelets and this is something that I'm excited to share with people because it's a little way to some of this into your day that's totally doable for anyone because most people are like I can't meditate or like you know an hour they imagine you need to do like an hour of this and an hour of that and I was like if you could do two minutes like this is 20 beads if you do 20 deep breaths and have the affirmation going that's like I am peace I am love I am you know today is a good day you know just keep reprogramming your Consciousness to have peace to feel good

[53:56] to be in alignment with your goals today so it's 20 breaths 20 beads and it's a meditation bracelet and it goes with this whole thing that we're launching for the bright future foundation to bring more health and wellness into people's lives it also comes with like this Elixir drink some of them are for energy some are for relaxation um there's even an aphrodesiac chocolate one for people for their uh intimacy but we have different things you know but the the intention is that you want to find things to make it kind of fun and that's really one of the keys that's what kids are so good at if you I saw a statistic the other day that said it

[54:32] takes 400 repetitions to create a new pattern unless you make it fun then it only takes 10 so for kids that's why if they're like jumping around they can learn something very easily because it's fun like it programs differently if something's fun if you feel like it's drudgery like oh my God let me get through this like some people feel that way about exercise or about meditation if you feel like it's drudgery it's it's actually working against you because now it's taking longer for you to get the result and the benefits so you want to find ways to make something kind of enjoyable and fun or at least like that

[55:07] it doesn't feel like drudgery and that you start to create this energy around it where you're like I love doing that like that's so cute that's fun that's cool and then like maybe I want to do it with my kids now I want to do it with my spouse like it start to create an energy around anything that you that you know makes you feel better but that you have like that little bit of resistance to get into it make it fun you know and that's why we did these bracelets it's like it's a beautiful fun simple way to kind of like plug it into your morning or like maybe at lunch or even before bed and you could do it with a kid you could do it with a friend and and there's different ways of just like integrating self-care into your routine

[55:44] and I always like to encourage people to to really remember that you don't have to do it all every day right just do something every day that makes you feel good and and what happens and what I've noticed is then I want to fit a little bit more in tomorrow because I'm like well that felt good let me I'll go on a longer walk maybe I'll do the one up the hill this time and every time I do the one that goes all the way to the top of the hill it's so much more fun because my puppy loves it up there and I say you know what every time if I can I'm gonna make it up the hill and you push yourself because you give yourself these little rewards because you what you're creating is a fun life around Wellness

[56:21] instead of it like I got to fit that in and it feeling like a to-do list because if it feels like an obligation or a responsibility or a to-do list then it becomes like but if it feels like I get to do that yay then you're GNA put it at the top of the list and to do it first thing in the morning if you can so you you kind of said very quietly um where you can get the braid I can shamelessly plug you because you know it's my show so um it was um bright future.org yeah bright future so I have this Foundation

[56:56] bright future foundation and the acronym is BFF and it's really fun because our bracelets um they they say BFF and it's part of this thing called the BFF gift club and it's like anybody can be a part of the gift Club the intention behind it is to spread Gifts of wellness and so every gift box includes one of the bracelets we have different colors and different styles and we also have these Wellness Elixir really delicious drinks that you can uh some give you energy some relax you some have different effect but really nice different flavors and we also have Beauty oils and it's this gift club that Our intention is for

[57:31] people you know if you're thinking of about getting somebody a gift for the holidays or for Veterans Day coming up that you you want to get somebody something that is the gift that keeps on giving Which is Wellness so I'll make we I'll make sure to get the information from you we'll put a link to that in the show notes so that people can can check out your sites and I this is you the um brighter future foundation this is an nonprofit is it or yeah we're a 501c3 it's bright future foundation and it's a part of our big mission uh with the children so all of our our revenues go to these programs so

[58:06] we have scholarships that we're putting to give these programs to children to teachers to Veterans to people that need health and wellness we have educational program certification uh in our trauma informed yoga teacher training so people can become certified to become teachers and help us and be on our team and to bring this Ness into their communities into your homes and families and and to your own life you know it's so I feel this is education that should be fundamental for every child in school and so that's part of our big mission so I mean unfortunately we are out of time I we could go on for I think an entire

[58:43] another day um but I I will tell you that um not only are you inspiring um I I I suspect for for people who are struggling I you know I for I'm I'm a single parent and raising my daughter it you know you you kind of go along day by day thinking am I doing the right thing you know and and so much of what I'm hoping to help her with is what you've been talking about so the the validation that you're

[59:18] also giving people um that you know they're on the right path they're they're truly helping and nurturing their loved ones I I you know I I think we all want to inspire but I think sometimes um nurturing and confirming is as important as inspiring because you know people we need that in order to sort of because because sometimes life is a bit of a slog right and and we don't know what the end result is going to be um in the moment

[59:53] we're we're hopeful um and so you know to hear your message of of what we can be doing to help each other out um is I think like I said tremendously reinforcing so um I I I I do believe that you know people ask me I because among other things I'm a rabbi they said why are we here I said we're here to emulate God I don't really I usually don't speak religiously but I think I love I agree they say okay well how do I do that I said well God takes care of

[60:28] his children so if you want to em emulate God then you need to take care of his children so how you do that that's the harder part the easy part is knowing that's why you're here we're all here to do that to take care of each other and and and I I see that really at the core of your message really at the core of your being so just just amazing things that that you said um I could I could bubble over and you know you get really embarrassed and you know blush and all that but but unfortunately we're gonna have to wrap things up so um desama thank you

[61:06] so much for coming on today I um candidly the last couple of days have been a little bit rough here at at casabel and this has really kind of you know Lifted Me Up um as as some of my friends say so on a personal level thank you so much and and on of all the viewers and listeners um thank you so much for coming and sharing your time and your message very very very powerful we'll put links to um your your organizations and such in in the show notes so that people can um you know get

[61:42] in get in touch with you if they have if they have questions if they're seeking seeking help and um we want to we want to you know make that as easy for for people as possible so um I'm going to wrap up here and I'm GNA I'm going to have you hang on after we go go off of being live just to so we can wrap up for a minute but folks thank you so much for joining us I really appreciate it as you know Wednesday is our our last show for the week so um I'm going to wish you a great rest of the week and hopefully a restorative weekend we will be back on Monday morning at 10:00 a.m. with trust

[62:17] and Estates weekly I think that one's uh self-explanatory 10: a.m. Pacific time that is on Tuesday 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time Business lessons from the military and then 7even days from today will be the next edition of people making money um and to be honest with you I can't remember what's on the calendar for those three shows um but if you go to our event brigh um uh page um you will uh be able to find out what's going on you can get a free ticket to join us live or you can always join us as you are um on our various social media sites

[62:54] and just one one last thing um if if you have it in mind there i' I've been really blessed to talk to a lot of tremendously gifted people if you want to check them out go to our YouTube channel youtube.com the way to wow and and and and you know check them out and and I I would encourage you if you know someone in your life who's struggling um send them the link to this show and let them hear das's story let

[63:29] them see her story I you will be doing them a tremendous kindness because her message is one of you know in in essence the Phoenix rising from the ashes in some respect and and I we we all need to do that at times and um we're not we're not always in a place where we can ask for what we want so if you're a loving friend or a loving family member you know take maybe take the time to do that and just say hey you know this may this may help you and that's all you have to say is is this may help you so thanks

[64:07] again for uh for joining us I hope I see you next week and uh as signing off as I always do Marie darling you are my bell thanks very much folks