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Rob's Identity Shifting website

Peter King (00:00:00):
You're listening to the PK experience podcast where I tap into the minds of today's impact players so that you can learn and level up your game to be a greater impact player yourself. My name is Peter King. I'm the host of the show. And today I have a very special guest in Rob Scott. Rob is somebody that I've known for several years and he is considered a master level coach that helps rewire people's minds. It's a phenomenal and you know, sort of crazy process that he calls identity shifting. It basically helps people create dramatic breakthroughs in all areas of their lives. I've seen him do it. And some of the testimonials that he has from his clients are just off the charts remarkable. It truly is a phenomenal thing. And in this episode we talk about his personal journey, which is one of the most harrowing and traumatic and largest transformations I've ever experienced. It, it truly is amazing that Rob is even alive, let alone on top of his mental game and then helping other people level up their lives with it as well. So it's a real pleasure and an honor to have him on the show. Here I am with Rob Scott,
Peter King (00:01:11):
Robert Scott. Hello. How's it going, man? AKA Rob Scott. I don't want people to thinking you're actually Robert. So Rob Scott, one of my best friends and many, many, many more. Welcome to the call, ma'am. Hey, thank you for having me, man. It's good to be here. Yeah, it's just we've been talking about this for what, how long? As long as you've been doing it, probably we, we, we've talked about doing one together, you know, so, yeah, this is, this feels good to be here with you like this. It does. We might, that still may be in the cards in the future. We'll see. We'll do the, I, you know, you've, I've had the pleasure obviously, of getting to know you and knowing a ton of your backstory and all that stuff and what you're up to. But I think it's helpful for some people to know just who you are, kind of what's, give me the, like we're riding an elevator the 32nd, Hey, you know, what do you do?
Peter King (00:02:04):
Kind of a thing. It's usually a good place to start so people can have some context, but I'll figure we'll dive in a whole bunch of other stuff during the course. You know, I'm not done to, I don't have like an elevator pitch in my pocket, so I'm not sure how great this will be, but I am, I'm deeply committed to helping people profoundly change. I created something called identity shifting, which is a process that we go through, which is both a very clear process but also very accustomed when people do it live with me that we go through that really changes who you are in a profound way. And that sound might sound scary to some people or push an edge. You know, like our ego really resists change in a lot of ways and we want to stay the same. We'd love the world to change around us, but we don't want to change.
Peter King (00:02:48):
And the reality is you if you're going to play a bigger game, if you're going to deeply shift out of patterns of anxiety and overwhelming depression, if you're going to, you know, become a really successful entrepreneur, that process is actually turning into a different version of yourself. And it is that profound. And we do it all the time. You know, we're not the five-year-old self. We once were, we're not the 10 year old self. We once were. We're evolving, but most of the time that process is done unconsciously. And so I've brought a really I think fresh and innovative way to make that a conscious process so that to a great degree, you get to pick who you want to be and you can really implant that in,
Rob (00:03:27):
Carry you forward. Did it so profoundly powerful because so many people deal with who they are and who they believe they can be or who they think they can be or who they want to be at the very least. Yeah. That like mental block can be debilitating. And I think a lot of people just end up, I was talking to somebody just this weekend and they're saying that, you know, yeah, my daughter, my daughter, my, my father just is the way he is. And that's what he tells me. Like I'm 60, whatever years old, I can't change. Yes. And it's like, dude, you haven't realized the malleability of the mind yet. You don't understand where your beliefs in your, your so-called identity comes from. What do you think? Well, first of all, why do you think that we as a society or just human race tend to all have that problem, tend to all have that perception of self that may be smaller than what our friends
Peter King (00:04:22):
Full potential is? You know, in a word it's, it's, it's, these are safety mechanisms. It's risky to, it's risky to go out and try things and it's scary to fail. But it's not as scary or as risky as it used to be. So, you know, back in caveman times, if you couldn't pull your weight as a Hunter, you know, somebody might kind of bump you off the cliff because you're causing the tribe, you know, you're costing the tribe rather than helping the tribe. And to a great degree, huge oversimplification. But what's happening there is we've gotten patterned in that if I'm not valuable, if I'm not worthy in my performance right then maybe my, my whole sense of self, my identity isn't valuable. And what ends up happening in that is that the cost of performing often can become so scary that to avoid it, we make an image of who we'd like to be and then we procrastinate to give ourselves the excuse of not having to become that thing.
Peter King (00:05:15):
And so we can all kind of walk around with this sense about ourselves. Like, well, my best is amazing, but I'm just so disorganized. Or, but I, you know, I, if I had it for a student, you know, I just didn't study this quarter, but if I'd studied, I would have been amazing. Right? And that's happening for most of us unconsciously. And we end up in this pattern where more and more we're not showing up for ourselves and we're losing self esteem and self worth. And so it becomes almost like a self fulfilling prophecy where later in life we actually start believing, you know, I kind of suck. I'm not enough. I'll never make the money. I'll never be popular. People won't, you know. Yeah. Does anybody really love me? Is love even thing instead of having confidence taking action, you know, really having the ability to go do the big things that we really can do and you know, go change the world and are big or little ways that we might do that.
Peter King (00:06:07):
Right. honest to God, like, and I've shared this with you before, you've been public about some of your own experience, but I don't know how you're even alive. Like the fact that we are even having this conversation is a bit of a miracle from what I know about you. And I don't know how much you want to get into all of that or what, but your personal experience has been the biggest identity shifting that I think I've ever come across. I mean, I, I jokingly tell people like, Oh, you know, you think you had it rough. Well, my mom loved me unconditionally and my father did super well financially. You have no idea how difficult. No idea the difficulty that I dealt with. Okay. So, you know, I am like living in this world of padded walls and marshmallow foundations and truthfully, and we should, I've shared this with you before, like that has been my challenge.
Peter King (00:07:02):
It's like it has its own challenges. It really does like to push myself out of that is, it's tough. It's tough. So comfort, comfort is often the enemy of greatness, right? And so in that, a lot of times when people have been through a lot of hard stuff, many people don't make it right. Many people end up addicted or in jail or dead or you know, like a lot. It's not like I'm wishing trauma on anybody. But quite often, the people who make the biggest changes have been through quite a bit. Right? They've seen the dark side. They've had overcome that in some way, and it's almost the root of the whole hero's journey, right? It's, you know, we're all kind of rooting for that person that's, that's seen adversity and kind of come out the other side. And, you know, this is nothing to speak of.
Peter King (00:07:44):
Anything that's exceptional about me, but I did go through a lot. I'm happy to share whatever about it. Anything you want to know, I'll tell you. But I, you know, I went through a lot of abuse and difficult stuff. It led to really early addiction. I ended up homeless in and out of like institutions and rehabs and halfway houses and all this stuff in and out of jails. You know, I've gotten down with the police taking a gun away from a guy and had the police force beat me up for like three days before they processed me. And that was, you know, the details of that are pretty nasty. So you know, it's been a, it's been a hard road and then, you know, to bring it back to identity shifting. What happened was I did have this, what my company is called fundamental shift.
Peter King (00:08:21):
I had this fundamental shift in the way my thinking was going and I, it's a huge oversimplification, but it was essentially, I was carrying this pretty big victim mindset and this mindset of, you know, look how tough I am, look at what I've been through, look at how hard life hits me and I keep hitting back, right? And so I would actually get attention from that. And that's something that's important to note for people that are doing this kind of dance. We get a payoff, right? We get a pay off for that. So, you know, a girl at a bar would be like, Oh my God. Like, you know, and I would get some form of attention, guys think I'm cool or tough or whatever if I told the stories enough. And so there's a payoff in that. But for that to remain true, life had to keep going badly for me.
Peter King (00:09:04):
So it's, it's almost like I keep finding ways for people to break my heart or, you know, I'm hanging around people that aren't their word or whatever's going on right. And I, I became aware of that. I was really digging at solving this problem and in a very grand sense, like, what is the human condition? Why are we all suffering? You know, my lens at the time was just life seems to be suffering. It seems to be addiction and suffering and you know, just liars and all this different stuff. And I was really looking at that and I, I became aware of the story I was telling myself and I really thought, what if I put that story down? Maybe make some new stories and show up in the world differently. And what happened after that was I literally went from homeless to vice president of technology at a company with no credentials.
Peter King (00:09:52):
You know, working with people who had MBAs out of Harvard and U Penn and all these different places. I have no credentials. And I'm going from temp in the basement to vice president running, you know, entire technology department. And so I started to get really good results, not only for myself, but part of the reason I was able to do that in the corporate world was I was able to help my staff get better results and I was a better leader and there was all this stuff. And so, you know, back in like 2005 I was one of the first people to have a podcast. And you know, maybe it's one of the biggest mistakes that I didn't keep that the whole time cause I, you know, I might be more popular than I am today, but I did it for a year, year and a half. And I was really sharing my best tips and tricks about at the time, you know, what is mindset?
Peter King (00:10:34):
What is meditation? What is hypnosis like, what are these hacks where we can go in and kind of rewire our brains and get better results for ourselves and other people. And it became really popular. I mean, there were very few people doing it, very few people listening. But of those that were listening, many of them started listening to me and they started asking me for coaching. And at first I really resisted that. Then I decided to dive in and, and and get into it because a friend was like, man, I'd hire you right now. And I cared about him. And as soon as I did it, I knew I was like, Oh, this is what I've been doing this whole time. I mean, to a great degree in the dysfunction of my family when I was a little kid, I was in some ways in it, sometimes trying to coach my parents, right?
Peter King (00:11:11):
Trying to help them think about things differently or see things differently or be more calm. So it's almost like I've had that in me the whole way I've wanted to help and figure out stuff like that. And so, you know, 12 or 13 years ago, I started this coaching company. I left the corporate world and I have been it's, it's the most deeply fulfilling, purposeful work that I do. And I, I literally love it. And I've been refining these concepts, you know, that whole time. W tell us the story. Well, you just mentioned that perhaps you've always had that within you wired to, to observe the observer within. Yeah. but do you remember, regardless, you still were dealing with a lot, you were talking about the payoffs that you had in the trauma,
Rob (00:11:54):
In the self sabotage, et cetera. But that there was that pivot point. Can you tell us a story? Like what was it that got you to wake up to, so you could start to see, Oh man, I've just been carrying around this story. Let me set that up. Was there something that, did you hit it off? I had so much like shame
Peter King (00:12:11):
And pain and rage. I mean, it took me years, even after this kind of awakening, it took me years and years and years of therapy to be able to safely feel anger, right? Because for me, and it was like, it was, it was almost like it was disconnected from it. You know, the abuse, what I'd been through as a kid was so horrific to me that I had so much rage toward that, that it was unsafe to feel that, right. I felt I might spin off the planet or kill somebody or whatever. And so unconsciously that gets stuffed down and I didn't have healthy access to my emotions and all this stuff and I'd gotten messaging like, you shouldn't be born, you know it's not safe to be alive. I, you know, we don't love you. Like that kind of stuff was what I was carrying around in my own mentality about that.
Peter King (00:12:59):
And so I was working on this like, why am I here? Right. In a context of like, if there's a creator and I'm going to talk to him, you know, what the fuck am I doing here? Like, I didn't ask to be here. Why are you putting me through this? And so I'm a young 20 something or you know, actually I remember I was, when this first happened in the biggest way, I was actually 19, and I'm walking on the campus of university of Pennsylvania over there, and I'm just thinking about this. I'm thinking, I'm thinking all of a sudden it was like my brain broke. It was something really shifted. And I had this just enormous epiphany. I mean, the colors got brighter. It was, I really saw behind the struggle that all of us as human beings have, it's this you know, I don't want to get too wishy washy or weird, but it's a, it's a little bit like an illusion of separateness, right?
Peter King (00:13:44):
There's this this idea that the only people we're fighting are ourselves. Like, why can't we figure this out? This is kind of silly that we can't make this world incredibly better place. And there was a ton of wisdom packed on top of a ton of immaturity and anger, right? And so it was like I understood all these things, but I remained pretty unhealthy for a while because I was, you know, now messing with things like non-duality and these were concepts that were they weren't mature yet, you know, and it took me, it took me more time to mature them and really become somebody that could mindfully teach this and help other people. But it was enough to begin helping me back then.
Rob (00:14:23):
Are you willing to, I mean, do you think there's value in going through some of this stuff that you went through as a kid? Cause I know that there's a lot of people that, especially in this me too culture. Yeah. There was one point in my life when everybody around me it became known to me, had dealt with sexual abuse. Every, every business person I was working with. Thanks for outing me, man. No, this is what, hello. Forever. I don't think I said that Pete, like
Peter King (00:14:52):
Jesus. Well, I, you know, honestly, it's one of the reasons why I do bring it up because you have spoken about it so eloquently. So confidently for somebody who's dealt with that and is, you know, has gone through that and wrestling with, do I see, is it a thing I come out with the people that I've spoken to that have dealt with that have often said, no, no, no, I've, I've dealt with it and I'm like, I mean to say, you know, it was funny, it was in the very beginning of me being a coach. I had a friend who was giving a local talk and long ago in my life I was like phobic about public speaking. Right? And so that was another major shift that I do because now I'm deeply comfortable at it. It's funny because you hear these famous actors who were like, you're always nervous.
Peter King (00:15:37):
There really is a level that you can get to where you're just comfortable. Now I'm not giving speeches all the time and there may be a stage that would make me nervous for sure. But I'm deeply comfortable doing that, you know, now, which is like an enormous shift. But at the time I was still sorta like, Oh, I don't know. But I was going to do it with my friend and it was great. And she relates, she talked me into sharing my story and so I start telling my story too. It was probably 40 people at the time and there's a guy in the back who's like clock in me, right? And he's like a little bit older than me, but he's, he's big and he's looking like, he's just looking at me like, and I'm thinking he's going like, why is this guy share on all this stuff?
Peter King (00:16:13):
You know, why is he telling me this? All that stuff and I'm, I can feel his energy like the whole talk. Right. And he's kind of pulled my energy but I'm still doing my talk and I do the whole thing talk ends and this guy gets up from the back room, like makes a beeline to me and I'm going like, you know, what's it like? How, how are we doing? What's that? What's going to happen? Take a sense on, he just goes, your story is amazing. He's like, you have to share that with people. And his, his, he was just captured because it moved him, right. It was like a big thing for him. And so I had never really wanted to share my story. And yet now it's somehow in my business, it's kind of all over the place and it's doing things that I often don't like seeing other people do.
Peter King (00:16:51):
So not the fact that I don't want to share it, but I don't always love that it's, you know, the reason people follow me or whatever. But it did happen to me and it's a real thing. So without, you know, maybe any more introduction, you know, I went through really bad sexual abuse. I was being raped by somebody who had worked for my grandparents. It was a close, I don't know if you say friend of the family, but somebody that my parents for a long time thought that they could trust leaving me with, for long periods of time, et cetera. And in hindsight, you know, what we found out was that he was a very sick individual. I didn't know this until later in life, but he had done this to many other people. He'd been arrested for this, all those kinds of things, which sent me into a rage when I was a late teen because it hadn't occurred to me that he'd been hurting other people.
Peter King (00:17:36):
And it made me so angry that, you know, I wasn't able to get him in trouble or make it stop. It was difficult because even after my parents found out there was still confusion about it and they sent me back. And so I felt really betrayed by parents. But it was violent. It wasn't like somebody touched me a little bit, like it was, it was really bad and it wasn't you know, it just, it just wasn't okay. And it, it stole a lot of things from me. It stole my innocence. It stole a lot of stuff. And it went on from, I was probably about three years old til like eight or nine. So, you know, that whole developmental period was incredibly dangerous, incredibly perverse. You know, and he was violent with it. It wasn't, it wasn't loving. It was, you know I'm going to kill you if you tell anybody.
Peter King (00:18:22):
It was holding my head under water. It was, you know, almost playing with my life in a certain sense. So it was incredibly dangerous. And then I, I had to be creative about how to be found out. He'd given me some really there's, there's maybe beautiful pornography and then there's really disgusting pornography. He'd given me really disgusting pornography. And I have a half sister who's either seven or eight years older than I am, depending on the time of the year. And I had one of those little safes that you could actually like pop and unlock. And I knew she used to go in and like steal my stuff, you know? And so I left this in there so that she could find it. And it took her so long. She didn't go in for the longest time, but eventually she did. And I came home and her and my mom had this, this stuff out.
Peter King (00:19:06):
It was just like, where'd you get it? And I finally had the courage to tell what had been going on for years. And you know, and beyond that, we had, we had a really dysfunctional family, you know, outside of that, it was, it was really difficult with my father long ago. I'm incredibly close with them now, but we really, I mean, there were years where we didn't speak. There was you know, there were addiction issues in my family. My mom now is sober for years and I don't know that she loves me saying that out loud, but that's, that's true also. And you know, so it's been, it's been a whole lot of dysfunction. I, you know other men in my life, you know, disappointed or, or betrayed me in certain ways that made me not feel safe. And I ended up going to a school for people that had all male teachers and none of them felt safe.
Peter King (00:19:51):
So the entire time I'm there, I'm feeling unsafe. And it's, you know, I don't want to focus, I don't want to be there. I don't want to do any of this stuff. So I get labeled as a bad kid and you know, all that. And so it starts this road of, you know, I'm Fonzie. Cool. I'm tough. I'm going to be the one who's going down into the city to get drugs, to bring them back for everybody and you know, and I'm I'm stealing cars. I'm, you know, I'm getting into trouble, you know, it's starting to go, it's starting to go bad. And by the time mom, sorry to interrupt you real quick. Where's your biological dad on this again? So my parents got divorced so I was, you know, seeing him some of the time, et cetera. But you know, I ended up yeah, I mean, when you say where is he?
Peter King (00:20:31):
Is that what you meant? Like where was he living? Yeah. Well, I mean, where was he in your life? Just in and out a little bit at this point. Yeah. So I mean, he was, he, my parents got divorced. I was living with my mom primarily. My sister was a lot older. There was a period of time where my sister was actually living with my grandparents. So a lot of it was just me and my mom. You know, there were times we didn't have a lot of money, you know, and until my mom met her new husband, you know, there were times where like we couldn't pay the heating bill and we were, you know, and so I'm going to this school that was for very wealthy kids. I was not very wealthy. You know, my, my dad, my dad's family had some money.
Peter King (00:21:04):
My mom did not. And so, you know, I was living with my mom and it was, it was a lot of stuff. So when you think about that as an adult, you know, one of the meanings that I make about money, what are the meetings that I make about success? If, if my dad feels dangerous and angry and evil in some way, but that's where money is. And my mom is, you know, a loving and nurturing you know, maybe not be able to kind of cover the bills all the time or whatever, but now it becomes noble to be poor, right? And maybe people with money are evil. Like, so we can get this different messaging. So to bring it back to kind of what the point of this is about identity shifting and stuff, all of that is what needs to be explored because we end up with all this patterning, you know, not to jump away from my story, but my patterning was really dangerous, unsafe, unloving, felt like I shouldn't have been born, et cetera.
Peter King (00:21:53):
And if I wasn't able to rewrite that, you know I would still be, you know, deeply addicted to stuff. I mean, I got into really deep addiction to very heavy drugs for a long time. And so if you don't mind, let's jump back to the story. So you're, you're the, the quote unquote cool kid going into the city to get drugs for everybody or whatever. What age are you at this point? Well, I mean, I, I started messing with drugs when I was seven years old. So there were, there were college kids next door, you know, sort of their mascot. And I, I wouldn't say I had a drug habit that early, but I was allowed to smoke in my house when I was 10 years old. Wow. You know, stealing alcohol the whole time. So when I, and my first nephew who's now in his 20s or whatever, but I remember seeing him when he was seven and just thinking to myself, Oh wow.
Peter King (00:22:41):
Like, that's really young. Like, Oh, am I, you know, it just sorta hit me what I had been through and done. And so, yeah, I just was, I was pushing edges. I was, I started to use substances to feel better. I was so miserable and full of shame and full of rage and all this stuff and I needed to figure out a way to process through that and you know, and, and get healthy. For a long time I was doing really heavy stuff. I ended up homeless. I had to clean a lot of that up, but I came back to the world and I had silly rules. Like, okay, I'm not going to do like heroin and crack, but I will, you know, I'll drink alcohol and smoke weed. I won't buy cocaine, but if somebody like leaves someone in the toilet for me, I'll do it.
Peter King (00:23:26):
But you know, like, alright, no, you know, no hallucinogens unless they're natural. Like it's, and I'm going, this is all the way through the beginning of that corporate rise to like, I'm, I'm the guy who's going out and drinking for martinis and coming back and giving a presentation. And they're like, how can you drink like that? I'm like, wow. You know? Yeah. And so there was this, there was this long road of, you know, I was forced sober because of rehab and I'm trying to stay sober, but, you know, I don't, and then I go back and it gets really bad. You know, I had my two best friends ended up, you know, essentially killing themselves, you know, more or less on my watch, you know? So through addiction, you don't have a lot of intimacy. Right. You and I are close friends.
Peter King (00:24:09):
That's a, that's a newer thing for me. In my life to have intimate, good friendships, because, you know, addicts don't have friends. What you're really in love with is the feeling. And so it may look like you've got all these buddies, but everybody's really, they're kind of in love with the addiction or the feelings. Right. And if somebody goes away or gets sober, you know, whatever, he's gone. And so much of my life I was dropping friends to try to handle my life or, you know, moving to get away from stuff and all these different things. And you know, I had my best friend growing up came to me and he told me he was going to take his own life. And I spent the whole night with him thinking I was talking about of it. And I didn't get them help. I didn't tell his family, I didn't call a doctor.
Peter King (00:24:54):
I didn't do anything cause I'm so cool. But what I did do was I really, I mean, I sat with him and I, I genuinely had thought that I had talked him out of it. He left my house and an hour and a half later, he's hanging in his garage at his parents' house, you know, dead. And so, you know, that if you had asked me what that would've done to me, if it had happened, I would've been like, Oh, that'd be horrible, but I'd be okay. I was not okay. Not for a long time. I mean, that sent me into, you know, a really deep spiral. I felt tons of guilt. That was a family that I was so close with. If things were bad at my house, I could go over and stay with them. I mean, they literally felt like my other family. And when I told them the truth about what had happened, you know, I don't know that they said we disown you or anything, but it sure felt like that.
Peter King (00:25:36):
Like I just felt like I lost this whole family. And so and then it took me years to even build another close friendship, to be honest. And then the next guy that I was really, really close with maybe even more close because I was older and sort of had more dimensions to me. You know, it wasn't a childhood friendship. It was like an adult friendship. And I genuinely love this guy. All of a sudden, you know, I got sober, he didn't get sober. Which didn't, if I would've thought it might've affected our friendship, it didn't, we just still stayed as close as ever. And all of a sudden I get a call from a mutual friend going, Hey, you know, Mike's not picking up. You're the only one that can get him when he's like this. Can you go check on Mike?
Peter King (00:26:14):
And we basically go over there and you know, I ended up like mopping up blood off the floor because Mike is dead now. And so I don't, you know, I'm not sure why I'm sharing that specifically, but you know, life can hand us really hard things. Any one of these things can give us meanings that end up making us try to protect and not feel those ways again rather than express and play big. Right. And so we're trying, we're trying to find a way to optimize and heal, you know, live our best life. How do you, how do you get on the other side of that, of just the self-forgiveness? I mean, do you, do you still blame yourself for what you felt like you should've done? Even though I would look at it and go, dude, there's no formula for exactly how you should pro, you know, move through that with somebody.
Peter King (00:27:00):
How do you know? You just don't know. Yeah. But how do you get on the other side of that to where you're not just bearing yourself with shame and guilt and you know, I thought I had peep, but now that you're bringing it up, you realize, well, you know, in a, in a weird way, like that's, that's one of the gifts that my father has given me. The ability to laugh in morbid situations. And I do think that there is value in humor in the darkest of moments, but obviously at some point too, that can be a bit of a deflection. And, and so for those who are, who have dealt with or are dealing with something like that, do you have any words of wisdom on how you survive that? To get to the other side emotionally to where you're not just, you know, in a sentence you got to get over it, right?
Peter King (00:27:49):
It goes how it goes and this stuff, I don't want this to sound insensitive to my print, right? Cause I adored both those guys and did carry guilt for a long time, but eventually the guilt doesn't serve me right and it doesn't serve them and it doesn't serve anything. It just keeps us stuck and it becomes like a toxic emotion, right? So our emotions have a really important function when they're having them. You know, when we're experiencing them. But if we, if we don't process them and move past them, then they become toxic. And then, you know, it starts to mess with our sense of self. It starts to erode our self love and our ability to, you know, meet the next person and be a better friend to them. And yeah. I think we all know, you know, you could imagine having a brother who you guys get in a fight and he's so angry with you that he just, he doesn't want to ever see you again.
Peter King (00:28:40):
And maybe for a while you feel the same way, but eventually you get over it and you get back to your life and maybe he's not in your life anymore. 20 years go by. He's actually been letting that anger, you know, faster and him the entire time, like he never got over it. It upsets him all the time. It's affected the rest of his relationships. It's all that. And then you meet 20 years later at a funeral or something and you're like, Hey, you know, it's good to see you again. I hope you're all right. Like, you know, I've missed you or whatever. And he's like, ah, Hey look, he's just still, that's, he's not winning in that right. Holding onto that emotion is not serving him at all. It's become toxic. And if we let those things stay too long, they start to become potential aspect of, we all have the potential to kind of hold onto those things too long.
Peter King (00:29:22):
And you know, if you grow in emotional mastery or emotional maturity, it's really important to feel your emotions and know how to be in the sensation of your emotions. I generally tell people, you're going to learn whatever you need to learn from that, you know, right. When it happens, like you get, you get the memo, you really can, you know, feel it process. And as soon as it's, as soon as you can let that go so that you can keep living your life and moving forward. You know, I look back at what happened with me and I genuinely did the best I could with who I was in that moment. And I know that I, there was no part of me that wanted him dead. I didn't, I didn't do it to him. I didn't do that, you know, and in hindsight, would there have maybe been another way to do it or something better?
Peter King (00:30:03):
Maybe. But you know, he had agency, he made that choice. And I I genuinely gave him everything I could and thought that I'd talked about. I mean, I thought it wasn't an issue. It wasn't like I was like, Hey dude, I don't care. Go do whatever you're gonna do. You know, it was, I really worked with them to get past it and he was, you know, he was, he wanted to do it. I mean, it was, he was ready to go. So yeah, I think, I think that emotional stuff, so really important teaching though. And I, I want people to take away the ability to, you know, learn how to get past and put things down and not let them ruminate because they just, they just get I think what I was saying, maybe when we got cut off, if your, you carry anger for a moment, right?
Peter King (00:30:43):
You get hit with anger. There's a justified reason. It's normal. It's natural. You should be, if you keep it for a week, it starts to be a little bit more persistent. Your life. Maybe you start to have anger about something for a quarter of a year or whatever. Eventually it starts to become kind of an aspect of your personality. You become the cranky person. Maybe you start to think about yourself as I'm, you know, I'm just crotchety, whatever. That's so, no, you don't know me. That's who I am. And it's like, well, I don't think you're an emotion, right? I hope you have all the emotions and you have the ability to go through the mall, but yet how many people do we know that are super proud at like how bitchy they can be or how angry they can be, whatever. At some point that can begin to cost us, especially if it's shame or it's, you know, rage or if it's, you know, depression, those kinds of things. So we want to know how to have mastery over them and get past those turn anxiety into confidence.
Rob (00:31:31):
I was a, it was at a dog park a couple of weeks ago with my dog and you know, let her out. She runs around, there's probably 25 dogs there. And I was commenting with one of the other people that are, how, it's funny how different dogs take on different roles. There was one dog that was just always on the perimeter, like sniffing things out, checking things out. There was, you know, there was one dog that was like the greeter, you know, anytime a dog came and he like went up there and was like, Oh, Hey, look, everybody, this isn't your dog. Hey, you know, second round, you know, and then there was one dog who was a more aggressive and would start barking and as soon as he would start barking, there was a what's the Lassie dog? I dunno, look like Lassie would immediately like turn start barking at that dog.
Rob (00:32:16):
Yeah. Like, Hey, what? Yeah, you just chill out. You don't relax. And I'm like, it's kind of cool. He's, he's the police dog, you know. So we were watching all these dogs play out their different roles. My dog and most of the dogs were like, Hey, we're just dog. We're just having fun, you know, whatever. So all of a sudden this oppressive dog or I'm sorry, the greeter dog goes up, his other dog comes in and immediately his tail goes his legs. He's super skiddish and is nervous. And if you know anything about like dog psychology, that immediately permeates the pack. Right? And so they're all like, dude, why are you so tense? So everybody starts to come in, the aggressive dog comes in and starts going after this dog. And because he was so tense and nervous, he starts running like his life is on the line, which only fueled the aggressive dogs.
Rob (00:33:02):
Like I'm gonna come after you even harder. Right? So, and then the next thing I know within literally two seconds, the entire pack of dogs, it's like a, something snapped in their brains and they're all now chasing this one tentative dog led by the aggressive dog. And yeah, totally right. And I'm drawing a this long, the short story and a much longer story, but eventually they kind of all piled up and the aggressive dog is kind of going after him. And it wasn't immediately clear that he was the aggressive dog. Cause all the other dogs were barking. But like I said, if you'd know a little bit about dog psychology, like I could see who was why he was barking and all that stuff. So anyway, I kind of go in there and I, I need my, my way in and kind of pushed the aggressive dog a little bit of the way.
Rob (00:33:48):
And I grabbed his collar just to pull him out of the situation. And so I turn around and go, Hey, whose dog is this? Not in a threatening way or like an accusative way or anything. I'm just like, Hey. So an immediately this guy starts marching up, Hey, get your hands off my dog. I'm like, bro, like I'm just like, your dog is being aggressive. And at first my first instinct was I knew that there was an ego there immediately. Like, okay, he's like marching at me with fuming. I could see it in his eyes like, yeah. And so my immediate thought was, Hey, I'm going to kind of shift the blame so that his ego can be sort of, you know, protected. I'm like, Hey man, this other tenant, a dog came in, it's not your dog's fault. But, but he couldn't see that and all he was was, don't you ever talk to him?
Rob (00:34:29):
And he's like ready to go to blows. And I said, I said Hey, look around for a second. So look at all the other dogs you see are the odd. Other dogs are calm. It's like there's a reason why dude, and I'm handing him at his dog back. I'm like, there's a connection there, bro. Just think about it. Just thinking about it. Yeah. And I go back to the, the lady that I was talking to and I'm like, isn't it crazy how who you are as a person, you, they always say with dogs, it's like you look like the dogs look like their owners. That dog was exactly reflecting the energy that that dude was putting out in the world and how that anger, like you were talking about earlier, it's like a ripple effect. And I think that's one of the things that you and I have kind of geeked out on is how one's mindset really does affect your, your community, your little circle and, and ultimately it ripples out to knows how big effect that is. You know? So, yeah, that's crazy. I mean, imagine if we spent the next hour just talking about and really trying to feel how horrible and scary the world is today. Right? All the horrible things that are happening. Notre Dame, I don't, you know, burning all the different stuff that's happening. Not to date the podcast, but you know, we, we have a lot of extra,
Peter King (00:35:38):
Sorry dude. Sorry. But you know, there's a lot of things that we could you know, sit around and get upset about and, and then that would be that hour, right? That would be that hour. We could instead sit around and talk about like what we're excited about, what we're grateful for. We could actually like spend some time like feeling grateful. Right? And by contrast, that would be how that hour is. So there's, you know, we absolutely affect the quality of our life with our attention and our focus and our meaning making all the time. But most people are walking around thinking that they're just a victim of like, I dunno man. Life just isn't going well. Right, right. It's not lining up out there, not taking any responsibility for what am I doing with my attention, my focus? How am I, you know, if I, if I'm in this pattern of negative thinking, have I ever realized that I could stop it?
Peter King (00:36:28):
Yeah. To stop it is we go get a drink. You know, another way to stop it is turn on Netflix. Another way to stop it is literally just moving your attention to, you know, I'm not going to think that. What am I grateful for right now? I mean, that's an incredibly powerful, simple shift right there that really changes this moment. The other thing, the value of that hour or any hour or every hour is that we're in this cumulative growing situation, right? Like the power of going and reading a book doesn't have necessarily an immediate effect on your, I mean maybe it's fun in the moment, but let's say you read a self development book, you know for a couple hours you don't close the book and now everything's better, right? But the information that you learned in the book, maybe you learned how to invest differently and you start putting away 10% of all your money that comes in and you start building savings or whatever.
Peter King (00:37:15):
Like that pivot. Even if you do that 10% move, it may not affect you for three months or six months of rare, but a year, two years later, all of a sudden you're like, Oh I'm building wealth. Like this is really a big thing. So like who you are today is completely made up of what you were thinking yesterday, the day before, the day before. So if it's not enough motivation to like move your thoughts so that you literally affect the next hour, right? Like, like the tangible difference that that is. But also if you're thinking more confidently happier, all these thoughts, you're probably going to be taking bigger, better actions to affect everything that has happened. And the cumulative effect of that over your lifetime leads quite literally to a very different life, right? It leads to happy, connected, successful, instead of, you know, anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, right? And realizing how to change that is super important.
Peter King (00:38:09):
And if it's not too much, I'd love to give another detail on that. The one thing is knowing how to do that consciously is like phase one, right? So take a person who has no idea that that's even possible, that they can just move their thoughts around and kind of have that kind of effect on themselves. That's a big wake up to realize that that is a fundamental shift of sorts. Right? But then if you can go in and actually re-pattern what's happening subconsciously for somebody, right? Because that person may have a pattern. Let me back up a little bit. You and I don't know what our next thought is going to be, right? I might say something and move your mind in a direction because we're in conversation, but even if you're left alone, your brain's going to be serving up thoughts to you.
Peter King (00:38:48):
They're kind of coming out of the unconscious, right? And we're doing all we can to learn how that works and everything. But what we don't know what our next thought is going to be. If you have had, you know, the kind of history I've had, if you somebody embarrassed you deeply in eighth grade and you think you're an attractive because of it, the pattern that might be serving up is I'm not attractive. I'm unattractive. I'm unattractive. People don't love me. People don't love me, people don't love me. The first move is to learn that you can change that in the moment, right? Like can you do that? The next move is to go actually in deeper and repattern that so that when you're not conscious of how you're thinking, your mind isn't set to just serve up these painful, negative, you know, safety mechanism type things.
Peter King (00:39:28):
Right? Cause again, that's really what's going on. It's trying to keep you safe. It's trying to go, Hey, don't, don't believe you're pretty, or you're going to be embarrassed again, right? If you think you're pretty for a second, somebody's going to embarrass you again and tell you you're ugly. So you preemptively go, yeah, I'm ugly, I'm ugly. Don't forget I'm ugly, I'm ugly. And it ruins the quality of your entire life, right? You don't have to have a horribly traumatic life to still be suffering and miserable, right? Yup. So anyway, level one is to learn that you can do that consciously. Level two is to go in and really repattern those, those deeper subconscious patterns.
Rob (00:40:01):
Good. It's fascinating. I, I grew up in partly in new England and so a lot of times we'd play outside in the woods and w my brother and I in the fall would love to, after the leaves fell, we'd go back into our backyard, which was, we had this big rock. And then there was a decent amount of woods back there, and we'd take a rake and we'd like take the leaves and we'd create a maze in the back of the woods. And I think of it as like our thoughts are, are like that where we're, we're, we're creating those patterns. And I think you might be able to speak to this more eloquently than I can, but the neuron, the neurotic pathways in our mind are like those pay or like those rate paths in our brain. And so immediately when who was it that it was listening to maybe Joe Dispenza or something like that, we were talking about how when you have not we, sorry, I was watching a video.
Rob (00:40:53):
There's where when you have a thought, it goes to the path of least resistance. And so if you have these carved Trailways in your mind that you've literally created, there's a literal connection in your brain and it goes to the easiest path of resistance. And if that path is, I'm not good enough, I'm not attractive, I'm not, whatever then that ultimately can become your reality. So I love the way that you call that repatterning cause it's kind of like, no, no, no. Let me get the, let me get the leaves and clean the slate a little bit. And, and rewrite a new Trailway in my mind of something that's more empowering. One of the things that I kind of struggled with when I was first learning this was, well, it seems what's the word? It seems it could be this way or it could be that way. Like what's the actual truth? [inaudible] So part of me was like, well, maybe I am whatever. Not enough. Right? How is that any less true than I'm amazing and I'm going to change the world. Like what's the truth? How does truth factor into that for you? Do you, it's really
Peter King (00:41:58):
Funny that, yes. I mean it's a major part of the program is, is really kind of rethinking and understanding truth in a different way because truth is very [inaudible] complex, right? Truth comes in perspectives and you know, your truth. And my truth may not be the same thing. And what is not enough, right? We, we say these things that don't have real meanings behind them, but they sure change how we feel. You know, I am not enough. Doesn't even make sense if you really think about it. Not enough. What, like what are you talking about? Right. Go ahead.
Rob (00:42:30):
I was going to say in a, it was going through the Tony Robins thing and he's got, his big part of the introductory of his whole stuff is, I'm not enough and I'm not loved. And I've, I've gone through that program several times and it, it occurred to me at one point that a powerful followup question is to whom, yeah. Who are you, who are you basing that measurement on? Or how are you measuring not enough? Yeah. And so I think that to whom part really, because to me it starts to point to where the, the reality of the of the illusion resides, which is in, in our parents. And when you usually wouldn't you really like, that's where that not enough feeling comes from is because not enough
Peter King (00:43:11):
In my father's eyes, not enough in my mother's eyes. Yeah. I mean, those are the ones that probably have the most to do with how you're formed. Right? So we're carrying a lot of their beliefs. We're either rebelling against beliefs, there's we didn't like, and we've taken on a lot of unconscious patterns from the way they linguistically talked about all kinds of stuff and about us. Right. So how did they talk about you when you brought your report card home? How did they talk about the wealthy people across the street, right? Were they respectful of them or were they you know, talking about how all, they're just rich and so they have that, but we're not that, right. So you identifying with like, I'm not rich, you know, just in the language of the home, are they calling rich people thieves and you know, are because they feel insecurity because maybe your dad felt insecure about his wealth.
Peter King (00:43:56):
He's, you know, shitting on the wealthy guy across the street who might be this wonderful, amazing person who's donating and doing all this great stuff, but your dad threw him under the bus. And so you take on that pattern and go, yeah, it's not cool to be rich. They just, they're all just handed it or they're lucky or there are other, right. They're not me. And so then later you have this very natural desire to be rich, right? [inaudible] It wouldn't be bad to have more money, but somehow that's been this wired in you to like not be okay somehow you have to now break up with your family of origin to take on. It's okay to be wealthy or whatever. Right? And there's a thousand flavors of that. You were talking about neuronal bundles earlier and pathways in the brain. I find it really interesting that, that we should understand that when these things come in, there's a good reason for them in the moment.
Peter King (00:44:41):
So if you, you can be a really messy adult with all kinds of limiting beliefs that are holding you back and all that. And I'm, it's, it is absolutely fair and accurate of me to say there's nothing wrong with you, right? What's happened there is you took on something that in the moment made the world make more sense, right? The people made fun of you at school or the parents said something or whatever. And in the moment it was safest to go, I must be ugly, or rich people are assholes or whatever. That, you know, that messaging came on to be, and it was big enough that it, it grabbed hooks, it created a neuronal bundle, and then it becomes a lens that you look at the world through and all of a sudden to your point, it becomes the easiest pathway to make meaning in the future.
Peter King (00:45:25):
The brain is constantly trying to be calorically inexpensive, right? Thinking is one of our most calorically expensive things. Is that true? Yeah. We're, we're constantly trying to make things simpler and easier to why we want to shut off. That's why we don't, you know, people don't know that. But are you, are we really burning calories? Obviously we're burning calories over thinking, but is that one of the most, it's a very calorically expensive thing we do. So I'm working out while I'm just sitting around. Yeah. I mean, I don't, you know, compared to cardiovascular health, like I can't speak to like the numbers, but it's, it's a very expensive thing to do and we're trying to protect, you know, we're, we're actually trying to be efficient with that, with our expenditure of our, of our brain. So if it meets, if it's right enough, we assign it that value.
Peter King (00:46:11):
So if it becomes, it makes sense to go, those people look dangerous, I'm going to cross the street. Right? Yeah. We don't do the extra work to look and go, Oh, they're just college kids coming back from a basketball thing or whatever. Right? Like we, it just goes, go across the street. It's like, it's click, we're right. It becomes more and more and more unconscious to us to take our existing truths and just find the way that they're still true because, and sometimes the rich guy is the asshole. Totally. Totally. It's not always untrue. Right. But that stereotype may have some value for us if it gave us a value in our home to keep talking about rich people, that way it gets patterned even more deeply for sure. But then we need to leave and we're, we're standing on the shoulders of maybe not so much greatness in that thing, right?
Peter King (00:46:54):
Maybe we're standing on the shoulders of generational miss wiring, right? There's an old story about you know, you're there cooking. I don't know what it was like a ham or something. This is like a known story out there. And the mother always cuts the edges off the ham and cooks it in the oven and she asks, you know, the, the daughter asked the mom, like, why do you always cut the edges off the ham? What are you doing? She's like, you know, I don't know. That's how my mom taught me to do it. Let's ask her. And they go, Hey grandma, you know, why? Why do you cut the edges off? And she's like, you know what? I don't know. That's how my mom always taught me to do. It. Turns out great. Grandma's still alive. So they call her up. Hey, great grandma, why don't we cut the edges off the ham all the time.
Peter King (00:47:36):
I had a really small oven. It wouldn't fit in there if we didn't cut off the ham. Right? But generationally, you've now got women just cutting the edges off the hand because that's what they were taught to do. So how much of our life are we carrying in a way that we're not seeing how we're playing small, right? Do you have a limit on what kind of house? If I asked you right now, how much money do you want to make this year? Right? You have a blank check. What are you going to write it for? And I can't tell you how many people, maybe in the corporate world or whatever, they make 75 a year. They go, you know, I just want to make six figures, man. I just want to make six figures. And it's, they've gotten hooked on, you're successful if you make six figures.
Peter King (00:48:17):
And I'm like, yeah, but I just asked you, how much do you really want to make? Like of everything you would pick $100,000. That's what you, you wouldn't pick a million a year. And if people check in, if we start making that number too big, all of a sudden it starts feeling uncomfortable. For many of us, it starts to go, I don't know what I would have to do to make $1 million a month. Like what? That seems unreasonable would people hate me? Like what? I have all these new responsibilities, what I don't even understand it. And so we unconsciously get set up with, this is probably the size house that I feel comfortable with or deserve. This is the kind of money that I do. And often those, okay. Levels for us actually don't make us happy at all. It's not really the game that we want to play, but we just don't feel confident risking into those bigger things.
Peter King (00:49:03):
I think you said, you know, you're not going to be a millionaire with a thousand air mindset. Right? and so what is it to take on genuinely a millionaire mindset? What does that look like? What does it to take on a confident public speaker? You know, mindset. Not so that we're faking it, but so that it's really who we are. Right? How do we change our identity into that? And you know, without, I'm happy to tell you more about the process, but that's, that's essentially what I, I'm mostly how do I how do you define identity? So in a lot of ways, right? It's a very, it is a big term and it's complex and it could be a lot of things in, in one way if we talk about it, its sense of self in another way. Well I'll tell you a story with it, right?
Peter King (00:49:46):
I want you to imagine somebody across the street and you know, if I'm talking to you, it would be a guy across the street. If I'm talking to a woman, maybe it's a woman across the street, but it's, it's someone in your neighborhood who is, they really have it together. They've got absolutely everything going on there. They manage their time, they're super successful, they're amazing. And somehow you're like not jealous of them. You actually like really like them. They're like amazing. Got a killer relationship. They make time for vacations. Like whatever's important to you, they have that skill. Right? Well, if I asked most of my clients, let's say, why aren't you that person? Right? They will answer me with like, I dunno Rob, they're them and I'm me, right? Like I'm just not that. But if we really look at how that person is different, and if you wanted to become that person, I promise you that that person is thinking different thoughts, then you are right.
Peter King (00:50:35):
They're not lost in indecision inaction, self worry, self-hate, right? They've overcome thinking. And the thing is, if you're, we want change out here, but we don't want to do the work internally quite often to make that change happen. We'd love to just keep thinking the same thoughts, but all of a sudden get all the money. But if you don't change your thoughts, why would you expect that there's going to be a different result? Right? So that's one thing that person across the streets also got a different level of emotional mastery. They're not feeling consistently the same kind of feelings. You are, right? Maybe you're overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, you know, have a little self hate in there. Whatever's going on there. That person across the street who's killing it. They're full of gratitude, full of confidence there. You know, it's not that they don't get scared, but they can manage that and they face it.
Peter King (00:51:20):
They're actually excited to kind of get into something that's at their edge, right? They're open to growing and all that. So thoughts are different. Emotions are different. Last thing is that person's got different behaviors and habits, right? They're literally getting up early to do the sales calls. They're choosing the things that the store and buying them that feed them selves. Well, they actually make the time to go to the gym and do that. So their habits are different than yours. If you change how you think, how you feel and you behave, right, those three things you, you literally become a new person, right? If you went away for a year and came back not with, you have to think this way, but if you knew how to think differently, right? You made different meaning that was useful to you. High level, smart, right? You felt differently.
Peter King (00:52:01):
You knew how to forgive. You knew how to, you know, be in gratitude, really connect in love. You knew how to be popular and liked because you're a genuine and a good person. And then if you'd habituated new habits, your body's changed. Literally, physically, you're, you know, you, you show up differently. You are your word in the world. You're a very different person than you were before. You've completely shifted your identity. And one of the things that's interesting, you know, I've worked with like a really heavy overweight person, a woman who was, you know, arguably about a hundred pounds overweight. If you can get that person to take on, if I asked her what her identity was in the beginning and she got honest with me, the answer is, you know, Rob, I'm a loser. I've tried forever to lose this weight. I can't avoid.
Peter King (00:52:47):
I'll wake up and just absolutely not want to eat the cookies and buy lunch. I'm literally watching my hand move toward my face. It's almost like it's another person just shoving the cookie in my mouth. But if I turn her into an athlete, right? If I say, look, you're an athlete, you might be a really overweight athlete right now, but you're an athlete. The thoughts, the feelings, the behaviors are in that identity, right? We can move her into, Oh wait, cause what's an athlete do? An athlete has sneakers, they get up, they go to the gym and they start working out. And in her case, you know, she ended up becoming a spin instructor, losing a hundred pounds, you know, she becomes a completely person. She was actually a spin instructor when she was still, you know, 75 or 80 pounds overweight. But she was this inspirational person. It's awesome. I'm not kidding. It was like unbelievable. And by the end, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's, it's the thoughts, emotions and behaviors are wrapped up. They make up your identity and if you can go in and kind of rewire some of the negative thinking, give a little bit of a most real mastery implant, some of those behaviors in a way that become more natural so that you're not resisting them your identity can deeply change in a way that's really profound.
Rob (00:54:02):
So you're talking about some of the things that you, just, the language that you were just using. I have a little bit of a resistance to and yeah, it's kind of like the movie inception, right? Implanting, I'm going to, you know, do this or that or whatever. How much of that really is you saying, well, you're not overweight, you're just a overweight athlete and I'm going to, you know, embedded these ideas and code you into an athlete. So let's go to the process. Is the client involved in that and choosing their, their notes? I do a thing called [inaudible]
Peter King (00:54:35):
Patterning, which is quite literally finding some of the subconscious, persistent things that come up. So you talked about truth before, right? If somebody comes up to me and they're like, Rob, I am a loser, right? I don't care what you do. I don't want to be a loser. I'd love you to fix me, but I'm a loser. Like, I'm a lost cause. I lost all the money. I lost the girl, I lose everything. I am a loser, right? That's an identity level statement. I am, I am a loser. Okay. And I go, great. [inaudible] As long as that's true. Cause you say it's true, as long as that's true for you, it's going to continue. Right? But is it true? Right? Are you a loser? What does that mean? He's nominalized, right? He's taking something that there might be examples of loss, and if he looks at them, it can look true to him that he's a loser.
Peter King (00:55:19):
But for him to become not a loser, that has to become untrue, right? Maybe he was a loser. Maybe he's just a winner who's lost. Maybe he's just a person, maybe something else. The meaning making that we're doing is less about truth and more about whether or not it's useful to you, right? Because if he carries on into this moment, I am a loser. He's just dragging his past into this moment and in, in a sense, kind of throwing it into his future to keep living it and living it and living it. So if I take a woman who's really heavy and we find out that she goes, I have no willpower, right? Which is just not true. She's got some level, you know, shit's not that willpower's vacant in this woman. But if she takes on the truth, cause that's the thing man, it feels true to them and we have to make it untrue.
Peter King (00:56:03):
We have to make the current limits and the current things, they're untrue first and then you make new, healthy things true for them. And as you do that, you've shifted their truth. You've shifted what's real for them. And in that they now become a different person because somebody who is an athlete, something different is true for them. To somebody who believes a couch potato, but th but their identity, the part of the, the process of choosing that new identity is, I mean, they're engaged in that as well. They're helping develop and create that for themselves. I make it all up and I wave a Mac. You have a menu of, of identities? No, no. It's completely custom to them. Yeah. It's completely custom to them and it's really important. So the limits that most people are carrying or not obvious, they're not in your conscious mind.
Peter King (00:56:50):
They're actually in your unconscious. They are literally truth to you. So that's, that's what a belief is, right? A belief is an assuredness of meaning, right? I looked down the hall and I believe that my boss just rolled her eyes at me and she hates me. Right? And so if I take that not to, I think so, or it's an opinion, but I believe it. Let's just imagine that I believe it or reason I'm believing that is, it's an assuredness of meaning. I know what that meant, but I don't really know what that meant. Right? And we're doing this all the time, but to me, I might go home and talk to my partner and say she hates me. I might get fired and it might actually become a self fulfilling prophecy because if I believe that deeply enough, I'm now nervous at work. I'm awkward around my boss.
Peter King (00:57:30):
He's looking at me like, why you're weird? And what actually happened is she had Dustin her eye or something. It's like not the same thing at all. Right? Or if we get into shadow work and things like that, there's a psychological process where we start to project our own stuff onto the world and see our own limits out there. All of a sudden they become very true because if I'm, let's say I've stuffed anger down and all of a sudden somebody is angry here, but I can't own it myself, I'm literally projecting anger onto you. And I'm like, why is Pete so angry at me? And you're like, dude, I'm not. But if I keep insisting before you know it, you are right. And so it seems true to me like, no, Pete was angry. See, I was right. And finally you're just like, dude, you're just being an ad.
Peter King (00:58:08):
And it's like, well, you're angry. Like why are you so angry? And then you leave going, was I angry? I don't know. It's like a big mess, right? Right. And so we're walking around with these delusional truths about ourself that aren't accurate or useful, and they may even have evidence, right? But if we're going to profoundly change, how can we challenge those truths for what's real now and what's possible now and what's, you know, there's a lot of stuff out there like the secret and the law of attraction. And there's, there's a lot of that that's not only bad, but it's literally dangerous because they're not, you know, affirmations aren't going to do it for you. It's not like, you know, I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire, I'm a millionaire. Because if you're not, and that's what you're trying to tell yourself, your system's going to know you're a liar.
Peter King (00:58:51):
You just feel like you're a liar. Right? So if, if that woman's meaning of what athlete meant was someone super fit and all that, that wouldn't have worked for her because she would have resisted that. But because I was able to show her that you can be an overweight athlete and just take on these different things and then we pattern that in using, you know, a little hypnotic stuff and some things that actually go past the conscious mind and, and really give the subconscious choice. Okay. So this is a story that I tell pretty often. Can I tell another quick story? Cause I think helps. So a lot of people wake up at, you know, let's say it's, we're doing a new year's resolution. There's probably thousands of people every year who are like, this is the year that I'm going to become a runner, right?
Peter King (00:59:39):
I'm going to become a runner this year, and I don't have the exact stats, but of all the people that claim that the beginning of the year, very few, you know, whatever that number is, very few actually become runners. Some people don't even buy the shoes. Some people run once, some people run for a week or two and stop. But a handful of people actually become runners. And we think that that's because of willpower. We think that it's because they had more willpower than I did or whatever. And willpower is a a thing in that game for sure. You know, willpower can go a long way, but we're having our willpower sucked all the time, right? Just managing all the communications, everything we've got to do, road rage, decision fatigue. We're overwhelmed, you know, we're getting exhausted with, with willpower and it's just so easy to distract down that you know, you're trying to do something that has willpower and you're like, I'm going to go back to my phone and just, you know, fuck it, or whatever.
Peter King (01:00:28):
Right? What happens with the person who becomes a runner? That's more important than the willpower. Part of that is at some point the system that fought, I'm not a runner, all of a sudden goes, I am a runner and you just wake up and there's no resistance anymore and you just put on your shoes and you go running. You've become a runner, right? Your identity shifted into, I am a runner. That is a subconscious process that's happening, okay? And what willpower's required for is what you are not. The reason you need willpower is, I'm not a runner, so I have to apply my will to do this act that feels unnatural to me, right? And so willpower is not the thing that we should be leaning on there. We should be actually looking in at what is the subconscious process where I can turn it over and actually make a safe, interesting option that my brain doesn't go cause the brain is mostly trying to resist new.
Peter King (01:01:21):
Right. It's very interested in the familiar because the familiar has happened and I'll do it again because I don't think that's going to kill me even if it's way less than what's keeping us happy. Right. We will stay in bad situations because they're familiar. Yup. All right. [inaudible] And going out into the unknown is scary and potentially dangerous and so that is a safety again, safety mechanism. That's what's happening. The process that I created goes into the subconscious and through different choices, you know, things that aren't going to be a lie to yourself, like all these things, we look at what's optimal for you and we actually give that to your subconscious as an easier, better choice. And then it, it doesn't want to do the bad thing anymore. It's like, Oh that makes perfect sense. I'll do that. And so you get this, you know, much more immediate shift over into a different way of being.
Peter King (01:02:05):
It's really, really powerful. Now, are there chemical patterns that are historic? They're like, yeah, but you, you've given an a new thing now, new neuron abundance do, and you literally change how your brain is set up. Let me give you the biology of belief really fast. Okay? It's, it's the way we think actually changes us chemically. Okay? And so, you know, if my neurons are firing or let's go back, let's say I don't know any other animal that can sit in a white room where there's no stimulus or input at all, and just through imagination work themselves up into a panic, right? You could put a certain kind of person in the middle of a white room, they're totally safe, nothing's going on. And they could just hyperventilate with fear because of their imagination. Right? Right. What's going on? What's the process of that?
Peter King (01:02:56):
You know, we started with the, the neurons and how they tend to bundle for simplicity and ease and learning and you know, it's stereotypes and those types of things. So that we can make the quickest decisions and not have to work through and rethink things all the time, right? So we're getting this neuronal bundling so that pathways and patterns can happen faster and faster and faster. And if that pathway is serving you, that's a good thing. Like I've worked out for years and years and years. I can't imagine ever stopping like that's a, that's a neuronal pathway in a way of being. That's a good habit that I like, right? But if it's a negative one, like I'm not worthy or I soccer, I'll never be a good salesperson or whatever. We start to build what happens there is that's firing off and then it fires our limbic system, right?
Peter King (01:03:37):
Which might make us feel anxious or whatever's going on that fires off things like our adrenal glands. And we start to get like cortisol you know, all this different physical response that actually like starts going around in our body and that patterns, what it actually invites, continuing to think the same way, right? And so it solidifies and hardens this way of being. If you change that, you know, gratitude. Instead, if you just decide instead of feeling anxious, what are three things I'm grateful for and do the work to actually feel those all the way down in your body, you will get a different chemical response. Okay. But there's levels of the timing of these things, right? Your thoughts can change something immediately, but you're chemical makeup in your body might be hours or days behind that, right? So if I'm super stressed, I haven't slept, I'm super hopped up on coffee and then I'm anxious on top of it because something bad has happened.
Peter King (01:04:30):
I get this rush of you know, chemicals in my body because of that. I can try to think better and that will help the situation. It is step one, no doubt. But I'm still battling all that, you know, parasympathetic, crazy. And my body was just going nuts, right? Like, and and so getting through that takes a little bit of time. And then we're also battling the genetic thing, which, you know, not long ago we thought was just set in stone, your genes or whatever your genes are. But we're finding that those can express differently depending on how we feed ourselves and how we think and how we show up and et cetera. But the quickest way to change all this is to change your meaning-making. Because if I'm making meaning that is not serving me and causing anxiety, having me in a white room, losing my mind I'm already losing before I'm even trying to deal with the real world at all.
Peter King (01:05:17):
And I'm setting up my body and distress cravings and all these other horrible ways of being. Right? So we've got to begin with mastering the meaning making, and we've got to do that consciously, number one. And then number two, do that. Repatterning where we can do that. You please, who would you say are some of your top influencers who have influenced you the most? Like authors or that kind of stuff? Yeah, I mean, people in your life. Authors, well, you know, my counselors, a guy I still work with now, who's been, you know, he's been working with me since I'm sober, 15 years. Right? So, and before that was, you know, some shade of trying to be sober, not doing heavy, you know, all that silly rule stuff I was telling you before. Guy named will home is he's just been a wizard in my life and very, very helpful and has a, you know, a big lens on addiction and recovery.
Peter King (01:06:06):
I don't really do meetings and the 12 step thing too much, but through him I get a flavor of that and some connection to that world. And he's been amazing. You know, there's a lot of incredible books and theories and things that have been really helpful in my thinking. A lot of the Eastern work of, you know, Taoism and Buddhism and some of that philosophy, not so much religiously, but kind of the ideas of presence and mastering your mental States and that kind of stuff. You know integral theory, some of Ken Wilber's work has been really important spiral dynamics. You know all that kind of stuff has been really instrumental in kind of giving me a different, better map of the world. But the, the real shortcut was kind of the epiphany that, that of just waking up and seeing how my brain was doing some of this stuff.
Peter King (01:06:56):
It's a different level of introspection. What do you, what are you most grateful for? You know, there's a lot, there's a lot that I'm grateful for. I'm, I think in the context of this conversation and context can certainly change things. So ask me later and I might have a different answer, but I'm so connected to my purpose, man. It's just and I'm really thankful that I'm able to be financially successful at this, you know, as well. But I would do this even if I wasn't, I mean, I would do this no matter what. Yeah, I definitely did. But I, you know, I was lucky in the beginning of being a coach. The first client I had was a big connector and I got him a great result and he sort of sent clients to me. And then I think I met you by, you know I was at a conference and I ended up being the, the coach to the guy at the conference and he led to lots of clients for me.
Peter King (01:07:47):
So I, you know, it's not, it's not been a struggle to find clients necessarily. But you know, I'm grateful that I have what seems to me to be maybe the most profound thing that human beings need to understand. And now I get to play this game for the rest of my life of seeing how many people I can share that with and how many people I can help. You know, not only for some people it's, it's the desire to become exceptional. And for some people it's the desire to stop suffering. Right? And for each of those, aye, I, I can help. And so I just get a ton of value and meaning out of doing that. So I'm incredibly grateful and honestly, if you think about it that, that, you know, means that I'm grateful for everything that happened to me. Right? I'm super grateful for the whole ride because it's led to me being here, which I think is a really quite often a cheesy thing.
Peter King (01:08:38):
It's actually a shortcut that we do to make our life okay. And maybe I'm just coming to that bias right now, but but I mean it, when I say it that like, I'm, I'm really living a life, you know, you know, personally, I had a tough year last year. I had a, I had a personal thing happened to me that was, you know, really devastating and difficult. Even though I was really unhappy through a lot of last year and a lot of ways I'm still like deeply grateful just to be in this purpose and be disconnected, et cetera.
Rob (01:09:06):
Very true. That was, that's been one of the most inspiring things that I've experienced with you. And, and one of the things that I greatly admire in you is your ability to stay on path, on purpose, even when dealing with you know, huge personal upheaval. You were still, your clients still were number one.
Peter King (01:09:30):
Yeah. It was really funny because the day I found out some of the worst of it was two days before I had to do a keynote talk in New York. Right. And I'm being flown in and I hadn't written the talk yet. And so I'm like devastated and you know, then I have to go get on stage and, and do this right. And help people. And because it means that much to me. And because I don't have to pretend that, Oh, I've just got it all together. I'll tell, you know, like I'm a human being. It's all, it's all real. This stuff is still incredibly useful. You know, it's amazing. But you know, I get to use my own stuff on me. I get to, you know, survive and in whatever way I can and then show up and I gave, you know, I, I was, it's one of my favorite talks.
Peter King (01:10:11):
I did a great job. I was thrilled of it. So yeah, I'm really proud of that because that's not, that's not easy and I'm not sure everyone could do that. You know, add to the fact that I, I shared how anxious I used to be at giving talks. Right. You know, a couple of that altogether. And it's like, yeah, that's, that's pretty good. That's pretty cool that, that, but I could rock it like that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. what do you see as like how, how do you envision what, what's your vision for the world? Yeah, I think that there's a different level of consciousness and I mean that in a really tangible way. I think there's this you know, this shift in consciousness that's not, you know, I'm not special but it, but it is special. And if we have that capability, it, it changes our lives in a way where not only can it help us, but I think it helps society.
Peter King (01:11:00):
You know, I, I look at guys like Elon Musk who I'm, you know, madly MBSR, just an amazing achiever and doing all these things and he wants to go colonize Mars. And I think that's fantastic. And I, you know, I'd love to be a multi planet species. That's great. However I'd really like to get it more right here, right? Like, I think there's, there's other problems to solve besides just moving us around the universe. I think I think we can live a very different life. I see so much unnecessary suffering, you know, and I want, that's one of his main motivations for colonizing Mars is cause he's, he foresees AI becoming a much bigger threat but energy and just, you know climate change and all of it, right? So, but primarily because we haven't evolved. Correct. So Mars is sort of planned, behave totally well, and you know, we need it.
Peter King (01:11:52):
We need to be able to get off this planet eventually. And so, you know, he's, that's a, it's a super important thing, but let's say that we are, you know, plagued in some way with self sabotage and, you know diligent. I mean, we're still like, why are we still going to war? You know, why can't we figure out how to get along? Right? Why can't we feed everybody on the planet? And I don't mean just, you know, it's a utopia. It's whatever. I'm just saying we have like legitimate problems that are solvable and yet we're not solving them because of belief systems, right? Because of these people think it's different, this and that, and we can't navigate our beliefs in a way that's as high level as I think we can. And if we, you know, every war has ever been fought.
Peter King (01:12:42):
Every punch ever thrown was over. A, a belief was over a, a deep offense of, you know, that's wrong. This is right and I need to now do violence because of it or whatever. And so we can get past that. Right. My vision for the world is that, that's solvable. Whether that's in my lifetime or not, you know, I have no idea, but there is a profound shift that we can take on and B, truly different happier, less violent, more effective, et cetera. And we're just leaving it on the table, right? And, and if we're, if we continue to be addicted and selfish and just you know, by the way, there's no, it's, there's a level of selfish that's phenomenal and important, right? We're supposed to be a care about ourselves first, et cetera, but unhealthily or toxically selfish, right?
Peter King (01:13:31):
And just using and consuming and, and not participating, not, you know, being in any kind of purpose you know, leads to all the dysfunction that we're seeing. Right? the, the breakdowns of our society. I'd see it trending better with or without this work. I think we're trending better. I think technology is helping a lot, but I think technology is going to challenge a lot of our [inaudible] existing beliefs, right? It's going to challenge value and what's the meaning? You know, we're, we're now building a society for at least hundreds of years, if not much longer. We're only valuable by what we do in the world. Right? Like, that's, that's like, that's the first thing we tell everybody. Well, what do you do Bob? Right? Like, what's your, what are you doing? Right? And if there's nothing to do because the robots are doing it all or whatever, you know, whether that's a hundred years or a thousand years away, we're moving that way where it's all being automated and we're going to have to rethink what it is to be in society and to, and to do these things. And I feel like I have a better answer for that. I feel like we can live a much more you know, beautiful, meaningful life when we learn to master the meaning instead of just taking it on and
Rob (01:14:38):
No,
Peter King (01:14:40):
And continuing in a way where we're not we're, we're kind of taking on dated beliefs and meaning instead of, you know, reinventing the Marcel's.
Rob (01:14:47):
Yeah. I've asked this to several of my guests and this might be a good way to sort of wrap it up. Put a little nice little bow on it. How do you, how do you want to be remembered? Not, not just after your death, but after, but after an interaction with you after a client goes in and does work with you, how do you want them to remember that experience?
Peter King (01:15:09):
You know, I, that's a great question. If only I ever listened to your podcast, maybe I don't. Not, right? No. The
Rob (01:15:21):
Now that you're on it, I'm sure you will.
Peter King (01:15:25):
Are you going to listen to this one hour or they sound amazing. So, no. That's a really good question though. So I, you know, I think there's, there's probably an egoic thing in there in the big sense of like what I like to have legacy and really change the world and be remembered. You know, probably there's probably a little, little part of that that that might be real, but I think what's, what honestly, it's, it's not, it's honestly not that big because I'm very aware that we all get forgotten, you know? I mean, it's just, it's, it's, I don't expect to be remembered necessarily, but I like the, the distinction on it. Like after a meeting, how would you like to be remembered? I'm really interested in bettering whoever's in front of me. You know, like I want to hear what you're struggling with and if I can give you like a little, a little move that that is a big ripple in your life is a big thing.
Peter King (01:16:13):
I want to really, I want to change your world. You know, I want to help you see something that you can't see. One of the things I often say is you can't do brain surgery on yourself. So this entire realm that I'm trying to work in is often in our blind side. It's not stuff we can see. And you know, you might go to a therapist and get help with it or a smart friend at a bar might help you with it or a good coach might help you with it. You know, I want to be that person that can hear really where you are, be a good listener and then maybe better your life in some way. Leave you, leave you better than I found you in a way that yeah,
Rob (01:16:42):
You open up at one question. I have to know another Institute. You said you can't do surgery on yourself. Who do you call when you're in dire straights?
Peter King (01:16:50):
Well, so I'm committed to the process of having somebody else in this dialogue with me and it's been, that guy will home. So he's, he's still my counselor, but I hired tons of other coaches. I think it's really important. You know, I've done, I've done tons of like business and marketing coaching. I've done tons of self development work. I do, you know, even if I feel ideal, I'm still trying to go and learn and better and you know, not only learn it so I could teach it, but also learn it so that I can continue to apply it to myself. Cause there's, there's a tons of human ways that I want to be. But if you can't do surgery, how do you hire others to help me? So what does it William? So it's not, it's not, it's not that you can't do surgery. There's some surgery you can do.
Peter King (01:17:31):
You can't do brain surgery on yourself. I might be able to operate on my own arm. Right. But I can't do, yeah, I'm not going to go under and do brain surgery on myself very easily. You know, maybe there'll be a day that we figured that out, but right now I don't do that. So there's things that are in your blind spot. So when that's true, you, you try and get help by having other people help you see it. Right. You can see in dialogue. I mean, you and I and our personal conversations, you've eliminated things about me to me that I wouldn't be able to see myself. Right. That's super helpful. So, you know, in some ways you're a mentor to me and
Rob (01:18:03):
So I wanted you to say I finally got, we can wrap it up happily end now. Here we go. Call it. That's it. All right then we're done. Snap finished. All right, cool. Oh boy. Dude, I feel like we just started this conversation. I know. I'm looking forward to having many more. I think it's definitely interesting conversation. Definitely geek out on this kind of stuff. But thank you for your time today and thank you for being a friend, man. I, you're the one, you know, I, I'm a quality over quantity type person. I like my friends clothes. And you're certainly somebody that I hold dear to my, you know, life, my experience, and I'm certainly somebody that I call if I need some brain surgery and cry after all we've talked about, that's kind of, you know, I I feel the same way, man. Thanks greatly appreciate you and, and what you've meant in my life. So thank you, bro. Thank you brother. I am a man. Have a good one.
Peter King (01:19:07):
You got it. Bye. Bye.