Change Your Beliefs about SUCCESS and LIFE STORY with Dr. Demartini
In my latest podcast, "Success Interview" with Dr. Demartini, we went DEEP! We talked about life and achievement. What limiting beliefs do you have that are limiting you? Dr. Demartini begins by sharing his life story and the secrets he has learned about the Law of Attraction, Life, and how to find Inner-Peace. Dr. Demartini is a seeker of "knowledge" and "bestselling author" of dozens of books who started as the dumb kid in class and went on the become a leading thought-leader. He even appeared in the blockbuster book and movie, titled, "The Secret." Expect to be BLOWN AWAY!
[Transcript Below]
TJ Hoisington:
Dr. Demartini is a global researcher, global educator, behavioral expert. He's written I think 40 books. I'm not even sure what the count is. So many books. What an amazing message that he has, and you know what, he holds nothing back. And this interview that you're about to listen to, and I suggest you go all the way to the end because he leaves nuggets all the way through. Powerful. Powerful. I really mean that.
TJ Hoisington:
Dr. Demartini, welcome to the Unleash Your Greatness Within Podcast.
Dr. Demartini:
Thank you for having me. It's great to be on.
TJ Hoisington:
You bet. It's great to have you. What a pleasure. So one of the things that we like to start off with all of our success interviews here on the Unleash Your Greatness Within Podcast is whenever we have a guest on, we like to get their backstory. So if you'd give us a little of your history, that'd be great.
Dr. Demartini:
How I'm doing what I'm doing?
TJ Hoisington:
Yeah. Where did it all begin?
Dr. Demartini:
Yeah. Well, I was born with my arm and leg turned in, and I had to wear from one half to four, I had to wear braces on my arm and leg. I also had a speech impediment, and I had to go to a speech pathologist and use strings and buttons in my mouth as a kid.
TJ Hoisington:
Really.
Dr. Demartini:
So I had constraint, and that probably made me want to be free of it. I had speaking problems. When I got to first grade, when I got into elementary school, I found out that I had dyslexia, and the teacher asked my parents to come to school and said, "I'm afraid your son's not going to be able to read. He's not going to be able to write. He's not going to be able to communicate effectively. I don't think he's going to go very far in life, amount to much in life," that kind of thing.
Dr. Demartini:
I had to wear a dunce cap back in 1960 it was. So it was true. I did have problems. I didn't know how to read, and I couldn't write and speak and all that properly. I got through school with the help of the smartest kids by asking questions, which I'm pretty well known today by my questions that I ask. And because I had to wear braces, I'm on the go all the time. I full time travel. So I was probably avoid toward that. And then that worked. I made it through school, barely made it through school until I turned 12.
Dr. Demartini:
At 12, my parents moved to a small town outside where there's a lot of low socioeconomics and there was no smart kids. I didn't have anybody to ask questions to, and I ended up failing. And I dropped out of school, and I started living on the streets when I was 13. So I was a street kid from 13 until 18. I first lived locally and then I ended up living at the beach because I was okay with surfing. But Texas wasn't a surf capital, so California was where I headed. So at age 14, I hitchhiked to California and down into Mexico and went surfing.
Dr. Demartini:
At 15, I panhandled enough money in the California beaches to go to Hawaii, and I first lived under a bridge then on a park bench, then in a bathroom, abandoned car, a tent. And I was a socially climbing hippie surfer. And I was surfing, and I rode big waves. I got in some surf movies and surf magazines. I rode big waves back then. Then I nearly died at 17, and in the recovery from that, a lovely lady found me in my tent nearly dead. I was unconscious for three days, and she took me to a little health foods store to try to get some nutrition in me. And that led me to a yoga class where a speaker was speaking named Paul Bragg. And one night in one hour of this one man with one message spoke to me and he was so inspiring. That was the first night in my life that I thought maybe, just maybe I could overcome my learning problems and learn how to read and become intelligent some day. I never thought I'd ever be intelligent. I was totally dunce.
Dr. Demartini:
So that was the night I saw a dream and a vision with his advice and help in his lecture because he said that we have a body, we have a mind, and a soul. And the body must be guided by the mind, and the mind must be directed by the soul to maximize human potential. He said that we must get really clear about what we would love to dedicate our lives to. We want to make sure that we fill our thoughts, our vision, our internal dialogue, and our feelings with the things that are absolutely the highest priority things that most meaningful to us and take command of those things. Nobody talked to me like this. This guy was amazing.
Dr. Demartini:
So that was the night I saw a dream and a vision, which is painted and sitting in my office today. A big painting of me standing in front of a million people speaking intelligently, and I saw a dream and vision to do that. And I set out that night with the help of him and a series of events to step foot on every country on the face of the Earth, learn how to read, learn how to become intelligent, and share whatever I discover with as many people who'd be willing to listen. So that was the beginning.
TJ Hoisington:
Wow.
Dr. Demartini:
That was 47, almost 48 years ago.
TJ Hoisington:
Wow.
Dr. Demartini:
I've been on a mission ever since doing that. I'm almost 66 now, and I've been on a mission to do that ever since. So that was 1972.
TJ Hoisington:
That's an amazing story. I was born in 1973. So what an amazing story. So can I ask why did you almost die? What was that about?
Dr. Demartini:
I had strychnine cyanide poisoning. I was living off land there eating seaweed and all kind of stuff, whatever I could grab and stuff. And there was a plant that I was eating without realizing that had those compounds in it, and it was accumulating. At first, it locked up my fingers. I kind of looked like Joe Cocker in those days. I didn't know what was going on. Everybody said, "Well, you're surfing 11 hours a day. You're sweating it not realizing your electrolytes are unbalanced." But it wasn't that. It was strychnine. And then what happened it started creeping back up, and eventually it stopped my diaphragm. So I was surfing a very big wave and my diaphragm stopped.
Dr. Demartini:
So anyway, that was really a perfect pivoting point in my life. Everything is on the way; it's not in the way. Anything you're not grateful for is baggage; anything you're grateful for is fuel. I'm a firm believer that that was an absent essential component of what I was here to do. So that turned things around, led me to that little store, led me to the yoga class, led me to learn from this man, and then I moved from there back to... I flew back to Los Angeles, hitchhiked back to Texas. Met with my parents, hadn't seen them in years. I had amazing parents. I never left them because I had any differences with parents. I had lovely parents. It's just that I ended up not being able to make it in school, and I become street.
Dr. Demartini:
They suggested that I take a GED, a high school equivalency. I took that test, guessing with a little affirmation that Paul Bragg gave me that I'm a genius and I apply my wisdom. Because I told Paul Bragg that I don't know how to read and I've never been able to read. I can't speak properly, but I dream about being a teacher and overcoming that. And he told me to say every single day, "I'm a genius, and I apply my wisdom." Say it every single day and never miss a day for the rest of your life, and sooner or later the cells of your body with tingle with it and so will the world.
TJ Hoisington:
Okay. Slow down. Say that... I'm a genius-
Dr. Demartini:
And I apply my wisdom.
TJ Hoisington:
And I apply my wisdom over and over.
Dr. Demartini:
I said that every single day since that day. I later learned with the help of my mom what a genius was. I didn't know what a genius was. I said, "What's a genius?" She said, "Well, people like Albert Einstein and DaVinci." But I realized that a genius is one who listens to their inner voice and obeys their inner vision and obeys that and follows that and doesn't let the world on the outside interfere with that vision and internal dialogue on the inside.
Dr. Demartini:
And so I pursued that. I came back, I took a GED, and I guessed, and I passed. It was like a miracle. I had me a high school equivalency. So my parents said, "In case you need a job, you got to have at least a high school degree." I didn't have high school. I never finished high school. They then said, "Well, since you passed that, why don't you try to take a college class, college entrance?" ACT I think it was called. And I closed my eyes, and I guess. I couldn't read half the questions. I guessed saying that little affirmation and I filled in little dots. And some freaking magical thing, I passed.
TJ Hoisington:
Wow.
Dr. Demartini:
Then they said, "Why don't you try to take a college class while it's summer time and the waves aren't big?" Parents are trying to encourage me to try it because they're saying, "Maybe he'll go back to school," kind of thing. I took my first class in history, and I got my two weeks into the summer school class, I took my test, and I went outside the door the next day. And I realized I got a 27. I need a 72 to pass. I got a 27. Everybody was above 72 except me. I was pretty devastated because all I could hear was my first grade teacher, "I'm afraid your son will never read, he'll never write, he'll never communicate, never amount to anything, never go very far in life."
Dr. Demartini:
I remember getting in my car, scrunching down, I was embarrassed. Driving home crying. And I curled up in a fetal position under a Bible stand. This stand.
TJ Hoisington:
Okay.
Dr. Demartini:
I was literally sitting having a really low moment. My mom came home from shopping, and she said, "Son, what's wrong?" She hadn't seen my cry in years. And I said, "Mom, I blew the test. I guess I don't have what it takes. I guess I'll never read, write, communicate, et cetera." She didn't know what to say. Finally she put her hand on my shoulder, and she knew that I had a dream of being a teacher. So she said, "Son, whether you become a great teacher, healer, philosopher, and travel the world like you want to do, whether you return to Hawaii and ride giant waves like you've done, whether you turn to the streets and panhandle as a bum again, I just want to let you know your father and I are going to love you no matter what you do, boy." When she said that, I felt loved, I felt appreciated. She was certain, she was present. That was very powerful. Those are very important components in what I teach today.
Dr. Demartini:
And I remember my hand going into a fist when she said that, and I looked up and I saw the vision I saw the night I met Paul Bragg of me standing on a balcony in front of a million people. And I said to myself, "I'm going to master this thing called reading and learning. I'm going to master this thing called teaching and philosophy, and I'm going to do whatever it takes. I'm going to travel wherever it is. I'm going to pay whatever price to get my search of love. I'm not going to let any human being on the face of Earth stop me, not even myself." I got up and I hugged my mom. I went into my room. I got a dictionary out, and I started memorizing 30 words a day. And I mom tested me on 30 words, the pronunciations, spelling and meaning and application and had to write a sentence with it. I was not allowed to go to bed until 30 new words were added to my vocabulary.
Dr. Demartini:
That led me to eventually being able to pass school. That led me to start excelling in school. All of a sudden people started to ask me for information, and I started teaching by the time I was 18. I never stopped. Within a very short period of time, I'm now excelling because I wanted to go to school when all the other kids were just going to school because that's what you do. I wanted to learn. I want to learn every single thing I could get my hands on. I didn't care. Anything to do with maximizing human awareness, potential, I want to know.
Dr. Demartini:
I was about 19, almost a year later, and I went to my mom, and she said, "Son, what do you want for your birthday?" Because I was born on Thanksgiving Day. "What do you want for your birthday and for Christmas?" And I looked at her with a straight narrow, and I said, "Mom, I want the greatest teachings on the face of the Earth by the greatest minds who ever lived." The greatest writings humanity's ever created from around the world. And she said, "You sure you don't want a t-shirt?" I said, "No, mom. I don't care about a t-shirt."
TJ Hoisington:
You wanted knowledge.
Dr. Demartini:
I wanted knowledge. So she happened to be the sister of a guy who was a professor at MIT. My Uncle Ralph I called him, and she contacted her brother. And he sent as a gift two giant six by six by six foot wooden crates on a flatbed truck to our home filled with thousands of books. A massive library. I got a crowbar out, opened up those boxes when they laid it on the ground, and filled with my room with thousands of books. I had a little yoga mat in the center facing the window for the sun, and I filled my room with books. And I started reading books 18-20 hours a day. I tried to learn everything I can with a dictionary. Any word I didn't know, I'd look up a dictionary. And he had some fantastic books. Philosophers, scientists, Nobel Prize winners. Great thinkers. There's thousands.
Dr. Demartini:
So I started devouring everything I could and started living in encyclopedias, reading encyclopedia sets, eight sets, complete sets I started reading. Anything to do that would give me a foundation of knowledge that would help build an educational system that would allow people to do something extraordinary with their life. That's all I was interested in, and I wanted to get the originators of the fields. So I got the actual polymathic individuals that were... The ones that created original ideas that started new fields. Like Gilbert Magnetism and different people in different fields because I wanted the people that were the originators, the creators and stand on the shoulders of those giants. I didn't want to subordinate to copycats. I wanted the original thinkers. I wanted to create original ideas that served humanity. I wanted to create a global company of teaching. I wanted to become financially independent. I wanted to have a global family dynamic. I wanted to have social influence and meet amazing people and do amazing things and consult and work with them. I want to be able to have a vital body.
Dr. Demartini:
On my 64th birthday, I went back to North Shore just in November last year, and I surfed pipeline at 14 foot.
TJ Hoisington:
You did. Wow.
Dr. Demartini:
So I did it at 65, and then I said, "Okay. I want to have a physical stamina, and I also want to be inspired. And I want to master the art of how do you live an inspired life, how do you prioritize your life, fill your day with the highest priority actions, delegate everything off your plate, engage other people in employment in helping the economy, and go do something inspiring in your life and exemplify what's possible as Einstein said." So that has been my mission for 47, 48 years, and I'm on track.
TJ Hoisington:
And I'm on track. I love that. What a beautiful story. And what that really shows forth is the true essence I believe of the true meaning of personal development. I interviewed yesterday John Assaraf. I've interviewed a lot of high achievers like yourself. I mean, thinkers and so forth. And I would say a high percentage of them started off in some form or another with a difficulty or an impairment. But they worked hard to overcome it. Tell me what your thought is on this. It's almost like having those challenges with a person with vision drives them to put those challenges in the past, to move past them.
TJ Hoisington:
And I stem from that because I don't think I've shared this on the podcast before that Dr. Benjamin Bloom in the 1950s, somewhere around that timeframe, did research of 120 different top athletes, actors, writers and so forth. 120 different fields, and when he studied them, he found that there was one common denominator that equaled their success. Now at the time their belief was talent. It was all about talent. But he found that the only consistent factor that determined these people's success was determination because what he said in that research is that when he interviewed the parents of that high achiever, you know what the parents said? They said, "Well, actually the person that had the natural gifts and talent was so-and-so's brother or sister. But they didn't use it."
TJ Hoisington:
I hear your story and I think John Assaraf yesterday talked about how he left school at 11 years old. I didn't read my first book until I was a junior in high school because I was in special resources in the fourth grade because I couldn't read. I'm seeing a pattern. I want your thoughts on this because I'm seeing a pattern of difficulty is really a blessing. What's your thought?
Dr. Demartini:
Genius is awakened not by support but by challenge. Support makes us juvenily dependent and inject the values of other people who support us as a dependency, and then we attempt to be someone we're not. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide." The moment we minimize ourselves to others and subordinate to others and put them on pedestals because we're too humbled to admit what we see in them is inside us, we'll inject their values, attempt to be somebody we're not, and be second at somebody else instead of being first at who we are. It's the challenges in life that make us go back to our highest values where we have the most intrinsic call to do it and the biggest drive to do it. It's the challenges that make genius. It's the challengers that make innovation. It's the challengers that make original thinking.
Dr. Demartini:
So the people who've had the most down and outs can be a turning point for their life. They can be victims of history or masters of destiny out of a challenge. And if we become a victim of history out of it, we blame things on the external world and we look for solutions in the external world. But if we are masters of destiny, we look and we realize it had nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with our perception, decisions, and actions, which are the only three things we have control over in our lives. And if we can see that our perceptions are on the way, not in the way, and that the challenges are making us great instead of making us small, we'll do something enormous. We'll have enormity instead of conformity.
TJ Hoisington:
Wow. That's rich. I hope the audience here's the essence of that. Listen, when I worked with Tony Robbins in 1999, I was a trainer for him, a speaker for him. I gave 240 different presentations in one year. It was a great learning period. So I left after about a year when I was sitting in one of his seminars, and he said, "When would now be a good time?" And that was like a pivot moment for me, and I called into the company and said, "I'm leaving in two weeks," to start my own company that I've been doing now for 20 years. But the first five years of building that company, I was falling flat on my face until I was forced to write my first book If You Think You Can in the backseat of my car after I lost almost everything except for my family. I lost everything. I was living in the basement of my parent's house. I realized through that pain that it was because of that pain and being forced in my car that those first five years I was speaking like Tony Robbins.
TJ Hoisington:
I wasn't speaking like TJ. And when I was forced to write If You Think You Can, and I had to think through all the principles through my own philosophy and my own beliefs, I found TJ's voice. I don't think that would have happened like you just said had I not had the struggle.
Dr. Demartini:
The magnificence of who you are is far greater than any fantasies you impose on yourself, and anytime you live in the shadows of anyone, you won't stand on the shoulders of giants and you won't become a giant. So that's perfect. What you said is so accurate.
TJ Hoisington:
I believe that every human being... Maybe you have a take on this. I'm sure you do. Every human being has spiritual gifts. I believe that one of my spiritual gifts, and I believe it's one of yours too, is we feel things. And from those feelings, we have ideas that come in our head that equal reality maybe in the short term or in the long term if we will follow that still small voice. I believe that every human being came to this Earth with a set of spiritual gifts but many don't find them. But if they will find them, the world is unlimited to them. Their destiny awaits their arrival. Thoughts about that?
Dr. Demartini:
You're right on the money. The number one thing that stops people from observation is to compare themselves to others instead of compare their daily actions to their own highest priority. As long as you put people on pedestals and inject their values and try to live on their values, as long as you put people in pits and project your values and expect them to live in your values, you'll have futility. Because infatuation, resentment occupies space and time in your mind and keep you out of your soul. And the moment you actually focus so much true to your calling and you have true mission and your true telos as Aristotle called it, and prioritize your day and fill your day with the highest priority actions that inspire you, spontaneously are called to act, that make a difference, a deep meaning. That's the day when you don't have entropy interfering with long term mission.
Dr. Demartini:
Immediate gratification costs you; long term mission pays. But that only occurs by living by the highest priorities, and that's the key. Make entropy, a life physics, as Schrodinger said, is greater than entropy; death physics. And entropy takes over whenever we inject the values of others into our life and try to live by conformity instead of enormity. The moment we're too humble to admit what we see in the greats around us, within us is the day we cowl the clarity of our own mission and shrink instead of shine and play in mediocrity instead of a greatness.
TJ Hoisington:
So what do you do... This is rich. What do you do through maybe your famous Breakthrough Experience or what do you do to move someone that's maybe 10% of who they can really become to get them to get to 60%, 70%, 80% of their true selves or 100%? What tools or strategies for just beginners? I know they would have to go to your program.
Dr. Demartini:
One of the things that... Anything that we admire in somebody, that we're too humble to admit we have because we think they have something we don't. The only reason we admire it is because we have what we see in them, and it's actually us too humble to admit we have it but we have it. The same thing for the things we despise. We're too proud to admit it but we have it. We don't ever have resentment to somebody else unless it's reminding us of something we feel ashamed about in the past, and we don't ever have admiration unless there's something we done and we know we have that capacity.
Dr. Demartini:
So instead of sitting there, living in their shadow, it's wise to ask this question. What specific trait inaction do I perceive this individual that is great, is a great hero, great leader has? Once I identify what that trait is, then I ask this question. Go to a moment where and when I perceive myself displaying or demonstrating that same or similar behavior, that trait inaction, and where was it, when was it, who was it to, and who perceived it? Where was it, when was it, who was it to, and who perceived it? Where was it, when was it, who was it to, and who perceived it? And dig into my consciousness and bring from the unconscious to the conscious the realization that the only reason you admire it is because you have it but you've been denying it. Wake it up. And once you realize you have it quantitatively and qualitatively equal to what you admire, you'll realize why you admired it because they were a reminder of what you were denying but you actually have.
Dr. Demartini:
The moment you do, you won't be living in their shadows. You'll be honoring them and appreciating them as a teacher to wake you up to what you're denying in yourself because at the level of the soul, nothing's missing in you. There's nothing missing in you.
TJ Hoisington:
Love that.
Dr. Demartini:
When you finally realize that, you'll stand on the same playing fields and go beyond because you'll take off where they left off.
TJ Hoisington:
Let me emphasize that. I remember in the basement of my parent's house watching Oprah in the few minutes that I turned on the TV, and Debbie Ford happened to be a new author, brand new. This is many years ago.
Dr. Demartini:
On The Shadow.
TJ Hoisington:
On The Shadow: The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. And I remember she said this, something on the show with Oprah, that caused me to take the few dollars I did have and buy the book. I remember reading the book. I got to page 50, that book spoke to me on page 50. I never read the rest of the book. I didn't need to. You know what it said on page 50 and years later I told that story over and over and over to my audiences, and I started questioning myself, like, "Hey, is it really on page 50?" And I pulled the book out, and yes, it's on page 50. She said, and this is what moved me. It moved me to get in the backseat of that car and write. She says, "When you see greatness in someone else, it's your own greatness that you're seeing because if you didn't have the greatness within, you wouldn't be able to recognize that quality in someone else."
Dr. Demartini:
Before she launched that book, she attended my program in San Diego.
TJ Hoisington:
You're kidding.
Dr. Demartini:
We had that conversation.
TJ Hoisington:
Unbelievable.
Dr. Demartini:
Was working with her sister who is the one who did most of the publicity for Chicken Soup for the Soul and many people, including myself. And Debbie was launching that. At that time, before that book, she was a trainer on people in media training. Then she launched the book. Arielle Ford, her sister, helped her put that book out, launch it out.
TJ Hoisington:
What a small world? Wow.
Dr. Demartini:
It's a very small world. We're all connected.
TJ Hoisington:
We're all connected, and you know what I'm hearing from you is that in a sense... Hope this is taken the right way. We all have godliness within. There's something of divinity nature that's within everybody, but many people don't know where to find it. And I feel like you and others like you of course, those in our field that love to study from the originals and then find out own voice are able to help people find theirs.
Dr. Demartini:
That's it. That's the most meaningful, most inspiring, most fulfilling thing we get to do.
TJ Hoisington:
Isn't it though?
Dr. Demartini:
It is. Zig Ziglar taught me when I was 20, if you help other people what they want to get in life, you get what you want to get in life, and it's so true. But the thing is is finding your niche is finding the calling you have inside you that's deeply meaningful, that comes from the voids of your life that drive you to something that's extraordinary. And it's the challenges that started the voids. It's the challenges, that's why the more down and out you have been, the more up and in you're capable of going.
TJ Hoisington:
That's great. So I have something that's called the BSA Results Formula that any goal that you ever... And feel free to add to it or subtract. But any goal that a person wants to achieve has to add a minimum include these three categories. Number one, beliefs or a mindset or an attitude. Number two, strategies and skills. And then number three, action. It's easy for me to live up in the philosophies, the beliefs, the ideas, the motivation. That's really easy for a guy like me. And taking action is really good for me. I can take action on all my ideas.
TJ Hoisington:
The question is I got to find the right strategy, and I think right now... I'm curious about your take on it. With the coronavirus, this is a little bit timely. People are worried. People are living in fear. There's a lot of uncertainty, and maybe they do have ideas. Maybe they do have that voice that's speaking to them to do certain things and they're willing to take the action. But maybe it's difficult to find that strategy or what have you. I have found that that's the least important only because from this standpoint, you have to eventually learn it. But if you know why you want something ahead of time, you'll naturally with passion and desire and so forth, you'll figure out the how. And people are in a position right now where maybe right now in life this is a pivot point.
TJ Hoisington:
I was talking to my family. You know one change, tradition that we have started since this quarantine time period, not to put a timestamp on this video because what we're talking about is evergreen. It's going to last long past this time, and we're going to get through this time. This is not the end of the world. But we're now going on a walk at about 4:30, 5:00 every day as a family. I still have two children at home, and we go on this walk. We never did that until now. So we've started to look at the blessings in disguise.
TJ Hoisington:
Anyway, I've said a lot there. Your thoughts.
Dr. Demartini:
Well, you said it very succinctly. When the why's big enough, the how's take care of themselves. Every human being has a set of priorities, a set of values that they're living their life by moment-by-moment that's evolving. And it's unique like a fingerprint. Based on their vantage point, experiences and voids that are driving them. Whatever's highest on that list of values, they spontaneously inspired from within to act. They need no extrinsic motivation. They don't need reminding motivation or extrinsic motivation. They just are called to do that. That's called the calling my theologians.
Dr. Demartini:
But as you go down the list of values, you require progressively more extrinsic motivation to do it. And motivation is a symptom, never a solution for mastery. If you need any form of motivation from the outside, you're not living by your highest value.
TJ Hoisington:
Love that. Yup.
Dr. Demartini:
So I'm not a motivational speaker because motivation is a rhetorical persuasion of an extrinsic source to get you to do something with punishment if you don't do it, reward if you do it. That is transient at best and misleading at most. But helping people find out what their most intrinsic value is and helping them realize they don't need motivation once they capture it and once they clarify it, it's very powerful.
TJ Hoisington:
Agree, and as I work with companies, for example, one thing that we're trying to do is move people to this place of sense of purpose. The disconnect is sometimes it's easy for someone to find their own purpose in life, their own mission, but helping people that still want to provide for their families to find the meaning and the purpose in serving the organization. Once you can connect someone's personal desires, meaning, so forth to the organization's values and means, then you have a team.
Dr. Demartini:
That's my specialty. You just nailed it. That's what I've been doing for 42 years.
TJ Hoisington:
Is it really? Oh.
Dr. Demartini:
So whatever's highest on your value that your spontaneous scribe to do, the ancient Greek Aristotle called that the telos. The end in mind. Napoleon Hill called it the key thing. Tolison called it the primary objective. Others called it the magnificent obsession that we capture. And because it was so important even the ancient Greek times, they made a whole study of it and called it teleology, and teleology is a study of meaning and purpose because the most meaningful, the most purposeful, the most inspiring, the most fulfilling thing any human being can do is access the highest value and set sail as captain of the ship in that direction and structure their lives strategically to live by the highest priority and delegate the rest away.
Dr. Demartini:
The moment they do, they have blood glucose and oxygen going into the executive center, which is the main prefrontal cortex, and they have automatically awakened stimuli reflexes coming out of the visual cortex five and six to be able to see clearly in their vision. And once you have vision, you flourish. Until you have vision, you perish. One is negentropic visually, one is entropic. It also activates the strategic planning centers, and not only do you have the data, you got information because in your highest value, that's when you've filtered through your pulmonary nuclei balthamos, the most information to then make wise decisions on. Then fires off the associative area of the cortex to execute those strategies, and it also sends data and glutamate down into the amygdala, to the nucleus accumbens, and paladin. And it shuts down impulses and instincts that causes distraction from clear focus.
Dr. Demartini:
So when you live by priority, you activate your mastery part of your brain, and you do not require external motivation. And you wake up your leader, and because you now walk your talk because you don't procrastinate, hesitate, and frustrate. You're disciplined, reliable and focused in your aim. You automatically believe what I say I do. So you're determination goes up. Your confidence goes up. Your expansion of space and time horizons go because every time you achieve, you want to go achieve more. And you wake up your natural born leader. You see a clear vision. You're unstoppable. You're now working in the direction of expanding your space and time horizons until you build a vision beyond your life as a legacy.
Dr. Demartini:
And anybody who's doing and working in that is immortal relative to the average mortals. And no mortal can interfere with an immortal visionary. And no matter what you go through in life, no matter what it is, it's on the way for that objective. And the wise individual sees things on the way as feedback, not failure and success. The two things that interfere with greatness is the perception of failure and success. Because success makes you depurpose and failure makes you repurpose, and the two together are not even important to a man on a mission.
TJ Hoisington:
So a Psycho-Cybernetic would say in his book, Maxwell Maltz, when you fail, that does not make you a failure. When you make a mistake, that doesn't make you a mistake. Because, like you said, you're on a mission. You have a vision. The positives and the negatives aren't going to increase your diminish your worth.
Dr. Demartini:
They have nothing to do with it. Anything you're infatuated with or resentful to is in your amygdala, that's your trying to find prey and trying to avoid predator mentality. That's a survival mentality. A survival mentality transcends the duality, sees the clear vision, and sees no matter what happens, they're nothing but feedback to get that vision.
TJ Hoisington:
The older I get, I'm moving in a place now where I'm starting to research a lot about conscience. Not conscious like in my conscious of this. But conscience, con-science. Have you done any research on that?
Dr. Demartini:
Well yes. When I wrote the book The Values Factor, I put a lot of work on that. I studied 400 text on morals, ethics, consciousness, and conscience. What's interesting, the second we subordinate to the world on the outside, we confuse the conscious. And the second we follow the voice and the vision on the inside, the divine calling on the inside, we transcend the outer conformity's, the outer morality's, and we allow the voice and the vision on the inside to become more profound. And I've never seen anybody coming from there do anything other than something philanthropic and inspiring.
TJ Hoisington:
True. Love it. One piece of advice I feel like we should mention is when we have those thoughts and those ideas and those impressions and those feelings that come to us, that may seem at the outset to be weird but they feel right, we have to capture. We have to record because I've had feelings come to me early on that in hindsight could have led me to a new door that would have opened up a channel of new opportunity that I never walked through because I was too tired and I went back to sleep. I've since learned whenever those ideas and thoughts come, I note take them, I write them down.
Dr. Demartini:
Anytime you get a cheer of inspiration, document the exact content of your mind. By the way, nobody can ever have fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown does not exist. There is no such thing.
TJ Hoisington:
Explain that.
Dr. Demartini:
All you have is fear of the content that's ruminating in your mind that you're imagining, assuming that there's going to be more drawbacks and then if it's in your conscious mind at that moment. And guess what, that's under your governance. So there's no fear of the unknown. There's the fear of what you're imagining is about to occur. And once you take command of what you're imagining what to do and focus on how you would love it to do, you transcend the fear into action because it's not anything out there that's doing this. It's your perception, decisions, and actions again.
TJ Hoisington:
So rich. All right, what's your thought on the heart? You've mentioned the brain and what happens with the chemicals of the brain and so forth, all the way down through every cell of your body. How does the heart play a role in any of this?
Dr. Demartini:
The moment you have a perfectly balanced mind because you have objectivity, your heart opens. And the wisdom and the intelligence of the heart when combined with objectivity is the path of inspiration. So the word courage comes from heart. That's its root. And what's interesting is if a person really... If you go walk on the fire, if you go and jump off bungees, if you do any of these little gimmicks out there, that's insignificant compared to the courage of being true to yourself.
TJ Hoisington:
Yes.
Dr. Demartini:
That's where true courage is. The courage to stand out alone amongst a pressure from society trying to make you conform. And mediocrity is giving into the conformity. An extraordinary life is lived by transcending it. As Ayn Rand says, having the courage to be an unborrowed visionary, not a derived borrowed vision from others, told what to do, but an unborrowed visionary, as Emerson said, is like a fire into a city that cannot be stopped.
TJ Hoisington:
When I train speakers to speak, I'll often say speak from your heart. And for many people, it goes over their head.
Dr. Demartini:
Your body language automatically is congruent when you do.
TJ Hoisington:
Yes.
Dr. Demartini:
Much of the communications nonverbal anyway. So the second we speak from our heart, our whole physiology says the message, and you can't intellectualize it. Your body language says it all. So the moment you speak authentically from the heart, which occurs when you have a balanced mind, because infatuations occupy space and time in your mind. We've all been infatuated and hardly slept. We've all be resentful and hardly slept. As long as we have polarized emotions instead of synthesized love from the heart and a balanced mind, we're going to be distracted and incongruent as a feedback to our physiology to let us know we're not authentic. Every symptom in our life is a feedback to try to get us authentic.
TJ Hoisington:
Yes. So stop fighting it.
Dr. Demartini:
Learn from it.
TJ Hoisington:
Learn from it.
Dr. Demartini:
Instead of trying to get rid of half of your life, learn that that part of your life is trying to get you to be authentic. You're pursuing a fantasy, you're creating a nightmare to try to put the two together to finally beat your truth. You don't need to get rid of any half of yourself to love yourself. You just need to know what that part is that you think you need to get rid of and what it's really saying. Because if you compare what it is to a fantasy of what it's supposed to be, you'll never appreciate your magnificence.
TJ Hoisington:
I feel illuminated. I know the audience will to. This is just rich, and you're speaking from your heart. I know that you've learned this, but it's gone from learning to a deep understanding.
Dr. Demartini:
Well, it's my dream to do what I do every day.
TJ Hoisington:
And that's why you're one of the best out there.
Dr. Demartini:
Well, I've been doing it a long time. 47, almost 48 years.
Dr. Demartini:
You know what's inspiring me?
TJ Hoisington:
What?
Dr. Demartini:
I saw a eight-year-old boy who was a little savant who's extraordinary, read 40 books a day. I used to read sometimes 40 books in a day, but this kid was just amazing. And just amazing. And now he's consulting. He's 16. He's now consulting at $1400 for a session to companies. He's 16. Because he gave himself permission to shine. I've seen a six year old girl come to my Breakthrough Experience program in Melbourne, Australia who decided she wanted to be a speaker and writer. At age seven, she wrote her first book. Came up and we went on social media with it, her first book called Start.
TJ Hoisington:
Right.
Dr. Demartini:
At seven. At nine, she did her second book. 12, she did her third book and was deputy mayor of Melbourne, Australia, and was a teacher educating. I used to think that many kids go through a stage where they want to play when they're a kid. What I found out is when kids feel oppressed in what they're real inspiration is and they don't see how they can fulfill what it is, they want to play as an escape from their unfulfilled moments. Anything you're not fulfilling what you feel is your mission, you'll go into your amygdala and look for immediate gratification and addictive behaviors and compulsive behaviors and do all these distracting things as a symptom of unfulfillment. But the second you find them, even at the youngest ages, extraordinary development of the brain occurs. Many kids do not develop their forebrain and their medial prefrontal cortex and their executive centers until 24 to 27 years old when they all of a sudden have the real responses of going out and working and facing reality.
Dr. Demartini:
But the real truth is if you started those kids with accountability at a very young age and they got to do what they were really inspired to do, they can develop that at six. And extraordinary kids do extraordinary things, music and art. You seem them now on some of these America's Got Talent shows and these things because they found that mission early. It doesn't matter the age, but if you can get, the momentum building, you can get it and youth getting it is very powerful. But I've seen people get it at 72, 90, and get on with a mission at 90. So the age is not as crucial, it's accessible at all times. But you can really build momentum the sooner you get it. That's why I encourage people to find out what they really value.
Dr. Demartini:
I have a value determining process on my website. It's complimentary. It's free for everybody. I want everybody to take advantage...
TJ Hoisington:
We'll put your link up. Yes.
Dr. Demartini:
Please because it takes about 30 minutes. If you ask somebody their values, they'll tell you social idealisms. Truth and honesty and peace and all this other stuff. I'm not interested in what people think it is. I'm interested in what their life demonstrates because every decision you make is based on what you believe will give you the greatest advantage or disadvantage to what you value most.
TJ Hoisington:
That's right.
Dr. Demartini:
And I want to know what you really feel your spaced with because you keep things that are important to you in your space and you push things away that's not. I want to look at what you really make time, find time, and spend time on because you make time for things that are really valuable. You don't have time for the others. I want to look at what you energize by because you gain energy when you're doing things high in your values, and it goes down if you don't. I want to look at where you're really spending your money and what you do spontaneous expenditure on. Find out what you really value. I want to look at where your most ordered and where you're most disciplined and what you think about, visualize and internally dialogue with yourself about most, about how you want your life [inaudible 00:48:09] coming true. I want to know what you want to converse with other people about spontaneously. I want to know what inspires you with tears in your eyes. I want to know what it is that the most consistent goals that are coming true in your life. I want to look at what you spontaneously can't wait to learn and find the common threads to that and look objectively at what you're committed to and then structure your life around that and watch what happens. Unbelievable momentum building, spontaneity of action where you do not have anything but resilience.
TJ Hoisington:
Can a mission change at different seasons of life?
Dr. Demartini:
Yes, you have two forms. You got gradual hypothesis and a punk take cataclysmic hypothesis that covers that. When you're doing something that you're really, really inspired to do, you make micro changes based on the changing environment around, as Jim Collins said. Little bitty changes that keep building momentum to keep adapting to certain people. If you're not living by your highest values and you're trying to conform and because of that, you become more polarized and more absolute in your belief systems and rigid, it takes cataclysmic events to finally break you and make you adapt to changing world. And stress is the inability to adapt, and resilience is the secret to adapting. And if you're neutral, you don't feel the loss of things you seek. You don't feel the gain of things that you don't want. You're not distracted by external things. You're resilient and neutral and able to adapt to whatever's happening and see the transformation. The master lives in a world of transformation, never the illusions of gain and loss.
TJ Hoisington:
Let that sink in. So part of getting rid of distractions isn't focusing on getting rid of distractions. It's about-
Dr. Demartini:
It's focusing on what the real mission is.
TJ Hoisington:
That's right. It's getting in alignment with your real mission. Start listening. Start feeling.
Dr. Demartini:
If you don't fill your day with high priority actions that inspire you, your day is designed to fill up with entropy and craziness as a feedback to let you know you're not being authentic, sir.
TJ Hoisington:
Powerful. Powerful. All right. That's awesome. So let's shift gears on the subject of gratitude. I wrote an article that I put out just a couple days ago on LinkedIn, on Medium, and on my website, and basically I wrote the first Swiss Family Robinson sequel in 100 years called Return to Robinson Island. You probably didn't know that, and that's okay. But I had this epiphany in 2003 as I watching the old 1960 version of the Disney version of Swiss Family. And then I woke up at one o'clock in the morning with the whole story of a sequel in my mind's eye. I got out of bed that night and typed until 6:00 AM in the morning. 13 years later, I actually wrote the book. So I thought during this time period where we're at right now with the world being technically in a way shut down, I thought what would Swiss Family Robinson have to say? How would they respond instead of react to the current situation? And I gave six points, but at the end of those six points, this is what I wrote.
TJ Hoisington:
As you find your life disrupted, remember you are in charge of your own destiny. No matter how difficult your circumstance may become, you always have a choice on how to respond. In this classic book, As a Man Thinketh, Victor Frankl points out that many of those who survive the Nazi Concentration Camps said that they "benefited from the captivity, seeing it as a growth experience." As horrendous as Auschwitz was, Frankl taught, "Our core drive as humans is our search for meaning. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering that it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross gives him ample opportunity, even under the most difficult circumstances-to add deeper meaning to his life." And then Russian novelist, short story writer and philosopher Fyodor Dostoyevsky... I'm not even saying his name right. Once stated, "The only one thing I dread is not to be worthy of my sufferings."
Dr. Demartini:
Aristotle described something. To extract meaning out of life, it's finding the mean between the volatilities that we experience. If you have a stock market going up and down and you do an Edmondson's chart on it over a period of time, you could find what the mean trajectory of overall the ups and downs represent. That mean in the mean between all the ups and all the downs neutralizing each other. And he showed that to extract meaning out of things is to be able to find the downs inside the ups and the ups inside the downs. For instance, let's say the market goes up and you think, "Wow. I'm making money on what I used to buy. I purchased." What about now? Now I'm doing $5 cost. I'm paying more for a share. So the downside is I'm paying more for a share. But the upside is I'm making money off the past shares I bought. If it goes down, I'm not making money off my old shares, but I'm now buying at a dirt cheap price.
Dr. Demartini:
So the truth is that if you see positive without negative or negative without positive, you're not seeing the whole. You're conscious of one and unconscious of the other or conscious one, unconscious the other. Extracting meaning is to find the downsides and the ups and the ups in the downs to be able to bring yourself back into the mean. The individual that can do that Viktor Frankl in his search for meaning or whatever, he basically showed that in these downside, here was the meaning. And he was the one that survived when the rest of them died because they were holding onto fantasies. If you compare your current reality to a fantasy, you'd be depressed about your current reality. You've got to be able to find the magnificence of where you are at this moment in time.
TJ Hoisington:
Neutral thinking. Is that what I heard you say?
Dr. Demartini:
Graced. You have to be grateful and see the meaning and the magnificence in the moment.
TJ Hoisington:
In his TED Talk, David Steindl Rast, a Benedictine monk made this statement. He talked about being grateful, "Does that mean that we can be grateful for everything?" He said, "Certainly not. We cannot be grateful for violence, for war, for oppression, for exploitation. On a personal level, we cannot be grateful for the loss of a friend or unfaithfulness or for bereavement. I didn't say we could be grateful for everything. I said we could be grateful for every moment." Because he says, "In every moment, we have a choice on how we're going to respond, what we're going to do next, and we can be grateful as a human being we have choice."
Dr. Demartini:
We also have the capacity to find the hidden meaning of even deaths. I do it every weekend in my Breakthrough Experience. I've developed a methodology in how to dissolve grief, and we can take even in most situations, so I would even differ from what that man just said. I would just say that there's nothing that the mortal body can experience that the immortal soul can't love. Every single thing that goes into our life, we can find meaning in it, and we can find something to be grateful for I assure you if we look deep enough. I teach people how to do that because otherwise they become victims of history, not masters of destiny.
TJ Hoisington:
At the core, I feel that that is true.
Dr. Demartini:
I've just developed the strategies on how to do it. We think something's terrible, and then a day, a week, a month, a year, five years later we go, "Thank god that occurred." But why have the [inaudible 00:55:35] of ages with the aging process, we can have the wisdom of ages right on the spot by asking the right questions. The quantifiable life is basically the questions you ask. I developed the questions to help you find, and that thing that you think is tragic, the gift. And the moment you do, you realize it's not even tragic in the first place. It's just part of the higher order in your life. There's nothing missing in your life if you know how to ask the right questions. There's just something to be gracious by.
TJ Hoisington:
So what I hear you saying is look at this time right now and find the blessings in it.
Dr. Demartini:
It's not a crisis. It's not a blessing. It's a synthesis and synchronicity of both at the same time. With wisdom sees both at the same time; doesn't get attached to either side.
TJ Hoisington:
Thank you. That's a great distinction.
Dr. Demartini:
Because otherwise you think this is bad, it's going to get better. It's not about better or worse. Right now in the moment, if we stop and look at it, New Delhi has the cleanest air in 35 years. Oil prices dropped. We can make a list... I have students around the world, all over the world making lists of the blessings that's going on, and the lists are so numerous, I don't have time to even read them all. There is thousands of upsides simultaneously than what we think is downside. If we're consciously downside with some sort of subjective bias and we're not looking at the upside, that's our choice and we're creating our own nemesis. If we're choosing to see the upsides, we create our fantasy. I'm not interested in fantasy and nightmares. I'm interested in the magnificence of seeing both sides and learning how to master the ability to adapt and resiliently use whatever's happening to my mission.
TJ Hoisington:
Who was it that said, "Nothing is good nor bad but thinking makes it so."
Dr. Demartini:
We're the ones that we make a mountain out of a mole hill, a mole hill out of a mountain. It's up to us. It's our perception, decisions, and actions that determine our destiny.
TJ Hoisington:
Wow. I know that your time is valuable, and this interview has to come to an end. But I feel like, brother, we could talk for a long time about these beautiful truths. And I really mean that they're truths. By the way, as I was doing some research on you, and I was watching some interviews and so forth, resonated. It was awesome. When you're talking about values, in my years ago, my first audio program I ever put out 20 years. It was called The Power To Shape Your Life, and in it I did a whole CD on values based on my research at the time. And I determined, and I'm just curious about your take on it because I don't know where you stand on this. But maybe you can nudge me or add something to it. But I always thought I've taught there's emotional values and there are vehicle values. And the vehicle values are the things of our world that we value in a sense, the means to an end, and the end is the emotion or the spirit or whatever. That the vehicle values always end up... They're subordinate to the emotional values.
TJ Hoisington:
When you take people through the value's process, do you have them identify temporal values versus spiritual values for example?
Dr. Demartini:
Whatever's highest on your value is a transcendent inspiring state. There's synthesized feelings, and there's polarized emotional feelings. When you see positive without negative or negative without positive, you have polarized emotional feelings. When you see them synchronistically at the exact same moment both of them, you have synthesize feelings. Those are the spiritual, inspired values. The ones below, the lower values are the ones that cause all kind of volatility and emotions. So we have to distinguish between emotional polarized values and true synthesized inspired. Gratitude, love, inspiration, enthusiasm, certainty, and presence are ones that are synthesized. Reconcile, happy, and sad, and all the polarities. Infatuation, resentment, admired, despise, seek, and avoid are all impulsive and instincts of our lower amygdala. The ones that are more inspiring, that call us, leave us not in a state of uncertainty, leave us in a state of clarity and certainty. Those inspired states bring tears of grace to our eyes. Those are the ones that you want to guide your life by.
TJ Hoisington:
And I believe that when we get into those values that you just said-
Dr. Demartini:
The highest values.
TJ Hoisington:
Our highest values. We unleash or illuminate our conscience.
Dr. Demartini:
That's it.
TJ Hoisington:
And we start living a life of conscience. We start leading as a leader in a company from a place of conscience.
Dr. Demartini:
We don't need extrinsic... The world government comes from governmentace, one who can govern their own mind. And when you're in the executive center, you can govern your own mind. You don't need extrinsic moralities to guide you. That's for people that don't have governance over themselves run by amygdalas looking for impulses, immediate gratifications. You have an intrinsic system that automatically exemplifies the highest self-actualized morality of life.
TJ Hoisington:
Wow. Dr. Demartini, listen, I can't wait to listen to this podcast myself after the production is done with this and go through it again. I feel like there's so many aha moments that can be taken from this, and you slide them in very succinctly and carefully. And they're rich and meaningful. Wow. Thank you for being on the show today.
Dr. Demartini:
Thank you for the show. Thank you for your insights, and thank you for your great questions.
TJ Hoisington:
No, no. No, it's great. Thank you. How can people find you? Lead them to the place where they can get to know you better and participate in what you're doing.
Dr. Demartini:
The simplest thing, just go to drdemartini.com. I'm all over the web. So just drdemartini.com. It's an educational website. You could spend the rest of your life on there.
TJ Hoisington:
Yeah, okay.
Dr. Demartini:
You could spend the rest of your life just learning on there because there's styles of podcast and webinars and TV and radio, newspapers, and all kinds of stuff on there. Just information on there. It's educational for people.
TJ Hoisington:
You know what's interesting, you started off with a story about having the physical impediment when you were young or born. What was it, young or born, right? When I was born, I was too big for my mom's tummy, and my feet were club footed. So for the first year of my life, I had little casts on. And every two weeks, they would cut the casts off, stretch my feet out, and then in time, I have normal feet today.
TJ Hoisington:
One of the great messages I think people can get from this is it's not about where you start, it's where you finish. And getting to that finish point is a lifelong process, but you can speed it up by unleashing that conscious, by unleashing and allowing yourself to harmonize with your higher values. All of a sudden your world will not only become more fulfilled, you'll see more success and happiness in your life.
Dr. Demartini:
Oh, I believe that the goals are in time and space but a mission is through time and space. We transcend even the illusions. The mind and space and time to the soul, the soul extracts out space and time for the mind. In the state of unconditional love, we transcend the illusions and the limitations that we perceive in space and time and amazing manifestations occur instantaneously and spontaneously because the people, places, things, ideas, and events show up in our life purposely the moment we're actually in a spaceless, timeless now.
TJ Hoisington:
Beautiful. All right, make sure that you go over to drdemartini.com. The link will be up here as well. Thank you for being on the call. This was great.
Dr. Demartini:
Thank you. I appreciate it. Very, very fantastic. Thank you.
TJ Hoisington:
You betcha.
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