John James Santangelo – Achieve Your Goals and Take Your Life to the Next Level Transcript

Host: Welcome to the Lifelong Wellness podcast where we talk to wellness professionals from so many walks of life from around the world and get their insight to living healthier. I’m your host Wes Malik. Today's guest is John James Santangelo, PhD who’s a very emphatic and a nationally acclaimed speaker, author and executive business coach. He’s been a guiding force in empowering individuals, businesses and corporations to excel at peak performance. John is a foremost authority in success principles and he's an expert in the field of communication. He is a neurolinguistic programming trainer and a clinical hypnotherapist and he's worked with companies such as the Learning Annex, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, Medicaid, Inc. and the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Team. John's mission is to eliminate negative thinking, help you achieve your goals and truly take your life to the next level and he does that through NLP. Welcome to the Lifelong Wellness podcast. What's going on in LA?

John: Life every day, Wes. Everyday life is going on. I usually get to talk about because usually the questions that I’m asked most often as a resource coach, I study with Tony Robbins, most of the question I get is, “How I do what I want to do? How do I achieve my goals?” Or here is a better question, “How do I stop sabotaging myself? How do I stop from doing the negative habits?” and the result is I'm not achieving what I want to achieve and that’s the biggest problem. I think it’s kind of like the life question we ask ourselves everyday. “Who am I?” “What am I doing?” “What are my goals?” “What am I trying to achieve?” Everyday we want to do that. It’s just that most of the time we we’re stopped and that’s where our lack of personal power. I think most of us it’s just a fear of who we are and not achieving the things we want to do. It’s a scary thought.

Host: Is fear the biggest thing that stops us from changing ourselves?

John: That’s a great question and you can probably distill it down and call it fear. Everybody has a different name for it. I think in my business and what I do, doing workshops, working with, you know, individual clients, coaching, I think all our problems, what I’ve come to know, all it comes come down to a simple idea is a lack of self-worth. It really is. It's a lack of who we are inside. I mean, pick any goal, doesn't matter what it is. I want to go on vacation this week. I want to increase my business by 50%. I want to write a book, that’s what I’m working right now as a book-writing program. All those come and stem from a lack of feeling that we’re worthy of achieving that next level of success. That’s really all it is. And that thing that stops us, we can call it fear, is an emotional attachment to something in our past. It’s usually from, think about this way, they’re negative programics because the human brain is kind of how I study, the human condition, the human brain itself, the mind is just a bunch of recipes. It’s all it is. It’s a recipe for brushing our teeth, there are recipes or you can call them strategies. As we say in NLP recipe for driving our car. You learn it and then we repeat over and over again.

Host: Yeah.

John: The thing about these recipes they become unconscious. You don’t think about driving your car.

Host: Not at all.

John: You don’t think about brushing your teeth, you just do it. We automatically go into these automatic modes because think about this, if the brain had to relearn those activities every single time, how much of your day would be taken up, right? The things that we do every single day. You sit down with that mic and you put on your headphones, you push a button, you do this, you automatically go into that mode. You don’t think about it like I just had to do, “Oh my God. I got to go that setting. I got to do this.” That’s a learning experience. We have these same programs that we want for success, for achievement, for progress. It’s just that most people never really have learned them properly.

Host: I see.

John: Because most of the strategies or habits that we learn come from our primary caretakers. Think about it, everything that we've learned how to be instilled or installed onto our little hard drive as children.

Host: Very true.

John: Right? We call that modeling. We model how our parents communicate. And I say parents because most people learn from their parents. They’re primary caretakers. It could be your grandparents. If you live in foster homes it could be your teachers, it could be your social worker, whatever that is, but most people learn from their parents. That’s why we’re the same as we don’t view too far from our parents’ behaviors because those behaviors are passed down generationally or genealogically in a way. That’s why (you say), “I’ll never become my parents!” and what happens? You become your parents because that’s instills. It’s like we’re talking about software a second ago. Those programs are downloaded, those software programs are downloaded under our hard drive which is our unconscious mind. So think about this, if you never learned how to build wealth, if you never learn how to invest or worse yet, your parents when they said this to you as children, my mom used to say it, “We can’t afford that”.

Host: We heard that all the time.

John: Of course. “What do you think money grows on trees?” or “That’s just too much money”.

Host: It's those typical responses.

John: Exactly. And so then what happens when you grow up learning those negative beliefs? That’s how you operate. You operate from those beliefs. “Oh, I can’t afford that. That’s just too expensive.” Well, here’s a great one. I believe because I talked to a group of highschool kids every year for some giant 4-day workshop and I asked this core question is, “What are the two things that you think that we deal with most as adults?” These kids are 16 years old. What’s the biggest problem they’re facing? My social media and whether they’re liked in school or not because in today’s challenges, you’re going to grow up dealing with money and relationships. That’s it. Usually help is nobling but it’s not until further down the road when your body starts deteriorating or you don't take care yourself and you look like you take care, you know you’re good looking guy. If I’’d known you’re good looking I would have dressed up for you a little bit better. (laughing) Because Wes and I, we don’t see each other you guys know this is obvious. So yeah, money and relationships. Now if you grew up when your parents were fighting all the time, right? And they were just bickering at each other and calling each other names, “Oh, you suck at this!”, “Oh, you’re just a bad…” or they delve your divorce and you learn a past away relationships were. How do you think your relationship is going to be when you get older? So we learn, we model those behaviors as children. As we grow up with those same habits or strategies are, or you can call recipes for success, recipes for failure. It’s like, it maybe like you, probably for most listeners I got to a point in my life where I’m like, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. I don’t want to do this anymore. I got to find a better way.” Most people believe that but they never go out and take action and one like, “Forget it. I won’t have studied every book, every one, every workshop, every seminar.” Then I discovered NLP, actually just finished writing a book about discovering NLP and I have one here in front of you, I can share it to you, just finished this book. And it really was about modeling success. NLP came from understanding what a change was and how we change. How do you stop biting your nails? How do you go after your goals? That’s all change. It’s being unconscious for so long because we’re on autopilot and then finally we say, “I got to do something to make the change.”

Host: Before we get deeper into NLP, explain what NLP is to a layman like myself. Apart from the Wikipedia definition of NLP, I don't know what it is. Could you help me understand what it actually is?

John: Yeah. Let me tell you how it was developed first and then it'll give you a basis of foundation about the actual explanation. There's a gentleman who is 21 years old, Richard Banner, one of the co-developers in the University of Sta. Cruz near San Francisco and he was working with a very famous therapist called Fitz Perls and Fritz said, “Hey Richard, I want you to come in to my therapy sessions. I want you to take note and transcribe everything that I say.” Well, after weeks of doing this, Richard was looking at his notes and he said, “Wow! If I say the same thing to somebody else, I wonder if it will work”. And he did. He started implementing change by just using the script. Well after awhile, because Richard was a genius, he was a mathematical genius. he started distilling out all the garbage language and modeling just what Fritz was doing. Well, then after awhile that actual language professor that time came in to talk to Richard. He said, “I know what you're doing. I understand the language process. Let’s pull resources and start really studying what change is.” Then they studied Virginia Satir, she was a family therapist and the best and most famous hypnotherapist of the times it was Milton Erickson. And they took all of this information and they put it into workshop and a couple of books and then from there they started developing methods, processes. Because if you’ve ever, I’m talking to your listeners, if you’ve ever been to a therapist, most therapy is transactional therapy analysis. You talk and hopefully, at some point, you come to realization like, “Oh my God. That’s what I’m doing.” Those what we call the “Aha!” moment, right? Well, Richard and John started distilling out these processes where now you have to go through years of therapy. I’ll give you an example, a phobia. Ever witness a true phobia was? A true phobia like somebody throws a snake at you. These people run down the street, screaming themselves even if it was a fake snake, right? Or an elevator. Here’s a great one, we have a client. He couldn’t get in no any elevator.

Host: Really?

John: And he worked, I think it was like 25 stories up. So guess what he was doing every day, taking the stairs. Yeah, right?

Host: Lot of exercise.

John: Yes. So, if you can eliminate these phobias, how that change your life, right? So Richard and John are distilling out what these programs work for these people. They didn’t study like, wow you have a phobia. They studied people that have gotten over their phobia and said, “What are you doing?” or “What had you done in the past to eliminate that phobia?” And they took that process and literally now we can pretty much, most of the time depending on there’s child’s and issue, stop going on backwards, because a true phobia, a clean phobia, we can eliminate that in 20 minutes. Now think about if you have to go to a therapy, right, if you go to a therapy sometimes it’ll take years because they allow the client to go through their own change process. Well, NLP is about helping the client do the processes that work. I’ll give you a better metaphor, Tiger Woods. He had one of the best golf coaches in the world. Now, I don’t have to help Tiger , if I was that coach, help him become the best golfer because he’s already great. What I’m going to do is tweak what he's already doing to make him better. So the philosophy of NLP is broken. We just have to help you tweak strategies, better your strategies, better your habits, right? So then they put us into a form into a workshop. Tony Robins then got certified by these guys. Tony took those same strategies and he put into, obviously he’s a great marketer, he’s got five, ten thousand people showing up for his events, these weekend events. I was trained by the same people that trained Tony and we do a 12-day certification program that trains these people to become a practitioner in NLP. And so now, let me get you into the explanation of what NLP is. Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Neuro meaning the mind-body. How we think and how we communicate language, the linguistic part, how we communicate with ourselves and other people. And then P for the programming part of the strategy or programs. As we talked about before, we have programs that are downloaded and so some of those programs we go learn ourselves, right? We go learn to ride a bike. That’s a program. You rode a bike before, Wes?

Host: Oh, yeah everyday.

John: Do you have to go learn to reride it every time you get on it?

Host: Not at all.

John: No because it’s engraved into our hardware by now. Same with successes. So, we talked about negative and fails, we talked about success. What about success? That’s one of the first things I asked my clients. I’m your travel agent. What’s the first question I’m going to ask you?

Host: Where do you want to go?

John: Where do you want to go. Here’s what most people come up with.

“Well, you know, I don't want to go to New York I was there before, you know. Mexico is beautiful, I went there about five years ago but I’ve always wanted to go overseas right now, but you know what's going on over there. The problems we’re having with mid-east.

“Okay, I understand that but where do you want to go?”

“Oh, oh. Well you have always wants … No, I won’t do that. That’s just too much…”

So many people are unclear about what they want in life so guess what shows up? Nothing because we become literally debilitated by our self-doubt. So the question again comes out, “Where do you want to go?” Clarity of purpose. Did you ever read the book, ”Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill? Great book. Written back in the early 10’s and 20’s, came out in 1936. Great buy. I really wish that you have read. You need to read this book It talks about philosophy for success. You can have clarity and purpose and a white sheet he calls desire. Why do you do this? Do you actually do all these interviews every, do you do it every week? There’s a purpose behind you doing them. A personal purpose you have. What do you get at? Let me interview you a second. What do you get out of this?

Host: I get a lot out of this. I get to talk to thousands of people and we talk to our, we engage with people who change people's lives and motivate them to change their lives and live well. That's what I get out of this.

John: Yeah and there’s some personal words of that. You get added value to who you are, your personality, your habits, maybe you get an “Aha!” moment after like, “Oh my God. I never thought of that. I’ve never done that.” If I do that then maybe I’ll achieve my goals or move me up on the next level of success whatever that is for you, right? So, everybody has those. Everybody has those ideas and those desires and those wants but very few people act on them. I know that was a long one with what NLP is. Do you need more clarifications? Do you think your listeners need more clarifications on that or?
Host: I think it was more important for me to understand because I hear about NLP all the time. I know a friend of mine who went to Singapore and did a three day NLP course, came back but I never really understood it. And you being the expert on this, you have so many decades of experience, I wanted to understand it as, I wanted you to it down is as low as possible so I could understand actually what it is and I have a better understanding of it now.

John: You know it’s funny that you say it dumb it down because it really is that simple. The first time I took my first course it was a full day and it was just the introduction course. Yeah, whole day, right? And my course is 12 days. There’s no way you can learn this technology and the attitudes and the personalities of the methods in a couple hours. And he said, what you learn in this introduction course is going to be about this much. I mean he’s a given so you know, a quarter of an inch of what you got to learn overall. If you want to get certified, you really want to make changes for yourself and for other people. You got to go and learn the methods, the true strategies. And what I saw in learning this, I write everything, I rented videotapes and bought videotapes. And it was so complex and I thought, Wow! If I could teach a course, I believe I’m a great teacher, I’m able to take those ideas you were just saying and dumb them down where people grasp the idea and go, “That’s what it is? Oh my God! That’s amazing!” And that’s why I wrote the book, the readers can see this I’m showing, Wes. I wrote the book “Discovering NLP”. You want to buy this on Amazon. Because I thought if I could put somehow like a manual together where people can learn this and go, “Oh! That’s what it is? Oh, that’s not so bad.” Now, you’re not going to learn everything from reading any book or any video, of course. You kind of like, I explained this one with my students, imagine driving a car by reading a book and watching videos. You need to be in the car. You need be going through the process. You need to be sitting in class, working with other students and getting the hands-on experience with the instructors and the students of learning how to drive a car. No different in NLP. You got to get as one of my instructors Robert Gilsey used to say, “Get into the muscle. Once it’s into the muscle then you can repeat the process over and over again.” So it’s really understanding the methods and the strategies. Really that’s all NLP is. One is the attitudes and beliefs and then the methods. And then taking it from there, there’s three level courses and you can go on become a trainer, a professional speaker.

Host: This might be a stupid question but when you wrote the book, who did you write it for and, you know, what are they looking for in terms of NLP? What’s the purpose of it?

John: Great question. Obviously, so much of what we do, human beings, are self-serving. My goal in writing the book is really writing it for my students. The ones that comes to the course and go. Do you recommend a book? Yeah, I recommend a lot of books though they’re so complicated. So I put together just so something they can really go, “Oh, that’s what it is” and then come into class. Also, it’s a marketing ploy as well, right, it’s up on Amazon, hopefully they read the book and they get a whole lot and learn more about this. You may want to take the course, do some result coaching with me or buy one of my other courses.

Host: The Wellness podcast is about living well and we always ask all our guests how they define living well because everyone has a different definition. How do you live well?

John: Good question and I assume if you are to write a book or at least report every answer that everyone gave you, they’ll be all different because it’s like asking what is success, right? What is wellness? Wellness could be health, could be mentally, right? So overall, this is for me, when I start doing a little intro research about who am I, what I really want out my life, for me it’s freedom. It really is freedom. I could never work for anyone else. I don’t like being told what to do. And I think I’m sure enough to figure stuff out. On my early days working, I was in the fitness industry for about 25 years. I worked for different health clubs just on part-time and I always found better ways to do things and the business owners and when I give them ideas they’d say, “No, that’s not the way we do things here.”. Of course, because you’re business owner you think you know everything, like I think I know everything? You think you know everything about what you do, right? And so we hope that we’re flexible enough. That's one of the things in NLP is flexibility of not just knowing what you know but stepping outside of yourself and learning more. And you have great opportunity of doing this because you get to hear from so many people that the viable information well that you draw from this is going to be amazing. Wes, you should be writing your own book. Oh my God. Yes, you should be writing your own book about this, ”Thetales and Tribulation of Interviewing People”. Well, whatever you want to call it. I hope you do. We have a writing course that’s coming up, too. So wellness, for me it as freedom, whatever I need to do. Money is part of that. When people say, “Oh, money is not important”. Really? Try to pay your rent by asking for a favor, right? Go buy some cologne or underarm deodorant and ask them for free.

Host: It’s now how the world works.

John: That’s right. It’s unfortunate but you get those people that think, “Oh money shouldn’t be important”. It shouldn’t be. Why, it shouldn’t be? It’d be wonderful if everything is free and we can barter for everything but that would be just too difficult. So we need money to achieve the things that we want to achieve in life. So for me wealth is important. And also helping other people achieve that off, getting out their own way, eliminating those negative beliefs kind of things that we talked about in the beginning, right? Relationships. I mean, raise your hand. How many people have gone through more than one relationship in their life? (laughing) You know? Did you marry your sweetheart from highschool? There’s only few people who do that because it’s a learning process as well, right? The things that we want to learn, the things that moves us towards what we want, not away from what we’re doing because here’s a deal, especially in relationships, this is the thing we talked about in the beginning. Because we’re so conditioned by our childhood and those relationships, we tend to repeat those relationships over and over again. And one of my instructors said to me, “It’s not the person you’re involved with, John, that’s the problem. You’re the problem in every one of your relationships because you take “you” with you. You’re the only common denominator.

Host: Right.

John: So until you can admit to yourself that you’re the fault, because if she said to me if I was in a rush with someone I want to marry now, in the past there’s so many perfect for her. Those past relationship, it’s just wasn’t me. So, I need to find the perfect person for me. And sometimes it takes a lot of introspective to say, “I'm at fault here as well”. I got to look at myself and decide, “Do I want a healthy relationship and find the right person for me?” In career, same thing. I start at dead end job because a lot of people feel that they’re just running on a hamstring treadmill in their career. You’re doing this. This is so outside of most people’s comfort zone, they can never do this. I think you never get on air and interview people and like, “Oh my God. I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I write the right questions to ask. The guest’s an expert, what if I ask the wrong question?” All this negative self-talk comes up. So you’re smiling now, you’re probably laughing because you’re probably going (laughing), “Yeah, I’m awesome at this. I got this. I know what I’m doing”. And it’s true because you’ve done it for awhile.

Host: Negativity and self-doubt. I want to backtrack on our conversation little while ago. It's a huge detractor as one of the major obstacles when, you know, we want to change but then we have a self-doubt. Can I do it. Is it possible? Oh no, I can’t do it. I won’t be able to achieve whatever goal that I may have. How does, where does NLP figure and all of this? So if I have a goal in mind.

John: Well, what Richard and John did as well is not just uncovering strategies and methods for things that didn't work. They started working with success strategies as well. Imagine if I sat you down and you were this world-famous blackjack, Howard Stern. If you were Howard Stern and I sat down with you and I said, “I just have some questions, tell me how you’ve started. What do you believe? What do you do every single day?” Those are strategies. If I can uncover your strategies and your beliefs, I can literally install them on someone else.

Host: Okay.

John: So that’s what Richard and John did. They uncovered what works. So to answer your question is, that negative self-talks, those limiting beliefs that we have, those are learned. So what if I can sit down with you and say, “What do you want?” instead which is the flip side of that coin. Because most people that I’ve worked with, suicide victims. Oh my God. After 9/11 I was called in to work with the US Counter Army Intelligence team, teaching them lie detection skills. Months after 9/11 that was crazy because NLP is really about uncovering strategies is what works. So let's find out if you have negative self-talk. If you have negative beliefs that are holding you back in life, we all do, of course no one’s perfect, right? So Richard and John distilled out a four-step formula of what every piece of success is based on. Ready? Number one, Outcome. You need to know what it is exactly what you want. What are your results that you want to produce? Where do you want to end up, not just today, right now, but where is your destination? So I guess in that question I’m your travel agent, “Where do you want to go.” Some people, “Well maybe Phoenix but I like to end up in New York”. Well then, let’s focus on New York and through the way we’ll find out how to get there. Number 2, Action. You got to do something about it. You need to know what you want and you got to do something in taking action every single day moving towards your goal. Three, Awareness is what you're doing. The action you’re taking. Working. Is it working? Number four, the most important piece is what we talked about before, Flexibility. And this is where people get really choked up. They know what they want, they move towards their goal and they ask themselves “Is it working?” “Not, it’s not working” and they go repeat the same process over again. I know what I’m doing. I’m taking action, Is it working? No, it’s not working and they repeat the same action over again. I know it’s working, I do the same thing and then it’ll end up the same thing. That's what relationships are, repeating the same negative program over and over again. Flexibility is so important that's why I said you got to take responsibility and the ego, here’s when the ego takes over. The ego’s never wrong. “God forbid if I’m ever wrong. I can’t take advice from somebody else who’s lower than me who doesn't know as much as. No! I’m going to keep doing what I'm doing”. Okay. That’s the whole thing is keep doing what you’re doing, you keep getting the same results over and over again. So you got to be, I guess, self-serving in a way. Higher spirit of soul’s got to realize, you’re meant for bigger things. You’re meant for bigger things. Get your ego out of the way. Be flexible enough to understand that if it's not working after a couple of times, what we say now is please do something different. Do anything other than what you've done in the past. Try anything. Try anything. So, Outcome, Action, Awareness and Flexibility. That's the key. That's the key to success. It’s real simple. Now, plug in everybody’s ideas and beliefs and strategies. You got to plug in what you want. What do you want? What actions are you taking? Are you aware? Ask other people, “Is it working?” “Do you think what I’m doing is working?” And then flexibility. Now I’m talking about what you asked the question, I’m using this as a segue, is negative self-talk and negative programming software. You got to acknowledge that first. That’s the first step, Awareness. Dr. Phil said in his first book about strategies. He said, “You can’t change something you don't recognize”. That’s the number step in EA. You got to admit to yourself there’s something not worth it, there’s something that is wrong. And then you can move on to what’s right. I kind of say it when we were students because I said, “Driving your car looking for your rear view mirror”. That’s not going to work. You’ve got to be looking forward and not behind. Does that make sense?

Host: Absolutely, it does. The biggest thing that I see in your four-step process is the first step itself. To me it seems like the outcome is the major roadblock and you yourself mentioned it that you know when you ask when the travel agent asks where do you want to go, we have no idea. But we do know what we don’t want to go.

John: Exactly!

Host: So that becomes your vision and it's really hard to create a vision for yourself. If I may, I just want to recount a very small story, I was talking to my kids and told them that you've got to have a mission statement for your life. What are people going to be to be talking about? What's going to be written on your epitaph on your grave? You know, you've got to, you’re young now you got to lead toward something. What do you want to do? One of my daughters said, “I want to make a movie. I want to make a feature film”. And I said “Yeah, you go for it”. My sister who was listening into this conversation and my sister piped up, “No. You've got to get a job first and you've got to gain the experience”. And I told my daughter “Well, no. Maybe you could start a production company and make that million dollar movie and make millions of dollars by the time you're 22”. Right after our college and my sister immediately, in fact we had a fight over this.

John: (laughing) Old beliefs were coming out, that what it was.

Host: She said, “No, you got to start and get that $24,000 a year job and then go to thirty and then go to forty and then with hard work and then complete your education. Maybe you'll get to where I am making $100, $120,000 a year in my dead-end job that I go to. (laughing). I countered with the example of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, who had visions. So using that example of my sister, there's a lot of people like her out there. That vision. That first step, the outcome, the vision, how do we do it man? I would like to know from you how you would tell your students to get to that the vision that they want?

John: That's a great question, Wes. We’ve talked about the whole time and it’s fear because I had to understand this whole process at a real conscious level coming from an unconscious process. Because the unconscious mind runs 90% of who we are, 90% of what we do every day come from the unconscious process. We don’t know we’re doing it. We don’t know how we talk. It just comes out but there’s a process. We don’t know how we drive our car, some people drive it unconsciously. They’re doing 10 things at once, right? Because it's unconscious process. I want to understand at that level and I really had to drill down through all the different types of therapies I have, the certification in and distill them out to a simple process. And here it is. You ready? It’s the fight or flight mechanism. Everything comes down to an instinctual level. Either we fight the process or we won. And your sister, I’m going to use that as a metaphor, your sister was talking from an unconscious process and it is a fear-based process. Because as what we’re saying in the past, only the programs, the strategies that we know, that we understand. And what’s for process? Well, you got to work hard. You got to go to school. You got to wait a long time and then hopefully if you do it right, you get results. Okay, that works for her because it is a slow, long process of getting the results. See, that's the same thing Richard and John, co-developers of NLP said, “Well, yeah. You can do therapy for 20 years” and there are people who actually do that. They work on 20 years for a phobia. Does it work? A lot of times, no. Most of the time, no. So, you distill out what works and then use that process. Now, here's the challenge with that. If you don't know what you're doing, it won’t work. Your sister, I mean I kept using your sister because it’s a beautiful metaphor, she doesn't know anything else. So she can’t defy her goals outside of that like your daughter wanted to because your sister didn't have a strategy. Or most importantly, a positive belief about herself that she can go, “I can do that”, right? What your daughter, because kids are amazing, they have no. preconceived ideas, usually if their parents don’t pound “No” into them over and over again and you seem like such a great guy to say, “Hey, you can do whatever you want”. That’s the first indication that somebody's going to step out of their comfort zone because there’s a great quote, “Everything desired, everything you want in life is outside of your comfort zone”.

Host: So true.

John: So true, right?

Host: Well said.

John: Your daughter like went way on that conversation. She was like, “Dad, I want to become a producer. I want to become a filmmaker”. Well, here’s what your sister should have said, “Honey, that’s a great aspiration. Tell you what, start with your cellphone and just start filming people. And make a little short videos, around one or two minutes long with people around you like your family and start there. That’s a great stepping stone”. But your sister can’t. Now, there’s a metaphor there for your listeners because we don’t know what to do. The fear of “What happens if I filmed something with my phone and they don’t like it?” or “I don’t know how to use my phone. I’m so complicated. I know there’s a lot more to that but, oh my God, what if people laugh at me?” “What if I get rejected? Worse yet ridiculed over this”? All of that goes on at the unconscious level Even before we answer the question of “Where do you want to go?”. So your daughter bypass that already. She went, “I want to do that” and went beyond those negative beliefs That she could probably come up with the same negative beliefs, “I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know anyone that has ever done that before. What if I fail?” She went beyond that. And that’s real success. Knowing what you want, here’s what I’ve learned, knowing what you want and getting at your own way. That’s it. Every success drive, every BOOK, every person you’ve ever interviewed has said the same thing but not that simple. That’s what we’re talking about before is distilling it down and toning it down to this. What do you want? How do I get out of my own way? End of story.

Host: I love what you just said. I love it. Getting out of your own way, the biggest obstacle is yourself, it’s your thinking. Of course, there are external negative thoughts, “Oh, you can’t do this” “You won’t be able to do that” “You have to do it this way” “This is not how the world works”, there’s a thousand things we hear all the time but yeah, the first and most major and most important thing is getting out of your own way that's so beautifully said, I love it.

John: Can I give you the a strategy for the question that you asked just about 10 minutes ago?

Host: Yes.

John: This is what I teach my students because again I love that word, “dumb it down” to make it so simple for everyone listening that statement. Apply this every single day, they’re going to achieve everything they want. And it literally is this symbol, that’s why I put these together. First, you got to know what you want. Succes, right? Know which one and getting out your own way. So, here’s the challenge, Wes, is that as soon as we start thinking outside the box, outside our comfort zone, the unconscious takes over and goes, “Whoah! You’ve never done that before. Hold on a second. What happens if we fail? What happens if there’s pain involved?”. Because one of things Tony Robbins said and this is true, it’s an NLP statement, “We do more to avoid pain than gain pleasure”. So, I’ll put into perspective, in relationship, “I’m in a dead-end relationship. My husband beats me, my wife beats me, she hates me, she calls me names, but I don’t want to leave because I don’t know what’s out on the other side of this”. Right? That’s scary. The unknown. We are alone. Here’s another metaphor for you about your sister. “I want to leave my job. Oh my God. I hate my job! I don’t make as much money as I want. What if I don’t get another job? What happens if I can’t find another job? Oh my God. I can’t support my family. I can’t do this.” All of that comes up before we even start putting ourselves out there.

Host: These are all questions that everyone has.

John: Exactly! Every single person.

Host: Yeah.

John: There’s not one person that can go, “Well, I never think of that”. This is how your brain works. This is not how you work, this is how our brain works. We want things because that’s what the brain does, it’s a progressive machine. It’s always looking for the next thing. So the brain says, “Whoah! Hold on. That could bring us pain”. And where is pain felt? In the mind or in the body? That’s the question I’m asking you. Where is the pain felt? The mind or the body?

Host: It’s the mind.

John: In the body.

Host: The body?

John: Yes, if your mind was separated from your body, your mind will go, “ I don’t know what that is. I don’t feel anything”.

Host: True.

John: We feel things in our body, right? So here’s my strategy. You got to acknowledge first what you’re asking. I’d like to take a vacation for 7 days. All expenses paid. I want to win the lotto. I want to be in a healthy relationship. I want to find the perfect job for me. I want to make movies when I get older, right? The second thing is what shows up. That’s the scary part. What shows up when you talk to yourself like that? As you were saying before that negative programming and those limiting beliefs show up as pain in the body. So you got to get that pain out of your body so you can think appropriately because here’s the deal, Wes. Everything that we do and want is based on a decision. One of them thousands of tiny little decisions every day,”Oh, I'm going to turn left here. I’m going to turn left here” and you got into an accident. What if you turn right? Would that change the outcome, right? “Oh, I’m going to ask her on a date or what if I went out with that woman?” “What if I took that job?” Every little decision moves us into direction. So, if you can change your decisions you can enhance your life. Does it make sense?

Host: Absolutely.

John: So, what then controls our decision? You probably never thought about this. Just guess. (laughing) Perfect answer! Do you know what it is?

Host: No, I don’t. I’m completely blank. I don’t know the answer to your question.

John: Because most people never thought about it this way. That’s why. It’s the emotional state you’re in when you’re making the decision. Wes, if you need to make somewhat life important decision and you’re in a negative state of mind, how’s that decision going to turn out?

Host: Exactly. It’s going to turn out the way that you’re thinking. Negatively.

John: So if you are in a powerful, confident state when you’re making that decision, is that going to be a better decision-making process?

Host: Sure, it’s going to be a world of difference.

John: Absolutely! But we don’t think about it this way because we’re never taught. So, imagine this, imagine if you’re able to as one of my quotes, “Master your emotions. Master your decisions”. If you can master your emotions everyday which are the things that get in our way, right? Success is knowing what you want and getting it out of your own way, I’m back at this again. Learn to master your emotions so your emotions aren’t mastering you. Learn to control your emotions. Master your emotions, you master your decisions and then you master your level of suggest in that next level of success, wherever that is for you. Like your daughter. Boy, she had it right. She knew how to take control of those emotions because all she felt was joy, that happiness and maybe gratitude from the people around her, supporting her. Your sister? The opposite end of that spectrum. Fear. Doubt. Negative self-talk, right?

Host: Exactly. Negativity.

John: All she felt were those negative emotions. So, here’s the formula. So, I’m giving you the background behind all this how the brain and body work together. It will keep us from getting what we want. Clarity and power in getting our own way. So the first thing. What is she’s know what you want, but here's a question you came up with a second ago that was brilliant. You said, “Most people know what they don't want”. And that is so true, isn’t it? Might ask somebody “What do you want?” I don’t know. I just don’t want to feel any pain. I never want to go through that relationship again. I never want to be poor again. They know what they don’t want but it’s so hard to define what they do want because what’s getting in their way is that fear of moving forward or success or that thing they want. So here’s the thing, Wes, you first got to get that feeling out of your body. You got to get that feeling out of your body. The best way to do that, the simplest way to do that is this, take a deep breath and let it out all real slow, three times. One more time. If you focus on your body then you focus on how good breathing feels, like the monks have known this for 5000 years. The breath is so important. The breath will take over every aspect in every cell of your body. You breathe in all that good energy, all the opportunity that's outside of us and breathe it in and let all those negative emotions go. Now you can in this state of mind, in this spiritual God universal equator state. Now you can start focusing on what you do want, but only until then. So therefore I tell my students, “What you’re focusing on?”. Oh, that negative self-talk. Okay take a deep breath, three deep breaths to get it out from your body and then ask this question of yourself which is so important because the brain, the mind can only do one thing at a time. They can only focus on one thing at a time. There’s no such thing as multitasking because there's just tasks over and over again that we’re thinking of, but everything, the next moment, the next moment. Ask yourself this question “What do I want instead?” What do I want instead because what is that do in the unconscious mind? It holds all the answers. It’s kind of like the flip side of the coin. Well here’s what I don’t want. What do I want instead? The brain will come up with multitudes of answers for you.

“I’m in this crappy, negative relationship”.

“What do you want instead?”

“Well, I kind of like to be in a nice, healthy relationship where I feel good about myself and I’m really, actually truly love the other person”

Or

“This job sucks. I’m not making enough money. I work too hard, I can’t see my family”.

“What do you want instead?”

“ Well I like to have a job. Maybe I’ll just work 40 hours a week and I’ll like what I do and I’ll surround myself with good energy from the people I work with.”

Most people can’t even fathom those questions because they’re so stuck in the past, right? So, take three deep breaths, ask yourself, What do I want instead. And then you can start. Now you got to practice because this doesn’t come automatic in your system. Like now, I don’t think about it. Whenever I get a negative thought, I immediately (inhale deeply) take a deep breath instead and you build in those habits. So every time something negative comes up, this will be a great strategy for your sister. “Sis, take a deep breath. Relax. What do you want instead?” “Well, I don’t know. Maybe I can go in and tell my boss I want a raise or ask the people around me what they’ve done other than what they’re doing here”. It gives you options and until you have options you’re going to get stuck in the same web over and over again.

Host: I was going to say that we’re not going to be able to learn how to overcome our emotions in one podcast. Maybe we should have you on again and go through the whole process again. You've written several books “Discovering NLP: Introduction To The Basic Principles Of NLP. It's available on Amazon. You've got the Roadmap to Success : America's Top Intellectual Minds Map Out Successful Business Strategies,
Setting Goals – Quick & Easy Worksheet, Theory and SMART Goals!. Asking The Right Question and did I miss any book?

John: There’s four books and there’s plenty of online courses that we’re working on and are already developed. If I can say real quick, I’m going to plug something free for your guests. There’s a 7-day NLP mini- course. The majority about stuff we’ve been talking about. It breaks it down to simple process because I like things simple like we’re talking about. Give me something to do so I can practice everyday. If you go to lanlp.com, and there’s a couple bunch out there. Go to FREE, it say FREE NLP LESSON. Click on it and your name and email and it’ll send you something every second day so you can start practicing things and really get a hold of your emotions, start making better decisions to clarify your life.

Host: Excellent. That’s a great starting point. That’s lanlp.com.

John: Can I give you one more tip?

Host: Sure.

John: Dennis Whately is a very successful speaker, motivational speaker, entrepreneur and he gave me a technique that literally change my life, Wes. It literally change my life because as I said before everything comes out of self-worth. Everything. The better you feel about yourself, less negative self-talk, easier to move forward, okay? He said say this to yourself every day, “I like myself”. Say it three times. I like myself. I like myself. I like myself. But say it with passion and gusto because that's the only way those positive affirmations get into the body and pass the unconscious mind. I like myself. I like myself. I like myself every single day. That’s what success is about.

Host: John James Santangelo, thank you so much for being on today's podcast. I'm so glad that you shared that with us. Once again lanlp.com. All your books are available on Amazon and you are touring the world, I believe all the time, workshops, courses, meeting with many people. What's the next stop for you?

John: Well the thing is to help as many people as you can. It’s what you do. It’s what I like. I love doing this. I love helping people. By the way, if you go to the website there’s a free 30-minute coaching session. If anybody wants to work with me for 30 minutes for free, I’m out there. And so, to get to the next level is hitting more people. So we’re literally designing after I finish this book this year is to put an online study course together. So they can learn program, that seven days, they can learn it online rather than, I have people fly in from all over the world to Los Angeles to spend 12 days with me. And so this is going to be an online course. It’s just a way to really reach more people and doing what I love to do.

Host: Brilliant. Thank you so much.

John: Wes, you’re such an amazing man. Thank you so much for the interview. I truly appreciate it.
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