http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2010/12/episode-125/
Introduction: In this episode: what is life coaching?, what to do when a low carb
diet stops working, how to heal TMJ, swimming after a weight
training session, should endurance athletes only do aerobic training,
how to get full transcripts of each show on your Kindle or e-reader
device and more information on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner
Circle.
Ben answers: Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here and happy holidays to those of you
listening. At about the time that this podcast comes out just a few
days before Christmas. Now of course this is also – since I was born
on December 20th a couple of days after my birthday and many of
you know that I did a free one hour live webinar on my birthday.
I’ve been getting tons of emails about when that video is going to be
released, when the recording is going to be released. Don’t worry if
you’re on my newsletter list or you’re following me on Twitter or on
the Facebook page you will get a notice as soon as that comes out. I
am not only releasing the video to you but also including a little
PDF transcript of it so in case you want to read it instead of watch it,
you can. That was a really interesting video. Basically the topics
were why the paleo diet is totally wrong about grains, how to get
aerobic capacity without touching cardio equipment. Why the
advice to eat several small meals a day is a total myth, when yoga
can be a complete waste of time. Why they’re lying when they tell
you crunches don’t work. Why healthy whey protein could be very
bad for you, how to exercise starved without cannibalizing muscle,
how I stayed lean and muscular for two months without ever
stepping into a gym, a step by step protocol to doubling
testosterone levels in men and maximize sex drive in women and
how to instantly become a faster swimmer, cyclist or runner with
one single workout. At the end I also included a bonus for you
holiday drinkers out there about how to go and party and end up
the next morning without a headache or hangover. So it was a really
interesting video. And that will be available again sometime within
the next two weeks – the video and the transcript for it. Now in
today’s featured topic we’ve got Ted McGrath coming on. He’s a life
coach. I’ll put a link to his website in the Shownotes but basically he
mentors high level CEOs and just the average individual for success
in life, in business, in health. Whatever the case may be. Well the
last time I did a session like this, where I recorded an emotional
healing type of session, I got a lot of angry emails from listeners
who thought it was total bunk. And I guarantee there will be those
of you who also think that today’s featured topic is total bunk. That
life coaching or the type of things that Ted does with me during the
interview is just a complete waste of time. If you think that, I’m not
twisting your arm or making you listen to the featured topic in
today’s podcast or making you listen to the interview. I think it was
really interesting and I have to be totally frank with you, it was a
little bit embarrassing for me to release this interview because
there’s some stuff in it that gets a little bit personal. Regardless,
again people please bear in mind that this podcast is about
investigating every aspect of health, fitness, nutrition, lifestyle that
is under the sun and if some of that tends to be a little bit
controversial, maybe not 100% based in research then it’s no reason
to get angry but you are totally welcome to skip it if you want to. I
would personally recommend that you listen in because I do think
that you’ll get something out of it. Ok, I’ll stop rambling now and let
you decide whether or not you want to listen to today’s featured
topic. But of course we will have a Q and A and some special
announcements first so let’s go ahead and move into this week’s
content.
Steve asks: I’m 56, 30 pounds over and low-carb is not working for me like it
did 11 years ago when I lost 77 pounds. What are your thoughts on
why low-carb might not work as well now for me?
Ben answers: So low carb first of all is not something that I am against. What
happens is when you eat low carb your body begins to rely on
gluconeogenesis which basically means it’s going to be able to
convert protein or fats into sugar based fuel that it needs for energy.
Now eating a very low carbohydrate diet could be damaging for
some people, put you into a state of ketosis. That can be dangerous
for example for diabetics. It can be counter-productive for people
who are engaged in heavy amounts of exercise. But in many cases
eating low carb or eating carbohydrates that are primarily very slow
burning carbohydrates like for example nuts and seeds can be an
effective weight loss strategy. The issue is that yeah sometimes it
can quit working. In the short term, it can quit working because
when you lose carbohydrate you lose a lot of water weight. Carbs
carry about four times their weight in water when they’re stored in
your body and sometimes you can lose just a pound of carbohydrate
but lose another four pounds of water along with that and
eventually that slows down as your body begins to shed all of its
storage carbohydrate from a low carb diet. So in the short term a lot
of times weight loss becomes tapered or slows down significantly
just because you’ve gotten rid of all your storage glycogen levels and
that’s something that typically happens just anywhere from one to
three weeks in to a low carb diet. Now long term, if you go on low
carb and after a while it just quits working, there’s a few different
reasons why something like that could happen. The first is kind of
the slap you on the forehead no duh type of answer and that is are
you exercising? Because if you adopt a low carb diet and your
weight tapers off but you haven’t yet started exercising, that’s a very
simple way to shock your body back into weight loss. So you
actually begin exercising or you take your current exercise plan and
you throw a curve ball at your body, begin doing something
different. If you’re only doing cardio begin doing a combination of
weight training and cardio. If you’re doing a combination of weight
training and cardio already, switch up the exercises that you’re
doing, switch up the length of the cardiovascular intervals that
you’re doing or even consider throwing in a fasted cardio session in
the morning which I found to be very good with some people at
shocking the body into weight loss – just an unfed aerobic session
before breakfast in the morning. Now, there are some other issues
that could be going on in terms of the plasticity of the body meaning
the body is going to change as you get older so you may want to
consider getting your thyroid checked out. A lot of times there can
be some hormonal issues that affect either the production of your
thyroid or your body’s sensitivity to its production of thyroid
hormone. If that has happened then it could make it impossible or
very hard to lose weight so you could get your thyroid checked out
and see if it may be necessary for you to get on something like an
iodine supplement or a thyroid supplement. Something like an
Armour thyroid or what’s called a desiccated thyroid supplement
and if you want more information about that, go listen to any of the
thyroid interviews that we’ve done at
www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Just go there and do a search for
thyroid. The other things that could be happening is insulin
resistance. Insulin resistance is going to increase as you age. Just
naturally you tend to become less sensitive in terms of the receptors
on your cell surface for insulin. So you get less sugar delivered to
the muscle which is what insulin is partially responsible for and
more sugar getting converted into fats in the liver and sent out in
the bloodstream to get deposited as fat on your waistline. So insulin
resistance can increase as you age. That’s why sometimes a diet that
worked for you when you were younger may not work quite as well
as you age. A lot of times your metabolism can simply slow or your
level of muscle can decrease – both of which are going to affect of
course your metabolic rate, the number of calories that your body is
naturally burning throughout the day and if that has occurred then
that also could affect your ability to respond well to a certain type of
diet including a low carb diet. The answer to that would be similar
to the answer to exercise, increase the levels of physical activity and
focus on specifically increasing the amount of muscle fiber
stimulation that’s occurring during your exercise. Make sure you’re
giving your muscles at least every day or every other day a good
degree of time under tension. Basically following the rule that if
you’re slightly stiff and slightly sore the next day then you have
stimulated the muscle fibers into new growth. In terms of some
other things that you may want to think about, sometimes when
you’re eating a low carb diet it’s very easy to be eating engineered
low carb foods which would be foods that are in a package,
container, whether those be microwaved or frozen low carb food or
a prepackaged low carb food in a box. A lot of times those can have
sodium, extra preservatives, artificial sweeteners, lots of things that
can be metabolically damaging, specifically to the cell membrane
and once you damage the cell membrane, cellular metabolic activity
can drop down quite a bit. The other thing that can happen is you
can get gut information which can decrease the absorption of
vitamins and minerals and nutrients and also cause your body to
mount an inflammatory fluid retaining response. When that
happens, that’s also going to make you resistant to weight loss so
you need to make sure that if you’re eating a low carb diet, that
you’re focusing on eating natural low carb foods. So we’re talking
about in some cases beans and legumes, in some cases seeds and
nuts and then of course all of your other higher protein foods or
higher fat foods like olives, avocadoes, olive oil, coconut oil, chicken,
fish, steak whether it be lean or fatty steak, etc. Those are the types
of foods along with all of your vegetables and some of your lower
sugar fruits like blueberries and grape fruits that are going to be a
little bit better choices compared to engineered low carb foods. So
don’t get lazy and start eating fake low carb foods. Those would be
my suggestions for you off the top of my head. Those are things I
would go after. Any last thoughts? Fiber, make sure that you are
eating fiber and a lot of times lack of fiber in a low carb diet goes
hand in hand with relying on engineered food as the primary source
of your low carb diet so make sure that you are including a good
amount of vegetables or some type of greens supplement like an
Enerprime or something like that along with your low carb diet. So,
next question is from Paul.
Paul asks: After a few months of mild jaw pain, my dentist has diagnosed me with TMJ. He has given me a mouth guard to wear at night and there are some jaw exercises which I have begun but my dentist and the web says this condition could take a very, very long time to be repaired or even never be repaired. I am wondering if there is anything you know of to assist with the pain and get healed up?
Ben answers: Well TMJ for those of you who are wondering what that is, that stands for temporal mandibular joint disorder. And it’s a pain caused by the displacement of the cartilage basically where your jaw attaches to your skull. You can feel that little joint in there where the jaw attaches to the skull and that can cause pressure and stretching of a lot of those delicate sensory nerves that are located in that area. A lot of times TMJ is just normal wear and tear from chewing and from using your jaw. The other thing that TMJ can be attributed to and this is often the case that I find is stress, tension, anxiety – any of these things that are contributing to overuse. Even something as simple as clenching your jaw during the day or grinding your teeth at night. So, the first thing of course that I would recommend going hand in hand with any type of mouth guards that you’re wearing or any type of exercises that your dentist has given you or that you’ve gotten off the internet, be sure that you’re also controlling stress and tension and anxiety in your life. Listen to the interview that I do with Ted McGrath today. Also you can try natural stress relief things. One that comes to mind for example is maca root or maca powder which you can get at a health food store. I’ve been using that in liquid form and that’s in something called Energy 28 whole food energizer. It’s something put out by Peter Gillham’s Natural Vitality and you can check that out at www.pacificfit.net. The other thing you can do is look into taking a rishi or shitake mushroom extract. That can also be really good for stabilizing stress levels. Any number of those Chinese adaptogens can help out quite a bit so I’d look into supplementing with those as well if stress and anxiety is an issue. And you can also experiment with things like neuromuscular relaxation, progressive neuromuscular relaxation, visualization, or hypnosis CDs, things of that nature that are really going to help some of the underlying causes of the TMJ. Now, when you are doing these exercises and for those of you listening in who may not know these exercises there’s a couple that I’m aware of. The first is that you basically close your
mouth and you rest the tip of your tongue on your palate like right behind the upper front part of your teeth and then starting at the upper front part of your teeth, you run the tip of your tongue backwards as far back as it will go in your mouth. Basically back to where your palate starts to get a little bit soft but as you’re doing that you keep your teeth in contact with one another. So your mouth is closed and you’re running your tongue as far back as it can go. Once you’ve gotten it as far back as it can go, you hold it back there for about five seconds and then you bring it back in closer to your teeth and just working back and forth like that can help to open up the jaw and relax some of those muscles. Another problem that kind of addresses a deviation of the jaw from side to side which can also happen with TMJ is to basically start off by trying to open your mouth completely straight and this is kind of a simple exercise. But you just open and close your mouth 10 to 20 times and make sure that as you’re opening and closing your mouth, it’s symmetrically done. You can do this in front of a mirror if you want to but you’re trying to get your jaw to open and close straight up and down and try and feel whether it’s wanting to deviate to the left or the right and stop it from doing so if you’re feeling that happening. You can also stretch your jaw. You can literally stretch your jaw with your hand pulling your jaw from side to side. A lot of times spasmic condition or tight condition can cause this TMJ and manual stretching can help out a little bit. You can even warm the muscles and the ligaments within your face prior to doing that by putting some moist hot towels or running some hot water over your face before you do that. Because a hot muscle is going to be a little more elastic and it’ll stretch a little better, same as a muscle will stretch better if you warm up before you go lift weights or before you do a flexibility session. Your mouth and your jaw ligaments, muscles are no different. So those are some of the things I would recommend. Make sure that you’re relieving tension on the rest of your body as well. If you’re able to get a weekly massage or a monthly massage that will help out. Using a foam roller or some trigger point therapy can also help out quite a bit as well. And even doing relaxation exercises like yoga would be something you’d want to try out. Definitely when you go to sleep, try some magnesium. That will really help relax you and specifically try a topical magnesium. Spray it on your upper neck and your jaw area. Rub it in and magnesium has a really cool muscle relaxing effect. Go to www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and do a search for magnesium and you’ll find some of the things that I’ve written about magnesium over there on that website. So I hope that helps Paul.
Jason asks: I wanted to know if a moderate swim session would be a good recovery after a weight training session. I always find myself very
loose and relaxed after a good swim session and wonder if it would also help the recovery of my muscles.
Ben answers: Well it’s a good question and just so you know, when we’re talking about recovery for muscles, as I hope most of you know tissue damage occurs when you do resistance training or weight lifting. Fibers tear and fibers become asymmetrically aligned so there’s quite a bit of repair that has to occur after a weight training session. That’s why it can be kind of counterproductive to do weight training for the same muscle group every day. A lot of times you usually need 48 hours for a good solid inflammatory and healing response to take place. What happens is when you damage muscle fiber when you’re weight training your body is going to send cells and nutrients over to the injury site and that will include everything from your microfascias to your white blood cells to your cytokine messengers to everything that basically alerts your brain that there’s an injury that happens and then helps to promote healing and flush out damaged cells in the area. So what happens is you get fluid rushing into the area and moving in and out of the damaged area and any type of cool down activity that you engage in, any type of aerobic activity that you engage in after weight training can help for that to occur. The paradox is that at the same time your body is repairing and recovering, it needs amino acids and glucose to accelerate that process ideally. It’s not crucial that you get it in right away but it does help out a little bit to get amino acids and proteins into your body and carbohydrates as well especially if you haven’t been eating before or during the actual workout. So that’s the problem with cooling down – with a long cardio session, you’re missing some of that window. If you don’t have calories or nutrients on board that you could be getting calories and nutrients on board. So basically what it comes down to is any post-workout cardio including swimming is going to help you with recovery assuming you’re not in a starved or fasted state during the actual workout session. But if you haven’t eaten for a while, like two or three hours before you’ve worked out and you haven’t eaten anything during the workout, going and doing cardio after the workout would not be advised unless you do something like do your weight training routine. Have a banana with a little bit of whey protein or grab some amino acids with a piece of fruit and then move on and do your swim to cool down and flush the muscles. The last warning I would give to you is that if you’re doing an upper body intensive weight training workout, you may sacrifice mechanics in the swim. So understand that you may be teaching your body to swim with poor biomechanics if you’re constantly swimming in a fatigued state. If you’re swimming four times a week and one of those times is post weight training session, probably the other three times you’re giving your body a good enough mechanics raining session to where
swimming with poor biomechanics because of fatigued muscles on one day is not going to be that big of a deal. But just be careful and know that you’re going to swim differently after a weight training session then you’re going to swim when you’re fresh. So good question Jason.
Now we have a question from Drago. Cool name Drago.
Drago asks: I heard an interview with Brett Sutton over the last two weeks blew me away from a couple of perspectives. (First of all people, if you’re listening in Brett Sutton is a triathlon coach. He coaches a lot of the top pros and for example he coached a pro named Krissy Wellington and she is the dominant female triathlete in Ironman triathlon. He coaches a lot of amazing triathletes.) Brett said that periodization is, more or less, a great way to get injured or have poor results, and second, that speed training / anaerobic training is detrimental to endurance. Do I have to throw out my mile repeats to quickly finish my next half Ironman?
Ben answers: Well Drago what I did was I went and listened to this interview with Brett Sutton that you were talking about. It was over on a podcast called IMtalk. And what Brett Sutton does – what you have to understand is that Brett Sutton primarily coaches pro triathletes. And although you’ve heard me preach on the show that one of the best ways to get fit quickly, especially when you’re time crunched to just be doing lots of intervals, lots of speed work, lots of anaerobic training if you have the time. If you have the time available, you can get better results with long aerobic training. That is why if you are a pro triathlete and you come to me to be coached, I will train you far differently then I train my age group triathletes or far differently than the way that I treat myself. Because I’ve got 30 to 40 hours in the week to give you exercise sets and when that’s the case is you can train the body far more physiologically similar to what it’s going to encounter during the race. So it’s very smart for Brett to be training his athletes in an aerobic manner the way that he’s doing because they are pro triathletes and they have that kind of time. That being said, I think you may have misinterpreted a little bit of Brett Sutton’s philosophy. So in a nutshell, here’s what Brett Sutton believes. First of all, he believes that when it comes to periodization, changing up the training plan throughout the year is ok but you don’t really have to plan periods of decreased overload for recovery purposes. So he believes this whole three weeks on, one week off thing is really just not realistic and not applicable for most athletes. I would agree with him on that front. I think if you’re strictly doing three weeks on, one week off, you’re missing a lot of the fitness you could be gaining. I’m a bigger fan of not really taking recovery weeks unless it’s after a big event you’ve done like an Ironman
triathlon or a marathon and instead taking recovery days or even easy days so one day out of the week easy. And that’s where the traditional periodization model kind of fails in Brett’s opinion. I don’t want to put words in his mouth. I’m just saying what I took away from the interview. He doesn’t really plan transitional training phases. Meaning that basically you have these off season phases. A lot of times in age groupers’ plans or you have these periods of times where you don’t have to do much triathlon training at all. He’s a bigger believer in year-round training which again if you’re a pro triathlete is fine. It’s your job. It’s your career. Me personally, I like to spend a few months of the year playing basketball and tennis and kind of forgetting about triathlon. So again, it depends on the way you’re looking at it. Are you doing this for your job or are you just doing it for fun. He’s really into a good technical performance of the athletes. Very focused on form and although he does believe in a high quantity of training, he cuts that off right away as soon as form starts to suffer. So if you go do a Brett Sutton workout and it’s a 50 by 100 meter in the pool, you might get pulled out of the pool 38, 100 meter repeats in if your form is starting to suffer. So there’s a very big focus on form in his programs, which I think is smart. Basically as far as the speed work goes, you’re wrong about that. Brett does incorporate speed work. He just has a much bigger emphasis on aerobic work and for the most part I do agree with that. The only issue is that for example, there are exceptions. For example, for swimming, Brett says you have to get in the water more than three times per week, period, if you’re going to swim fast. There are multiple world record holders in swimming. Susan Vanderlift is one example who gets into the pool three times a week. That’s it. She’s broken two masters world records. I personally much of the time only swim three times per week but once I’m getting close to a race I’ll get in the water four or five or six times a week to improve my technicalities in the water. So I don’t want to bore the people who aren’t too interested in triathlon, but essentially what it comes down to – I guess my single sentence answer to this would be Brett Sutton’s philosophy works wonderfully for pro triathletes but needs to be slightly modified for the age grouper triathlete or age grouper endurance athlete with limited time to train. So that’s that.
Tony asks: In your podcasts you often mention a PDF version of the transcripts? I can only find the full transcript as a web page, as a Kindle user I’d love to be able to download the PDFs. Is there a way or did I dream the PDF references?
Ben answers: Yes, all PDFs for those of you using Kindles or who want to read these podcasts, all PDFs are available over on my Slide Share page. You can go to www.slideshare.net/bengreenfield. They’re all
completely free or you can just follow the link that I’ll put in the Shownotes for episode 125. After Tony’s question, I’ll put the link to the Ben Greenfield Slide Share page where you can not only get the PDF full transcript of every podcast I’ve ever done but you can also get access to a lot of the seminars that I teach. Often I’ll teach a seminar and then I’ll put the Power Point presentation over at www.slideshare.net for free. So check that out. Now that about wraps it up. So we are going to have a special announcement and then move on to the interview with Ted McGrath.
Ben: Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and we have a really interesting guest today. This guy’s name is Ted McGrath and actually he used to be at kind of the top of his game with New York Life. He was the number five partner out of 500 there. He was making a lot of money and basically completely dropped that to become an inspirational speaker, business coach and really a global leader with his company which is called Rise Global. And he founded Rise Global with the mission of making one of the best and most advanced personal and professional growth networks the world has ever seen. Essentially what he does is he helps people get to the top of their game, no matter what industry that they’re in. What we’re going to do today with Ted is talk quite a bit about what he does and how he can help take anybody, whether you’re a triathlete, CEO, an employee, doesn’t matter and get to the top of your game no matter where you’re at. So Ted, thanks for coming on the call today.
Ted McGrath: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Ben: Well I’m very interested in what you do and we talked for a little bit before the call and kind of decided that one of the best ways for you guys to really understand what it is that something a guy like Ted actually does is for him to talk to me a little bit over the phone in a similar way that he’ll be able to work with you and the same way he works with some of the most successful people around the world. So, what do you think Ted? Are you ready to rock and roll?
Ted McGrath: I’m ready to rock and roll man. So what I want to start off here is just to give a little background and pre-frame this before we get into the coaching session that you and I are going to go through. Of course most importantly, everybody who’s listening right now, I want to walk you through it as well to make sure that you’re following along with us and you get the most out of the session for the listeners. Just to give a brief background, you mentioned my background with New York Life. For the last 12 years, all I’ve been doing is coaching people. Entrepreneurs, salespeople, professionals. And the one thing that’s fascinated me is how do you help somebody make that critical breakthrough or critical mindshift in
their mindset, behavior and their beliefs. And anytime we work with somebody, once we help them make that shift, something amazing happens. Not only do they break through but then they have the opportunity to really perform at higher, higher levels of performance where they’re really reaching extraordinary potential. So what I want to do with you today Ben and what I want to do with the listeners is to just walk through how we would do a coaching session and give you some value. Sound good?
Ben: Sounds perfect.
Ted McGrath: Alright, cool. So what I want to do to start is really simple. We’re
going to start with something very basic to see where it is that
you’re at. So what I’d like you to do is just take out a pen and a piece
of paper.
Ben: Ooh, that actually might be a tough order. Can I use a notepad on
my computer.
Ted McGrath: Sure.
Ben: Ok, perfect. I can type faster than I can write anyways.
Ted McGrath: Perfect. Anybody listening can just simply write this down. If you
can imagine a pyramid or a triangle, in the pyramid or the triangle
or just from top to bottom, from bottom up we’ll start I want you to
write down the word “needs”. Above “needs” write the word
“comfort”. Above “comfort” write the word “thriving.” Above
“thriving” write the word “contribution.” So these are four areas
that I’m going to explain in a moment. To the right of the triangle,
you’re going to write four other categories. So those go inside the
triangle. For those of you who are drawing and you can just write
four categories next to the triangle. These four categories have to do
with your life which is health, finances, relationships and work. So
before somebody can make any progress on anything, I’ve always
said that before someone changes, every year their life – sometimes
people get ambitious and say “I’m changing everything.” Our focus
is let’s focus in on one area and first and foremost let’s see where
you are in four areas so you can pick the best area for you. So as
you look at the pyramid. Let’s talk about what needs stands for.
Needs basically means you’re barely meeting your needs in this area.
Comfort means your head is above water. You’re comfortable.
Thriving means you’re totally thriving. You’re just rocking and
rolling, excited every single day that you get up. Contribution
means you’re just a master in that area that you just contribute and
give back all day long because you’re great at it, you’re a master. So
you look at these categories for example and I’m going to
demonstrate this for the people listening as well, is you look at
health. Health in general, let’s start there. if you look at health to
give an example, needs would mean somebody’s barely meeting
their needs there. They’re just eating terribly, they’re not exercising.
They’re just in a funk. Comfort would mean that they’re
comfortable. Maybe they exercise every so often, they eat pretty well
but they junk out here and there and that’s how they run their life
with health. Thriving would mean that they’re just thriving. They’re
absolutely just booming in their health. They’re totally healthy.
They’re exercising all the time. They’re eating really well and
contribution would mean that they’re such a master in health that
people would come to them for advice on it. So for you and our
listeners, as you look at these categories just start with health and
just put it in the area in the pyramid that best signifies where you’re
at.
Ben: Ok, well for health since it is the area in which I’m a consultant and
have a good handle on in my life, that would be contribution.
Ted McGrath: I knew it.
Ben: You suspected as much as I’m sure the audience did.
Ted McGrath: I kind of figured that, man.
Ben: For finances, I would say when you talk about something like
finances and for the listener too, are you talking about the ability to
save money? The amount of money someone has? The number of
investments someone has? How ready they are for retirement? How
do you define something like finances more completely?
Ted McGrath: I would say to just keep it general but specific. It’s however you feel
you’re doing in that area. So if thriving means you’re just doing
excellent based on your standards, put yourself on Thriving.
Ben: Ok so for finances, I’m going to put myself into Comfort based on
my goals based on my goals.
Ted McGrath: Terrific. Now for relationships.
Ben: For relationship I’m going to put myself under Thriving. And for
work, I’m going to put myself under Thriving because I love what I
do and I’m not sure if I’m going down the right path there. Is that
what we’re going after with work? Being happy in your situation?
Ted McGrath: Yup. You feel like you’re happy, you’re fulfilled, you’re doing really
well in it. You just feel like you’re thriving.
Ben: Ok, I got it.
Ted McGrath: Alright, great. So out of all the categories right now as we go
through the rest of the session, what is one that you would like to
work on?
Ben: I just get to pick one? Ok, well let’s go ahead and pick the lowest
one. The finances.
Ted McGrath: Ok, great. This is going to be done in a general sense. When we get
to the second part of our tools here. The second part of the program.
This is more of an intro. We’re getting to the first part now and the
second part will come later. When we get to the second part later, it
will get more specific. What I’m going to do now is I’m going to start
off in a very general sense. So anyone can apply this next piece to
their life. So as you look at this next piece and I want you to write
down these words right now. I call it the Driving Needs. Ok, now
what this basically means is on a daily basis, the average person is
having about 65,000 thoughts. And that’s a lot of thoughts, right?
There’s also 11 million bits of information coming at somebody per
second. That’s a lot of information. So what’s happening is in a lot
of situations somebody’s looking at their life and saying I want to
make a change in my finances. I want to make a change in my
health. I want to make a change in our relationships. The challenge
becomes why do we make changes so hard? We really make change
hard. And when somebody understands this map that I’m drawing
right now, they’re going to realize that change really is not that hard.
The challenge for people is they look at their life and they say ok out
of the 65,000 thoughts I’m having on a daily basis, out of all this
information coming to me, what does it really mean and how do I
apply it to my life? With everything today, all the information, we’re
distracted in every single way of really focusing on what it is we
want to focus on. We’re getting pulled in that direction, pulled in
that direction and what I always say to people is somewhere there,
there’s this invisible wall. I want to improve my health, I want to
improve my finances. But there’s this invisible wall. It’s like ok, we
go in that direction for a moment and how come we can’t break
through it. It’s like we try and we try and we try and we have
challenges breaking through the invisible wall. And not only is it
this invisible wall, but it’s also this invisible force that starts pulling
us. What people don’t realize is you have both the subconscious and
the conscious mind. I’ve often said that the subconscious mind is
like a speedboat. You have a speedboat on one end of the piece of
paper. If you draw that right now, and you have a water skier in the
back. And what’s happening is the subconscious – somebody says I
want to make a change in my finances. I want to make a change in
my health. And the challenge becomes in the subconscious – 95% of
our patterning, our programming, our beliefs. So this is where our
beliefs are stored. This is where our patterning is stored, this is
where our conditioning is stored. This is where our programming is.
So 95% of the decisions we’re making on a daily basis are made
from the subconscious. They’re made in an unconscious manner.
Somebody will wake up one day and say ok, the conscious mind is
the water skier on the back of the boat is saying ok I want to make a
change in my health. They make some strides during that day. They
say you know what, I’m going to go and figure out an exercise
program. I’m going to go and buy some shoes to get workout gear.
And they decide all of a sudden, you know what? Today’s the day.
I’ve got the exercise program. I’ve got the footwear and the clothing.
Today’s the day that I’m going to go workout and all of a sudden
something comes up with the kids. And then the next day
something comes up with a business meeting. Then Friday comes
up and they say I’ll do it Monday and then Monday comes and they
get busy. Then all of a sudden they look back and two weeks have
passed and the conscious decision they made – this water skier on
the back of the boat – is saying I want to go and change my health. I
want to go to the gym or I want to go and change my finances. I
want to save money. And the water skier is waving from the back of
the boat to the boat where there’s no driver. It’s just an unconscious
person or non person in the front and the wheel’s being steered all
over the place by what? This invisible force. What is this invisible
force? And the invisible force is really simply that. It’s everything
we learned when we were kids that we picked up from our parents.
Even the beliefs that were inherited from generation to generation.
Even the conditioning we learned or the patterning we learned just
by watching our peers, learning from our teachers. All of it. So it’s
all stored and we make this conscious decision to go in this
direction and the invisible force of the speedboat pulls us all over
the map in every different direction and we’re just saying I just
want to go to the gym, but we’re pulled by this invisible force and
we don’t do it. I got to believe and Ben you can give some insight on
this that the majority of people in this world – pretty much every
person has faced this at one point or the other. Won’t you agree?
Ben: Yeah absolutely.
Ted McGrath: Yeah. So our work is how do you take this invisible force? How do
you take all these different thoughts that we’re having on a daily
basis and how do you boil it down to where it could mean 65,000
things. It could even mean a million different things. How do you
boil it down to one or five things? So where at the end of the day it
doesn’t mean anything but these five things. Does that make sense?
Ben: Yeah.
Ted McGrath: Ok. So here’s the five things and I’m going to check in with you after
each one of these five things.
Ben: Should I be writing these five things down?
Ted McGrath: Yeah, that’d be great. And when writing the five things down, since
you’re on a computer you can just type them. The other people
listening – for you listening who’s got a piece of paper and a pen,
just write them down in the form of a pyramid. This is very similar
to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. What I’ve done is just repackaged it
in a way that helps somebody understand exactly how it applies to
their life. So this is nothing new, but what’s going to be new for
somebody is not to learn it in a textbook to see exactly how they can
apply this to their life and come up with a strategy. So at the bottom
of the pyramid write the word Safety. Above the word Safety, write
the word Variety. Above the word Variety, write the word Respect.
Above Respect, write the word Relationship. And then above that
write the word Life’s Purpose. So the end goal of where people want
to live – everybody wants to live in their Life’s Purpose. We all want
to be there. What’s that really about? It’s about realizing our
potential. It’s about growing on a daily basis. It’s about contributing
to others. We all want to be there. And I call these the 5 Driving
Needs simply because these needs, all five of them, are driving our
choices. Every single day. So often times, somebody will say well I
really value health. I really value this. And that’s a value of theirs.
They start there. Let me figure out what my values are but the first
place you must start is your needs, because at the end of the day
people will violate their values to meet their needs. Because these
needs, it’s not a should. It’s something we must meet. And what I
mean by that is it’s built into our nervous system. Built into our
nervous system. So we are driven by this every single day. And
whether it’s an unconscious choice or a conscious choice we will
find a way to meet our needs at the end of the day. Now we’ll find a
way to meet the first four for sure. Safety, Variety, Respect,
Relationship – whether or not we get to the first depends on how
we meet the first four. Does that make sense so far?
Ben: Absolutely.
Ted McGrath: So as you look at Safety. This is nothing new. Safety at the end of
the day – there’s two components. Number one, it’s food, shelter,
clothing. If we don’t have food, shelter, clothing, if the bills aren’t
paid what are focused on? Paying the bills, right? So that’s a
survival mechanism there. A homeless person at the end of the day
finds the way. The component I’m talking about which is huge here
is comfort. We’re creatures of comfort. We want to have it. We must
have it. And I’ve always said that the quality of our lives is our
ability to step out of our comfort zone on a daily basis. So what I’m
talking about here is really simple. Comfort can be met in several
different ways. The question I have to everyone listening is you and
you can answer this when I’m done going through safety is what
ways are you meeting your comfort needs? How are you going to go
about meeting your needs because we have choices. One of the
choices that people make in an unconscious manner many times is
they either procrastinate or try and control things. So this is a huge
piece. At the end of the day, we look back on our day and most
people show up to their day and they know they have to get this
project done. This project is going to move my business forward.
This event is going to move my business forward. This task is going
to move my business forward. I must do it today, but they show up
to the office and all of a sudden they’re going straight to the phone
to do it or straight to the computer to get the project done and
whoop, invisible force speed boat takes them off. It’s like ok, they
get to the end of the day and it’s like at the end of the day we’re
really great at stories so we come up with all the reasons of why we
didn’t do it. And we build this story on why we didn’t do it. But at
the end of the day you can come up with 47 different stories. But the
whole key is it only means one thing. When somebody’s
procrastinating, it means one thing. They’re playing it safe. That’s it.
And control is the same thing. It’s very similar because we use
control to remain safe. Ok, before I pick up the phone and call this
person I have to think of all the different things that could happen.
And people do this. What are they going to say? What type of mood
are they going to be in? What if it doesn’t go right? What if I lose the
opportunity. What is the weather like outside? What if they don’t
pick up? What if? What if? What if? And we live there. it’s like how
do you control a world where in the grand scheme of things, we’re
like a grain of sand compared to the entire universe. We’re a speck.
And we want to control the outcome of all the different variables.
It’s impossible. You can be in charge of your life, you can’t be in
control. So my point here is that procrastination and control are
ways to remain comfortable. And we do it on a daily basis, right?
And some of us do it more than others, but my point here is when I
wake up I find myself in certain ways procrastinating on things
where other things are getting my attention but the difference is my
awareness right when the procrastination comes up. My awareness
is like a radar that goes off. I’m getting pulled this way and I’m so
aware of it and I just focus right back in on procrastinating. What
do I need to get done and just that simple piece for people to just
have an awareness of they’re doing this because they’re playing it
safe. They’re trying to go off in a different direction because they’re
playing it safe. Just that awareness can help somebody make a little
shift. Those are the two ways that people meet them in negative
ways. Now a positive way to meet safety would be how about belief?
Believing that you can do it. In fact if you just take a moment Ben,
just take a moment and remember a time when you just felt totally
powerful. So just go back and remember a time where you felt
powerful and inspired.
Ben: I remember just a couple of days ago when I crossed the finish line
down at the Ironman world championships.
Ted McGrath: I heard about that man, congratulations. Carrie was telling me that
you were there. Congratulations. So when you crossed the finish
line, now you’re seeing yourself and you can feel the power and the
inspiration that you felt, right? So you’ve succeeded at very high
levels with the position you’re in, with your business as well as your
athletics, right? So as you tune into that, you have a sense of belief
based on the past that I’ve had powerful and inspiring moments,
right?
Ben: Right.
Ted McGrath: So as you tap into that emotion, couldn’t that emotion of you know
what? I’ve been there before so I believe I can do it. I know what
power and inspiration feels like so one of your greatest resources in
this moment if you had to make a phone call or if you had to tackle
a big project – wouldn’t your greatest resource be the ability to tap
into that emotion?
Ben: Yeah, absolutely.
Ted McGrath: Right? So my point here is that everything we have is within us.
Most people think it’s time, it’s not. If you have the emotional juice
and the ability to tap into that emotional resource in any given
moment, when the fear creeps in or the procrastination creeps in, I
say just remember and believe you’ve been there before. A 10
second practice could be the pause on procrastinating and let me
just remember a moment when I felt powerful, let me access that
emotion and let me step in and just do it. That’s a simple 10 second
practice for someone. The bigger leap is faith. Because belief is I’ve
done it in the past. The situation is not that much different. Faith is,
there’s no evidence. And I’m just going to step in because based on
my knowing from my full potential I’m going to step in and know
that when I do step in, the people, the resources, the opportunity
will show up. So out of everything that I’ve just shared so far with
Safety, on a scale of one to 10, I want you to just label where you’re
at from one to 10 and what I mean by that is a one would mean
you’re controlling , you’re procrastinating, you’re not getting
anything done. A 10 would mean you have so much belief and so
much faith that you step in on a daily basis. On a one to 10 for you
Ben and those of you listening, just jot down where you’re at.
Ben: Now for me, am I thinking about this in a specific category or just
overall?
Ted McGrath: Just overall.
Ben: Ok, I would say a seven.
Ted McGrath: Great. So as I go through the first Safety needs… does that make
sense to you?
Ben: Yeah.
Ted McGrath: Any questions on that?
Ben: No, makes sense.
Ted McGrath: Ok, if you have any questions or any comments along the way, feel
free ok?
Ben: Ok, sounds good.
Ted McGrath: The next need is Variety. And Variety is a need that all of must meet
and the interesting thing is there’s kind of a balance here.
Sometimes these two needs are in conflict because while we want to
be safe and comfortable we also want life to be fresh, new and
exciting. If life is not fresh, new and exciting and we’re comfortable
all the time then life just gets tiresome. We get bored with it. The
interesting thing with variety is when we look at this, there’s an
endless stream of variety in the world. There’s an endless stream.
So how could somebody possibly get bored. When you look around
your room right now, there’s colors on the wall, there’s different
colors on the floor. There’s chairs, there’s tables. There’s couches.
There’s hardware that I’m looking at right now. There’s buildings
across the way. There’s a downtown. There’s blue sky. There’s all
kinds of different variety. There’s pictures on the wall. There’s art.
There’s so much variety. There’s an endless stream of variety so
how could someone ever get bored? The question becomes if
somebody is bored and they’re not meeting their variety needs,
where is their attention really going? If you’re bored with life, where
is your attention really going? Because you can get variety from
reading a book. You can get variety from going to the museum. You
can get variety from a great conversation. You can get variety from
traveling around the world. There’s such an opportunity to get
variety in every day of our lives. Yet many people claim that they’re
bored with life. And what people turn to often times – those are
positive ways I mentioned and negative things that people turn to –
is they turn to drinking, they turn to smoking, they turn to drugs,
they turn to overeating and why would they do that? Because one of
the reasons we’re here in life is we want to feel good. What good is
the journey if you don’t feel good? The challenge of people is they
make these unconscious decisions and they get lured into things
such as I can drink and I don’t even have to leave the house, my
state changes. I can do drugs, my state changes even faster. I can
overeat and my state will really change. Go from whatever mood
I’m in to totally settled down because the blood’s in my stomach
and I’ve got all sorts of state changes. We become addicted to these
patterns and these patterns of drinking, overeating – it’s meeting
our needs. So, my point on this is if we must meet our needs –
Safety, Variety, Respect and Relationship – to live a life of purpose,
if we’re not meeting them in a positive way, if we’re choosing these
negative ways then we’ll never have a life of purpose. And a lot of
people find themselves there. So when you look at this need of
Variety, on a scale of one to 10, how would you say you’re getting
variety in your life? Just for you Ben and our listeners, just write
down where you’re at. One means you’re meeting your variety
needs in a negative way. 10 means you’re meeting them in a really
positive way.
Ben: I think I’m going to have to again put myself at about a seven for
Variety.
Ted McGrath: Awesome. Seven of 10 is a really good position to be in. That’s great
for Safety and Variety. Which is why in the beginning you
mentioned that you’re in health and you’re in a contribution stage
because you are living your life’s purpose and meeting it in a
positive way. So as you look at the next one, which is Respect.
Respect is really simply people want to feel important right? We
want to feel appreciated, we want to feel significant. So that’s really
important. It’s a need that’s driving all of us. And there’s different
ways to meet it. Some people are great achievers where they achieve,
achieve, achieve and because they achieve, they feel respected.
Some people are just great educators where they learn and learn
and learn. Because they have degrees after their name, they feel
important. Some people want to be great leaders and they’re great
leaders of companies or they’re CEOs of companies and they feel
important. Some people just like to contribute and they contribute
and that meets their respect needs. Other people, they want to
stand out in a crowd so they have blue hair. Right? We all have a
different way to do it. One of them that everyone can identify at
some point in their life is a negative way we meet our respect needs.
When somebody challenges us in a way that makes us feel
disrespected or they belittle us. One of the most conditioned
responses is we respond with anger. We respond and we get pissed
off. And we’ll even sometimes get up in their face – “How dare you
do that to me?” and then this yelling match starts and it feels good
in the moment, right? In the short term it feels good. But five
minutes later, we find ourselves totally alone and the person’s gone.
We just tarnished a relationship and now we’re going from anger to
now feeling maybe remorse or guilt. The interesting thing here is
that’s a pattern that a lot of people run. There are only so many
patterns and all of us are running some type of emotional pattern.
So when somebody goes from anger to guilt, anger to guilt, anger to
guilt – somebody might say well anger is not doing you any justice.
It’s not serving you at all. Yeah it is. It’s meeting your needs. I get
angry all the time. I don’t know why I get angry. You get angry
because it meets your needs. If you’re spending all the time getting
angry and wasting all your energy on that, why would you have any
reason to actually go out and achieve and contribute and do other
good things if your energy is focused on that? And part of the work
that we do is getting even more in depth of people into their
emotional patterns because our emotions are definitely a fuel in our
life. They’re the fuel and the rocket ship. If there’s no fuel in the
rocket ship, it’s not going to the moon. So as you look at Respect, on
one to 10, how do you feel you’re doing there if you were to score
yourself?
Ben: I would say an eight.
Ted McGrath: Ok, great. So, achievers – you’re definitely an achiever. Achievers
often score high on this so it’s definitely high. Terrific. So the first
three needs – Safety, Variety, Respect – any comments or insights
or anything you want to bring up? Questions?
Ben: No, it all seems to make good sense. I like how you’re breaking it
down.
Ted McGrath: Awesome. The fourth one then is Relationship. And Relationship is
connection, love, belonging. And the simple fact of that is that all of
us have a different way that we meet our relationship needs. Now
the one thing that makes us the same is we all have the same needs
in terms of we must meet their needs. The one thing that makes us
different is the way we go about meeting them, as you’re seeing. The
way we go about meeting these needs is determined by what we
believe about the world. So in this situation, some people have
beliefs where they’ve been brought up that I have two really good
friends, and my relationship needs are met. Or I have to have 1000
relationships. 1000 relationships where everywhere I go, every port
I pull up to, every airport I fly into, I can have dinner with
somebody in any part of the world and if I don’t know somebody, I
know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who
can introduce me to somebody to have dinner with. Right? So we’ve
got all kinds of people like that. Some like 1000, some like two.
What makes them different is what they believe in how they go
about in meeting that need. But we all must meet it because at the
end of the day, we want a connection. Whether you’re going to get a
connection from two people or 1000, we have to have it. We also
want love. Not everybody gets that. So in situations where
somebody’s not getting love, you’ll often see in whether it’s a
business relationship or a relationship in general – an intimate
relationship – well if I’m not getting the love that I want, you see
people turn into drama queens and drama kings. Why? Because
they’ll settle for attention over love if they’re not getting it. So they
act out, they cause problems because their relationship needs are
someone to put attention on them. If they’re not getting attention in
the way they want in a relationship, they cause problems. And
belonging, we want to belong to something bigger than ourselves. If
we’re isolated and not part of a community, life’s not fun. In fact,
the happiest nations in the world – one of the reasons they say is
because they have a sense of community. So those are the first four.
And there’s good ways to meet relationship needs. People’s
(inaudible) I’m just going to give love unconditionally. And that’s
what they do. So as you look at the first four on the Relationship,
why don’t you just label on the Relationship Ben where you’re at ,
one to 10.
Ben: On Relationship I’m going to put five.
Ted McGrath: Five. Awesome. So you’re doing really well on this. You’re seven,
seven, eight, five. So out of all four of them things are going well for
you. So for everybody listening, just look at where you’re at. And
here becomes the key – the way we meet the first four determines
how we meet the fifth and if we meet the fifth. So the first four, I
call them Fundamental. I call these all the Driving Needs. But if you
break it down it’s fundamental. This is fundamental to who we are
because the first four, we must meet. The fifth one is the fulfillment
need and that’s why we’re playing this game to begin with. That’s
why we’re here. Because we want to be fulfilled, we want a life of
purpose. We want to realize our potential. We want to grow, we
want to contribute and that’s what life’s purpose is. And growing, if
you just look around in nature, things either grow or they die.
Period. They’re growing or they’re dying. Contribution – just look at
the world we live in. Contribution is just so evident. You look at the
big companies. The big companies that weren’t contributing and
were doing bad in the world, they were eliminated. Things in nature
that don’t contribute – what happens to them? They get eliminated.
So it is built in to not only our nervous system, it’s built into our
universe that things must grow and they must contribute. So the
great question becomes for everybody is what is stopping us from
getting back into this life of purpose? That’s the ultimate question.
And it’s like how do you even get there if you’re stuck and you don’t
even have a nap? This takes all the thoughts – everything that’s
going on, all the programming and all the conditioning – here’s the
map where it means one of five things. So my question for you right
now, if you had to choose one or two needs, Ben, and for our
listeners one or two that are really driving your decisions right now.
Not the ones that you want to live in. But the ones that are really
driving your decisions, like where you live on a daily basis. If you
had to pick one or two. What would be the two that are driving you
on a daily basis?
Ben: With my choices being Relationship, Respect, Variety or Safety?
Ted McGrath: Yep. Or life’s purpose.
Ben: I would say driving me on a daily basis would be Life’s Purpose and
Respect.
Ted McGrath: Awesome. Awesome. So the great insight for achievers is when
we’re driven very heavily by respect, the respect and the
relationship needs are also in conflict. Because if I’m always so
significant, if I’m always so important – which is a good thing – but
sometimes I’m so driven by success, so driven by significance that
we lose the ability to connect with other people.
Ben: Interesting.
Ted McGrath: And that can cause conflict. And really the ultimate as you go up the
scale is what life’s really about is it’s about relationship and
connection. The connection and love – when we make that shift to
connection and love, all kinds of things open up for us. It’s not that
Respect loses its importance. It’s just the balance between the two.
Because you look at – there’s a movie out recently called the
Solitary Man and the Solitary Man with Michael Douglas. Did you
see it Ben?
Ben: No, it’s on my list.
Ted McGrath: Yeah, so I watched this movie the other night and in the movie
Michael Douglas goes from this car salesman who was on the cover
of Forbes magazine to this guy who has no money and he’s having
this conversation with Danny DeVito in the movie and Danny
DeVito just says I was there with you on Forbes. Meaning I just
respected you so much, and he looks at me and says there’s no
difference. When I was at the top I had nobody and when I’m at the
bottom I had nobody now either. The interesting thing is a guy like
that so driven by significance, he lost his ability to connect with
other people. That’s why the cliché – it’s lonely at the top – there’s
truth in that.
Ben: Right.
Ted McGrath: So those are the first four and we just went into the fifth. Safety,
Variety, Respect, Relationship, Life’s Purpose. Do you have any
insights Ben or anything you just want to say right now as our
listeners are listening in?
Ben: I think it’s very insightful that you draw that contrast between
relationship and respect because I find that that’s really true for me
and I always struggle to find out if it’s because of me and me having
a stand-offishness because of the level of respect I’ve attained or am
pursuing or it’s because others are intimidated and I don’t want to
sound egotistical when I’m saying this but in social situations,
sometimes I know that especially in the circles I run in, I do have a
good reputation and sometimes I wonder if the fact that I would
rate a relationship level a five is because sometimes I intimidate the
people around me or they’re intimidated by me. Even though that’s
definitely not what I’m going after. It seems like there’s definitely
major truths to what you’re outlining in terms of between
relationship and respect.
Ted McGrath: Yeah I think every great achiever has faced this dilemma at some
point, right?
Ben: Right.
Ted McGrath: There’s a reason it’s the way it is that it is. There’s a reason why this
is consistent with just the model and how everybody who’s been a
great achiever – I won’t say everybody because that’s a large
statement – but a good majority of people who have been a great
achiever have faced this dilemma. So it’s a great insight buddy,
thanks for sharing that. Can we move on to the final 15 minutes
here of the coaching session?
Ben: Let’s do it.
Ted McGrath: Alright, so here’s what we’re going to do now. Here’s where it gets
interesting. Because all of this is great intellectually but my whole
thing is both intellectual and emotional. To help somebody and
truly coach them, not only do I want them to get it intellectually, I
want to help them get it emotionally. The reason I want to get it
emotionally is I want them to get it in their body. It’s not enough to
just get it in your mind. If you get it in your body and you get an
experience of it, the shift takes place where then it becomes real and
now it becomes a part of us rather than a part of the mind and
disconnected from the body. Alright. So we’re going to roll into
something which is a scientific process. My mentor who spent 50
years – who developed this 50 years ago – it’s real science, it works.
It’s not some woo woo process where it’s just up in the air and see
what happens. There’s no disrespect to those processes because I
enjoy them but this is real science, it’s systematic, it gets results and
the science behind this – the science is called holodynamics. And
what I’m going to talk about today is really what is the science
behind your full potential? For everyone listening. What’s the
science behind your full potential. And the key is right now we’re
identifying why people are stuck in the first part of the session.
Where we’re stuck, we can see a map of what’s stopping us and now
I can use this process to help anybody break through whatever their
challenge is, and the interesting thing about this is it starts to
identify for somebody where is the information stored that’s really
keeping me from reaching my financial goals or my health goals.
Now I’ve got the map, I see where I’m at. Where’s the information
really stored? And there’s all kinds of techniques out there that
work on re-wiring the brain or subconscious programming and
things like that and if you’re just dealing with the brain, you’re
dealing on a very linear level. People today in the new sciences are
proving that consciousness is very real and they’re also proving that
belief is the new science. What you believe will transpire in your life.
But the question comes – where are these beliefs stored? Where is
the information even stored? And people say well it’s in the brain.
Well if you look in the brain there’s many different places they say
it’s stored. But there’s also proof that it’s stored on a cellular level
but if cells are regenerating all the time, and we’re regenerating
ourselves, well if we’re regenerating ourselves does our memory
disappear? So it’s the memory that we’re holding is connected to a
much bigger field. The information is stored within this quantum
field. It’s actually stored within something that’s called – in the
microtubulars of our cells and inside of the microtubulars are these
holodynes and I’m not going to get into the science because people
will fall asleep but what that really means is we have these little
thought forms stored within ourselves connected to a larger field.
And what I’m going to jump in right now to get out of the scientific
terminology and get right into the experience of it is walk you
through step by step, Ben and our listeners, of let’s access the
information. Let’s figure out what’s real and how to make a shift of
it. Sound good?
Ben: Sounds good.
Ted McGrath: Alright, so the first step of this is really simple. I want you to go to a
peaceful place in your mind. So go to just a really peaceful place in
your mind. It could be a sunset, it could be a waterfall. It could be a
favorite place from childhood. So take your time and tell me when
you’re there.
Ben: Ok, I’m there.
Ted McGrath: Alright, and in this moment I want you to imagine you at your best
coming towards you. So imagine you more powerful, imagine you
inspired, imagine you more dynamic, more loving, more caring,
more vibrant, more healthy, more prosperous, more powerful. Just
imagine you at your absolute best coming toward you right now.
Ben: Ok.
Ted McGrath: So what do you see? Tell me what you see in your peaceful place
and tell me what you see with you at your best.
Ben: Basically my peaceful place is just childhood, quiet place in nature. I
grew up out in the country and I’m there basically sitting on a rock
surrounded by trees. It’s a place I actually used to go think when I
was a kid and what I see coming at me, is basically me. I’m running.
I’ve got a smile on my face. I look great. My family is standing
behind me. They all appear to be very happy too. Confident,
protected. And I appear like I don’t have a worry in the world.
Ted McGrath: Awesome.
Ben: That’s what I’m seeing.
Ted McGrath: Awesome. So that’s you at your best and the whole key here as
everybody’s falling along with us, is this your full potential. So often
we’re making decisions unconsciously from old models of the world
and old conditioning that’s not serving us right now. When you’re
able to tap into your full potential, this is where you can access all
the information and access all the right choices for your life so what
I’d like you to do right now is since you’re with your full potential
right now and your totally present to your full potential is I want
you to ask your full potential a question. So it’s like we’re
communicating with our full potential. And when you think about it
we’re communicating with ourselves all day long. So this is nothing
different. We’re having a conversation in our head all day long,
we’re just not aware of it. So now what you’re doing is you’re
stepping out of the normal conversation and focusing on what
conversation you want to have. So I want you to ask your best self
this question just quietly in your head “What is the problem I need
to work on right now?”
Ben: Ok.
Ted McGrath: Go with the first thing that comes up. If you want to share it, you
can share it.
Ben: The first thing that comes up – interestingly – that was before you
used this word was “share.” I’m really not exactly sure how to
interpret that. I know that I can tend to be a closed off person, tend
to keep my emotions to myself. Sometimes be a little bit selfish,
self-absorbed, introverted so maybe that’s where that statement –
that word – is driving me towards, is opening up, sharing.
Ted McGrath: Great. So when that popped up for you – the problem – I want you
to tune in to where you feel that in your body. And thank you for
being totally open here.
Ben: The anatomical place in my body?
Ted McGrath: Just where you feel it, point to where you feel it and tell me.
Ben: My hips. Maybe that’s because I’m standing and they’re tired but
that’s where I’m feeling it.
Ted McGrath: Ok, great. So tune in to where you feel it in your hips. As you tune
into the problem that you’re having.
Ben: Ok.
Ted McGrath: And what I want you to do is as you tune into what you’re feeling, if
that feeling were a shape or a color or an image, what would it be?
Ben: Red.
Ted McGrath: Great. If it were a shape that were red, what would it be?
Ben: Circular.
Ted McGrath: Circular, and how big is the circle? As big as your hip? As big as
your body? As big as your fist? What is it?
Ben: Racquetball.
Ted McGrath: Racquet ball great. So I want you to tune into this racquetball
because all this is, is your thoughts. They’re stemming from a
problem and we’re giving form to it. Tune into the red racquetball
shape and I want you to surround it with love and appreciation
right now. So surround it with a feeling of love and appreciation
and the reason we’re doing this for our listeners and you is that if
we ignore the problem or we want to swat it away like people say,
it’s just going to persist and get worse. So if we appreciate and love
it, it will cooperate with us, communicate with us and it will share
its positive intent for our lives. Because here’s the – as you’re
surround it with love just stay tuned to the love and appreciation,
I’m just going to commentate here. The key to all of this is, is that
this problem that’s showing up like every other problem on the
planet is driven by its potential solution. The solution is already
within the problem. The reason people aren’t coming up with
solutions to their problems is they’re looking externally. The
solution is within the problem so what I want you to do now is as
you surround it with love and appreciation, is I want you to ask this
red image – this red racquetball – I want you to ask it what it wants.
Go with the first thing that comes up.
Ben: Alright, acceptance.
Ted McGrath: Awesome. So it wants acceptance. Ask it is there anything else that
it wants?
Ben: No.
Ted McGrath: Terrific. So it wants acceptance. Ask it when it gets acceptance what
will it get?
Ben: I’m getting power.
Ted McGrath: Awesome. So it wants acceptance and power. That’s its positive
intent. Notice this was showing up as a problem before, now it’s
presenting its potential solution. It wants acceptance and power. So
ask – what I want you to do is I want you to create a new image that
represents acceptance and power. What would acceptance and
power look like?
Ben: When you ask me that, do you mean using the same process I did
before – picturing colors, shapes?
Ted McGrath: Yep, exactly. What does acceptance and power look like to you in
your mind? Combined. If you had one image.
Ben: I’m really not seeing much of a shape. Just like a color, like blue.
Almost more like fluid, like water.
Ted McGrath: Yeah, it doesn’t need to be a shape. Alright so you see a fluid, blue
water color. Awesome. So, ask this blue water color if it’s willing to
help the red racquetball.
Ben: Yeah.
Ted McGrath: Terrific. Now turn to the racquetball, the red image and make sure
it feels safe. Make sure it’s surrounded by love. And ask it if it’s
ready to merge with this blue water color of acceptance and power.
Ben: Mm hmm.
Ted McGrath: So introduce the red racquetball to the blue water color and allow it
to absorb into this blue water color.
Ben: Ok.
Ted McGrath: What do you see now?
Ben: I still see the same circular ball shape but it’s the same color as the
blue water color.
Ted McGrath: Great. So it’s in the water now and it’s the same color right. But it’s
still there to some degree.
Ben: So I want you to ask if it’s willing to totally merge. Is it willing to
totally merge and transform into the water?
Ted McGrath: I’m getting a no.
Ben: So you’re getting a no right now.
Ted McGrath: Great. So what I want you to do right now is now you have the
racquetball that’s in the water and they’re both blue, right? So you
have one image of this. So what I’d like you to do is I’d like you to
surround this image with love and appreciation and I want you to
ask this image what else does it want?
Ben: Nothing.
Ted McGrath: Ok. So it doesn’t want anything.
Ben: I’m not getting anything.
Ted McGrath: Alright. So for some reason racquetball is not merging with the
water. So surround the image with love and appreciation again.
Alright? And it says that it wants nothing. So the question is, is it in
its full potential yet? You’ll get a yes or a no.
Ben: Yes.
Ted McGrath: So you feel that this image is in its full potential even with the
racquetball is merged with the water now.
Ben: Yes.
Ted McGrath: Ok, so you’re getting a yes. So ask now if this image is willing to
integrate into your body.
Ben: Yes.
Ted McGrath: Ok, great. So allow it to integrate into your body right now.
Ben: Ok.
Ted McGrath: Now I want you to ask this image what message it has for you.
Ben: Ok.
Ted McGrath: What’s the message?
Ben: The message to me is relax.
Ted McGrath: Terrific. And what does it want you to do in the next 24 hours to put
it into action?
Ben: I’m getting talk.
Ted McGrath: And talk to who? Can you ask it to be more specific?
Ben: Emily.
Ted McGrath: Ok, great. And is there a time that you have set aside in the next 24
hours where you can do that?
Ben: That can be arranged.
Ted McGrath: Ok, so why don’t you arrange that.
Ben: Ok.
Ted McGrath: Alright, terrific. So that’s the completion of the process for now. The
first part of this process. So what was that experience like for you?
Ben: It was interesting. I was going with my gut response on everything
and where I’m at right now is I was getting the message that
something inside of me wanted acceptance because of a drive for
power. And that that might be a negative issue or there might be a
negative side to that issue and in order to overcome that being a
negative issue that I need to share, open up and talk more and start
by doing it with those close to me.
Ted McGrath: That’s awesome. I’ll tell you why. I’ve done this with literally
thousands of people all over and there are several things that
happen in this. Number one, there’s really a shift that’s happening
in the information. So you’re actually getting the message that it
wants acceptance and power but it’s showing you – the water that it
transformed into – this blue water is the potential of that. So we can
interpret power as one way but here’s the thing. The scientific piece
is that there’s an implicit order to growth. So your information –
just like we grow from one to two to three to four to five to six and
we grow and mature – our information inside of us grows and
matures in the same way. So when we ask it a question in what it
wants, it’s maturing right there on the spot. There’s a shift that’s
happening internally within somebody where it’s maturing. So what
you notice is that every time we do a session like this, we work with
people where we help them in 15 minutes. They’ve been on anxiety
medication for years and we help them make the shift. We work
with athletes who want to improve their race times. We work with
entrepreneurs who want to make lots more money and it’s always
defining what’s the critical shift, what’s the information that’s
blocking them and then the specific action they need to take. And
what we found is when people take these little actions, not only is
the shift happening internally where things are just going to happen
automatically but when they take these specific actions, the whole
world opens up and we’ve had – last night we were on a call with 12
people sharing this and every single one of them said the exact
same thing. I’m excited to see what happens with the action you
take because we’re always looking for the big moment and it’s really
the small things that we’re doing that’s important. Not the things
that distract us but the small thing like this, the messages that we
get that make the biggest shifts in our life. So I’m excited that I got
to share this with you.
Ben: Cool. I’m anxious to see the results and see what pans out. So
thanks Ted.
Ted McGrath: You’re welcome.
Ben: I’d like to be able to give the audience a little bit more information
because whenever people hear something like this I always like to
somewhere over on bengreenfieldfitness.com give them some kind
of a further resource if they want to see a book or a video or website
or something of that nature so what type of resources can you offer
to people who heard this session and are interested in this type of
information?
Ted McGrath: Great. So they can go to www.mindsetmasterynow.com.
Ben: I can just put a link in the Shownotes if you want.
Ted McGrath: Great. Mindsetmasterynow.com. And when they go there what
we’re going to give away on mindsetmasterynow.com is three videos
where the information you just heard, you’ll see in video format.
But even more in detail. So you’ll get a bunch more videos, three of
them. And then you’ll have the opportunity in there to get a free
coaching session with us.
Ben: So basically what we just did.
Ted McGrath: Yup. What we just did but we’re going to tailor it more specifically
to them. We did this for you and in a general sense. It’ll be much
more specific, much more conversational so they can get the most
out of it for themselves personally. They’ll work with one of my
coaches to go through this process.
Ben: Cool, I’ll put a link to that in the Shownotes. It’ll basically give
videos and a coaching session just like we did.
Ted McGrath: Yep, they’ll go in there and they’ll get access to the videos and then
it’ll prompt them right when they get their first video, they’ll see
there that they can click a button and sign up for a free coaching
session and they can even go on there on our calendar and pick a
time that works best for them.
Ben: Perfect. Cool, well I’ll put a link to that for you folks listening in and
for those of you who have stayed with us through this session,
thanks for taking the time to listen and I know that some of the
things that we do in this show, you got to be a little bit open minded
about. I know sometimes we do get into a realm that goes beyond
flesh and bones and simply talking about eating the right things and
really get down to the mental component and the way that that
interacts with our biology, our physiology and our success. So, if
this is the type of stuff that you like, that you’re interested in,
definitely go check out the Shownotes for this episode. Ted I want to
thank you for your time.
Ted McGrath: Thank you very much, it was a privilege to be here and I know that
your audience is a lot of people into health and athletes and we
work with plenty of them so I know people will get results by going
through this.
Ben: Perfect. Alright folks, well until next time this is Ben Greenfield and
Ted McGrath signing out from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com.
For personal nutrition, fitness or triathlon consulting, supplements, books or DVD’s
from Ben Greenfield, please visit Pacific Elite Fitness at http://www.pacificfit.net