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Instant Confidence

Adam Gilad

with

Todd Sedelmeier

September 2011

TODD Hello! ADAM Hey, Todd! Welcome, everybody, back to Instant Confidence with Women. We have a very, very interesting and deep interview and training this week with my friend Todd Sedelmeier. Welcome Todd! TODD Thanks Adam! It’s actually Sedelmeier. ADAM Sedelmeier. Todd I recently met through Alex Allman. A lot of you may know him – he is a very old and good friend of mine who teaches revolutionary sex. And you guys are right now together on the beach in the Dominican Republic I believe! TODD We are! That’s where we live! ADAM Lucky you! [Laughter] Well, you know, one great thing about you is that you have made a tremendous success of your life, coming from a very low point. And you have done a lot of deep study in the area of confidence – and I just want to tell everybody – not just confidence with women; this is very advanced stuff. Your work has to do with emotional mastery, goal achievement, relationship problems like we talk about – but also time and energy management and success.

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And I want everyone to know that Todd has coached doctors, psychiatrists, teachers and a lot of professionals, as well as men in the dating world. So this work goes deep. And before we get into that, Todd, I want you to give just a little background on where you came from because I don’t want people to think you were born like, you know, “Biff king kid,” super-confident man and your whole life has been like nothing but confidence. God knows, I’ve been through my ups and downs, through divorce. But if you could just take a quick minute and talk about where you came from. And then I want to get into the tools that you use to help people act and live with confidence. TODD Okay, no problem! Well, Adam, as I kind of described to you a little bit briefly before, ten years ago almost to the month, I was homeless, living on the streets; I was very suicidally depressed – I actually tried to kill myself a couple of times; and I was an extreme addict and alcoholic, and I had just completely fallen apart. I was totally dysfunctional. I had lost my career as a licensed aircraft mechanic and I didn’t work for almost three years. And after I skidded from friends’ couch to friends’ couch, eventually family and friends just wouldn’t let them around me anymore because I was just too much of a negative energy and I was pretty crazy. You know, it really started when I was a vey young child. I was very introverted, very shy, and sensitive – and, you know, I didn’t have necessarily bad things happen to me; I wasn’t abused or I wasn’t neglected, I wasn’t violated. I grew up in a family that was a decent family. We were poor but we didn’t have any major calamities happen. It was all very much internal, just how I experienced life, and I ended up kind of spiraling downward as I grew up, and I started drinking when I was ten years old and found my “magic bullet,” my “magic wand” to make me feel better. So I proceeded at ten years old to become an alcoholic very quickly, and used that as my saving grace, my sword, my shield, to take care of myself, to feel relaxed – because I was always anxious; I had panic attacks constantly since I was a little kid – I mean, three/four years old I had panic attacks. I didn’t know it at the time. And I just spiraled out of control. I dropped out of high school; I eventually went on to a tech school to learn how to be an airplane mechanic but by that time I was seventeen years old, I was partying every single night. On the weekend I’d stay drunk two or three days – and I was just out of control. And it was because I

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was suppressing all of this anxiety, and fear, and anger, and all these emotions. I didn’t know how to deal with anything. So at twenty-four years old I really hit bottom. I landed in jail again – I had been arrested over twenty times, all for stupid stuff. ADAM You’re very accomplished! TODD I wasn’t a criminal but I was always getting into trouble; you know, I was mouthing off to police when they came to bust up a party; I got in a lot of bar fights or party fights; I’d get arrested drunk driving… It was just like I had this big neon sign that said, “I’m bad news.” And that’s all I attracted – was bad stuff. So at twenty-four years old I sobered up and I had given up on life. I said, “You know what? I can’t – I don’t know how to do this. Something’s got to change.” I really just kind of put out a prayer to whatever I thought of as my higher power. And I allowed people to start helping me; I went to AA, got some help. I stayed in there for about five years and I became a very, very studious and very intense person when it came to developing myself, trying to figure myself out. I got into a lot of stuff. And over the years, I got a handle on myself and I became much more confident. I learned about emotions, and stress, and goal achievement, and psychology and spirituality, and women, and men, and masculinity… And I started coaching about five years ago because people were just asking me for help all the time. I was counseling a lot – and I turned it into a business, and I have been running it full-blast for five years. And up until about six months ago – I never advertized, it was just by referral only, and I talked on the phone through Skype to people all over the world. And recently I put this program together that we might talk about a little bit later, called Become Naturally Confident. It is like a boiled-down “best” of all the systems, and tools, and practices that I teach my clients – and now you can get it kind of as a home study course. ADAM Yeah, I really like your practical approach. I mean, my Instant Confidence with Women Program is very much a behavioralist psychological program, where you do and you feel. And I think you come from a sort of very deep, subconscious place…

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TODD Yes. ADAM …and I want to get into that. But let me ask you first, what holds back most of the men – and let’s talk specifically about dating, and relationships, and self-worth – what is holding back most men from feeling confident with women, in your experience? TODD You know, there’s a lot of really amazing information out there that I’m sure that your audience, your guys have been exposed to; that they’re studying and listening to – and I think it’s fantastic. I’ve studied a lot of it myself, I brush up on it… Where I differ, what I’m trying to really get to people is it’s not really about the mindset. It’s not about the behavior. It’s not about the techniques. It’s not about the outer game. It’s not about your attitude. All that really is being steered, and affected, and influenced by the stories, the subconscious stories that we have had going on inside of us about who we are and how life works for us, since we were very young children. And it starts when we have these emotionally traumatic experiences when we’re young that have a deep impression upon us, and we create a belief system – and I call it a false story, or a false perception of who we are and how life works for us. And we don’t know about it; they go unprotected. They are like viruses in our computer that we’ve downloaded on the first day when we bought our computer and we never knew that they were there, and we just got used to using the computer the way it was – dysfunctionally. And we grew up thinking, “Well, this is the way it is. This is who I am. This is what happens to me.” And hence we end up having these patterns of behavior, and thought patterns, emotional reactions, dysfunctional strategies – all that stuff is based on misperceptions from early childhood experiences that seem like they’re insignificant. I am not talking about necessarily things that happen, like if someone was violently abused or they are raped, or something extremely traumatic happening. It could have happened when you were sitting watching television one afternoon with the remote control and you were supposed to be out doing yard work with the family – and you were kind of like hanging out going, “Wow! I get to watch my favorite cartoon!” and maybe you grabbed a bowl of your favorite cereal – like I like Fruity Pebbles, sometimes expensive stuff… You’re sitting there, you’re getting everything you want; you’re in control and you lose yourself in it. All of a sudden you feel this sharp pain on the back of

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your head and you’re being jerked up by your dad and yelled at, and throw outside, and told that you’re going to have to clean the garage and go without dinner and you’re grounded for a month because you were “doing bad.” And in that moment, the subconscious mind, which is not evolved, doesn’t have real logic, is not wise – it wires-in this positive experience with the negative experience, and it makes an “equal” sign and says, “When I get what I want, I get hurt, I get punished, I lose my freedom, I have to do hard work, I get trapped…” on and on and on. So now there is this negative association with a positive thing and it goes undetected. And it grows, just like a tree – it has roots and it grows into a tree that has branches, and leaves. And later on in life, when you’re twenty-five / thirty / forty years old and we’re wondering why we don’t seem to allow ourselves or ever get what we want, and can’t ever rest, or have a good time, or have the good things we want – and actually we are subconsciously deflecting them to keep ourselves safe, because the subconscious believes that if we get the positive thing, the negative stuff is going to come right after and it’s very, very scary. Does that make sense? ADAM Totally. It is why do we keep recreating the same situations in our lives, even though we think we’re changing. I like your analogy of a virus. And I also like your language of “What’s the story we’re telling ourselves?” I don’t know if you know this but I used to teach a university writing course called Spiritual Autobiography. And one of the practices we had was I would have everyone write their life story in three minutes. And they’d all look at me like I was crazy! And they would write it down in three minutes – and they would read it, and they would laugh, and they would cry – some people really did cry. And I said, “That is amazing. You guys did a great job. Now do it again – except you can’t repeat anything. You can’t mention the same person. You can’t mention the same places. Go!” And they had to rewrite their life story again. And they looked at me like I was crazy – and they did it! And they were amazed by how they could tell an entirely different story. And then I had them do it again! And, you know, it seems to me like any education, any real education if you are going to involve a human being, you need to unpack all those silent viruses in your mind – these stories that you are telling yourself – because they are just stories. And it is through these kind of practices that I do – and that you clearly do – that help people unpack and dissolve the stories we’re telling ourselves – because they’re not true! They’re just stories.

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TODD Exactly. That’s my big… it’s like, the bad news is my life has turned out the way it is because of our stories. ADAM Yeah. TODD The good news is they’re just stories – and we can change them. In fact the metaphor that I like to use the most, that’s easiest to kind of get, is to think of yourself sitting in a movie theater… you know, this is kind of like bouncing off of Plato’s Man in a Cave story from thousands of years ago. But imagine you’re sitting in a movie theater, and you’re watching this movie screen. And this movie has the same character – which is you; you are the star character in your own movie, your own reality show – and the character tends to do the same stuff over and over again. If you’ve ever seen a movie that has sequels, you know, it’s kind of like the same plot line: there’s this climax, and tension; there’s some kind of big challenge; there’s ups and downs – and then in the next movie it’s basically the same thing again. And that’s what our life is like – it’s the same character, doing the same thing; the same persona, living out the same stories over, and over, and over. And the people in our lives are the supporting characters. ADAM Right. TODD But what we don’t realize is that the images on the screen are being projected from the back of the room, and a projector up in the projector booth. And that represents our subconscious mind. There is a film reel going on in our subconscious mind, projecting these stories. Where did these stories come from? they came from our early childhood experiences where we literally show up kind of a blank slate and we’re having all these neuro networks and pathways put together, and we are making up a model of how the world works. We are creating these maps – that’s how the subconscious mind works; it needs to like figure things out and go, “Okay, that must be how it is so now I can file that way – and I know how to deal with it, and I know how to identify that, and I know what to do in this situation. This is how I respond. This is what I can respect.” And so it creates this huge amount of stories and files that are being projected out on to the screen which we think is all true

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and real – and we are all focused on the story on the screen. And so when we try to change the stuff on the screen, it’s very ineffective because that’s not the cause. That’s the effect. So when we can find a way to dig into our subconscious mind and unearth our deep-seated stories that are totally inaccurate, and just fear-based and false, and dissolve them – in fact just by exposing them, and looking at them, and seeing them clearly they start dissolving – and we can always prove them to be wrong and untrue. And then we can rewire them, literally rewrite our own script, our own new movie screenplay. ADAM Right! I’m with you. And it’s funny you said “dissolve;” when you shed light on these things, when you get cuprous about them, it’s like turning the lights up in a movie theater, and the screen disappears. It literally dissolves when “light happens.” And the word that I love – and that I keep coming back to in all my endeavors recently, in all my… personal evolution over the past three years – is “curiosity.” If you could stay in curiosity, you just learn so much. And I am wringing my mind here trying to remember a conversation I had with my girlfriend a couple of weeks ago. Something got triggered in me as we were walking, and I said, “Can I ask you a question?” And I wish I could remember what it was! But I wanted to ask her what she meant by something because it triggered something from my past. And I just stayed curious about it. And her answer was fantastic – it was coming from an entirely different story of hers. And it led to this great conversation and we both learned, you know. But it is very important to stay curious when your insecurities get triggered – and God knows, mine still do, you know, in all kinds of ways. But I don’t take it in anymore. I kind of get curious about it. Now, what I want to do, because we have limited time, I really want to talk about your tools because you’ve broken this down – like how to handle staying curious about yourself and dealing with your past. Clearly that’s something you’ve had to do. And I have looked through your system and it’s pretty amazing; you’ve got different tools to handle different aspects of confidence. One is called the Purifier Tool, and one is called the Relationship Mender Tool. And one is what we just talked about – the Storyteller Tool; retelling you story. But I am really curious for you to talk about the Purifier Tool first.

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TODD Well, the Purifier Tool is very simple: it’s two steps. It’s almost so simple that people think they shouldn’t use it. But let me back up and give a little bit of why I created these tools. I really created them for myself because I became a seminar junkie; I listened to thousands of hours of CDs, I read hundreds of books, I went to coaches, healers, workshops, psychiatrists. I ran the gamut of everything and anything that could help me. And I started seeing a matrix of things because everybody seemed to kind of have, you know, “the answer” and it turns out they didn’t – they had a part of the answer. It was like spokes on a wheel. And I finally realized that confidence is really the hub of the wheel of our life. We have confidence; real, solid, natural, coming-from-within confidence in ourselves. Then it just pours out in every area of our life. And what was missing for me was practical, everyday use type of things. A lot of books, a lot of great philosophies, a lot of concepts and insights that I was exposed to – but when it came to, you know, sitting in traffic and I’m late for an appointment, and I’m stressed-out, and I’m hungry and tired, and I’ve got a girlfriend problem, and my bills are due, and I can’t pay rent yet, and I’m freaking out and I’m overwhelmed, what do I do then? You know, like Eckhart Tolle teaches, “Become the observer and the witness” – and that’s fantastic stuff. But when our buttons are pushed, our subconscious takes over. Our instinctual mind takes over and tries to protect itself, and always just tries to operate from one of three strategies – which is to run away and hide, submit and play dead, or fight and dominate. So that is – we are much more sophisticated than those simple ways now, but those are still very active, they are very much part of our mentality, and our wiring, and our instincts. And so I needed a way to interrupt that stuff in the moment, and work through stuff. So I created different tools for, one, you didn’t mention this – called the ACT Tool – it is a three-step process, it is an acronym, very simple to use, you can memorize it, for when you are just in the moment and you are getting stressed-out and you are intimidated and insecure, you can work through that really quickly. The Purifier is more like when you get stuck in a bad mood and things aren’t terrible but you know you’ve got some crap going on, maybe some confusion or insecurities, some fears, uncertainty. What do you do? Well, you dump out all the negative thoughts and feelings first. Most of us repress our negative thoughts; we try to like deny it, we try to be positive, we try to be logical. A lot of guys are very logical and we try to be like, “Oh, screw it – just go do it!” And that is an important attitude to have – you know, be very masculine and grown-up, and just kind of rifle through things – but when we’re stuck and we’ve got that

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stuff going on, we really want to be in an empowered, present and passionate state. So we’ve got to express the stuff – express rather than repress it. So it is just literally writing down, or even speaking, all the negative thoughts and feelings that we have, especially about what is going on – just so it is expressed. It is like letting the steam out of a kettle. Then once that stuff’s out, you’ll feel better. I mean, if you really take like ten minutes and keep scribbling, and be raw, and unpolitically correct, and just really honest, maybe brutally honest – all your judgments, your fears, your insecurities. Get them out – you’ll feel ten times better. And then shift into a positive state now, by writing down your new choices, what you’d like to have happen, what you’re grateful for; what your new attitude is going to be that you’re choosing… And it is amazing how just this one little simple two-step process helps people become super-empowered in just a few minutes. It is so simple it sounds like, you know, “Wow – big deal. That makes sense. Okay, I’ll just kind of express my feelings and have fun with that.” but the real gold comes from writing it down. So I’ve made it really easy for people. All my tools are kind of fill in the blanks, sentence completion type of stuff, where you don’t have to think. It’s like haven’t a coach there with you – because that’s what I realized; like I couldn’t afford to go call up my mentor or my coach every time and pay him two, three, five hundred dollars every time I got stuck – I needed something now – that was free! So I created these tools where people could have almost like a pocket coach where they didn’t have to think. Because it’s very hard to facilitate yourself while you’re in a negative emotional state – to be observant, be your own psychiatrist. It’s very hard to do. So these tools help you just be in your shit – and then work through it. But you’re guided by the steps. It’s very cool. ADAM Now, it’s so funny you say it, because as you were talking and as I looked at it, it’s like having a little coach robot to take around with you and straighten you out. It’s amazing to me how quickly you can shift with very, very simple tools, throughout life. You know, it started with my work with David Deida – how quickly you can shift just by changing your body; just by changing your body energy – picking up a girl and twirling her around when you’re having an argument – and everything changes in a second. Or if you’re on a date, just, you know, if you’re walking

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down the beach, “I’ll sprint you to that lifeguard station” and you sprint for fifty feet – and suddenly you’re both breathing and your whole energy is different! So these little tools are huge change points. And I don’t want people to underestimate that. Most people really walk through life unconsciously. They don’t look at it; they don’t look at their brains and their hormones as something they can, for lack of a better word, manipulate, or change…

TODD Control. Manage. Steer. ADAM Control, yeah – better words. I like it. I didn’t like the word manipulate That’s great – actually steering like a ship. We have all these chemicals running through our bodies; the last fifteen years really, since – I don’t know if you know Candace Pert’s work – but there is so much more understanding of what is going on hormonally in our bodies and how it affects our minds, we’re mostly unconscious of it. And these tools actually give us a grip on our minds. So I love that. I love what you’re doing. TODD Yeah. I always say our mind is the steering wheel of our life. Our mind is the steering wheel of our life, because we all feel – we usually don’t feel negative feelings and emotions that aren’t preceded by a thought first. ADAM Yes. TODD It’s our thoughts that make us feel bad, and then we react to those feelings, and then we think more negatively. Then we get on this turntable, this merry-go-round and it spirals out of control. And now we’re not present; we’re out of control; we’re being owned by our negative emotions and negative thoughts, and then all this old stuff is triggered that we’re not even aware of. Our mind, our subconscious mind, is self-referencing into history. It goes backwards into the files and says, “Well what do I do when it’s like this? What do I do in this situation? What do I do when dealing with this type of person?” and goes back to childhood and says, “Well, big authoritative men are abusive, and mean, and scary.” So then we get totally intimidated by some guy who is not a threat at all, you know.

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The same with pretty girls – we have a lot of experiences when we’re young where we misinterpreted the events and told ourselves a story about how women treat us, what they want, what they do, how we’re supposed to act. And if we reactive poorly – which usually we do because we didn’t know any better – and then that becomes kind of hardwired into us that this is what we always do, this is what happens. And the more we can see it happen, the more we experience it, the more it becomes true for us… ADAM It’s reinforced. TODD …and it reinforces – and we end up having a false identity. I mean, literally, most people walk around with… we all have a persona, but most people aren’t even aware of their persona, and it’s a false persona. It’s a false identity that is fear-based and based on mistakes and misperceptions. ADAM Yeah. We are meat sacks walking around on this earth. And fear is what has kept the species alive and thriving until the apes take over – Planet of the Apes comes out this week! Which I’m really excited about! But you know, fear has gotten us far. Fear has gotten us far as a physical species. And now it’s killing us because our capabilities have improved so much. And the more we’re driven by fear, the more we kill possibilities. And I want to say a couple of things about this. One of my favorite girlfriends had a mantra which was, “Every moment has a choice.” And she said it all the time. Whatever we talked about – whether it was business, her life, or my life, or our emotional life, sexual life – “Every moment has a choice.” It’s that simple. But you have to have the tools to be able to make the choice. You can’t be ruled by the programs that are running – is that correct? TODD Exactly. ADAM Yeah. And another girlfriend – you know, I don’t know how you go through life without lots of girlfriends; you know, I learn so much from them, you know? – another one had this great phrase which I have talked about elsewhere in this program, where she would begin her sentence with, “I’m noticing that…” and about her internal state. So she had this wonderful kind of camera running on her mind; “I’m noticing that I’m feeling this… I’m noticing that I’m feeling hurt.

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I’m noticing that I’m feeling hopeful.” And it was great. It was a great practice that I learned from her, to actually watch what’s going on in your brain. And I want to use that metaphor – it’s an excellent metaphor – about your mind being a steering wheel. And every steering wheel, on any complex machine, anyway, has a dashboard, and has a – what do you call it up in an airplane; you’re looking at all those signals and dials - and that is called a?

TODD It’s your gauges. ADAM Yeah, your gauges, your dashboard. And I think that you actually start your program – you have that, so there’s a “daily dashboard” so that people can watch themselves, just like we’re talking about. TODD Yeah. But a dashboard is a phenomenally useful tool. I mean, I’m all about practicality – my personality type; I’m a Virgo; in the Myers Briggs I’m an [25:35], so I’m all about practical, efficiency, optimization and systems. And so it’s really easy for me to kind of get all this stuff; I can see the patterns and systems behind things. And really what I do is reverse-engineer a lot of what I’ve learned, figure out what’s going on, what are the key principles that these people are teaching and using, and then synergize them with other people’s stuff and create a whole new system of tools. That’s basically what I’ve done. The daily dashboard is based on a lot of different influences to get us in the right state/frame of mind, right away in the morning; really harness the power of our mind, focus on what really needs to be done, what’s most important; focus on how we’re improving on a day-to-day basis; and become what I call outcome-oriented or outcome-focused, so we’re actively creating what we want to have happen as a result. Most people are either problem-focused or goal-focused and these are, you know, taught a lot in a lot of different arenas, and people use them all the time. But they’re ineffective compared to being outcome-oriented. If you’re problem-focused, you’re focused on a problem. And what people don’t get is that your mind and what you’re focusing on is directing your subconscious. So subconscious is now expanding, and even creating and looking for more problems. So you get bogged-down in that and end up just looking for relief from stress and problems, and not really making much progress.

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Goal orientation, or goal focus is better because it’s more about the positive, you know, the thing that’s going to happen that’s good; there’s a payoff – but it’s external, it’s tangible. It’s like, you know, “lost twenty pounds” – people who want to lose weight, they want to feel good about their body. They want to feel attractive. They want to be able to take their shirt off and feel confident. So we’ve got to become outcome-focused. And when we do, it short-circuits or it shortcuts things in our subconscious mind. And now the powerful subconscious –which is a million times more powerful than our intellectual brain, actually; it now has… it is like giving your GPS the correct coordinates – instead of saying you want to end up in this area code, you type in the exact address that you want to go to – and it will find the quickest and fastest path to get there, based on all its inner resources, all its experiences. And it’s like putting out a signal to your environment, the people around you. All this subconscious stuff is being transmitted and you started attracting and creating the situations you want, which will lead you to your outcome the quickest and fastest and most effortlessly. Does that make sense? ADAM It’s beautifully said. Absolutely. TODD So it’s really about harnessing the power of our mind. And I love what you said about your girlfriend who said she’s noticing this thing, or she’s noticing how she’s feeling, or she’s noticing something that’s coming up – and that’s really the first step, that most people don’t ever do; is just go, “What am I thinking and feeling?” And then, “Why?” And then dig a little deeper. “Where is this really coming from?” So my tools – what I figured out a long time ago was that whatever we’re thinking and feeling in a situation that is going on that is stimulating a response or a reaction really has to do with our past. What is going on internally has nothing to do with what is happening right now. It never does. But we can trace back to an experience earlier in life that gave us kind of a programmed reaction or a programmed response, and a belief, and a viewpoint. And that’s what’s steering the ship. So we have got to kind of dig in and look under the surface. And we always – I mean, it’s amazing the revelations we have; my clients are like “Holy cow! I would have never had thought that this was actually the real problem” – because we’re so focused on the outer world. And it never has to do with the outer stuff. It always has to do with internal, historical things that happen to us.

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ADAM Yeah. That’s great. And I love how you really break it down to time, and relationships, stories, your spiritual family; you break it down to the challenges, needs, goal-making, dream-making – I mean, you have really broken confidence down to sort of very practical bites. There’s a lot here. So let me just ask you a general question. What do you think is one of the most surprising discoveries you’ve made, working with a lot of guys, that most people wouldn’t guess, about what holds people back from just living confidently and more fearlessly? TODD The biggest actually recent discovery and major breakthrough, especially with my own life and what is pouring into my coaching, and how I’m teaching and coaching, which is just like – it was already very advanced and accelerated; now it’s like we just poured nitrous into the fuel tank! What I discovered – because I’m always synergizing things, and I’ve really gotten into the personality typology systems; the – the Enneagram, the Myers Briggs; there’s a system called the Wealth Dynamics, which is all about your best path to wealth based on your personality; there’s a human design system – and all these are very, very insightful to help you understand yourself – what your blueprints are, why you are the way how you are, why you think the way you do, what your strengths and weaknesses are. So I’m always trying to put things together, and combine them, and see where they overlap and something new can emerge from it and then I practicalize it; I make it operational for the layperson that doesn’t spend thousands of hours studying and stuff. And what I discovered, what I realized – I had this big “Ah-ha!” – that, you know, for a few years now we all really have only one main glitch, one main virus, one main story that’s driving us, based on our personality type, or our child programming. Really, personality type, a lot of it comes from our experiences when we’re young. So I realized that we have this one main core fear really, and depending on who you are, how you grew up, and what your personality type is, you can find that and then figure out how it’s affecting you and what experiences it comes from – and really challenge it and see how it’s been driving all of your behavior, all of your thinking patterns – and dissolve it. Huge liberation happens! And it happened to me personally. I test everything on myself first; I always, you know, really work stuff out – figure out why it works;

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and then I experiment with my clients, and tweak it, and perfect it. And I had a massive transformation recently because I realized my core fear was being bad, wrong, and not good enough. I’m a perfectionist. I’ve always been a perfectionist with high standards, you know, high achiever – high expectations. I wasn’t a high achiever when I was younger! I’ve always had high expectations so I’ve always felt like shit about myself. I really beat myself up – I had a lot of self-hate. And it was because of this core fundamental fear that I’m bad, wrong and not good enough. And so I was always measuring myself up to some kind of super-human perfection that doesn’t exist. And that was driving me, even up until recently – it was still there; I hadn’t worked it out because I hadn’t worked it out. It was unconscious; I didn’t see it. I wasn’t aware of it. People around me – they were like, “Todd, you know, you can do anything. Everything you put out there is fantastic. You need to relax. You don’t need to rewrite your book again. You give people way too much. You know, everything you do is great – you need to relax and enjoy yourself more.” And I just couldn’t hear it; I didn’t get it because I felt like there’s always better to do; I can keep going, there’s more to do. Can’t relax yet. Can’t allow myse3lf to have much fun… So I used what I learned from personality type systems about my core fundamental fear. And I used this other system that we haven’t talked about – it’s a very unique, advanced system for digging into your subconscious very quickly, called the Philosopher’s Stone – but you could only use that with me in my private coaching because it requires it. And I put them together, and I had this huge revelation of really what was driving the bus for me – what was kicking my ass. And it’s very hard to describe what I experienced; it was very much of a spiritual experience. It was like I puked up a person. It really felt like energetically puking up this other person that was living inside of me, like this dark side. And since then, I have become really, really much more centered and here on earth. Like the world looks more vivid to me. I notice the detail. I can just be. I don’t have to think so much. I’ve started painting – I never thought I had any kind of creative, artistic talent – I started painting and my friends were telling me, “Dude, you could sell this. This is great.” I’m really into learning music, and taking dance lessons; I’m much more socially outgoing – because I’ve always been kind of introverted. I have confidence. I can talk. But I was always much more introverted. Now I’ve become like the opposite – I’m like an extroverted, “Let’s go have fun!” I can be friends with anybody… it’s just amazing what’s happening and I’m very grateful for it.

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ADAM Every moment is a choice. You hit something that is something I’ve learned about a lot of people – as a parent, by the way – is that you see how parents and families slot people into roles very early. “You’re the smart one. / You’re the social one. / You’re the popular one…” And people carry those stories – and those are just stories.

TODD Yeah. I was labeled, you know, “the quiet, pleasant, good boy.” ADAM [Laughter] Not by the police! TODD So I never stuck out. I never stood up for myself. I never caused problems. If I was hurt… I mean, I remember a time when I broke my nose and I didn’t tell anybody about it at school. And I went home and it was like late at night; my parents finally came home from work and they went, “Oh my God! What happened?” Because I just had this mentality that I shouldn’t cause trouble for anybody; I shouldn’t stick out, I shouldn’t have needs, I don’t want to impose upon anybody. And so I suffered a lot, from missing out on things, getting support… ADAM Yeah, me too. TODD …getting fun things, getting taken care of. And, you know, internally, as a little kid, I was just a mess. You know, I had insomnia for about twenty-five years – I could hardly sleep. I had anxiety all the time; I was always tense, I always felt unsafe. I never felt I belonged – even when I was with a group of friends who had been with me for years. And I was always on high alert, very sensitive to everything that was going on around me. So I was like intense, burnt-out and exhausted but I couldn’t sleep – and, you know, it just sucked. And I’ve gotten past all that stuff by just figuring myself out and applying these really simple principles and making them practical. So I use these tools for myself whenever something comes up. It’s just like becoming a really good, skilled driver, you know, of a race car, instead of a helpless passenger on a tour bus. And that’s how most people are living their lives; they’re like a trapped, helpless passenger on a shitty tour bus ride…

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ADAM That’s a great analogy! TODD …they’re just going along; they’re subconscious is driving – this little three-year-old is driving the bus, who’s freaking out half the time. And you’re trapped, with all these different characters in your mind who are the other passengers on the bus. ADAM That is a great metaphor! I love it! TODD Thanks! It’s in the program. I teach my clients how to get off the bus! ADAM The shitty tour bus of life [Laughter].

TODD You need to call, you know, your Mickey Thompson off-road pickup race truck, and become a highly-skilled race driver and a mechanic… ADAM Love it! TODD …so that when it has problems, or breaks down, or gets wrecked, or has a flat tire, you can fix it quickly out on the road. And you can drive over any terrain – whether it’s snow and ice, or drive through a river, or the desert, and do big jumps. And that’s how people get to live their life. We can do anything we want. But most people don’t know that – and it is because they’re so limited, and so programmed, and so full of fear, they don’t even realize it. Because everybody else is living that way, so it must be normal. So we never even think that, “Hey, I could have better.” ADAM Great. Brilliant. I love metaphors, as a writer – and that’s a great one. I want to recommend, by the way, a poem if you haven’t seen it, by Mary Oliver, called When Death Comes. Just have a look at it later. I’ve recommended it elsewhere in my programs. It’s one of my favorite poems ever written – and it ends with the idea that, “I don’t want to have just visited this world.” It’s very, very, good. I love that metaphor of a truck – that is good!

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Give me three quick things before we wrap – three quick things guys could do today, just right now, to prove getting a grip on the steering wheel of their lives. TODD Three quick things – wow, I’ve got a lot! ADAM I know you do – but I’m always practical so I want to get value… TODD I’ll throw out a few things. I just wrote this new free report called The Seven Forgotten Secrets of Self-Confidence – and I’ll give you a few of those. One is to stop relying upon your strengths. You know, we’re taught to, or we learn, to really rely upon what we’re good at and what always works. Stop doing that because it’s actually very limiting. I’m not saying your strengths are bad, and that you shouldn’t have them and develop them. I’m saying you’ve used them as a crutch too much and that you have weaknesses, or perceived weaknesses, that are actually strengths that can emerge. If you flip it upside-down, earlier I spoke about how I had this weakness, this core fear about not being good enough. When I flipped that upside-down and challenge it, I realize I am way better than I am expected to be. I am really good at a lot of stuff. ADAM Yeah. TODD And when I started realizing, like instead of like relying on my strengths of being a strategist and a thinker, and rely upon my weakness, which is more feeling, and connecting with people, and that kind of stuff, my world has rapidly, rapidly changed. So figure out what your strengths are that you are relying upon, and look upon how you’ve actually been relying upon them too much so you’ve trapped yourself. And think about your weaknesses that you haven’t maybe overcome – there is actually gold in those. You learn about this in the report. Another one is we talked about becoming outcome-oriented. It’s so important. I really drill my clients on this: “What is your outcome – in a conversation, at lunch, headed into the grocery store, a long-term goal, your career, a girlfriend, going out dating that night – what is the outcome that you want?” Not the goal. Not the problem that needs to be solved. Not the challenge or obstacle. Focus on

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what the result is. How are you going to feel? What’s going to be happening? What’s your body language going to look like? What’s going to be new and different for you? Because when you focus on that and imagine it and visualize it, and agree to it, give yourself permission to have it, then it starts happening almost effortlessly. Really – I mean, this is just like power of manifestation; you are giving yourself conscious, completely new instructions. And people intellectually get this but they don’t practice it. So you’ve got to keep drilling yourself: “What’s my outcome?” even in conversations – like, what’s the outcome of this conversation? We could talk for twenty minutes, and I’m trying to figure out what this guy’s trying to say, and what he needs. Or I can just say, “What’s the outcome you want?” He’s like, “Well, I need you to sign this.” “Okay, great. Done.” “Oh, thanks.” And it’s over. ADAM Beautiful. TODD So really just giving yourself permission to be what you want, and being clear, and focus only on that – and crowding out all the, you know the hows, and the whys, and the stresses, and the problems. Crowd that stuff out and you’ll be amazed with what happens for you – and then your confidence increases because you are in a positive state, and things start happening easily. And thirdly is become masterful with your emotions – especially for guys because we are so used to repressing them, avoiding them, intellectualizing and rationalizing. And I am not talking about emotional intelligence – Daniel Goleman Is considered one of the leading authorities on emotional intelligence, and I have gone through his stuff, and what really struck me was that there is not very much practical information there. What do I do in the moment? Like, okay, I can get this, and I understand it, and I can kind of see when somebody’s going through stuff, and I can calibrate somebody’s emotions. But when we’re emotional, we’ve moved into our mammalian, and our reptilian, our instinctual brains and we have become a three-year-old. That’s why adults do really weird stuff – we freak out, we lose control, we get overwhelmed with anxiety, or anger, or grief. And it’s because we are not aware of a lot of things about emotions. Emotion is just energy. It’s just energy and it’s felt in the body. It is not an intellectual thing. Usually preceded by a thought, or a series of thoughts – our emotions are just energy, and that negative energy that we’re experiencing can

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literally be transformed into positive energy very quickly when you understand what the negative emotion turns into. I know we have very little time and this is kind of complex, so I can’t go into it, but there are basically like six core emotional states that have a negative and a positive polarity. When you understand each one of those, and what each one turns into – like anger actually turns into authority and action. ADAM Good. TODD To take responsibility – because anger is all about blame. So when we know the key to transform it – there’s a key for each one – understanding the anger turns into authority and action through forgiveness. So we’ve got to express, you know, figure out why are we resentful; what are we not taking responsibility for; who are we blaming? And then forgive them – literally, just in the moment, you can do it in an instant – just say, “You know what? It’s okay, I forgive them. They’re doing the best they can. Maybe they’ve screwed up. I don’t know what their motives are. Maybe there was a misunderstanding.” It doesn’t matter, because it’s still your responsibility. When you do, you let go of that anger, that power – because anger is a very high energy; you know, we can beat somebody up, we can run really fast, we can clean the house, and we can have done with it. But it’s angry energy and it’s destructive. When we flip it upside-down it turns into power and authority, and action – and from a positive place – empowered, loving action. And we can get stuff done from a leadership role. So really understanding how emotions work and what to do about it is very important. It is included in my program – a lot of information; a lot of practical stuff, to make it so that people can put a steering wheel on their emotions, literally – I’m all about the steering wheel thing! ADAM I like it, it’s a great metaphor – and it’s very masculine, too, right – trucks, steering wheels! It’s good. You said you had a special report – I know we’re going to give it away for free. Where can guys get that?

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TODD I set up a page on my website with your name so that they can identify it real easily. Just go to www.naturallyconfident.com/adam - you can get the free report right there. It’s called The Seven Forgotten Secrets of Self-Confidence – and it’s stuff that most people have ever heard of; it’s not just a rehashing of a lot of information that’s already out there. So definitely check it out – it’s great. ADAM You have a very really nicely unique and well thought-out approach to this – and an amazing story, by the way. And I love the fact that you’re living on the beach right now in the Caribbean. I’m a little bit jealous! So, yeah, go check out those Seven Secrets. You actually surprised me with a couple of those – I haven’t heard a couple of those – and I really appreciate the world you’ve done. And I think everyone can sense the seriousness with which you take your work, in your voice. It comes through to me, anyway. I’m pretty intuitive about people and I love your commitment to this and to helping guys out. So, thank you very much Todd – and, everyone, www.naturallyconfident.com/adam. And I hope this has been useful – and I look forward to seeing you on that beach down there soon! TODD Thanks Adam. All the best – I had a blast! ADAM My pleasure.