Chris Do:

If someone presents to you a solution that you're not ready to hear, it's a threat to your own identity, and our identity is very important to us, who we are, our self-concept, what makes us us. The only real question here is how long do you want to let it take for you to evolve? You're just robbing yourself of your new potential the longer you take.

What I want to start talking about is how your state of mind, your emotional well-being, whether you feel prosperous, generous, or that things can happen for you not to you, how it impacts how you observe and see the world. Then this will then inform the kind of decisions that you make. Let me start by saying this. In that I believe this, that there's this very narrow sliver of what we would identify as objective truth. It's tiny, where it could be verified by a lot of different people and say, "According to science or measurements, the data, this is the objective truth." What's happening is an objective thing happens and we interpret through our very subjective lens and we tell ourselves a story about what's going on. That lens is largely influenced by our emotional state, how we feel inside.

I'll give you an example. If you are parking somewhere when your meter runs out and the meter maid comes up to you and starts writing you a ticket, you might feel like, yo, man, I just need some slack here, brother. Why are you such a bad person? Your job is to ruin people's lives and their day. This is unjust and unfair. That's how you might record it in your brain. When we know objectively the meter doesn't lie, you are at fault here because you didn't put enough in the meter and you overstayed such that your time had expired.

Objectively speaking, this person's job is to make money for the city so that they can have the funding to do what they need to do. This is how one way that the cities make money, so their job is to write a ticket for anyone who violates the rules. Objectively speaking, if you were the person waiting for this parking spot and this person's time is expired and they've not paid for it, you would feel like they're breaking the rules. The rules are there so that there's order versus chaos, there's harmony in the world. Those are the objective things.

But subjectively, you've now painted the meter maid as a bad person, as a bad man or woman or whatever, and you're like, you know what? You're just an evil person and the city is just robbing us. So you create this kind of narrative in your mind. Now this is a pretty clear example, so we can all say yes, we see what's going on. If you want to move towards a higher self to be in greater harmony frequency and to look at the world more objectively so that you're not skewing the information, you might say, "Okay, here's the thing I messed up. It's a lesson for me to learn. This person's just doing their job. I would like to appeal to their sense of forgiveness and their generosity and lean on that and hopefully they'll just let me off the hook knowing very well that I'm in the wrong."

Rather than chase them and say, "Hey, why are you such a horrible human being?" We could say, "I messed up. I lost track of time. I knew I had minutes left, and I obviously have underestimated. I know you're just doing your job and I appreciate what you do and I know this is a necessary thing. Could you find it in your heart to just let me go off with a warning? Let me off with a warning please. And I respect that this is your job and you have every right to say no," and see what happens then.

Now, if we were to bet and say, what is more likely for you not to get the ticket chasing after a person with your hands waved in the air full of emotion and rage and victimization or wanting to say, "I realized what you're doing. I effed up, friend. I'm hoping that you can just let me off here, but I understand if you don't want to," which one is more likely going to get you a better outcome? When we start to align ourselves towards the outcome that we want, we get away from the subjective storytelling, the distorted lens in which we look at the world, and most often what we do is we mistake that subjective lens as the absolute objective truth.

Krishnamurti wrote this, and hopefully I'm quoting this correctly, which is, "To observe without judgment is the highest form of intelligence," and that was an example of that. "To observe without judgment is the highest form of intelligence," Krishnamurti.

I have another example to share with you. I was having a conversation with a friend. This friend has big aspirations in life, a big goal to achieve, and the friend won't know who I'm talking about, so I hope my friend is going to be okay with me sharing this story, but I'll abstract everything else so that you don't know who this is. Okay? My friend wants to be a public speaker. My friend is looking for opportunities to make an impact on the world and to be a role model to many other people. This makes sense. These are all the right reasons why you want to be a public speaker. I said a comment to this friend that they took offense to, but I didn't realize until much later, so let me get to it.

Months after having this initial conversation, this person has buried these negative feelings and this person has body dysmorphia. They are concerned about how they look in their appearance. When I said, "Would you like some accountability in this so that can keep you on track? As a friend, do you want this from me?" Now, I've learned in my life that if you give people unsolicited advice, if you offer to help them when they haven't asked for it, it actually can get the opposite effect, which is will strain their relationship. They'll walk away feeling disabled like, are you saying I don't know how to do this? Are you saying I'm incapable of doing this? I didn't ask for your help. Is this a real problem? So all kinds of negative stories start happening in the brain. Generally speaking, don't give advice or offer help to people without first checking in with them and getting permission from them that this is indeed what they want.

My friend says, "Yes." I say to them, "You're working towards eating better and exercising so that you feel better and you have more energy, but also you'll command more presence on stage." They're, "Cool. Feel free to check in with me, but don't judge me," which is something that I was like, "I'm judging you? Help me understand this". I was looking at it from a place of curiosity like, I'm sorry, I didn't know I was judging you. How did I judge you? Well, my friend says to me, "Well, when you said when you lose weight," and this is what I said, "When you lose weight, you'll be able to wear different kinds of clothes, you'll have more options, and you'll radiate to people that you're a person of great self-control. That you're really self-determined and you have a strong will and that you'll be more confident."

This person says this to me. I'm like, so where's the judging part of this? Their reaction to me surprised me a little bit, which was, "I feel like I already know these things and for you to say it makes me feel like I'm stupid or something like that, that I'm not capable of realizing the obvious." I said, "Okay, I recognize that this is sending negative emotions towards you. I will no longer say anything like this. That's what your preference is."

This also gets into another side topic here, if you'll indulge me, which is this, is oftentimes we think the golden rule is the best way to treat people. The golden rule is this, treat people how you want to be treated. But in fact, that turns out to be not very good at all. What I always want to do is apply the platinum rule, treat people how they want to be treated. Hence, I ask people questions about what they prefer, what they don't prefer. Do they find this to be helpful? Do they want help? Do they want support? Do they want accountability in any of this, which is how we should aspire to live our lives.

I've learned in my life painfully, especially with my wife, when I do what I think she wants versus what she really wants and sees as being helpful, I'm actually straining our relationship. I'm demonstrating to my poor ability to observe and to give her what she needs. I've learned this through therapy and I try to apply it as often as I can in my life. I've learned in this moment in time with, my friend especially, hold me accountable, ask me how I'm doing, but don't tell me these things that I already know because that is judging to this person. I suspected this observation was not true, but coming from an emotional state that wasn't positive.

What happened was, and it was just very organic how our conversation went, and it goes something like this. After this person was able to talk about something much more positive, their state completely changed. They're very excited about public speaking. They're excited about what they can do. They're excited about losing weight and looking and feeling their best, not for other people, but for themselves. I said, almost verbatim, the exact same thing to this person that I said before that was considered a judging language. I said, "It's going to be so great. When you lose weight you're going to have more energy, you're going to be more dynamic. You're going to have more options to wear different kinds of clothes, and I just can't the imagine cool, fun, iconic things you're going to do with how you show up in the world." They're like, "That's right. It's awesome, isn't it?"

I said, "Did you realize something? That I said almost literally the same thing that I said months ago that you repeated to me minutes ago that you thought was judging," and this was a big revelation to this person. They're like, "Oh my god. Oh my God, you are so right. When I am in a positive state of self-love, I have esteem, I have confidence, and I can see a desired future state that I want, nothing that you say is then interpreted as negative or judging. It's actually really empowering. Whereas when I was in a different mental state, what you said, objectively the same thing, had a completely different effect."

I said to this person, "I have good news and have even better news for you. You are in control of your emotional state. Here's the objective truth. When we choose, and this is a choice here, to look at the world from a negative state, a place of scarcity, a place of fear, of jealousy, a place of being self-critical, almost no input that can enter us will feel good, positive or helpful. Whereas when we're in a positive state and we make that choice as well, then no amount of negative input can impact us negatively."

This is what Marshall Rosenberg talks about in his nonviolent communication. When you learn to listen differently and reinterpret the negative stimuli in your world as nonviolent language, everything changes. Here's the bad news though. There's some bad news in this. The question is why do we choose, and it's a choice, to look at the world through the negative lens versus the positive lens? If you believe me in my hypothesis, my observations, my philosophy thus far, and if you agree that there's this narrow sliver of objective truth, almost everything that we do see skews us towards one thing or the other. What we have to do is have the mental fortitude and to set the intention that every single day we look at the world from a place of abundance and a place of gratitude, that everything can happen for us. They don't happen to us, they happen for us.

In my mind, I live in a place of extreme gratitude. I wake up each and every single morning grateful just to be alive, to be able-bodied, to still have my mind with me because at some point that'll go away. To be grateful for life, that's just the core. To be in a house that's warm, to have food in the fridge, and to have friends that care about me and the friends that I can care about. No matter what amount of negative criticism comes my way, and there's going to be a lot of it, I'm going to be able to reinterpret as something that builds me up.

If someone said to me some critical things, my interpretation of it, instead of being it judging and disempowering, disabling to me, my interpretation would be like, you really do care about me. You care enough to speak truth to me, to take time to think about what I am doing. You have a perspective on that. I realize you could think about lots of people, but the fact that you've dedicated some part of your brain to think about me and you have the courage to tell me, says to me you're a true friend. Because it's easy to deliver empty platitudes, words of encouragement. It's much harder to speak truth to someone when you know it'll hurt, when you know it'll strain your relationship, but your intentionality is to help that person grow. That's a key difference.

If you can master the skill and come to the realization that you are actively, or even sometimes, I'm sorry to say, subconsciously choosing to interpret the world through a very negative lens, through an emotional state that doesn't support you or support your personal growth, that's a choice that you're making. I'm going to encourage you to make a different choice.

Mo Ismail:

I'm a stickler for the how. So I got to ask you the how on this because when I watch you do this, and we've had conversations that have been either tough for me, both professionally and personally, because we have that overlapping relationship where I need to learn something or I want to share something with you. Well, actually before I even ask the question, and you've always been, in my opinion, very level regardless of what it is that we're talking about. I've never felt a sense of whether it be judgment or being overly critical, and I had to learn that I used to be very emotional and still recovering from something like that.

My question is, what are some deliberate practices that people can do to become this version? Someone who is grateful, someone who has this perspective of abundance. Because I feel like you've had time in it. For those listening, they're like, and maybe this is a big assumption, maybe they even rolled their eyes a little bit when you said it. It's like, oh, here comes another gratitude platitude. But I believe in this now that I've made this shift in my own life. What are some deliberate practices that a person can do?

Chris Do:

Okay, those are good questions. If you're sitting here thinking to yourself, great, sir, what do you want me to do with my horrible life? Okay, you're stuck in that loop. What we have to do is we have to break the cycle. The neurosynaptic wavelengths or pathways in your mind develop these strong grooves. I talked to a professor of anatomy, those freeways that are developed in your mind where you have an experience, you have an emotion, experience an emotion, they develop deep grooves and it's very hard to escape.

When she said that, I got a metaphor in my mind. Back in the day when we all had vinyl records, and some of us still love vinyl, if you play a record, sometimes it develops such a groove in it that it kind of, and it kind of repeats itself. And if you let it repeat itself so many times, I think you'll literally go insane. It's something about the human mind. Things on repetition, like droplets of water from a leaky faucet, the rhythmic repetition of something will drive you insane. I want you to think of your mind like that.

If you have an experience and you record it as negatively, it takes a lot of effort for you to move the needle out of that groove and form a new neural pathway. That's what you want to do. The first thing that you want to do is to set the intention like, you know what, I realized something. Prior to this moment in time, I've been a victim to my own life. I've been a character in my own story, and I've not been able to write or influence where I'm going. But today is going to be a new chapter, a new story, because the end of my book isn't written and I decide today's the day. It starts with the decision. Believe it or not, that decision will be the most important and most difficult thing for you to do. To move from a state of victimization to a state of empowerment. I'm an empowered person. I choose what I eat. I choose what I say. I choose how I behave. I choose also how I feel.

Now what can you do? Well, we're going to fall down a certain trap here. What I didn't understand about meditation, and I'm going to tell you right now, my wife is trying to correct me. I must practice some form of passive meditation because I do no active meditation. Most people think of meditation as a form of emptying yourself to be free of thought. According to my understanding of meditation, it's not that at all. It's for you to feel all that you feel, to think all that you think, but to be witness to this. Imagine you outside of yourself, an out-of-body experience where you get to see someone who looks just like you, who speaks like you, who has your same thoughts, but you can see it happening to them, and you have a level of detachment, objectivity, so you can witness this.

When I'm around my son, when my boy comes over to give me a hug, and he's happy to see me, I don't want to temper my emotional reaction to this. I want to hug him deeply. I want to feel his embrace. I want to know that my boy loves me and that I love him. But that is the witness paying attention to what's happening to the person and saying, "We allow this. We encourage this, give openly."

Conversely, if I'm speaking to a client and they're saying things that would be upsetting to me, when they're questioning my character, they're being unreasonable in their demands, they're not taking any ownership of their role in the project and they're asking for things that can't be done, the witness in me will see that I'm starting to have a negative emotional reaction. Then what I do is I ask myself, what is the outcome that I want right now, and will being emotional help me achieve that outcome or will it take me further away from the outcome?

Well, in a case like this, the outcome that I want is to come to a peaceful resolution that allows the clients the feeling of getting what they want while simultaneously protecting myself and my team and drawing up clear boundaries. What I need to do is shift into problem-solving mode and to neutralize the negative emotions because the negative emotions will then change the words that I choose and the course of action that I take.

What we want to do is just say, "I'm in control. I want to write my own narrative. I'm done with the way I used to do things." Then we practice some form of self-awareness where we can see what we're doing and we could decide, I feel myself getting angry. I feel myself feeling dejected or rejected. How do I want to respond? Just that momentary pause or interruption can create a more stoic mindset and way of living.

The next thing I want to do is I want to practice using non-violent language with others and within myself. We're just mirrors. What happens is people who are cruel, who are mean-spirited to other people, it is a mirror to how they talk to themselves. You are an idiot. You're the world's worst mistake. You're incapable of doing anything. You're a petty person who's full of jealousy. That's what we say to ourselves. So that when somebody behaves a certain way, we say it out loud to them and it feels very natural to us. What you want to do is you want to do some critical voice work to understand that the voice, the narrative that you have in your mind, your self-image, isn't your own. Believe it or not, we're a reflection of how we were raised.

It could be something very innocent. When you're a kid and you're playing with toys on the floor and your mom walks by, your dad walks by and steps on it and trips and falls, and then they have a momentary emotional reaction. They weren't practicing mindfulness. They just reacted and they said, "God, this is so annoying. All you care about is yourself. Do you realize what kind of danger you represent to other people? You're so ungrateful. I need a break, and this is what I get from you."

Later on your parents feels bad, and it's like, "I'm sorry, Johnny. I'm sorry, Mary. I didn't mean that mom or dad was just having a bad moment. I had a lot on my mind." But you can't process that because your three, four, 5-year-old undeveloped mind has now recorded that thing as a traumatic experience in your life. Those words that would appear emotional reaction, then become an inner dialogue, and you start to repeat that again and again. You're selfish, you're looking out for people, you're ungrateful, you're sloppy, all those kinds of things.

Now, your relationship with your parents could be totally different. That could be an isolated incident, but you weren't able to process that. If you get into critical inner voice, you'll learn that those moments can start to create unresolved trauma that you repeat for the rest of your life. If you can start practicing nonviolent language to be fair to yourself, to be clear and true, then you'll be clear and true to other people.

Mo Ismail:

I came up with an acronym to remember this. Do you want it?

Chris Do:

Sure.

Mo Ismail:

Dapper, D-A-P-P-E-R. You ready?

Chris Do:

I know how to spell dapper, yes.

Mo Ismail:

You're welcome for anybody that doesn't know how to spell dapper. Moving on, number one, you got to make the decision, so decide. Number two, awareness, so heighten your own awareness. Become really self-involved in watching yourself like a theater play. Then when something happens, you want to pause, take a breath, assess the situation. Then pivot, so pivot from what you would normally do to this new thing that you're going to do. Then execute on it, which is the E. From there, the R is that will rewire how you behave. Now you're dapper, just like these two gentlemen right here talking about this. I'm just saying.

Chris Do:

Well, you look very dapper, Mo, with that hat and that jacket.

Mo Ismail:

So are you, Chris.

Chris Do:

It's a good look on you, man. I have to say.

Stewart Schuster:

Thank you. I appreciate that. Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Chris Do:

Do you believe in the power of being around like-minded people who will both encourage and challenge you? How about having access to experts who are sharing what's working in today's market so you can skip the guesswork and get right to taking action? If so, I want to invite you to join us inside the Futur Pro membership where you will get instant access to the community, resources and support that will allow you to effectively scale your business. Go to thefutur.com/pro to learn more and join us on the inside.

Stewart Schuster:

Welcome back to our conversation.

Mo Ismail:

When was it for you that you started actively making this particular decision to behave in this way? Was there a cataclysmic point for you in your life?

Chris Do:

I'm going to say this, and I know the reaction from our audience. I'm going to say it anyways because it's going to sound like mythology building. I'm always wary of people who tell tales of heightened awareness at too young of an age. But I tell you, because I'm this weird, shy, introverted person, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I think about. When I experience negative emotions, Mo, when I feel like inside my guts are twisted inside out and my nerves are tingling, I ask myself, what's going on here? Is this good for you?

The story that I tell people is I think I'm almost nine years old, maybe 10 years old. During Lunar new year, which we celebrate, which is, usually, in February, children are given red envelopes with money, a dollar, $2, $5, $10, whatever. For us, as a person who's unemployed, it is our way of having some financial freedom to buy the things that we want, so that's a very important holiday for people who celebrate Lunar New Year. That's all the money you're going to get, aside from your birthday and Christmas, but this is more than you're going to get anywhere else.

I remember one time I'm running around the house on the envelope with $5, adjusted for inflation, just keep that in mind, was it was gone. The problem with these red envelopes is they're kind of generic. Well, different people buy different red envelopes and they give them to you, so who gives them to you, they might be different. But the one that your brother gets is the same one that you get. What parents or uncles and aunties typically do is they stuff them with the same amount of money. Like I said, a dollar, $2, $5, $10, $20, depending on how rich your uncles and aunts are, it's never going to go beyond 20 bucks.

They have special envelopes that they keep in a different pocket for their favorites, and they have a whole system of manipulation, sleight of hand. But whatever, so they hand them out. I'm like, "Thank you so much, uncle, auntie." You don't want to be crass. You don't open it in front of them like it's all about the money, so you secretly run in the other room, you pull it out. I'm like, oh my gosh, okay, this is what I was worth to you. This is excellent.

I lose my $5 out of probably a hundred dollars, let's just say, my total collection there. I'm so upset at myself. I'm like, where's this money? I go around, "Mom, have you seen my envelope?" Of course, my mom doesn't even know. There's a thousand envelopes floating around the house, how's she supposed to know? I go to my brothers, "Hey, have you guys seen my red envelope?" They're like, "No."

Then I march up to my mom just righteously indignant, so upset. I'm like, "Mom, I know somebody took my envelope because it's not here." My mom being the beautiful, effervescent soul that she is, says to me, "Honey, do you think someone in this family would steal money from you? Because I would like to know who that person is," and my mom stopped me cold tracks right there, just dead stopped. I'm like, she's right. I would never steal from my brother. My brothers would never steal from me. My parents definitely would not steal from me. They're the ones giving us the money. I've lost it.

Then I went through the negative self-talk. You're a dummy. You fricking idiot. Now, we can't get this. I'm just feeling really horrible about myself. I want to cry as a ten-year-old boy. I'm so devastated by this. I caught myself, Mo. I went dapper. I wanted to decide is beating myself up over this loss, $5, going to change the outcome? Will it magically make a new red envelope appear? The answer was no. I had to figure out, a negative emotion like this, no matter how negative I feel it, no matter how intense I feel it, will never change the outcome. All it's doing is it's eating me up inside. I asked myself, what is the learning opportunity here? The learning opportunity is, man, keep your stuff in one spot so that you never lose anything.

Mo Ismail:

You asked yourself at nine, what is the learning opportunity here?

Chris Do:

Yes. Yes, I did sir. I decided that the emotion of regret, remorse and anger it wasn't serving me well. I decided to excise that and say, look, we're going to develop new systems. I'm going to keep my place in a single spot. I'm going to develop this new habit such that if I lose something, it's going to be very rare that it happens. From nine, 10 years old on, I keep myself in a very specific place. I keep my wallet, my phone, my eyeglasses, everything so I know where stuff is.

The constant joke at the house is mom's always looking for her phone. Dad always knows where his is because it's only one, two spots. It's in my pocket or it's on the charger, that's where it's supposed to live. From that point forward, I very rarely misplace or lose things. When it's misplaced, it's because someone in the house has used it and not returned it. When I use it and not return it, I'm reminded of that one moment again. I don't get angry. I'm like, remember when you break your system, these are the consequences. You choose to do this at this point.

Mo Ismail:

This reminds me, it takes me back to a very critical point in mine and your relationship for me, and I would argue my own personal development. You probably recall it, we were talking on a weekend as we usually do, and I was just having one of those moments. It was towards the end of the year, so emotionally I was there for those kind of conversations. To make a long story short, we got to a point where I kept asking you like, "Well, why? Why? Why do I need to do this? Why do I need to do this?" You were hammering into me doing things with faith. You were like, "Does the answer to why even help you?" I was like, "No, actually it doesn't."

I'll get to the point here in a second. In that moment as a child, for you, a lot of people could have taken that as like, why is this happening to me? Why am I feeling this? It's like the answer to why in that moment probably doesn't serve you, which led you down to the next question you asked me, or I think maybe I asked you if my memory serves me correctly. It's like, what's the reason that I'm not just executing on what you're telling me fast enough? I just realized in your story that going back to the first question of why people choose to stay negative, it's you told me, "Maybe you're choosing to stay in the same identity that you've always known."

I think the reason why you, and I admire this about you so much, and you've told me stories about a coach telling you, "Do this," and the next day you're just doing it is because you have no problem evolving very quickly. My next question for you because I just want to stay in this pocket with you, I feel like a lot of people can do what you're saying. Do you think that the reason why they're not is because they're worried that they're going to, I don't know, become somebody different or lose out on ... What do you think is stopping? Logically, this all makes sense, but I think something stops them even when they get to that point. You are able to pass it at nine, but do you think it's holding onto who they are now? What do you think it is?

Chris Do:

Do you know what the longest distance is?

Mo Ismail:

What is it?

Chris Do:

The longest distance is the distance between your heart and your brain. You can understand things logically, Mo. You could say, "This is a better outcome for me. This is what I really want." But your emotional, irrational state's like, oh, I'm afraid. Who am I if this happens? What do I lose? You get into this scarcity mindset, this loss aversion thing really quickly.

A part of my life philosophy and the things that have served me well is to practice some form of emotional detachment. Then the detachment principle becomes much bigger than that. For example, you see people who sob uncontrollably when their house burns down, and they're holding their children, their pets and their family members. It's like you lost a house, not your identity. There's going to be some financial hardships and some inconveniences, for sure, but you have everything that's important to you, which is your health and your loved ones and their relationship. That part, no one can take away from you.

What happens is we become prematurely attached to things that we should have no attachment to. For example, there was a point in time which I had hair, I don't have hair anymore. If I said, well, I feel less of a person, less of myself because physically I've changed, then I'm going to be constantly battling those inner demons. My vision is not getting any better each day. It's not, it's getting worse. Not in a rapidly declining way, but these are things of old age. We get that. We become too attached to things.

There's something I heard Tony Robbins say. "It's like if you think you have reasons to feel sorry for yourself, hang around with someone who's lost their limbs. They have no arms, they have no legs. Look at their disposition." He goes, "They're some of the most inspiring people. The things that we complain about pale in comparison to what they could possibly complain about, but they never complain. They're very abled, not disabled." That's the problem.

You say to yourself, and this is something that many people get stuck in, you're not alone in this. I would say the vast majority of people I've met in my life have some form of this. You don't love your old identity. Let's not even call your old identity. You don't love your current identity. You don't love the progress that you have in your career. You don't love the relationships that you have with the people around you. You don't love the relationship that you have with your parents. But when someone offers you a way out of it, you revert back to that.

What I've learned is that it's better to deal with the devil than the devil you don't. We love in a weird way, and it's a strong word for me to use the love, but we love the miserable state that we're in because at least we know it.

Mo Ismail:

Damn.

Chris Do:

Here's the real problem, Mo. If someone presents to you a solution that you're not ready to hear or don't want to hear from that specific person, it's a threat to your own identity. Our identity is very important to us, who we are, our self-concept, what makes us us. There was a point in time when you're like, man, I have to dress this way, my identity. The question is, is it? Because there was a time in which you didn't dress this way and there will be a time when you don't dress this way anymore because we all evolve. The only real question here is how long do you want to let it take for you to evolve? Do you want to take a day, a year, 10 years? You're just robbing yourself of your new potential the longer you take. That's all.

Mo Ismail:

It seems like the punchline to be able to get to that state of minimizing the time it takes for you to evolve is this emotional detachment that you speak of.

Chris Do:

Yeah. If you look to the animal kingdom, it's a lot easier for us to see what's going on about growth and development. If you know what a crab goes through, a crab molts its skin, which is a fascinating thing for me just to observe. A crab grows this hard shell, it's protection, it's armor against predators. Without it, it's very, very vulnerable. But somehow it goes through this metamorphosis process where the skin gets really soft and they are able to break out of it somehow. They break out of their shell and they're now a soft shell crab, and they're very vulnerable. They're yummy, and they have to do this so that they can grow a new exoskeleton. If you think about it, I have to leave the comfort and safety of this armor that's protected me in order for me to grow. If I don't, I would be stuck. Quite literally. If you look at a snake, the same thing. It has to shed its skin, it has to cast away its old self. It's a weird and wonderful thing to behold when you see it shedding its own skin. It's so wild to watch.

What's happening? But now with human beings, we don't molt. We don't shed our skin like that. The physical transformation is not so obvious to us. But if you understand that concept, you have to let go of the things you found comfort and safety in, the things that protected you if you want to grow. Now, if you ask most people, "Do you aspire to grow?" The answer is usually yes. The harder question is what have you done to let go of your old identity so that you can adopt a new one that's more aligned with who you want to become?

Mo Ismail:

It's always letting go, not adding, it feels like. Not always.

Chris Do:

Good start.

Mo Ismail:

Maybe that's too much absolutism, but it's a big portion of it.

Chris Do:

Well, okay. Here's another metaphor for you. If who you are is the contents to a cup and you're filled to the brim, adding to it is impossible. It's true. You have to empty some of it so that you can add something new. You have to let go of an old idea, an old identity, so that you can fill it with a new identity, with a new idea, a new business plan, a new partner.

Mo Ismail:

What's one thing that you think someone should do that would help them on this journey, on this quest to what I think is becoming the ultimate version of yourself or the version that you aspire to become?

Chris Do:

I would say this, the hardest thing is the very first step is to set your intention that this is what you want to do because you like this infinite potential version of you and not this finite version of you that exists today. Realize this, it hits each person a little bit differently. We have people when we go on the road and on tour, people coming up to me, and I got to tell you warms my heart when people do this, and they do this quite often now, they said, "I used to earn minimum wage. I used to do 12 bucks an hour, and last year I did 150 grand. This year we're projected to do 250 grand. You've changed my life. I watched this video, and I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart." I feel all of that.

This is where the witness is, Chris, opening yourself up to feel this. I don't pass it off. I don't dismiss it like, "Oh, I'm just an idiot." I say, "Thank you. It makes me proud to hear you say this. You are fuel for me to do this for another five years every time I hear one of these stories. So congratulations, keep going and give me my 10%."

Mo Ismail:

Run to 10.

Chris Do:

I always put in the 10%. What's happening here? Why am I bringing this up? Think about all the people who watch that same video who have a different outcome than the ones who tell me it's worked. I always say this little snarky thing because they're like, "Chris, it's unbelievable, but when you apply your advice, it works." I'm like, "That's funny how when you apply something you've learned, it can work. It's funny how that works."

Then I have to say, the other people who are watching it, just like this example of objective truth and subjective interpretation, many people watch this like, "Oh, easy for him to say. Oh, he has the perfect life, he was born into wealth." They'll say things like that. They'll say, "Oh, because he lives in LA because opportunities are falling all over him and this is what's happening." Or, "Because his face looks a certain way," or, "He's a minority, he's getting all these opportunities." They make up 1,000 reasons why it's not applicable to them. Because if they were actually to do what it is that I say, they would have to admit a really harsh truth. This is something that no one wants to say to themselves. I'm stuck because of me. I'm stuck because the decisions I made in my life. I continue to stay stuck because I continue to tell myself this narrative.

To accept that this actually works would destroy your own identity. So like, my God, I'm at fault. I'm the effect of what's going on and I want to live at cause. I want to be in control of my own life. This day forward, I'm going to do this. I think the people who are able to transform their lives are just dumb enough to believe a stranger on the internet, brave enough to do something, and stupid enough not to know all the steps that they need to do so that they can actually do it and grateful enough to let it happen when it happens. Everyone else is stuck in this negative self-talk in a cycle of wanting to repeat unconsciously their patterns of their lives.

I can take it back to my nine-year-old self to tie this together, to continue to find fault with people, to blame, to live in a life in an emotional state of anger and remorse and regret, they choose to do that. No amount of coaching, training, workshops, books that you read, advice you get from internet strangers will change your life in the way that you want until you adopt a different mindset, until you have a different state, until you start looking at things from the lens of empowerment versus victimization.

Things don't happen to you, they happen for you. Be grateful for all the things that you have and start looking at life that way, and then you're going to appreciate every moment that you have. That's what I would say with that. I'm going to end it on this framework that it came up with, it's called dapper.

Mo Ismail:

[inaudible 00:41:39].

Chris Do:

It means different things than what you came up with. I'll say this, I admire your wit and your intelligence to be able to pull this out of thin air, but the letters and the meaning don't quite work for me. I'll say it in a different way now.

Mo Ismail:

Classic Chris. If you didn't do this, it wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be the same.

Chris Do:

We're going to refine it. It's going to be an uncut diamond, and then it's going to be polished-

Mo Ismail:

I love it.

Chris Do:

... and set in a thing, right?

Mo Ismail:

Love it.

Chris Do:

How can you go through this and remember this? Let's boil it down to this framework that Mo kick-started for me. It's called Dapper. First of all, don't react. Do not react. Number two, become aware of your emotional state, the feeling. That's the A. Then before you do anything else, pause, take a breath. The next P is to ponder what options there are available to you. Then the E is choose the emotional state that works best for you, that serves you in a path towards empowerment and growth, and then decide how you want to respond. That, my friends, is dapper.

Mo Ismail:

If you are ready to receive, the coach will appear. On that note, we out.

Stewart Schuster:

Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week.

The Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced by me, Stewart Schuster. Thank you to Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode. Thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music.

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