STOP MANIFESTING WRONG! – Do THIS Everyday To Manifest Anything YOU WANT IN LIFE! with Eric Edmeades

Eric Edmeades 0:00
I needed this kick in the pants to turn things around for myself. Thank you for firing me. I am so grateful. Now, I want to tell you something first of all, you pull that you're gonna unfire you.

Alex Ferrari 0:20
I like to welcome to the show. Eric Edmeades, how you doing, Eric?

Eric Edmeades 0:25
Good. Glad to be here.

Alex Ferrari 0:26
Thank you so much for being on the show my friend, I've, I've been a fan of yours for quite some time I've, I first saw you, I think at Mindvalley at one of the events a few years ago, prior to the world coming to an insane, insane place that we are right now, back when we could like just talk without a mask on and things like that all those years ago. And I just mean,

Eric Edmeades 0:49
Would you be more comfortable if I wore a mask now?

Alex Ferrari 0:50
I mean, if you could that would be fantas. I didn't want to say anything? Because could you imagine? Could you imagine if zoom you can catch up, we would beat over the whole thing would be done. But I really wanted to have you on the show. Because you are. I mean, there used to be those old turkeys commercials are the most interesting man in the world, you sir, are one of the most interesting men I've ever said I've and I work in Hollywood. So I've met a lot of interesting folks in my day. And you my friend are you you're you have a heck of a story. So that's why I wanted to have you on the show and see and kind of do a deep dive on how how your journey has affected your own personal journey, how you affect other people and so on. So I wanted to kind of take it back because I was reading in your in your bio that you were when you were a young young man, you were homeless? For a little bit. Can you discuss a little bit if you don't mind, discuss a little bit about that time and what that did to affect you and what you do. And if you want to stay before that, who you are what you do for the audience. So they know, kind of because you do so much it's hard to give you what you do before and then that time in your early childhood.

Eric Edmeades 2:04
Yeah, no problem. My background, I mean, the simple short version is I was born in South Africa, we emigrated to Canada when I was a small child. And, and I went through some of the typical childhood divorce and some non ideal, you know, growing up situations. And then eventually I, I kind of just got to a place where it was like up to me and I'll come back to that relative the whole homelessness thing, but I got to a place where my health and safety and survival and stuff was ultimately gonna be up to me. And and where that's taken me to is that I have I have had a really interesting life. But I have to remind you interesting. You know, there's that old Chinese curse. May you live in interesting times. It's a two edged sword. Let's remember that. Exactly what I you know, I got involved in business when I was young, I started my first company when I was 27. And I sold it nine years later in the mobile computing field. And then I then spent two years just traveling around the world, you know, learning and exploring and such. And then I bought a film studio in Northern California and worked in the film industry for a number of years we worked on, we I worked, I was really I get to work on Avatar and Pirates of the Caribbean and Iron Man and some really cool stuff. And, and I've had an eclectic business background, we pilot, we sort of parlayed our Hollywood special effects tech into, like World Class military simulation stuff and develops life saving technology for the US Army and first responders that went on to the products that went on to win awards from the US Army and from Congress. It was it was it was really an interesting journey. And then about 10 years ago, I made the decision to follow my real dream, which was always to get involved in teaching. And and so that's mostly what I do these days. But going back to the moment when you would never have been able to predict any of these things is that at 15 years old, I had a pretty big dispute with my father and my father had been recently sober. And one thing I've really realized about alcoholism, and my dad is not secretive about this, he tells everybody so I'm not breaking his anonymity. But one of the one of the things that's really tricky about about alcoholism is that when you when you sober up, it's like almost like you're reborn, you have to start all over again. And so my dad at the point in time I went to go live with him was basically like a three year old adult, you know, he was you started and that may, you know, I wasn't the ideal teenager by far and he wasn't the ideal parent by far and, and one thing led to another and, and he kicked me out of the house. And so I found myself in Edmonton, Alberta, literally homeless now, in retrospect, having obviously spoken to him he are very good, you know, very good friends. It was not his intention to kick me out was his intention to stimulate me to do what he wanted me to do and I refuse to do that. So I left so from his side I left from his from my side he kicked me out but the net result It was that it was Edmonton, Alberta. And it was Jan January, which means minus 30. And, and I had to figure out life, I had to figure out how to get food, I had to figure out how to not freeze to death, and you know, all that kind of stuff. And I will say this about that time in my life, I have no regret about it at all. In fact, one of the things I'm quite grateful for is that it wasn't summer. You know, a lot of everybody's asking for their life to be easier, right? I want my life to be easier. I like what Jim Rohn used to say about that you don't ask for life to be easier as for you to be stronger, you know, so. So think about it. If life had been easier if I'd been homeless, say June, then that first night, it would have been very easy for me to go down to the high level park, find a park bench and find somewhere to sleep because it was warm, it would have been easy. I had run away times before and slept out overnight. So I knew how to do that. And if it was June, I might have done that. But after about three days of doing that I just started looking like homeless get. And then I would have started smelling like one. And then I would have been like, you know, I wouldn't have had any impetus immediate threat to me. And so I could have just drifted into this comfortable summer homelessness like you see in Southern California. So very often, even in Northern California, although it's very different by the time December comes along, right if things change. So what happened in December, because this happened in January for me, I would quite literally frozen to death if I didn't find a solution. And I found a variety. I tried couchsurfing for a while as anybody would but you can only serve couches, at your teenage friends houses for so long before the parents were like, Do your parents know you're here? It's tricky. And and then at one point, I still had a key to my dad's building. So I would like sneak in. And we lived in a 28 storey building or he didn't know and I would sneak in and go up to like the top Florence and sleep at the 28th floor stairwell. You know, that was a safe place because nobody uses this there's that that isn't always gonna catch me. But you know, where I changed everything was we hung out video arcades back then, you know arcade games where you had to put the money and how to automatically that be for kids today. You have to pay money

Alex Ferrari 7:02
They have no idea what to do with my children. My children with the card now that just slightly swiping the card doesn't work anymore. Because you're out of money.

Eric Edmeades 7:11
Yeah, we had to actually count our quarters, right? Yeah. But so i We hung out at this video arcade and the guy who owned it. He was a friend of a friend of mines father and I walked up to him one day. And I said, you know, geez, you look tired. Now you have to think I'm 15 years old, I probably look 12. And how impetuous is this, you know, to walk up to an adult and say, Hey, you look tired. But he's like, I am tired. And they go, I think I know why. It was what like, well, you're here late closing every night and you and then you're here opening for us all first thing in the morning. And that's just got to be tough on you. And he goes, I'm not hiring. I said, I'm not asking you to I just I have a proposal for you. And he goes, what? And I said, Well, I will open the place for you. I'm not hiring, he goes, Wait, wait, I said, I will open the place for you in the mornings. And I'll cover the first three hours of the day. And then I will come in at night. And I will close the place up for you. So you know from 10 till midnight, so you can go. And he's like, I'm not hiring, and I go, I'll do for free. All you got to do is let me sleep on his couch at night. And since he had no problem violating child labor laws, he said yes. And so now I got myself off the street and effectively got myself a job because the truth was, he also knew I had no money and I wasn't eating. So then he started buying me meals and and we worked out a really good deal. It worked out really well for him. And it worked out really well for me until I was able to get myself back into school. And that was you know, it took several months. And I would say that that experience was unbelievably defining for me because you know, I think it put me in a place where I knew you could drop me pretty much in any city in the world. And I'd figure it out. And I knew that from 15.

Alex Ferrari 8:49
Isn't it funny that we look back on our on our toughest times? And at the moment? You go, Oh, God, what am I going through this? This shouldn't be the thing. And in hindsight, you go back and go, yes, the best thing that could have ever happened to me, isn't that isn't it? Didn't you come up with I think that's a video the hindsight window. That's right. What is the hindsight window?

Eric Edmeades 9:09
Well, the hindsight window is the period of time between an event that you regard as an adverse event and the eventual time later when you are able to look back at that event with minimally appreciation and maybe even gratitude. And that period of time is the hindsight window. And you know, so what that means is you get fired, you're angry, you're resentful, you don't like it, and you're blaming and you're blaming and you're blaming and then and then three years later you look at your life and go holy crap, thank God I got fired, boom, window closed, window closed. But the challenge is, is that the longer the window remains open, the harder happiness is to attain. The more windows you have open at any point sequentially in your life, the more difficult happiness is 10 And that's because of this principle. If the road has been bumpy so far, it will be bumpy in the future. And that's how people think their life My life is The road has been bumpy so far, then it will be bumpy in the future. And I'm like, Well, yeah, but that's what if you drive a Jeep, then if the road has been bumpy so far, then the road will be bumpy in the future. And so there's a perspective shift that the way we look at our lives and, and so what I what I aim to do with people is help them to close those windows more rapidly. The talk you're referring to was first delivered at Mindvalley. And then both has picked it up. And I've been really lucky millions of people have seen it, it's really cool. But the core message of it is, is that if you're if you're in an event, and somebody goes, oh, one day, we're gonna look back at this and laugh. Well, if we're gonna laugh one day, we may as well do that now. We may as well find a way to find the appreciation of this. And here's kind of my joke about that. Imagine somebody does get fired, right? So one reaction is you're fired. Man, that's just not fair. And this always happens to me. And then you go tell your friends how unreasonable your boss was. And you have all that going on? Right? What about this getting fired? Your fire? Thank God. I mean, thank you, if you look, you and I both know this day was coming. We just didn't know who was going to do it. First. You are me. And thank God, you had the guts to do it. Because I certainly didn't. I appreciate this. I know that I've not been I've been under par. And I needed this kick in the pants to turn things around for myself. Thank you for firing me. I am so grateful. Now, I want to tell you something, first of all, you pull that they're going to unfire you.

Alex Ferrari 11:24
Easily, easily. You're absolutely right.

Eric Edmeades 11:26
Maybe we made a mistake here.

Alex Ferrari 11:31
Well, your way to self aware, your way to self aware? We need to have you here.

Eric Edmeades 11:37
Yeah, now you've learned the lesson you can stay you know, but even if they don't do that, which maybe they won't. But the point is, is that think about how different it is to go job searching, when you have an attitude, a complete Attitude of Gratitude about losing the last job rather than a choice of victimization. If you feel like you're victimized over there, then you're expecting to be victimized over here, guess what you're going to attract, you're going to attract it, it's going to happen again. So closing the hindsight window is one of the very best steps that anyone can take for their mental health. And I put it this way, the more resentment and anger and regret that you have about your past, the more anxiety you will have about your future. On the other hand, the more appreciation and gratitude you have for everything that's happened in your past, the more faith you will approach the future with and maybe even excitement. And so that is really the the hindsight window in a nutshell.

Alex Ferrari 12:35
That's a fact. I mean, it's so true. I mean, I got fired from one of the highest paying jobs I've ever had in my life. And it was miserable, miserable, and then I got fired. It was like a complete hatchet job and HR, and they they just wanted me out because I was the highest paid editor at that, at that at that station. And, and then three days later, I got another job and two months later opened up my post house. So it just like exactly the way and then I went off from there and you know, had my own post house up until I retired from the film industry or not the film ministry from post production, but four years ago when I became a podcaster a professional.

Eric Edmeades 13:13
Now you do pre, posts and everything production.

Alex Ferrari 13:18
But it's like it's so weird how life, your journey keeps nudging you in. And I talk a lot about this on the show is like I feel that the that we're all born with certain set of skills, we're programmed at the factory with certain things, you and I probably won't play in the NBA, it's probably not in our in our in our bucket of tools that we're going to be able to do especially at our age at this point. This one maybe we had a shot a few years ago, but not now. But but we do are born with certain things. And as long as we keep going towards the path that makes sense for the the tools that we have been given, life is a little easier. Doors open a little bit different. But when we go off, off off road a little bit, it's when the universe starts to nudge you. And then if you don't listen, it'll push you. And if you don't listen, then a sledgehammer comes out. And that's when something really crazy happens that that needs to pick up blow up your life to really wake you up and get you back on the right path. Is that your experience as well?

Eric Edmeades 14:19
Yeah, I really think so. It's it's very much about watching, you know, patterns. And I do feel like the unlearn lesson is the repeated lesson. And so if you go through something and let's say you're getting fired and you approach it with blame and you approach it with all this kind of you know difficulty, then you will have that vibration, you will walk into the next job interview and you will align I mean if you think in pure physics, right, do you strike a tuning fork over here, then this tuning fork? Well, if it's the same frequency it will vibrate. It's called resonance and when we are when we vibrate when we when we have resonance with something we feel attracted to it well hold on a minute. What is your vibration when you're in victim mode, having been Higher victim vibration, then you go to a job interview and you go to a place that victimizes people, you have resonance. So now you're going to, you're going to have another job and get victimized again. Now you're going to be like, now you're gonna be ringing even louder when you get fired from that job, or you quit that job, and you're gonna be resonating this victim thing even further. And then you're gonna go to the next job and the next job. And it isn't until one day when you close the window on all these things and say, Wait a minute, now, what did I really need to learn from this? And then you change your vibration, you go to the next job interview, and you can sense that it's a victim culture, you can sense that they are unfair, and you're like, No, I'm not a match for this anymore. So So you're right, the universe comes along with, you know, knocking on the door, going, Hey, I want you to learn something about this, you know, don't don't be such a victim, hello, you want to not do this. And then you're right. If you don't, you'll just keep happening happening until one day, it's, in a sense, life breaking. And what I would suggest is that sometimes we need to hit rock bottom to make change. But the good news is that we can project our consciousness out to rock bottom before our body gets there. And we can learn the lesson that way.

Alex Ferrari 15:59
That's very true. I've never heard the term of the tuning fork idea of vibration, because it's so true. I mean, I've heard the concept of, you know, attracts, like attracts like, and if you want to put you know, if you want good things to happen to you put good out good energy and, and depending on your mindset, you'll attract whatever's in your mind, and so on, so forth. But I never looked at it from a scientific perspective, which is a tuning fork where if a vibration of something or a frequency, like a will attract that same frequency, and if you walk into a room, that doesn't make sense to you, or into a situation that doesn't feel right, that's the vibrations are not connecting. So you know it. For some people, like we'll walk into a room with a bunch of gangsters. If you're a gangster, you'd be like, Hey, what's up. But if you're not a gangster, and you walk in there, and you're like, with no one ever saying a word, you feel this is not the right place for me. It's so it's so it's so very true. I've never thought about that way.

Eric Edmeades 17:00
But you know, what's also important about that is you walk into that room with the gangsters and Okay, so you're not going to have a residence match with them. But you also don't want to walk in there feeling terrified and afraid, because they're going to see that one of the biggest lessons I got in all of this closing hindsight Windows understanding residents was many years ago, reading a story about two women who had both been sexually assaulted in, in Central Park. And it was such a difficult story to read about. And you know, both been through, they both went through a very similar situation. But they ended up responding to it very differently. They both came away thinking I never want this to happen to me again, of course, I mean, of course, they're going to think that. And they both learned as a result of what happened to them that the odds of it happening to a second time are higher after it's happened once. So that this is an interesting lesson in resonance. So what happens is, a woman goes through this experience, and the then she's got this nervousness in her and she's afraid and she walks down the street. Well, the kind of the kind of men who commit these crimes are spineless wimps who pick on victims. So somebody who's walking along with a victim vibration is like the perfect candidate for them. You know, that's, that's who they are. So now this woman puts herself a weirdly, she's in this place of now I'm even more likely. So both women learned this, the one woman dealt with it by never going outside becoming agoraphobic drugs, you know, prescription medication therapy, a few suicide attempts, like it ruined her life. But the other woman learned this information and understood this thing about resonance and said, I never want this to happen to me again. But I'm gonna have to do something different. And what hurt her decision was as she went off to learn a self defense class, and she learned some basic things like a credit card held in the hand, the right way can actually cut open the throat, it's a weird thing to know, but it can happen. And so she would now or keys, you know, put the keys between your fingers when you're walking down the street, and they look like I look, I'm a big fan of the book. Well, what is the book? It's when violence is the only answer I can. The author's look, in my mind at the moment minimum, sometimes a great book. He says violence is only ever the answer when violence is the only answer. So I'm not advocating for violence. I'm just saying this woman went and learned how to defend herself. Then what happened is she would go for dinner with her friends in New York somewhere and then they she'd likely to walk to her car and they would be like, Oh, do you need us to walk you to your car you know, after what happened? And she was looking at me Go Nam, I'm alright. And then she would walk down the street but her vibration was not don't hurt me her vibration was go ahead and make my freakin day because she had learned how to and you know what the the kind of men who commit those crimes are there they're

Alex Ferrari 19:40
They're terrified of that kind of energy.

Eric Edmeades 19:42
Yeah, they're chickens. They're ultimately want to pick on the weak so they don't. And so then what happened is she her friends started asking her and then she started her own classes and then that got franchised and she ended up with a chain of self defense stores for women. And in the interview, they asked her like if you could go into time machine and prevent your own Would you do so? She said, No. That's powerful. And I'm like, Okay, I cannot relate to that. Like I consider myself medium stoic and fairly tough at times, but I can't relate to that. But then she explained it because look, I am more afraid of the woman I was before that happened than I am of the one that I am today that the life of me before is what I'm afraid of the life of living in fear. That's what I'm afraid of. And plus, on top of that, if I get out of the selfishness of it, think of all the hundreds of women that I have now helped to also not live in fear. So no, I can't go back and undo what happened to me. That is it i in hindsight window firmly closed.

Alex Ferrari 20:36
Wow. That's, that's, that's pretty. That's pretty amazing. It's really amazing. Now, I did hear you want to talk about your time with Mr. Tony Robbins, I saw that whole talk, which is fantastic. And you tell the people because this is such a fascinating story. How did you end up on stage was one of the greatest public speakers of his generation? And how were you able to just get there? Not even planned?

Eric Edmeades 21:06
You know, it's, I don't know if I have that kind of time, but I'll do I'll do the best that I can do. The short version, the short, I made the decision to become a speaker, I made the decision to become a teacher. And and I went through like an ideation process. And I, I effectively said, Well, if I wanted to say accelerate, it would be really useful for me to work with some of the top people in the field. So I wrote on a board Tony Robbins Harv Eker Jack Canfield. It's a longer funnier story, how those names ended up on the board, but I wrote them on there with no sense of belief. There was no sense of belief about that. But what I will tell you is that within about six or eight months of writing your name on the board, I became very good friends with Jack Canfield. He is a very good friend of mine. We were members of a private mastermind. Together, I see him until the pandemic like twice a year minimally. And then weirdly, I bumped into Harv Eker, at the grocery store in Turks and Caicos where I was living at the time. And this is an important thing to understand about about vibration and resonance is that when you live in a place like Turks and Caicos, you don't see tourists. You don't even see them. And he was a tourist, but he was dressed like a tourist shopping like a tourist. You don't even see tourists like they just Yeah, but because I've written his name on the board, I saw him and more than that, because I've written his name on the board. I talked to him. I went up and I go, Hey, hi, my name is Eric Edmonds. Weird thing. I wrote your name on the board, and we got to talk. And I ended up having a barbecue at his house that night, and he lived just down the road from me. And he at that point, it was not common knowledge at the time, but he was thinking of selling in a seminar company and he offered it to me like he said, Well, you've sold your business. Why don't you buy myself I could have instantly owned the largest training company in the world. If I wanted to shortcut my speaking career pretty quickly. In the end, I didn't do that. But the reason I mentioned all this is that you asked how I did it. I didn't do it. The Universe did it. I set an intention and the universe followed. I did not create Jack Canfield coming into my life the way he did and joining his mastermind, and it's not a mastermind. You join and pay a membership fee. And no, no, this is a private invite only. John John Gray Jack Canfield, Marianne Williamson, the entire cast and secret pretty much and you know, it's really neat. What happened with Tony was my very good friend Chet Holmes was a good friend of Tony's and Chet was scheduled to teach marketing at an event and unfortunately, Chet had been fighting cancer. And it really looked like he was going to win. And he was booked to speak at an event. And I was flying home and I on the plane realized I hadn't spoken to him in about 10 days. So I wrote him an email. And then I landed at Newark Airport and got into the lounge and immediately got a note from his cousin Brian, that he had passed away in the night, pretty much at the moment that I wrote the email to him like it was, you know, and then I rushed home, and I got this phone call and the phone call is live chats passed away. And and Chad always spoke highly of you. We've never seen you speak. I wasn't the speaker. So I don't know what they were thinking. But Chad always spoke highly of you, you know, would you would you come and speak at this event, Tony really wants you to come and I'm like, Okay, if I even believe you about this, because honestly, I thought it was a rainy April Fool's joke of some kind. I just couldn't, it was so outside my frame of possibility that I didn't believe him. But I then realized that he's telling I said, Okay, I think I believe you know, but here's what I believe what I believe is, is that Chet can't make it you've called every other speaker that you would normally call, but it's 11 days notice, and none of them can do it. So you're calling me as your last ditch offer. You even asked the the crazy dude on the street corner who talks about Jesus? You asked him first. Now, now you're talking to me? And you're hoping I'll say yes. And if I say yes, you will beg Tom to let me do it. And there's silence and he goes, Yeah, but I can convince him. So I told him, give me an hour. That's amazing. I told him to give me an hour and I waited the hour and I called him at the 59 minute mark, and I said, Okay, I'll do it. And in the meantime, he had convinced Tony and 11 days later I got off to fit in. And this is where it's kind of interesting as I had been doing some of the Tony seminar I've been listening to Tony on CDs and I'm sure see tapes.

Alex Ferrari 24:57
The tapes and CDs Yeah,

Eric Edmeades 24:59
And so I knew I knew his material quite well. And I was I was a fan. And I got there. And Tony didn't know anything about me and his team comes to get me to know, hey, Erica, Tony wants to have a word with you in the hallway, but he's not going to introduce you at the event. And it's only me and him at this event. It's a five day business event. And he and I are the only two speakers. And so he's like, he's not going to introduce you. The translator is going to introduce you, but he wants to meet you anyway. So I go out in the hallway. And Tony is like, so how are you feeling about your presentation? And I'm like,

Alex Ferrari 25:28
Great impression great impression by the way.

Eric Edmeades 25:32
You know, I 11 days notice and you want me to use Chet slides in his presentation, I said, I it could be better. And he's like, Well, you can be a lot more confident. And at this point, I'm like, Oh, I'm in trouble. He's not gonna let me but then I remember what Tony said about rapport right? With rapport. You don't you don't meet somebody else's high energy with Look, nobody in the history of calming down has ever calmed down because somebody told him to calm down, right? So so I'm not gonna Tony, take it easy. No. So he'll you can feel more confident go, Tony, I'm plenty confident. I said, the reason I'm here and all your other speakers aren't here is because they their business operators, I'm a business owner, I can be here to talk might not be everything you're expecting, but I bet you it's going to be fantastic anyway, and he goes, Well, alright, then. Then Then it gets kind of funny. And if this is a little crazy, but he changes his mind and decides that he will introduce me because he liked me. And he's like, I want to introduce this guy personally, so So where it gets a bit crazy is that I was going to be introduced by the Chinese translator. So they take in my bio, and they put it into Chinese, and then they throw it away the English one. And then Tony's like, well, where's Eric's bio? I want to introduce him. And then when we throw out the English one, well translate it back. So. So the short version of this is that the bio at the I wasn't even a speaker. So the buyer wasn't even all that well written. It basically said, Look, Eric's not really a speaker. He's really just a traditional business guy. You know, he started his first business and sold it nine years later, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, that's what it said, started his business. So that nine years later, Tony gets up on stage. And he says, You guys, I'm so excited to introduce this next speaker. I was just talking to in the hallway, I can't wait to hear what he's got to say to you guys. He started his first business when he was only nine years old.

Anyway, well, and he and I hit it off, and I and then he booked me to tour with him for about a year and a half teaching marketing and business and stuff. And it was it's really, I'm here with you now. Because Tony created that space from

Alex Ferrari 27:30
Now, what was you know, spending all that time with Tony, what was the biggest lesson you took away from him?

Eric Edmeades 27:36
There, you know, biggest lesson. They're all contextual. You know, I was having lunch with him. We were in Fiji and I was having lunch with him in his house in Fiji. And it was like the day after my talk. And I thought we'd have like a 15 minute lunch, you know, but we had a four hour lunch. And it was he and sage and my wife at the time and we were sitting there and Tony was being effusive about my talk. He's like, I love the way you did this. And then when you transition like that, and the way you tell the stories, and you're using the whole stage, and and he's just going on and on and on like this, and it went on for like 30 minutes, like I and I just I couldn't take it anymore. I just like I couldn't I was full. And I said, Tony, you can have no idea how much this means to me to hear that. And I appreciate it. I said, but I'm really curious about is how can I make it even better? And his eyes are like, No, and he grabbed my journal. And he just, you know, and I think one of the big lessons I got from there is that ask for help, you know, ask for help. Tony really gave me a great deal of personal attention and personal help during that time. I don't know how many people there's there's not many people who've had personal speaking training from Tony doesn't do that. And, and it's because i i It's because I asked and I think that that's that's a big lesson, I still need to learn that lesson from time to time I'm getting better at it. But that that that year with him really, really didn't show me that.

Alex Ferrari 29:07
You mean it seems like you've done so many things in life? I have to believe at a certain point you were afraid you had to break through some. Yeah, how to break through some barriers. What advice do you have for people who are facing that fear every day in either big things? Or even just little things? And how can you do you have any techniques? Do you have any advice?

Eric Edmeades 29:30
So I'm, I've just put the finishing touches on a book that deals with this topic quite handily. The truth is that today, most of us have nothing to be afraid of. Really that's that's that's the truth. I mean, okay. Of course there are exceptions. If we're in the wrong neighborhood, you're in the Ukraine, like you know, there are exceptions and but for most of us there's actually nothing for us to be afraid of. And I mean this literally like I've spent a great deal of time with hunter gatherer communities and watched the way they live day by day. And they live with like genuine things like there are snakes and spiders and lions and rhinos and elephants and you know, and danger and no houses and no no food storage, like they live in a constant knife edge survival routine. And why that's important to know is that that's how our ancestors live for 99% of our history. And so that means that our neurotransmitters evolved for a harsher environment. Our neurotransmitters evolved for needing to survive really difficult conditions. And so the trouble we have today is that we use those same neurotransmitters to communicate about our lives today. Here's an example. You're walking along. I'm walking along, I walked down to riverbank, and I walked down into a driver bed in the low filth in Africa. And there's 14 Lions under the tree. And I'm not this actually happened to me, this is a literal story. And there are 14 lines under the tree. Well, what happens at that moment is your brain immediately goes to fight or flight, right? Immediately you start pumping adrenaline, you start pumping cortisol, cortisol is designed to do many things, but one of the things that it does is that it slows your blood down and actually begins preparing you for coagulation. So that if you do get an injury, you don't bleed out. At the same time, adrenaline is increasing the strength to your muscles and your heart. And then at the same time, you are losing logic, because you only need the most basic logic in a situation like this fast, slow throw, run, you know, you don't, you don't need caught, you don't you're not sitting there thinking about the enterprise dynamics of the lions, right? You know, you're, you're very lot your logic is gone. And then also, you also begin to lose your connection with empathy. The more afraid you are, the less empathy you have. And this is full extreme, when somebody is at their most expensive, they want to save the planet, when somebody is at their most expensive, they want to save the larger community around them. Then if things get a little more tense, they want to save their neighborhood, then if things get really tense, they want to save their house. And then sadly, if things get saved, scary enough, they start choosing which family members to save it. I noticed this sounds harsh, but the truth is, if you have somebody drowning in the water, the ultimate fear of death is coming. And the person they love the most in the world gets in the water with them, they will drown that person, they won't want to it's not logical, it's just that the more afraid you are, the less empathy you have. Now, all of that works just fine. If you're there with the lions, that's what it's for. Right? That's what it's meant for. But How helpful is that when the police pull you over? You're driving along. And you see the blue, red and blues in your back window. You start pumping adrenaline, you start pumping cortisol, you start losing your sense of logic, you start losing your sense of empathy, which means you can't empathize with a policeman. policeman comes to your door, you look nervous. You can't say what you want to say properly. You stumble on your words. Now you now you create a sense of suspicion. And that policeman that police, a policeman starts acting like you're suspicious, you feel more suspicious, and it's a horrible feedback loop. Another example might be you get a legal summons in the mail. Well, you get a legal summons in the mail. If you look at it, the return address is a lawyer, you haven't even opened the envelope yet, you just know that it's a legal summons. You start producing adrenaline, you start producing a cortisol all wonderful if you're about to get a serious paper cut, but not useful otherwise. And so what happens is you read the legal summons through your fear, the more fearful you are, the more negative the world looks. Now, the worst thing you can do is respond to the lawyer from that position. So what I want to say is you say that I must have faced fear Yeah, all the time. I mean, literally all the time. A if you're not doing stuff that you're afraid of, you're just not living. The you know, it's just if you're not asking that person on a date, because you're afraid you're not living if you're not starting that business, because you're afraid you're not living. If you're not having me tell you what, anybody who has children, they don't have a little fear that they're just in denial, it's scary.

Alex Ferrari 33:55
Yeah I have children.

Eric Edmeades 33:57
Best things in life are on the other side of fear. So the issue is not how to get rid of it, the issue is to recognize that it is a opportunity for upgrade. Look, this is a silly metaphor it is but I'm going to use it anyway. When a video gamer gets to the big boss, or gets to the next level, or get you know, your doesn't matter if you're playing Super Mario or Call of Duty, there are these moments where this game suddenly becomes more intense, suddenly, it gets tougher. And if you can get through that stage, then you get all the power ups and all the bonus points and you get to go to the next level. And video gamers come up to that stage. And they don't go, oh, I don't think I'll play this part. They they, they buckle in, they're ready game on, because they know that all of the benefits and the rewards are on the other side of this challenge. Well, guess what? It's the same thing with life. It's the exact same thing. You walk into an office and the guy says you're fired, you should realize you're up against the big boss, you're up against one of those levels. If you handle this badly, you're just going to have to play the level again. Yeah, that's how the game works. If you handle it badly, you're gonna have to play the level again. But if you step up and go game on, then you get to go through that level.

Alex Ferrari 35:08
That's excellent. Excellent, excellent answer to that question. And I'm again, I was a gamer I was an old school Nintendo gamer. So original, original old school. Oh, gee, if you will.

Eric Edmeades 35:22
Mario, Mario, man. Mario Kart, I bet.

Alex Ferrari 35:24
No, no, just straight up to come up, Contra. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, come on. So with all of this, with all of this, your life being what it is? What how is this life's journey affected your spiritual journey? Because I know you're a spiritual man as well. How how has that affected, you know, seeing as many things as you've seen, being around the world, that meeting so many different kinds of people experiences you've had, how's that affected your spiritual journey?

Eric Edmeades 35:58
Life is suffering, right? Sort of Buddha said, but it's ideas like a suffering. I feel that it's a bit like this. Everybody's out there trying to find their purpose in life. And I think that your purpose in life is rather more simple than that. Your purpose in life is to enjoy the journey, as much as possible. You know, we spend a huge amount of our time sacrificing our enjoyment, sacrificing our time sacrificing our health, sacrificing our time with our family, we spent a huge amount of our time sacrificing and doing things that we don't want to do, in order to earn money to maybe one day get to do something that we want to do. And for a lot of people, that means working at a dreary job for 50 weeks of the year, and with the odd vacation and taking their two weeks off on vacation, like like, much of our life is built that way. And and I My feeling is is that people's purpose in life is very simple. It is to enjoy it as much as possible. One years and years ago, over 20 years ago, I published a magazine online, it was the very first internet e zine like the first success face easy. That was called the success expression when I started publishing in 1984. And I wrote in there one day, because all these people are like trying to define success. How do you define success, and everybody has their own version. But I feel quite strongly that that success in life in life itself is defined by the number of days that you've enjoyed the number of days that you actually were happy. And and so what that says to me is, and if people take that badly, it means they think that it means that they're supposed to, like work really hard to create these happy days. And I'm like, no, what it means is that there are some days that are going to be naturally rewarding and easily pleasurable. And there are some days that are going to be significantly more challenging and uncomfortable. And if you really want to magnify your life experience, you will find a way to enjoy both, you will find a way to appreciate both, you will find a way to not simply appreciate the obvious rewards, the yummy food, the nice vacation, the amazing sex, the great concert, the wonderful, whatever you can enjoy that stuff doesn't take any skills to enjoy that. It takes real skill to enjoy climbing Kilimanjaro. It takes real skill to enjoy running a marathon. It takes real skill to enjoy. And listen. People know this on a level they just don't understand it yet often. And I'll prove it to you. What kind of music do people listen to when they've just gone through a terrible heart wrenching heart ripped out of their chest breakup? They listen to Alanis Moriset now.

Alex Ferrari 38:36
I like first album, first album, yes.

Eric Edmeades 38:39
That's it. Like they're, they're listening to it. It's your time in this pain. You know, and but here's the thing, why are they listening to that? Or what's your name Kelly Clarkson, because of you I'm enjoying my pain and misery so much at this moment. The truth is that when somebody is in that despair, and in that pain of misery, the best thing they can do is put on the saddest songs ever and feel it fully and recognize that that is the texture of life. That one day if you ever achieve the singularity, whether it's because somebody figures it out with technology, or because that's what the spiritual plane is, who knows. But it strikes me that if we are if we do move into this infinite space out in that infinite space, there's no mystery there's no fear, there's no regret maybe there's no feelings, maybe there's no emotions, maybe it's just thought and I gotta tell you, if you ever transition into just thought just spiritual existence or or just uploaded existence, I am telling you right now you and I are to, you know, singularity and being selves. We're gonna turn to each other and go, You know what, I miss some stuff, don't you? What do you miss? And you're gonna be like, well, I miss pizza. And I'm like, Yeah, I miss pizza. And you know what else I miss orgasms. And I miss music. And you know what I also miss I hate within this team, but I miss heartbreak. I miss I miss despair. And Miss feelings. Look, here's the real proof. The life lived between the margins is unremembered. If you don't have an emotional response, you will not remember what happened. Correct. But if you have an emotional response, you activate your memory. And that emotional response can be positive, and it activates your memory or it can be less than comfortable, it activates memory. And I think that your purpose in life is to generate memories. So that's it, you know, and look, one more thing. And I know this doesn't sound like the most spiritual thing, it's not really but I guess my view of it is that we have to walk this line between don't take life too seriously and take it plenty seriously. And what I mean by that is that don't take the individual parts of life, the individual aspects of life so very seriously that they can mess you up. But then at the same time, recognize that you get this one life, you get this one body, you get this one experience, no matter you Look, you believe in heaven, you believe in reincarnation, you believe in the singularity. Sure, there might be something after but as it stands, right now, it appears that we only get to remember this one.

Alex Ferrari 41:03
So make it memorable,

Eric Edmeades 41:05
Make it memorable, and have as much fun as you can.

Alex Ferrari 41:09
With all the things that you do in life, I gotta believe there's some stress every once in a while, how do you how do you how do you deal with stress? Do you meditate? Do you like what is it that you do to to bring down the stress or handle stressful situations when they come towards you?

Eric Edmeades 41:28
I have two approaches. Well, I have three approaches to stress. One is my dysfunctional approach. And what I mean by that is that, occasionally I let it get to me. And you know, and I observe that and watch it and try to learn from it. And my experience is that when that does happen, it's because there's an unlearned lesson, I if there's an unlearned lesson, if I can just go to the root cause and find the lesson, then I will release. But otherwise, my more functional ways of dealing with stress. One is to use stress and stress not a bad thing. You know, I mean, I, when I do public speaking, for example, I'm not scared, I'm not nervous, but I do feel some stress, it's called excitement. I feel that is there stress in that. And so certain types of stresses are helpful, and they're useful, and they help to build your resilience and your strength and prepare you for what's coming. But then the other side is what I don't like what I don't agree with what I don't think we should live with this pervasive ever present stress, that's dangerous, that'll shorten your life that'll that'll shorten your quality of life, you know, it's not ideal. And so there are a number of different things that I would suggest are great strategies to deal with that. But I will tell you what isn't a great idea, psychotropic pills, like going to see your your pharmaceutical psychiatrist and having a conversation with them about what pill can help you feel better. That is never a good idea. I my rough idea about this is that out of every 10,000, behavioral modifying drugs that are prescribed to somebody to help them, maybe one of them was actually medically necessary and the rest are not, that is not how to deal with these problems. And if they are necessary, then we should only regard them as a crutch for a short time until we heal not as a chronic treatment for a long term. And unfortunately, that's how many of them are these days. What we have noticed in one of my companies, wild fit does nutritional coaching for people so we help people rebalance the relationship with food. And what was amazing about this is we knew when we did this, that we would help people lose weight, we knew that we would help people reduce inflammation. And we had a theory which has now been proven out that we would help people reverse type two diabetes and that kind of stuff. But what we didn't know was that countless plants of arts would tell us that they had ended their medications now hold on, we knew that they would end their blood pressure medications, we suspected strongly that they would end their end to reduce their thyroid medications and their diabetes medications. We knew all that was on the table. But it never occurred to me that they would be ending their antidepressant use that they that they would no longer be depressed that they would be happy. We've had people come to us and say like, I've been suicidal for years, and suddenly I'm not and you know, all we've done with them. All we've done is helped them have a better relationship with food, water, movement, exercise, sunlight, what have you. If you give the body what it needs, the body responds better to everything. That's it. I don't believe a single person should be going to see a psychiatrist until first they fix their diet. If you really handle your nutritional needs, your hydration needs. Your sunlight means you do that stuff properly. 99% of what we consider to be stress and psychological problems, anxiety, all kind of stuff goes away. So there's that. Then the next thing is is yes, meditation, journaling, contemplation, these things are really important. One of the things that we've lost is thinking time. Yeah, I see a little gray in there. So I figured you and I can't be so far pardoning. We're similar vintage, sir. There you go. Similar. So that means that you remember what life was like when we could think when we used to be forced to think when you were sitting at the doctor's office and all the magazines he had they were eight years old and you couldn't they were like because he was highlighted. There you go. So you just had to sit there you you might be old enough to remember what TVs what planes were like when they didn't have TVs and nobody had an iPad. You just sat there and thought you stuck in traffic. You just sat there and thought you know like we used to do a lot of thinking, but now we acquiesce our thinking to our devices. And we are constantly having our brain stimulated by our devices. And so when we do that we're messing up our serotonin and dopamine production. Because guess what Facebook and Instagram know that if they trigger your serotonin and dopamine, they can dictate you and then you can't help but pick up your device. So you know what perfect, I mean, basically, they're drug dealers, they just are selling you the drugs you make inside your body, but they are Zuckerberg is a drug dealer. And so when we recognize all that, well, what's the harm of not thinking anymore? Well, not thinking means that we don't process our lives anymore. We don't self evaluate the same way anymore. I mean, this whole Karen movement, the Karen and Kevin or Karen and Ken, or whatever, you know, they're the means, like, fully grown adults having completely emotional meltdowns that are that are just completely unacceptable. Two causes, as far as I'm concerned, two primary causes and other influences. But the one causes, there's no more self reflection, everybody's just, you know, looking at their device, and they don't get to self reflect on their behavior anymore. But here's the another reason. And this is a big principle of personal development and parenting development, any behavior that is rewarded is likely to be repeated. So if you see a 38 year old woman having a Karen style meltdown at the at the, at the bus stop, I can tell you right now, her parents gave her what she wanted when she had a temper tantrum. That's what happened. Right? So between those two influences, now you've got people out there that are that are in a, you know, just difficult to be around. And that's again, we're not we're not it's because we're not taking contemplation time we don't, we don't sit there in the old days, you'd have dinner with your friends. And then you would think a lot about the things you said and the things they said and you think, you know, maybe I shouldn't have told that joke. Or maybe I shouldn't have said that thing, right. And your your your your personal development was happening constantly. Now, you're just looking at Cute Kittens on on Instagram. So meditation and journaling are a big part of those things. And I'll share one thing about meditation, I started meditating at the age of 12, by accident, I was watching an episode of the $6 million man, and there was a guy on the show that could hold his breath, as long as he held an image of this calm lake. And they shot it really well. And I remember. So I just started doing that meditation as well, whenever I was in a stressful situation, or whenever I had to wait or I was bored. Or whenever my teacher couldn't hold my attention, I would just go to that lake. And I changed a little bit, I would paddle across the lake, trying not to create any ripples in my meditations. And I would have been doing that since I was 12. And so then I got into exploring meditation. And I can tell you that it is absolutely paramount to my quality of life. But I can give one clear, quick example. My business my first business was facing implosion, I believed I was gonna go out of business. I we were profitable, but we'd run out of money and I'd mismanaged somehow. And money wasn't coming in. And I woke up on a Monday and my accountant told me that we couldn't make payroll or anything on Friday and, and we're just gonna, we're gonna go out of business. And I just I knew that I couldn't, I didn't see a way out. And that morning, I prayed. And I don't really my version of spirituality doesn't really involve asking somebody else to fix my problems. But I prayed anyway. And what I prayed for was a nervous breakdown. I asked for one I was like, I just I just want to lose it all. I just want to I just want a nervous breakdown because this is inevitable. And my ego is on the line. And so the best thing, and my previous boss had had a nervous breakdown. And so I knew what they were. He'd had a nervous breakdown and everybody had sympathy for him. That's why his business went down because he had this nervous breakdown. So I was like, okay, nervous breakdown. Perfect. That's what I want, please. Downloading come on download the never script, but it wasn't available from the app store. I couldn't I couldn't download the nervous breakdown, it wouldn't come. And so I just I was sitting and I was gonna get in the bath and I grabbed a book an audio book and the audiobook was there's a spiritual you mentioned Wayne Dyer, right at the start of our talk was there's a spiritual solution, every problem and in the audiobook Wayne is telling the story and wings like, I was really going through some hard times I was really struggling and, and you know, when he spoke slowly, it's like, I was really struggling with something and I just needed to talk it out with a friend and so I picked up the phone and I called Deepak and I said Deepak answered Hello. And he answered he goes, and I said, Deepak, I'm really struggling and I just need to talk. Meditate. No, no, I know. I know that meditate. I know I know to meditate but I just these things are just too much and life is so meditate. I know I'm when I'm Wayne Dyer. I am I'm Dyer Wayne, you know, I write about that I know about meditating. It's just that right now. I just feel like I need to meditate and call me back. Then Wayne says he went off and meditated and then he never called Deepak back about that thing. It's like, and I listened to that and I laughed my butt off and then I and then I meditated. And then I remember one of the most important things ever and that is the least motivated you are to meditate, the more you probably need to the more you don't want to meditate, the more you probably need to

Alex Ferrari 49:59
That's A grits should be a t shirt should be a t shirt. Now, during you know on in our lives as we're walking, and we got that little, little voice in our head, who's, you know, he's he or she is not the nicest all the time and negative talk the monkey brain as they say in the meditating circles. How do you quiet that negative thought? Because I have to imagine you've got the you've got that monkey inside your head to say, Eric, you really want to start this new business? Who do you think you are? You're not going to go on stage with Tony Robbins, like what are you thinking? That kind of stuff? How did you put that silence that to be able to get to where you gotta go?

Eric Edmeades 50:40
Yeah, that's, that's a that's a tough one. There's, there's, there's a lot to unpack there. I think I can focus on two solutions that I use quite a lot. One is align and redirect. And so funny, you mentioned the Tony Robbins thing. When I said yes to Tony, when I said yes, to go to Fiji wasn't really the smartest thing I'd ever done. If you think it through, it turned out to be but if you think it through, I hadn't been on stage for three years, I'd been running a movie studio, I wasn't a speaker. I didn't know how to do like, I didn't know what I was doing. And so in a sense, it was almost like I was a go kart driver. And somebody just said, could you just fill in for my Formula One driver today, you know, and, and I said yes to that. And, and so I found myself having a great deal of self doubt and stuff, and I'm on the plane, and I'm having all this self doubt, I'm thinking I'm just gonna make a fool of myself. And I'm gonna make a fool of myself in some in front of somebody that I admire a great deal who's done a great deal for me. And I just, and I found all this happening. And then I thought, Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second, wait a second. How do you want it to be? And so I started thinking about how I wanted it to be. And I was like, I want to do really well. And I've been working on it. And I am a business owner. And I know what I'm talking about. And when I have spoken about stuff, it's gone really well. So why would I second guess this? And he's second guessing that's gonna help and I just start coaching myself. I just and so at one point, I literally like I'm feel like I'm two people having this conversation. And at one point I finally the negative part of me relent. And he goes, okay, okay, you're right, we got to do this, we got to do this thing. In fact, that's it. If we do well enough, we do well enough. Maybe we can even get on the list. Maybe we can even get on the list that Tony would call us again, if you ever had a problem. And the other me said, No, we don't want to get on the list. We want to be the list. And somehow I'd gone from freaking out to touching down in Fiji and knowing that I was playing a bigger game. And it's really important because after that process on the plane, I recreated the entire talk. I recreated the entire talk because it wasn't at standard yet. And so that's something we need to know is that very often when we're having that negative talk, it's because there's something we need to do. It's there's there's something not right yet. And your mind is just trying to get you to find that thing. I went in, and I there was this one story, I was planning to tell it about an hour, but I realized no, for this audience, I got to bring it to the front, I can get Tony's engagement that way, I brought it to the front. And it changed everything that by the way, Tony, they told me he would only stay for 15 minutes. And as long as he was happy, he would leave. And he stayed for three and a half hours laughing and enjoying it. And every second sentence was in Chinese. So it wasn't even the easiest presentation in the world. So that that coaching the self talk thing is is a big thing. You know, what would a coach say to you in that situation? And possibility thinking, you know, getting clear about what how you want it to be? How do you want it to be? Remember, your negative mind is going What if it does go like this? What if it does go like this, but your other mind could be going Yeah, but I want it to go like this, I want you to go like this and that, for me that that works. But there's an even more powerful version. It's a little dangerous. But it's really powerful. And that is something that I call rock bottom perspectives. And it's based on something I mentioned to you earlier, and that is that sometimes rock bottom is the thing that people need to turn their lives around. But the trouble with rock bottom is that it's frankly dangerous. Some people don't survive rock bottom, literally, some people lose everything, including their lives. So what do we want to do? Do we want to hit rock bottom or not? And so one of the things that I do is I do exercises with clients when I'm in my workshops and stuff where I will take somebody who's scared about something. And rather than try to reframe them and motivate them and inspire them, I'll go whoa, come back. I'm gonna go. How bad could it be? Tell me, tell me the truth. You lose your job. Then when you lose your house, do you have any savings? No, you lose the house too. So you're gonna go through personal bankruptcy? How bad is that going to be? And I just play all out. And then what everybody finds out is that they're going to turn it around. They're gonna they're gonna turn around. Now there are some exceptions to this. There are some exceptions and somebody's dealing with really serious, say alcohol or drug addiction or what have you. But then the exercise works another way it only it only ever goes one of two ways. One is they realize that things were never going to be as bad as they thought they were going to be. That's 99 percent. We worry about shit that's never going to happen and never going to be as bad as we thought. Why has some ministers say pessimism is safer than optimism? That's why That's it. But but every now and again, the rock bottom is that that it really is that bad. But why not go visit it now? Like why not go see it now? Why not? And by the way, you'll often hear this with say alcoholism where say say that husband has an alcohol problem, what is the wife doing? Hiding the alcohol, waking him up so that he's not late for work? covering for him when he's inexcusably rude and at dinner, stop doing that shit, don't hide the alcohol by more like, you know, like, Don't wake them up, let him get fired from his job. Now, I realized these are tough things to say. And you know, you're living in it. But every time you soften the landing, you're moving rock bottom further away. And what this person might need is actual rock bottom. But better than that, is what if they could associate to rock bottom without ever getting there? What if they could and so I've had both experiences in my life there was there was something going on in my life, you know, maybe four or five years ago, and I was like kind of stressing about it, stressing about it. And I dove in and I dove in and I realized I was right to be stressing, I was absolutely right to be stressing about it. And I had to do something about it. I had somebody working with me that I knew was stealing from me that I knew is overcharging me that I knew was misrepresenting things, that and that I liked a great deal. But I just knew this in my heart, and I questioned it and I would get all these absurdly confused, you know, bubbly answers, you know, the kind that double talk, but we're doing the math, you know, that kind of stuff, you know, and, and I, I one day went out and projected into my future and saw where it was going. And it was painful. It was the end it was it was really bad. And it was only by projecting my consciousness out in the future that I was able to, like, what would I do if everything went that bad, I would finally take action, well, then I better take action now. So sometimes you push your consciousness out and you and you experienced the rock bottom. But then other times, you push your consciousness out and you realize the rock bottom was never going to be that bad. And I had this one, I had my movie studio in California. We were I bought it and immediately found out the guys who sold it to me and defrauded me and lied to me cheated me. And it looked like I was going to lose everything. And for many months, every single week, I would be worried about losing the studio every week. Payroll was a difficulty. worker comp was a difficulty union things were difficulty. Every week I faced the reality of losing everything and everybody losing their jobs. And one day I just I was like, I can't live like this anymore. So How bad would this be? And I sat with my wife and we talked about it. I said, Well, what's the worst thing happens? We lose everything. Okay, we lose everything we've invested in this. Well, we still own our house, okay, mortgage, right. But we still own our house. She still had her accountancy practice, which was part time, but it was enough to since we had the house and you know, like we could just barely squeaked by, which means we weren't going to end up in like personal bankruptcy. And then we're like, yeah, which means, frankly, I could just take a couple of months off. I mean, we'd be skinny about it, we wouldn't be going out for meals and stuff. But I could take a couple months off and recalibrate my life. And then I'd find the next thing and all of a sudden we realized it wasn't that bad. If it happened, and then and then here's where the magic. The real magic was, he was like, I almost hope this does happen. By the way, the minute that we found that the minute that we found that we won a major contract to do the movie Elysium with magnesium and of course, we then one Iron Man, and then we won Pirates of the Caribbean three, we then entered the only profitable trading period in the history of the company even for I bought it. We turned things it was phenomenal. And you can you can get into the esoteric conversation did that happen? Because I changed my vibration? Is it because we suddenly were happier. And we were we were enjoying our lives again that we attracted these things. If you watch the secret, you might say yes, I say who knows. But what I do know is is that I got to enjoy the time more. That's my main issue.

Alex Ferrari 58:51
So you were happier doing the thing where before you were terrified?

Eric Edmeades 58:55
Yeah. Now it was just a video game. I'm like, Okay, it's difficult, and it's challenging. But you know, it's a game.

Alex Ferrari 59:01
Well, then that's the thing. That's one of the reasons why gamers go into the boss level all in and they stop themselves, because they know there's no real, you know, real danger. So they just go all in.

Eric Edmeades 59:13
That's, that's interesting. Hold on, you're onto something here. And this is a real human challenge. We're all going to have to face very soon very soon. First of all, when the gamers are done playing all of Halo, when they finished it all, what do they do? They go to insane level, they upstage the level and they play it again. Harder. Yeah, that's how we should that's how life should be. That's how we should be doing it. You play it harder every time now. Now, let me ask you a question. You're an original gamer. You remember Pac Man? Right? Then you watch Pac Man to asteroids, asteroids to Dragon Slayer, Dragon Slayer, whatever. The games have been getting increasingly more realistic every single day. And we are at best five years away from video games that are indecipherable from your real life experience. We're talking about virtual reality that stimulates your neurology so holodeck you the things you touch.

Alex Ferrari 59:58
It's holodeck. Yeah, the holodeck Gotcha.

Eric Edmeades 1:00:00
Exactly. So now let me ask you a question, Alex, you have an opportunity to do a HALO jump out of a plane, you have an opportunity to do a HALO jump onto the plane, it's a simulation. And what's going to happen is as your primary shoot isn't going to open, and you're going to be free falling, and you're going to have a like long extended freefall, you're going to feel the wind in your hair, it's going to be amazing. Now you'll know you're in a sin, you'll know you're in a sin, but you're going to feel it all. And then at the last minute, your shoot is going to your backup shoe is going to pop and you're going to land on the ground. And that's how it's going to be, would you want to do this sin?

Alex Ferrari 1:00:34
Before I answer that, as you were saying it, I felt myself getting scared and nervous. As you were talking about it, I started to feel like certain things were starting certain chemicals were starting to get released inside my own mind, as you were just talking about, that's how powerful the story that you were creating in my mind was, and I was like, my voice was like, Dude, he's just talking about it. You're not You're not gonna jump, you're not this or that. So would I do it? I would say yes. But it's a sim. But then we're going to start getting into the conversation of the matrix.

Eric Edmeades 1:01:16
Well, that is where we're going. The next question is, you've now done that jump two or three times knowing it's a sim, and you're now bored with it. Now I tell you, Hey, Alex, I didn't mention this earlier. But we have a version of the game that is indecipherable from real life. It's indecipherable from real life. So you will not know you're in the game. So you will actually think it's real. And you won't know whether your emergency chute is going to open. It's going to be real. You've done it the boring way. Would you like to feel it for real life? Would you like to feel it for real life?

Alex Ferrari 1:01:48
After knowing that, but I won't know it when I'm in it.

Eric Edmeades 1:01:51
You know it now, but you won't know it when you're in it to make it very real.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:56
Oh, yeah, of course, I would do it. Why? Because you know, instinctively that you're safe, which now that you're in it, you won't. And when you're in it, you won't. But knowing the information that I know now, even while I'm experiencing it, I might be disconnected from the reality of what's going on. But I want to give myself that experience. Now, this is a wonderful analogy to the soul body connection. Yep, it is exactly. This is a wonderful analogy to it. Because as the soul if you want to, if you want to go into that, that in the world of that conversation, you're a soul. And someone's telling you a guide, or somebody's going, Okay, you want to go back down to earth, you want to learn some lessons, okay, you're going to jump out of some planes, this is going to happen, you're going to do this, you're gonna you're gonna, your hearts gonna break, you're gonna, you're gonna be the one of the richest people in the world, you're gonna lose it all, only to have to rebuild it again. And all you're gonna learn all of this stuff, but you won't know that this is a simulation, you won't know that you this is not real. This is part of just a school that you're going to to learn these lessons. Do you want to go? And as the soul goes, I'm a soul. I'm eternal. Nothing could happen to me. Let's go. Yep. And if you think about your life that way, which is hard for a lot of people. But that simulation idea, man, that's such a wonderful analogy to it.

Eric Edmeades 1:03:24
It's how it is. And I like I look at that and go if you want to take the extensional further, and I think I think Elon Musk has made some comment like this. I can't say it's partly original thought, but it's definitely been influenced by what's going on in the world. And what are the people who said but consider this. If you can, if you ask the question of whether or not we have humans on the rest of the planet, like Sorry, sorry, life on other planets, you have to assume that Earth is in the middle of that bell curve. And that means that there are planets that have unicellular protozoa on them somewhere out there in universe, but that there are also planets that have added life for billions of years, billions and billions of years that are so far advanced beyond us. And if we're only five years out from fully integrated, a complete illusion sim, then that means there are already societies that have that which means you and I right now are living in a sim written by some 13 year old acting face kid and we call them God.

Alex Ferrari 1:04:14
There's that conversation as well. Know your app, you start going in your head will start hurting. If you go if you start going down this this train of thought your head will start.

Eric Edmeades 1:04:28
Well, I you know, I only do those thought processes because what I'm really trying to do is I'm trying to say we really don't know we don't we don't know what's next. We don't know what was before. What we know is now and the truth of the matter is the more we can enjoy the now the better. And that means enjoy the easy stuff, but it also means enjoy the tough stuff. The person have climbed Kilimanjaro seven times. The person who is entirely focused on the summit doesn't often make it to the summit. The person who finds to enjoy every step. Every conversation every like and every every view, if they focus on that they get to the summit.

Alex Ferrari 1:05:07
That's amazing. I'm going to ask you a couple questions ask all my guests are, what do you believe is your mission in this life?

Eric Edmeades 1:05:15
So missions and purpose are a little different, you know, I think purpose is really to, you know, to enjoy it. And then missions are things like us completing the game metaphor. Missions are like quests that we undertake at various stages of our lives. And so my current mission really is just, it's to, through having a great deal of fun, improve the quality of people's lives in a variety of ways. There's three gifts that I gave myself as a young man, one was a level of economic stability and freedom by figuring out entrepreneurship. The second one was comfort and confidence with public speaking, which I was so terrified of before. And then the third one was a healthy body through a great relationship with food, exercise, hydration, what have you. And so my mission in life is to give those gifts to billions of people. And that's what I do every day.

Alex Ferrari 1:06:05
And what do you believe is the ultimate purpose of life?

Eric Edmeades 1:06:09
Enjoy it. Enjoy it thick and thin life is always and consistently happening for you, not to you, especially when it doesn't feel that way.

Alex Ferrari 1:06:21
That's very true. And you're just throwing out T shirts left and right, my friend. I mean, you're I mean, you could you start a T Shirt Company with these things I'm just saying. And where can people find out more about the work you're doing, Eric?

Eric Edmeades 1:06:32
Well, you know, I manage my own Instagram account. So that's probably the best place to just come and reach me. But if people are interested in food, what we call food freedom, like having a great relationship with with food, then getwildfit.com For people who are interested in self employment or entrepreneurship and want to figure out how to build a business that like improves your quality of life and businessfreedom.com And people who are interested in influence public speaking presentations, that sort of stuff, whether for business or political or social campaigns, or what have you, then you want to become comfortable and confident public speaking and check out speakernation.com

Alex Ferrari 1:07:07
Eric, it has been an honor and a privilege talking to you my friend was so much fun talking to a fellow old school gamer and using these wonderful analogies. So I really do appreciate you my friend. Thank you for everything that you do with your work and for the for the world in general. So I appreciate you my friend.

Eric Edmeades 1:07:24
Cheers. Thanks for having me.