– Welcome, everybody to another YouTube Hangout,
super excited to be here again with you.
I have a new set of friends, a power couple called
the Power Couple of Personal Development,
super excited to have a chat today,
Alexi and Preston are joining us from Australia.
They’re on tour, sharing their wisdom, and knowledge,
and enlightenment, and they’re going to,
what time is it there, 7:30 in the morning?
– It is, nice and early.
– We’re going to talk about the habits of success,
and hopefully learn something from these guys.
Welcome aboard, guys!
– Yeah, thanks so much, happy to be here.
– Ooh, ooh!
– I love it, that’s the intro.
So, for people who don’t know about you
and what you’re doing yet, give us the quick intro,
who are Alexi and Preston?
– So, the short answer to that is
we are transformational junkies, we are authors,
we just wrote a book called Now or Never,
which hit best-seller list in the U.S., actually.
We speak all over the world;
we lead transformational and personal development workshops;
and we support entrepreneurs
in building a body, a semantic body,
which means having the actual embodiment piece,
to what’s happening here,
’cause a lot of people learn head knowledge,
but they never actually let it land in the body.
– Interesting, so you just
opened up a can of worms already, there.
What are some of the things we need to be,
people read books all the time, people watch videos,
they go to seminars.
We may be really kind of book smart,
how do we take that and start to actually apply
and get results in our life and businesses?
– Yeah, it’s a great question. – That’s number one.
– So many people stuff this thing up,
and yet they never actually practice it.
The workshops Preston and I do, it’s somatic work,
which means tapping into the wisdom of the body.
And unfortunately, it’s not something you can do online,
it’s something that you have to be in the experience of
to truly get the cellular learning,
and it’s phenomenal what happens
when you have a group of leaders in a room
and you see how they show up
in front of that room on day one,
and on day two by the end of the day
you see a complete shift.
They’re standing strong,
they’ve let leadership land in their cells,
they’re grounded, they’re breathing,
and all of that truly builds a body
that people can trust, and that’s what’s enrolling
when it comes to leadership and success.
– Yeah, and for those of you who are like,
“Okay well, I can’t go to your damn workshop
“so I kind of (breaks up) that,” it starts with awareness.
You can’t intervene in a world you can’t see.
We cannot change what we cannot see,
and a lot of people are working on what they can see.
And so for us, step number one,
and this goes into the success habits,
is starting with awareness,
because awareness proceeds choice,
so one would have to
really take a deep dive into the places
where they try to avoid the most.
– Yeah, and what’s interesting is when you’re in
experiential work, what happens is
we put you in chaotic situations where you have
no mental ability to try and control how you show up,
and it’s how you actually show up in the world,
and we give you feedback on how you show up real-time,
so that awareness gives you the choice to say,
“Okay, how do I want to choose to show up when I’m in chaos,
“or when I’m in stress, when I’m in overwhelm,”
and we build the body to support that.
So like Preston was saying,
awareness is the step number one, it is the key,
because once you see how you’re legitimately showing up,
not how you intend to show up,
but how you’re legitimately showing up
and you’re getting real-time feedback,
especially for people in your life on that,
then you can choose powerfully to move forward.
– Where do you think the biggest
disconnect is for people on that,
where they feel like they show up a certain way,
but they’re actually showing up this way?
I know it’s a general question, but in general, (laughs),
what do you feel like is some of the biggest, yeah.
– It’s everywhere, a lot of people have the intention
that they want to spread love,
and they want to be enrolling in their business,
and they want to support others.
But yet, the feedback that people are giving them
in our workshops, and that we’re giving them,
is that they’re closed off,
they come across as fake or inauthentic,
and when you’re showing up that way, people don’t trust you.
They’re kind of like, I feel like there’s a disconnect.
I feel like something’s between us,
and I’m not going to say yes to your business,
I’m not going to say yes to your online program,
because there’s something about you
that I can’t put my finger on that I don’t buy yet.
– Yes, and what that comes down to
is trying to get it right.
So many of us are trying to get it right,
because we’ve been brought up in a society
that has told us over, and over, and over again,
to do one thing to get another thing.
And so, a lot of people unconsciously,
this is not a conscious mind thing,
the unconscious mind is operating trying to get it right,
and so, there’s this mask that’s showing up
in front of them, and that mask is disingenuine,
and people can read through.
The bullshit meter now, especially with so much stuff
that’s on the internet, is like, (snaps).
– It’s so high. (laughs)
– I’m an entrepreneur,
and I want to be a visionary, and be a team leader,
and inspire my people, and when things are going good,
maybe that’s what I do;
but then when something happens,
kind of urgent crisis, now you turn into
this rage-aholic person who you don’t want to be,
but that is who you are when things are not going right.
Like, that sounds like you’re forcing them
into these stressful, painful situations,
like how do you act?
Okay great, so that’s how I act,
I don’t want to be that person, now what do I do?
You’ve opened up this giant wound,
now how are you going to fix me?
– Yeah, so this brings us to step number two which is
being radically responsible.
And again, you need the awareness first, to say,
“Oh, I’m showing up like a raging lunatic in chaos,”
in you’re example, and with step number two it’s going,
“Okay, how am I fully-responsible for this?”
If I was taking 100% responsibility of the entire pie,
how did I create this?
How did I allow this?
How did I perpetuate this situation?
And how am I choosing to be the space for chaos?
Because in our work, in The Bridge,
we say that you are the bridge to all areas of your life,
meaning chaos cannot enter your being,
unless you build a bridge for it.
And that’s where radical responsibility comes in,
because we see a lot of leaders,
especially leaders that we coach and work with,
that when shit hits the fan and everything goes awry,
what happens is they go,
“Oh well, this person in my management team
isn’t doing this,” or “the economic climate is doing this,”
and it’s always outside of themselves.
So, we always bring it back to them,
because when you’re taking a 100% responsibility,
as you know, you have 100% of the power to make a change.
So, that’s really the next thing to do.
– And what did you call it, radical?
– Radical responsibility. – Radical responsibility.
So then, the people who come in and will say,
“But you know, the economy, the president,
“my resources,” whatever excuse,
how do you break through that and say like,
“Guys, you know it’s all on you.”
How do you make them feel it?
‘Cause they may think it, but how do you get them
to actually understand that?
– Yes so, here’s one of the things to understand:
we are linguistic beings, so we build with our language.
We create worlds with our language, and so one of the things
that we support people in understanding
is the distinction between being a victim,
and holding victim consciousness.
And so some people, things do happen,
we cannot control what is happening, right?
There are certain realities that are, right?
And the moment we start arguing with reality,
we move into victim consciousness,
we move into this, “I’m at the effect of the world,”
and, “Oh woe is me,” right?
And a lot of times it doesn’t look
like victim consciousness, but that’s exactly what it is.
Whenever you’re blaming, or complaining,
and we say all the time, “Your complaint is your mission.”
If you’re complaining,
that means that you have some part of you
that believes there is a better solution
for how this gets to be worked out.
And so, you can be a stand for something,
and hold the space of love all at the same time.
– You guys are takin’ us on a trip today,
this is not what I expected,
but I’m enjoyin’ it, man, this is good!
We’re getitn’ some live questions:
what do I do if I’m only 16?
Do you deal with younger people?
I guess there’s less baggage,
but there may be less confidence,
how does this change depending on how old you are,
or where you are in life?
– The next step, this brings us straight to number three,
the next step is act now.
That means clearing your past,
and really getting responsible with your past,
so that you can create, clear, and then present,
and move forward powerfully in the future.
For anyone that’s young,
you guys have an extreme advantage,
because you have less baggage;
you have less crap that you need to move through;
you have less conditioning, less programming,
less mapping of the world on your psyche;
so you’re showing up with a cleaner slate.
And at 16 if you’re watching shows like this,
you are like killin’ it already! (laughs)
– Yeah, for sure.
– And it’s really cool, Evan,
because I don’t know if you’ve noticed this,
but we’ve noticed in our work
that our audience is getting younger.
I mean, we’re getting 16 year olds,
we’re getting 13 year olds,
we’re getting 12 year olds who are watching our stuff.
It’s really powerful to see
the generational shift that’s happening,
where young people are waking up at a lot younger of an age,
and they’re saying, “I’m not buying into the system anymore,
“the system doesn’t work.”
The old paradigm of go to school, get a good degree,
get a good job, get married, have 2.5 kids, it doesn’t work,
it’s not secure anymore.
The world of the entrepreneur
is really picking up right now.
– Yes, and that never was secure,
and that’s the thing that this illusion,
this Western contingency plan
where we do all of this stuff over there,
to get some future “goodness”,
none of that stuff actually was true in the first place.
So if you’re 16, or 60,
our advice is the same: go have fun!
See what you’re made of, step off the ledge, go too far,
because it’s not about getting there, and that’s the issue.
So many of us are trying to get high on good,
and we’re trying to get there.
We go, (inhales), “One more hit, I got to get there,
“I got to get good!” – I got to get
my first million, then I got to get 10 million,
then I got to do this and get a private jet.
– Which is slavery. – It is.
– Man, you’re still a slave to the jet and everything else.
It’s not the mountain that we conquer, but the self.
And so, it’s about who you become on the way,
it’s about where you go in your own consciousness,
where you have to go within yourself along that journey.
You know, we get so caught up on the destination,
we want the product, but we miss the process.
And so, it’s about falling in love with the process.
– And falling in love with the game of life.
You mention the reasons and the excuses,
and especially in business, there’s so many of ’em, right?
There’s so many that stand
in between you and your dream life,
and Preston and I preach that being unreasonable
is where mastery is.
To truly be unreasonable is to truly, like Preston said,
see what you’re made of, see what you’re built for,
and stretch yourself out of what you think your limits are.
– I like it, I like it, this is great.
Speakin’ of limits, let’s go deeper into the limits,
’cause a lot of people have the limiting beliefs like,
“I love what you’re saying, I want to live a happy life,
“I want to go and live on the edge and step over sometimes,
“but whatever, I’m not good enough, I don’t have,” you know.
How do you address, ’cause it makes sense logically,
but they don’t feel it in their heart,
they tell themselves they can’t do it, so they don’t,
how do you address someone’s limiting beliefs
once they set this big, ambitious goal for themselves?
– So, we set micro-wins for the macro,
because small hinges swing big doors.
So, it’s the little bites daily,
it’s this practice, but lower the bar.
A lot of people have the bar so damn high,
that it’s almost, it’s fantasy standards.
They’re holding themselves to something so gigantic,
that is seems like a huge task.
But if you just lower the bar, and one of the things
we help and support entrepreneurs with all the time
is reaching for the low-hanging fruit,
meaning, reaching for the things that make your heart smile.
Because you bring you everywhere you go,
you are the bridge to all areas of your life.
And so if you, if your cup is filled,
and you’re giving from the overflow, if you’re having fun,
if you’re enjoying the process and the journey,
that becomes attractive winning,
winners are attractive, why?
Because their frequency is higher,
and you get there by honoring what is,
by reaching for what you can reach for,
instead of trying to climb the whole damn tree,
get up to the top, and fall out, and break your back.
– Yeah, and that goes back to another thing.
I think a lot of people think that they’re the only person
that has the limiting beliefs.
A lot of people are in their own world going,
“Oh well, I feel like I’m unworthy,
“I feel like I can’t do this,
“I feel like who am I to make that happen?”
And we remind people that all of humanity
is being with that conversation.
And, we also remind people like even,
we know a lot of people
that play in the billion dollar level,
and they’re friends of ours,
and they’re some of the top wealthiest people in the world,
and they still have limiting beliefs, you know?
And we remind people
that when you’re stretching out of your comfort zone,
your ego, (snaps), is going to come up, and pop up, and go,
“Oh God, okay, I got to try and keep you safe,
“so I’m going to throw all these limiting beliefs out here
“to try and keep you in the comfort zone,
“to keep you small, to hold you back,
“because you’re about to step into a new world,
“and that world of the unknown is scary for me,”
says the ego.
So, know that when you’ve got the limiting beliefs,
it’s actually a signpost that you’re about to
step into something that’s really big,
that could be really big for your soul to open up,
and stretch yourself, and again,
become that leader that can hold the vision
that you want for your life.
– Okay, and I’m going to wrap this all up in a bow,
because she nailed it. (Evan laughing)
It’s resistance versus alignment.
– Yeah.
– Most people are in resistance to what is.
What’s coming up for them?
Oh, a limiting belief,
“Oh, I’m not good enough, oh resist,
“I shouldn’t be saying that.
“You know, Evan, Evan is always great,
“oh I should be like Evan, I should be like these,” no.
See, this is resistance, when those thoughts come up for me
about, “Oh, you’re just anther Black boy,
“no one’s going to believe you,”
that stuff comes up for me.
The dyslexia, that comes up for me.
“Oh, you’re not as smart as everyone else,
“’cause you don’t read as fast.
“How dare you be an author, when you’re dyslexic?
“No one’s going to read your book,” like that stuff comes up.
But when it does, instead of me resisting it,
I meet it with love and compassion.
And instead of me letting it go, it let’s go of me,
because everything is passing, everything is moving,
always changing, always flowing.
That’s the nature of life,
but we get in trouble when we try to hold on to it,
and figure it out, and make it wrong.
– I love it, so how do we turn that
from the subconscious to the conscious?
Because that voice saying,
“You’re not good enough,” whatever, then saying,
“This is a signpost to say
“now it’s your chance to be a leader,”
our pattern, our decades of life have taught us
that this scary and come back.
How do you make a conscious choice,
and not fall back into the same pattern
that you’ve live your entire life to say, “You know what?
“This scary thing is actually my opportunity,
“the obstacle is the way,”
like this is my path to be a leader.
It makes sense logically, but how do you even
catch yourself in the moment when you’re overwhelmed,
and feeling like you need to back away?
– The big thing with overwhelm is you want to breathe.
It’s such a simple tip. – Yeah, start there.
– It’s such a simple tip, but most people are breathing
from like here up, and we go, (pants).
And that actually in the limbic system
creates stress and overwhelm.
We study the body and the internal system,
and what’s happening in our leadership,
this is stress and overwhelm,
when you drop your breath all the way into your belly,
what happens is you actually ground into the Earth,
you ground into the center-point of your body,
and you have more movement and more choice.
Just like when you see animals on the ground
that are so fluid, and flexible,
and they can jump from here to here like a cat,
or something, it’s ’cause they’re grounded
in the center-point of their body.
Most humans are walking around
being chest breathers like this,
and we wonder why we’re so stressed out.
So, drop your breath into your body,
that’s the first step in terms of awareness.
– ‘Cause that brings more oxygen to the brain,
and more oxygen equals more choices.
– Yeah, and when you have more oxygen,
you begin to think clearer.
And when you have that clarity of thought you can go,
“Okay, I see this limiting belief coming up,
“I am not my thoughts, I am not my thought,
“I’m going to let this things just roll through.”
Interesting, I have a belief that, in Preston’s case,
“I’m dyslexic, I shouldn’t be an author, interesting.
“I’m just going to watch that,
“and I’m going to move into action, regardless.”
Regardless of the belief, when you’re in action,
what happens when you’re in the game,
and you’re in the present moment,
and you’re taking steps towards that vision,
and towards that goal,
you’re limiting belief can still be there,
but you’re showing the limiting belief
what you’re committed to.
And the problem is,
is most people keep committing to their limiting beliefs,
and not committing to their vision.
So, it’s being a commitment to the vision, no matter what,
being completely unreasonable,
no matter what limiting belief is coming up.
I am a commitment to my vision, not you.
You can be here, you can be on the sidelines,
but I’m in the driver seat.
– I like it, we’re gettin’ some live questions,
back to kind of the top about reading books,
and not actually absorbing them,
how do you read books in a smart way?
What advice would you give?
– Slow down.
So for me, for instance, this is our book, Now or Never.
Even with our book, which I reread,
I’ll just take three sentences and sit with that for a week.
I just read them over, and over, and over again,
and just see how I can put them into play,
and into action in my life.
So, a lot of people were trying to read,
speed-read everything.
– I read 500 books this year. – Read more, more, more,
more, more, more, more, more, more, more.
It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter if you aren’t living it,
it’s just hot air at that point, and so slow down.
That’s one of the best tips you could ever do,
slow down to the speed of wisdom,
and it’s more important, in my opinion,
to take a paragraph, or a chapter,
and have that like living in you,
than it is to read 700 books,
and just know a bunch of stuff in your head.
– Yeah, and here’s the thing, guys,
books are a direct access into
some really incredible people’s brains.
You’re getting direct access to their best work,
to the best stuff in their heads,
’cause they want to look good in their book,
so they’re going to put the best stuff in there.
I’m a reader, I love reading, I’ve read a ton of books,
and what Preston is saying is huge.
Do not move on from a chapter, or from a paragraph,
until you are living the work.
Nobody cares if you’ve read 500, or 1,000 books, who cares?
If you’re not the embodiment of a work that you’ve read,
then you’re wasting a lot of your time reading
a bunch of books. (laughs) – It doesn’t matter.
– You might be able to regurgitate the information,
but if you’re not living it, you’re just going to be like,
you’re going to be a parrot at that point,
and nobody’s going to follow a parrot.
– But guys, that’s so hard to do!
I want to finish this book.
– Awesome, then finish the book,
and don’t be in resistance to it.
Finish the book, and don’t be in resistance to,
’cause here’s the thing,
yes, whatever you read, even if you speed-read it,
some of that’s going to land.
And maybe, just like with our parents,
how many of you guys have had your parents, or your friends,
tell you something 10,000 times,
and it didn’t land until the 10,001 time.
And so perfect, I’ve watched Ace Ventura When Nature Calls,
like 100 times, and every time I watch it,
something new pops up.
So perfect, then read it again.
– Yep, yeah.
And for people who are in a rush in life, but we also teach
how you do anything is how you do everything.
If you’re in a rush to get to the end,
if you’re in a rush to get to the outcome and a result,
you’re missing the process,
and the process is where masters are born.
And if you fall in love with a process
and stop trying to get to the finish line,
that’s when you win in life.
You become an instant success
the moment you fall in love with a process.
– I love it, I mean, that’s the message that we preach, too,
and it’s great to hear it come back in different words,
in different perspective, I love it.
In terms of takin’ on knowledge, takin’ on wisdom,
tryin’ to learn, and grow, and better yourself,
do you guys have a recommended habit for people?
Should this be a part of their morning routine?
Do you recommend them spending
20 minutes on themselves reading a book,
maybe be not hitting like, “I got to hit 100 pages,”
but like spending 20 minutes watching a video,
or readin’ a book, is that part of a daily routine,
or a weekly routine?
What do you recommend that I got a crazy busy life,
and you’re sayin’ I got to carve out time
for personal development, how do I make that happen?
– Yeah, I think the journey of the self
is the most important, we both think that.
If you’re spending eight to 10 hours a day on work,
that either you’re not passionate about,
or you are passionate about,
hopefully you are passionate about it,
then you can spend at least an hour on yourself.
I think it doesn’t have to be a morning routine,
for a lot of people it is because
get it done in the morning you don’t have to worry about it,
but some people are more active in the evenings,
so know when you’re time is, that’s the first thing.
Know when you are most focused,
most creative, and most alive.
Some people are night owls, do it at night;
if you’re a morning person, do it in the morning.
For us, we love to mix breath, because again,
most people don’t know how to breathe.
This sounds so simple, most people are like,
“Yeah okay, breath, whatever.”
The minute you tap into the power of your breath,
you are literally tapping into the life force energy.
That is life.
– Why don’t we do it now?
Teach me how to breathe. – What’s that?
– Teach us how to breathe.
– All right, you want to know?
All right, we’re going to show you how to center,
you’re standing up, yeah?
– [Evan] Yeah.
– I’m going to stand up.
So center, put your finger, your thumb in your belly button.
– Okay, which one, does it matter?
– Okay, left hand. – Yeah, just your thumb
in your belly button.
And then wherever your pinky finger falls,
that is the center-point of your body.
So where your hand is, you want to breathe into that space,
and that is called your center, that is your center-point.
So, breathe into it so that your stomach expands.
– You want to try to look pregnant.
– All right, okay, good.
– [Alexi] So, see how it’s moving?
– Yeah. – Good.
So now, we’re going to teach you how to stand
in a grounded position, so feet shoulder-width apart.
– Shoulders up and back.
– Yep, shoulders up and back, so like–
– Jaw released. – Jaw released here,
so that the air is completing through,
’cause most people with stress, they lockjaw,
and they hold all the energy.
– Okay. – So, with your mouth
slightly open, just keep breathing into that space,
knees slightly bent. (breathes deeply)
Breathing into that space.
Now feel how like,
feel how much choice you have in movement,
you’re grounded, but you can move, right?
– Yep, yeah. – If my feet were
close together, I can’t do that, I’m going to fall over.
So, this is the a physical metaphor
for what’s happening in your life:
when your feet are in a grounded position,
you’re in your physical center, you’ve relaxed your jaw,
you’re actually creating the space
for full range of movement without moving.
That’s when you become like Neo in the Matrix, right?
When you’re grounded, (Evan laughing)
and fully-centered, you have space and you have choice,
so we do centering, that exercise,
When we first started doing it,
and first started learning breath work,
we put little centering reminders in our phone every hour.
So, we’d be like at our computer workin’ on something,
building out our business, centering alarm would go off,
we would just stop in our chair, reset our bodies,
(exhales) drop our breath, drop our jaw, recenter.
Now it’s a practice for us,
we probably center 3,000 times a day.
And it’s so interesting,
’cause we teach this in our workshops,
when people come in day one they don’t know how to center,
they come up in front of the room,
and they’re completely like nervous,
and scratching their head,
and doing weird things with their bodies.
Day two they walk out and they’re like,
“Hi, here’s who I am, here’s what I’m committed to,
“here’s my vision,” and it’s all because of breath.
Literally, it’s the simplest thing, but it’s everything.
– Yeah, but there’s also more to that,
because we go into some really deep stuff,
and that’s one of the things
that everybody gets to understand,
is the body is a living library.
It’s storing all of your traumas,
everything you’ve ever been through
is happening in the body.
And so, what tends to happen is, is people are unaware
because they can’t see themselves,
they can’t see themselves when they are in fight, flight,
freeze, or appease, as we have added in there.
And so, the breath, yes,
and cleaning up your own consciousness
by facing off with the parts of yourself
that you’ve been hiding from.
That’s the work, especially that work,
that most people aren’t willing to do,
but those who do it are the ones
who experience the most freedom.
– Yeah, ’cause they clear space for more to come in.
I think a lot of people don’t realize
how much crap they’re holding onto,
even simple, small things from childhood,
like you were told to shut up when you were singing
when you were eight years old,
so now you don’t fully use your voice.
There’s so many small, little traumas
that happen throughout our lives,
that are actually in the way of us fully leading.
– I like it, I like it.
More questions, comin’ up:
can you expand on the topic of consistency,
how do I stay consistent in my actions?
What do you think?
– Simple answer, just do it.
Consistency it is literally the game-changer for everyone.
People come to us and say,
“I want to build a tribe like you’ve got, you guys have built,
“I want to build a business like you guys have built,”
we have been consistently in the gym
on our own consciousness,
and in the gym building our business every single day
for the last decade, and people want it overnight, (snaps),
and it’s the consistent action that produces a result.
So, how do you be more consistent?
You schedule it in, you make it non-negotiable,
you get over your reasons, and you get unreasonable,
and make it happen no matter what.
Even when you don’t feel like it,
like we’re up at 7:30 in the morning for this call.
I was up at seven yesterday,
we do an online master mind program
with our people here in Australia;
once we get back in LA,
we’re up at 3:00 a.m. in the morning to do their calls.
Get unreasonable!
Do whatever it takes to make it happen,
and most people are unwilling to do that.
– Yeah, and one of the things that I’ll add to that is,
celebrate when you are.
Because what you appreciate, appreciates;
what you celebrate, gets repeated.
And so one of the things, and I get it,
’cause I would be the person hearing this and going,
“Okay consistency, but like how the hell do I do it?”
Well, whatever you practice more of, you get more of.
So, if you are practicing micro-wins, small wins,
every time you do a small win,
every time you do and be what you say you would do and be,
every single time, celebrate that.
Take a moment, stop, and just go:
wow, today I sent every email that I said I would,
or at least half of them, wow;
today I reached up to my mom
and I told her I loved her, wow;
today I did my bookkeeping, which I’ve been hating.
– (chuckles) Avoiding. (laughs)
– Wow!
– You’re like me, (laughs), and him.
– So now, I get to celebrate that.
And I don’t mean celebrate it by going and watching porn,
or like drinking, and all of that stuff,
because those also are habits, and here’s the thing:
there are certain habits, and we’ve been talking
about the five success habits, and there’s two more to go,
but there are certain habits
that are counter-productive to success habits.
One being alcohol and vices
that we use to numb ourselves out,
a lot of people are trying to avoid life,
and life is just life, it’s impartial.
It’s not promised that it’s always going to be good,
because good and bad are mental constructs,
they are not True, with a capital T.
Right and wrong, good and bad,
these are things right in Australia,
could be wrong in Pakistan,
all of that is up to the eye of the beholder.
The process that a lot of people find themselves in
is they’re hiding from themselves.
– And the minute stuff comes up,
and the minute life gets tough,
a lot of people go to their numbing agents,
whether it be TV, or scrolling through social media,
or porn, or food, or alcohol, whatever it might be.
– Swiping through Tinder
and Bumble. – People are numbing
themselves out with these distractions,
and then we wonder why we’re not achieving
the life that we want,
it’s because we’re completely distracted
and shut off from who we really are.
And that brings us into the fourth step,
which is truly owning who you are, and that means all of it,
not just like, oh I’m going to own
that I’m “all your good traits”, and list your good traits,
I’m this, I’m that, I’m that.
It’s I’m going to own who I am, and that includes
all the things that I’ve been resisting for years;
that includes all the things that I’ve been afraid of
and I’ve been running from.
It’s owning your totality and accepting your totality,
and then living from that totality.
‘Cause most people are trying to be somebody,
they’re trying to be somebody else,
they’re trying to be Evan, they’re trying to be Preston,
they’re trying to be Alexi,
and trying to be the person, Gary V.,
they’re trying to be somebody that they see online so,
“I got to do it like they do it,”
and they’re missing the point.
The minute you become yourself, you actually become unique,
you actually become worth getting to know because
you’re different from the rest of the sheeple out there,
and most people, they miss this.
Well, in my attempt to try and be somebody,
you’ve missed the point, and you’ve lost your uniqueness,
and when you own your totality,
you become something really interesting.
And that’s what people don’t get,
especially in this Internet culture of comparison,
and looking at so-and-so online,
and the minute you drop into the self, you win.
You win.
– I like the sheeple comment, that was good.
I’m curious for you guys, so like you’re both,
you’re a couple, you’re in the business,
you’re both delivering the training,
you’re both on this call, how do you guys
split up the content, and like who’s better at what?
And how do you share the delivery?
‘Cause this is great, we ask a question,
you’re both givin’ an answer, but I’m curious,
what are the strengths that you feel like you both bring,
and maybe the weaknesses, too, to your seminars,
to your events, to the content that you’re creating?
– You know, that’s a tricky thing,
’cause it’s always moving, always changing.
And full transparency, that definitely comes up for us,
because we’re both loaded weapons.
We’re both A-type personalities, you know?
Even in this call I watch my ego flare up,
and want to like, “Oh, she answered twice, and I didn’t!”
And like, so what? – Yeah, yeah, it happens.
– So what, ya know?
For us it’s what are we here for?
And the answer to that all day, every day, is service.
I could give two (cuts out)
whether it’s her answering all the questions,
or me answering them or whatever,
it’s less about that and more about what are we here for?
And so, sometimes one of us gets on fire,
and at that point, sometimes the other ego flares a second,
and then we recognize it, and then go right back
to what is here, what is the point of this?
The point of this is to serve people,
and so if Alexi is on fire, then she gets to stay on fire,
and I get to hold space because here’s the thing
that’s tricky about our society:
everybody wants to be the LeBron James,
everybody wants to be Oprah Winfrey, right?
But there’s a way to do that by just holding space,
just being your loving self.
It’s not about words, ya know?
We get it so confused, we think it’s do, have, be,
but the truth is it’s be, do, have.
And so, in the being-ness, I can still be a space
for transformation, personal development,
and for people to see that when you amplify your love,
you automatically amplify your life
without saying a damn word.
– Yeah, and that’s real leadership.
We have a leadership “test” in our program,
where people don’t even know what’s happening,
and it’s awesome.
And what happens is, for us we’re kind of
sitting on the sidelines and waiting to see what happens,
’cause chaos always ensues,
and then leadership starts to emerge.
And we start to watch the different types of leadership,
there’s always the bull-headed leader who’s like,
“I’ve got the loudest voice, listen to me,
“I’m going to control this situation.”
And then there’s the leader who’s the quiet one,
who’s actually empowering others to lead,
and to do what needs to be done
to get the job done as a team.
And that, in our definition, is what true leadership is,
is allowing others to rise into their leadership.
In terms of the two of us,
I definitely have some strengths,
he definitely has some strengths,
our brains think a lot differently,
however it comes out very similarly:
we’re both extremely passionate,
we both put everything into our work and–
– And we’re around each other all the damn time.
– And that. (Evan and Preston laughing)
And we’re studying the same stuff,
and reading the same books, and we have the same mentors,
so for us the container’s the same,
but the way we show up in the container,
can be very different.
And the way we think is very different,
and it complements each other,
and I think that’s why we work so well together,
’cause I can be very structured, and organized,
and rational, and I can take something
that’s really big out here, and I can bring it down,
and synthesize it, and chunk it down,
and make it deliverable.
Preston is really big vision, and can take it out here,
and has me outside of the box.
It’s really cool, because that complements each other,
and our weaknesses, where I’m weak, he’s strong;
where’s he’s weak, I’m strong;
and where we’re weak,
we’re working on developing and bringing those up.
So it really is, like he said, it’s always flowing,
and it’s constantly in practice.
But at the end of the day,
our leadership is about empowering others to rise,
and if he’s wizened in a moment,
and he’s disturbed in that moment,
then I’m just here holding space, and that’s my leadership.
– I like it, that could be your next book, or a workshop,
or event, or couples trying to be entrepreneurs.
It’s a huge challenge,
how to work with your wife, or your husband in a business,
and it just leads to a lot of issues.
So, if you launch that program,
we might have some clients for you.
– [Alexia] Perfect!
– And what’s step number five, the fifth habit is what?
– Whoo, have a blast!
The fifth habit is have fun.
We’ve gotten so caught up thinking that
this thing needs to be so damn serious,
but for us it’s like, you get to have fun.
You get to have fun, the more fun you have in this process,
the more of service you are to the planet.
And to us, it’s a crime against humanity every day,
every moment, every minute that you hoard your gift,
and think that you need to be all damn serious.
It’s the process,
it’s the process and the product.
Every mountain you climb,
and get to the top of that mountain and make that million,
or make that six figures, or whatever the hell you want to do,
every time you get to the top,
all you’re going to do is celebrate for a minute,
and then set out for the next mountain.
– Yes. – So, if we know that,
if we know that every,
the human spirit is always going to have new desires.
– Always. – And so,
if you are not having fun in that process,
then you’ve missed 90% of life.
– Yeah, and that’s the thing.
I think most people are struggling to get there,
and subconsciously it’s in an attempt
to kind of “beat death”, well if I become worthy,
if I become significant in my lifetime,
then I’ll leave a legacy so that I “don’t truly die”.
Now, this is getting really philosophical,
but most people are dead right now,
they’re literally dead inside,
they’re death before death happens,
That is the ultimate death, is to be dead while you’re here.
We see so many people, especially entrepreneurs,
who are sucked into this like
hustle without heart mentality,
and they’re hustling for this thing,
and they’re hating their life.
They’re hating their life!
We remind people we work really hard,
we hustle really hard, but you better believe we play hard,
we play really hard.
We travel to places all over the world,
we’re constantly having a blast, and goofing on each other,
we’re just not taking this whole thing so seriously.
Yes, it’s serious because we’re out to change the world,
and that’s a pretty serious mission,
but it’s not that serious, right?
It’s like the gigantic paradox
and cosmic joke of the universe:
it’s serious, but it’s not that serious.
So, make sure you’re alive in the process.
– ‘Cause you can’t give what you don’t have.
And so, we can’t change the world,
and ask the world to step into joy
if I’m not living from joy.
And so, then our job is to fill our own cups,
and give from the overflow,
the overflow is where all the magic is.
– I like it, I like that.
Okay rapid fire, the five habits, what are they?
– Okay, so you always have a choice, number one,
and that means awareness. – Awareness.
– Step number two is be radically responsible.
Step number three. – Step number three,
is align committed action.
– Step number four is doing it from the totality,
owning who you are.
– And step number five is, whoo-whoo, have a blast!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. – We’re like ’80’s
dancin’ to that right now.
– I like the sharing of responsibilities on the points, too,
that was good guys, that was good.
Cool, listen tons of questions coming in still,
I hogged a lot of them ’cause I was genuinely curious,
and really appreciate the vibe you guys put off,
and all the work you do.
Probably the most common question being asked is,
who are these guys, how do I find out more about them?
So I mean, you’re in Australia now,
but if people want to find your book,
or they want to see your courses, what’s the next step?
Where do you hang out, where can they find you?
– Our book is Now or Never: Your Epic Life in 5 Steps,
and we deep-dive and give you guys
a ton of tools in this book.
But if you want to find us online go to alexiandpreston.com.
You can find Preston @prestonsmiles,
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.
Find me @alexipanos, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Be sure to Google-stalk us, ’cause we are all up
in the social media business. (Evan laughing)
– [Preston] Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo!
– I love it, thank you guys so much for joinin’ us,
have an amazing day in Australia.
Thank you guys which are watching,
continue to believe everyone,
and we’ll see you soon! – Yes!
– [Preston] Whoo!
super excited to be here again with you.
I have a new set of friends, a power couple called
the Power Couple of Personal Development,
super excited to have a chat today,
Alexi and Preston are joining us from Australia.
They’re on tour, sharing their wisdom, and knowledge,
and enlightenment, and they’re going to,
what time is it there, 7:30 in the morning?
– It is, nice and early.
– We’re going to talk about the habits of success,
and hopefully learn something from these guys.
Welcome aboard, guys!
– Yeah, thanks so much, happy to be here.
– Ooh, ooh!
– I love it, that’s the intro.
So, for people who don’t know about you
and what you’re doing yet, give us the quick intro,
who are Alexi and Preston?
– So, the short answer to that is
we are transformational junkies, we are authors,
we just wrote a book called Now or Never,
which hit best-seller list in the U.S., actually.
We speak all over the world;
we lead transformational and personal development workshops;
and we support entrepreneurs
in building a body, a semantic body,
which means having the actual embodiment piece,
to what’s happening here,
’cause a lot of people learn head knowledge,
but they never actually let it land in the body.
– Interesting, so you just
opened up a can of worms already, there.
What are some of the things we need to be,
people read books all the time, people watch videos,
they go to seminars.
We may be really kind of book smart,
how do we take that and start to actually apply
and get results in our life and businesses?
– Yeah, it’s a great question. – That’s number one.
– So many people stuff this thing up,
and yet they never actually practice it.
The workshops Preston and I do, it’s somatic work,
which means tapping into the wisdom of the body.
And unfortunately, it’s not something you can do online,
it’s something that you have to be in the experience of
to truly get the cellular learning,
and it’s phenomenal what happens
when you have a group of leaders in a room
and you see how they show up
in front of that room on day one,
and on day two by the end of the day
you see a complete shift.
They’re standing strong,
they’ve let leadership land in their cells,
they’re grounded, they’re breathing,
and all of that truly builds a body
that people can trust, and that’s what’s enrolling
when it comes to leadership and success.
– Yeah, and for those of you who are like,
“Okay well, I can’t go to your damn workshop
“so I kind of (breaks up) that,” it starts with awareness.
You can’t intervene in a world you can’t see.
We cannot change what we cannot see,
and a lot of people are working on what they can see.
And so for us, step number one,
and this goes into the success habits,
is starting with awareness,
because awareness proceeds choice,
so one would have to
really take a deep dive into the places
where they try to avoid the most.
– Yeah, and what’s interesting is when you’re in
experiential work, what happens is
we put you in chaotic situations where you have
no mental ability to try and control how you show up,
and it’s how you actually show up in the world,
and we give you feedback on how you show up real-time,
so that awareness gives you the choice to say,
“Okay, how do I want to choose to show up when I’m in chaos,
“or when I’m in stress, when I’m in overwhelm,”
and we build the body to support that.
So like Preston was saying,
awareness is the step number one, it is the key,
because once you see how you’re legitimately showing up,
not how you intend to show up,
but how you’re legitimately showing up
and you’re getting real-time feedback,
especially for people in your life on that,
then you can choose powerfully to move forward.
– Where do you think the biggest
disconnect is for people on that,
where they feel like they show up a certain way,
but they’re actually showing up this way?
I know it’s a general question, but in general, (laughs),
what do you feel like is some of the biggest, yeah.
– It’s everywhere, a lot of people have the intention
that they want to spread love,
and they want to be enrolling in their business,
and they want to support others.
But yet, the feedback that people are giving them
in our workshops, and that we’re giving them,
is that they’re closed off,
they come across as fake or inauthentic,
and when you’re showing up that way, people don’t trust you.
They’re kind of like, I feel like there’s a disconnect.
I feel like something’s between us,
and I’m not going to say yes to your business,
I’m not going to say yes to your online program,
because there’s something about you
that I can’t put my finger on that I don’t buy yet.
– Yes, and what that comes down to
is trying to get it right.
So many of us are trying to get it right,
because we’ve been brought up in a society
that has told us over, and over, and over again,
to do one thing to get another thing.
And so, a lot of people unconsciously,
this is not a conscious mind thing,
the unconscious mind is operating trying to get it right,
and so, there’s this mask that’s showing up
in front of them, and that mask is disingenuine,
and people can read through.
The bullshit meter now, especially with so much stuff
that’s on the internet, is like, (snaps).
– It’s so high. (laughs)
– I’m an entrepreneur,
and I want to be a visionary, and be a team leader,
and inspire my people, and when things are going good,
maybe that’s what I do;
but then when something happens,
kind of urgent crisis, now you turn into
this rage-aholic person who you don’t want to be,
but that is who you are when things are not going right.
Like, that sounds like you’re forcing them
into these stressful, painful situations,
like how do you act?
Okay great, so that’s how I act,
I don’t want to be that person, now what do I do?
You’ve opened up this giant wound,
now how are you going to fix me?
– Yeah, so this brings us to step number two which is
being radically responsible.
And again, you need the awareness first, to say,
“Oh, I’m showing up like a raging lunatic in chaos,”
in you’re example, and with step number two it’s going,
“Okay, how am I fully-responsible for this?”
If I was taking 100% responsibility of the entire pie,
how did I create this?
How did I allow this?
How did I perpetuate this situation?
And how am I choosing to be the space for chaos?
Because in our work, in The Bridge,
we say that you are the bridge to all areas of your life,
meaning chaos cannot enter your being,
unless you build a bridge for it.
And that’s where radical responsibility comes in,
because we see a lot of leaders,
especially leaders that we coach and work with,
that when shit hits the fan and everything goes awry,
what happens is they go,
“Oh well, this person in my management team
isn’t doing this,” or “the economic climate is doing this,”
and it’s always outside of themselves.
So, we always bring it back to them,
because when you’re taking a 100% responsibility,
as you know, you have 100% of the power to make a change.
So, that’s really the next thing to do.
– And what did you call it, radical?
– Radical responsibility. – Radical responsibility.
So then, the people who come in and will say,
“But you know, the economy, the president,
“my resources,” whatever excuse,
how do you break through that and say like,
“Guys, you know it’s all on you.”
How do you make them feel it?
‘Cause they may think it, but how do you get them
to actually understand that?
– Yes so, here’s one of the things to understand:
we are linguistic beings, so we build with our language.
We create worlds with our language, and so one of the things
that we support people in understanding
is the distinction between being a victim,
and holding victim consciousness.
And so some people, things do happen,
we cannot control what is happening, right?
There are certain realities that are, right?
And the moment we start arguing with reality,
we move into victim consciousness,
we move into this, “I’m at the effect of the world,”
and, “Oh woe is me,” right?
And a lot of times it doesn’t look
like victim consciousness, but that’s exactly what it is.
Whenever you’re blaming, or complaining,
and we say all the time, “Your complaint is your mission.”
If you’re complaining,
that means that you have some part of you
that believes there is a better solution
for how this gets to be worked out.
And so, you can be a stand for something,
and hold the space of love all at the same time.
– You guys are takin’ us on a trip today,
this is not what I expected,
but I’m enjoyin’ it, man, this is good!
We’re getitn’ some live questions:
what do I do if I’m only 16?
Do you deal with younger people?
I guess there’s less baggage,
but there may be less confidence,
how does this change depending on how old you are,
or where you are in life?
– The next step, this brings us straight to number three,
the next step is act now.
That means clearing your past,
and really getting responsible with your past,
so that you can create, clear, and then present,
and move forward powerfully in the future.
For anyone that’s young,
you guys have an extreme advantage,
because you have less baggage;
you have less crap that you need to move through;
you have less conditioning, less programming,
less mapping of the world on your psyche;
so you’re showing up with a cleaner slate.
And at 16 if you’re watching shows like this,
you are like killin’ it already! (laughs)
– Yeah, for sure.
– And it’s really cool, Evan,
because I don’t know if you’ve noticed this,
but we’ve noticed in our work
that our audience is getting younger.
I mean, we’re getting 16 year olds,
we’re getting 13 year olds,
we’re getting 12 year olds who are watching our stuff.
It’s really powerful to see
the generational shift that’s happening,
where young people are waking up at a lot younger of an age,
and they’re saying, “I’m not buying into the system anymore,
“the system doesn’t work.”
The old paradigm of go to school, get a good degree,
get a good job, get married, have 2.5 kids, it doesn’t work,
it’s not secure anymore.
The world of the entrepreneur
is really picking up right now.
– Yes, and that never was secure,
and that’s the thing that this illusion,
this Western contingency plan
where we do all of this stuff over there,
to get some future “goodness”,
none of that stuff actually was true in the first place.
So if you’re 16, or 60,
our advice is the same: go have fun!
See what you’re made of, step off the ledge, go too far,
because it’s not about getting there, and that’s the issue.
So many of us are trying to get high on good,
and we’re trying to get there.
We go, (inhales), “One more hit, I got to get there,
“I got to get good!” – I got to get
my first million, then I got to get 10 million,
then I got to do this and get a private jet.
– Which is slavery. – It is.
– Man, you’re still a slave to the jet and everything else.
It’s not the mountain that we conquer, but the self.
And so, it’s about who you become on the way,
it’s about where you go in your own consciousness,
where you have to go within yourself along that journey.
You know, we get so caught up on the destination,
we want the product, but we miss the process.
And so, it’s about falling in love with the process.
– And falling in love with the game of life.
You mention the reasons and the excuses,
and especially in business, there’s so many of ’em, right?
There’s so many that stand
in between you and your dream life,
and Preston and I preach that being unreasonable
is where mastery is.
To truly be unreasonable is to truly, like Preston said,
see what you’re made of, see what you’re built for,
and stretch yourself out of what you think your limits are.
– I like it, I like it, this is great.
Speakin’ of limits, let’s go deeper into the limits,
’cause a lot of people have the limiting beliefs like,
“I love what you’re saying, I want to live a happy life,
“I want to go and live on the edge and step over sometimes,
“but whatever, I’m not good enough, I don’t have,” you know.
How do you address, ’cause it makes sense logically,
but they don’t feel it in their heart,
they tell themselves they can’t do it, so they don’t,
how do you address someone’s limiting beliefs
once they set this big, ambitious goal for themselves?
– So, we set micro-wins for the macro,
because small hinges swing big doors.
So, it’s the little bites daily,
it’s this practice, but lower the bar.
A lot of people have the bar so damn high,
that it’s almost, it’s fantasy standards.
They’re holding themselves to something so gigantic,
that is seems like a huge task.
But if you just lower the bar, and one of the things
we help and support entrepreneurs with all the time
is reaching for the low-hanging fruit,
meaning, reaching for the things that make your heart smile.
Because you bring you everywhere you go,
you are the bridge to all areas of your life.
And so if you, if your cup is filled,
and you’re giving from the overflow, if you’re having fun,
if you’re enjoying the process and the journey,
that becomes attractive winning,
winners are attractive, why?
Because their frequency is higher,
and you get there by honoring what is,
by reaching for what you can reach for,
instead of trying to climb the whole damn tree,
get up to the top, and fall out, and break your back.
– Yeah, and that goes back to another thing.
I think a lot of people think that they’re the only person
that has the limiting beliefs.
A lot of people are in their own world going,
“Oh well, I feel like I’m unworthy,
“I feel like I can’t do this,
“I feel like who am I to make that happen?”
And we remind people that all of humanity
is being with that conversation.
And, we also remind people like even,
we know a lot of people
that play in the billion dollar level,
and they’re friends of ours,
and they’re some of the top wealthiest people in the world,
and they still have limiting beliefs, you know?
And we remind people
that when you’re stretching out of your comfort zone,
your ego, (snaps), is going to come up, and pop up, and go,
“Oh God, okay, I got to try and keep you safe,
“so I’m going to throw all these limiting beliefs out here
“to try and keep you in the comfort zone,
“to keep you small, to hold you back,
“because you’re about to step into a new world,
“and that world of the unknown is scary for me,”
says the ego.
So, know that when you’ve got the limiting beliefs,
it’s actually a signpost that you’re about to
step into something that’s really big,
that could be really big for your soul to open up,
and stretch yourself, and again,
become that leader that can hold the vision
that you want for your life.
– Okay, and I’m going to wrap this all up in a bow,
because she nailed it. (Evan laughing)
It’s resistance versus alignment.
– Yeah.
– Most people are in resistance to what is.
What’s coming up for them?
Oh, a limiting belief,
“Oh, I’m not good enough, oh resist,
“I shouldn’t be saying that.
“You know, Evan, Evan is always great,
“oh I should be like Evan, I should be like these,” no.
See, this is resistance, when those thoughts come up for me
about, “Oh, you’re just anther Black boy,
“no one’s going to believe you,”
that stuff comes up for me.
The dyslexia, that comes up for me.
“Oh, you’re not as smart as everyone else,
“’cause you don’t read as fast.
“How dare you be an author, when you’re dyslexic?
“No one’s going to read your book,” like that stuff comes up.
But when it does, instead of me resisting it,
I meet it with love and compassion.
And instead of me letting it go, it let’s go of me,
because everything is passing, everything is moving,
always changing, always flowing.
That’s the nature of life,
but we get in trouble when we try to hold on to it,
and figure it out, and make it wrong.
– I love it, so how do we turn that
from the subconscious to the conscious?
Because that voice saying,
“You’re not good enough,” whatever, then saying,
“This is a signpost to say
“now it’s your chance to be a leader,”
our pattern, our decades of life have taught us
that this scary and come back.
How do you make a conscious choice,
and not fall back into the same pattern
that you’ve live your entire life to say, “You know what?
“This scary thing is actually my opportunity,
“the obstacle is the way,”
like this is my path to be a leader.
It makes sense logically, but how do you even
catch yourself in the moment when you’re overwhelmed,
and feeling like you need to back away?
– The big thing with overwhelm is you want to breathe.
It’s such a simple tip. – Yeah, start there.
– It’s such a simple tip, but most people are breathing
from like here up, and we go, (pants).
And that actually in the limbic system
creates stress and overwhelm.
We study the body and the internal system,
and what’s happening in our leadership,
this is stress and overwhelm,
when you drop your breath all the way into your belly,
what happens is you actually ground into the Earth,
you ground into the center-point of your body,
and you have more movement and more choice.
Just like when you see animals on the ground
that are so fluid, and flexible,
and they can jump from here to here like a cat,
or something, it’s ’cause they’re grounded
in the center-point of their body.
Most humans are walking around
being chest breathers like this,
and we wonder why we’re so stressed out.
So, drop your breath into your body,
that’s the first step in terms of awareness.
– ‘Cause that brings more oxygen to the brain,
and more oxygen equals more choices.
– Yeah, and when you have more oxygen,
you begin to think clearer.
And when you have that clarity of thought you can go,
“Okay, I see this limiting belief coming up,
“I am not my thoughts, I am not my thought,
“I’m going to let this things just roll through.”
Interesting, I have a belief that, in Preston’s case,
“I’m dyslexic, I shouldn’t be an author, interesting.
“I’m just going to watch that,
“and I’m going to move into action, regardless.”
Regardless of the belief, when you’re in action,
what happens when you’re in the game,
and you’re in the present moment,
and you’re taking steps towards that vision,
and towards that goal,
you’re limiting belief can still be there,
but you’re showing the limiting belief
what you’re committed to.
And the problem is,
is most people keep committing to their limiting beliefs,
and not committing to their vision.
So, it’s being a commitment to the vision, no matter what,
being completely unreasonable,
no matter what limiting belief is coming up.
I am a commitment to my vision, not you.
You can be here, you can be on the sidelines,
but I’m in the driver seat.
– I like it, we’re gettin’ some live questions,
back to kind of the top about reading books,
and not actually absorbing them,
how do you read books in a smart way?
What advice would you give?
– Slow down.
So for me, for instance, this is our book, Now or Never.
Even with our book, which I reread,
I’ll just take three sentences and sit with that for a week.
I just read them over, and over, and over again,
and just see how I can put them into play,
and into action in my life.
So, a lot of people were trying to read,
speed-read everything.
– I read 500 books this year. – Read more, more, more,
more, more, more, more, more, more, more.
It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter if you aren’t living it,
it’s just hot air at that point, and so slow down.
That’s one of the best tips you could ever do,
slow down to the speed of wisdom,
and it’s more important, in my opinion,
to take a paragraph, or a chapter,
and have that like living in you,
than it is to read 700 books,
and just know a bunch of stuff in your head.
– Yeah, and here’s the thing, guys,
books are a direct access into
some really incredible people’s brains.
You’re getting direct access to their best work,
to the best stuff in their heads,
’cause they want to look good in their book,
so they’re going to put the best stuff in there.
I’m a reader, I love reading, I’ve read a ton of books,
and what Preston is saying is huge.
Do not move on from a chapter, or from a paragraph,
until you are living the work.
Nobody cares if you’ve read 500, or 1,000 books, who cares?
If you’re not the embodiment of a work that you’ve read,
then you’re wasting a lot of your time reading
a bunch of books. (laughs) – It doesn’t matter.
– You might be able to regurgitate the information,
but if you’re not living it, you’re just going to be like,
you’re going to be a parrot at that point,
and nobody’s going to follow a parrot.
– But guys, that’s so hard to do!
I want to finish this book.
– Awesome, then finish the book,
and don’t be in resistance to it.
Finish the book, and don’t be in resistance to,
’cause here’s the thing,
yes, whatever you read, even if you speed-read it,
some of that’s going to land.
And maybe, just like with our parents,
how many of you guys have had your parents, or your friends,
tell you something 10,000 times,
and it didn’t land until the 10,001 time.
And so perfect, I’ve watched Ace Ventura When Nature Calls,
like 100 times, and every time I watch it,
something new pops up.
So perfect, then read it again.
– Yep, yeah.
And for people who are in a rush in life, but we also teach
how you do anything is how you do everything.
If you’re in a rush to get to the end,
if you’re in a rush to get to the outcome and a result,
you’re missing the process,
and the process is where masters are born.
And if you fall in love with a process
and stop trying to get to the finish line,
that’s when you win in life.
You become an instant success
the moment you fall in love with a process.
– I love it, I mean, that’s the message that we preach, too,
and it’s great to hear it come back in different words,
in different perspective, I love it.
In terms of takin’ on knowledge, takin’ on wisdom,
tryin’ to learn, and grow, and better yourself,
do you guys have a recommended habit for people?
Should this be a part of their morning routine?
Do you recommend them spending
20 minutes on themselves reading a book,
maybe be not hitting like, “I got to hit 100 pages,”
but like spending 20 minutes watching a video,
or readin’ a book, is that part of a daily routine,
or a weekly routine?
What do you recommend that I got a crazy busy life,
and you’re sayin’ I got to carve out time
for personal development, how do I make that happen?
– Yeah, I think the journey of the self
is the most important, we both think that.
If you’re spending eight to 10 hours a day on work,
that either you’re not passionate about,
or you are passionate about,
hopefully you are passionate about it,
then you can spend at least an hour on yourself.
I think it doesn’t have to be a morning routine,
for a lot of people it is because
get it done in the morning you don’t have to worry about it,
but some people are more active in the evenings,
so know when you’re time is, that’s the first thing.
Know when you are most focused,
most creative, and most alive.
Some people are night owls, do it at night;
if you’re a morning person, do it in the morning.
For us, we love to mix breath, because again,
most people don’t know how to breathe.
This sounds so simple, most people are like,
“Yeah okay, breath, whatever.”
The minute you tap into the power of your breath,
you are literally tapping into the life force energy.
That is life.
– Why don’t we do it now?
Teach me how to breathe. – What’s that?
– Teach us how to breathe.
– All right, you want to know?
All right, we’re going to show you how to center,
you’re standing up, yeah?
– [Evan] Yeah.
– I’m going to stand up.
So center, put your finger, your thumb in your belly button.
– Okay, which one, does it matter?
– Okay, left hand. – Yeah, just your thumb
in your belly button.
And then wherever your pinky finger falls,
that is the center-point of your body.
So where your hand is, you want to breathe into that space,
and that is called your center, that is your center-point.
So, breathe into it so that your stomach expands.
– You want to try to look pregnant.
– All right, okay, good.
– [Alexi] So, see how it’s moving?
– Yeah. – Good.
So now, we’re going to teach you how to stand
in a grounded position, so feet shoulder-width apart.
– Shoulders up and back.
– Yep, shoulders up and back, so like–
– Jaw released. – Jaw released here,
so that the air is completing through,
’cause most people with stress, they lockjaw,
and they hold all the energy.
– Okay. – So, with your mouth
slightly open, just keep breathing into that space,
knees slightly bent. (breathes deeply)
Breathing into that space.
Now feel how like,
feel how much choice you have in movement,
you’re grounded, but you can move, right?
– Yep, yeah. – If my feet were
close together, I can’t do that, I’m going to fall over.
So, this is the a physical metaphor
for what’s happening in your life:
when your feet are in a grounded position,
you’re in your physical center, you’ve relaxed your jaw,
you’re actually creating the space
for full range of movement without moving.
That’s when you become like Neo in the Matrix, right?
When you’re grounded, (Evan laughing)
and fully-centered, you have space and you have choice,
so we do centering, that exercise,
When we first started doing it,
and first started learning breath work,
we put little centering reminders in our phone every hour.
So, we’d be like at our computer workin’ on something,
building out our business, centering alarm would go off,
we would just stop in our chair, reset our bodies,
(exhales) drop our breath, drop our jaw, recenter.
Now it’s a practice for us,
we probably center 3,000 times a day.
And it’s so interesting,
’cause we teach this in our workshops,
when people come in day one they don’t know how to center,
they come up in front of the room,
and they’re completely like nervous,
and scratching their head,
and doing weird things with their bodies.
Day two they walk out and they’re like,
“Hi, here’s who I am, here’s what I’m committed to,
“here’s my vision,” and it’s all because of breath.
Literally, it’s the simplest thing, but it’s everything.
– Yeah, but there’s also more to that,
because we go into some really deep stuff,
and that’s one of the things
that everybody gets to understand,
is the body is a living library.
It’s storing all of your traumas,
everything you’ve ever been through
is happening in the body.
And so, what tends to happen is, is people are unaware
because they can’t see themselves,
they can’t see themselves when they are in fight, flight,
freeze, or appease, as we have added in there.
And so, the breath, yes,
and cleaning up your own consciousness
by facing off with the parts of yourself
that you’ve been hiding from.
That’s the work, especially that work,
that most people aren’t willing to do,
but those who do it are the ones
who experience the most freedom.
– Yeah, ’cause they clear space for more to come in.
I think a lot of people don’t realize
how much crap they’re holding onto,
even simple, small things from childhood,
like you were told to shut up when you were singing
when you were eight years old,
so now you don’t fully use your voice.
There’s so many small, little traumas
that happen throughout our lives,
that are actually in the way of us fully leading.
– I like it, I like it.
More questions, comin’ up:
can you expand on the topic of consistency,
how do I stay consistent in my actions?
What do you think?
– Simple answer, just do it.
Consistency it is literally the game-changer for everyone.
People come to us and say,
“I want to build a tribe like you’ve got, you guys have built,
“I want to build a business like you guys have built,”
we have been consistently in the gym
on our own consciousness,
and in the gym building our business every single day
for the last decade, and people want it overnight, (snaps),
and it’s the consistent action that produces a result.
So, how do you be more consistent?
You schedule it in, you make it non-negotiable,
you get over your reasons, and you get unreasonable,
and make it happen no matter what.
Even when you don’t feel like it,
like we’re up at 7:30 in the morning for this call.
I was up at seven yesterday,
we do an online master mind program
with our people here in Australia;
once we get back in LA,
we’re up at 3:00 a.m. in the morning to do their calls.
Get unreasonable!
Do whatever it takes to make it happen,
and most people are unwilling to do that.
– Yeah, and one of the things that I’ll add to that is,
celebrate when you are.
Because what you appreciate, appreciates;
what you celebrate, gets repeated.
And so one of the things, and I get it,
’cause I would be the person hearing this and going,
“Okay consistency, but like how the hell do I do it?”
Well, whatever you practice more of, you get more of.
So, if you are practicing micro-wins, small wins,
every time you do a small win,
every time you do and be what you say you would do and be,
every single time, celebrate that.
Take a moment, stop, and just go:
wow, today I sent every email that I said I would,
or at least half of them, wow;
today I reached up to my mom
and I told her I loved her, wow;
today I did my bookkeeping, which I’ve been hating.
– (chuckles) Avoiding. (laughs)
– Wow!
– You’re like me, (laughs), and him.
– So now, I get to celebrate that.
And I don’t mean celebrate it by going and watching porn,
or like drinking, and all of that stuff,
because those also are habits, and here’s the thing:
there are certain habits, and we’ve been talking
about the five success habits, and there’s two more to go,
but there are certain habits
that are counter-productive to success habits.
One being alcohol and vices
that we use to numb ourselves out,
a lot of people are trying to avoid life,
and life is just life, it’s impartial.
It’s not promised that it’s always going to be good,
because good and bad are mental constructs,
they are not True, with a capital T.
Right and wrong, good and bad,
these are things right in Australia,
could be wrong in Pakistan,
all of that is up to the eye of the beholder.
The process that a lot of people find themselves in
is they’re hiding from themselves.
– And the minute stuff comes up,
and the minute life gets tough,
a lot of people go to their numbing agents,
whether it be TV, or scrolling through social media,
or porn, or food, or alcohol, whatever it might be.
– Swiping through Tinder
and Bumble. – People are numbing
themselves out with these distractions,
and then we wonder why we’re not achieving
the life that we want,
it’s because we’re completely distracted
and shut off from who we really are.
And that brings us into the fourth step,
which is truly owning who you are, and that means all of it,
not just like, oh I’m going to own
that I’m “all your good traits”, and list your good traits,
I’m this, I’m that, I’m that.
It’s I’m going to own who I am, and that includes
all the things that I’ve been resisting for years;
that includes all the things that I’ve been afraid of
and I’ve been running from.
It’s owning your totality and accepting your totality,
and then living from that totality.
‘Cause most people are trying to be somebody,
they’re trying to be somebody else,
they’re trying to be Evan, they’re trying to be Preston,
they’re trying to be Alexi,
and trying to be the person, Gary V.,
they’re trying to be somebody that they see online so,
“I got to do it like they do it,”
and they’re missing the point.
The minute you become yourself, you actually become unique,
you actually become worth getting to know because
you’re different from the rest of the sheeple out there,
and most people, they miss this.
Well, in my attempt to try and be somebody,
you’ve missed the point, and you’ve lost your uniqueness,
and when you own your totality,
you become something really interesting.
And that’s what people don’t get,
especially in this Internet culture of comparison,
and looking at so-and-so online,
and the minute you drop into the self, you win.
You win.
– I like the sheeple comment, that was good.
I’m curious for you guys, so like you’re both,
you’re a couple, you’re in the business,
you’re both delivering the training,
you’re both on this call, how do you guys
split up the content, and like who’s better at what?
And how do you share the delivery?
‘Cause this is great, we ask a question,
you’re both givin’ an answer, but I’m curious,
what are the strengths that you feel like you both bring,
and maybe the weaknesses, too, to your seminars,
to your events, to the content that you’re creating?
– You know, that’s a tricky thing,
’cause it’s always moving, always changing.
And full transparency, that definitely comes up for us,
because we’re both loaded weapons.
We’re both A-type personalities, you know?
Even in this call I watch my ego flare up,
and want to like, “Oh, she answered twice, and I didn’t!”
And like, so what? – Yeah, yeah, it happens.
– So what, ya know?
For us it’s what are we here for?
And the answer to that all day, every day, is service.
I could give two (cuts out)
whether it’s her answering all the questions,
or me answering them or whatever,
it’s less about that and more about what are we here for?
And so, sometimes one of us gets on fire,
and at that point, sometimes the other ego flares a second,
and then we recognize it, and then go right back
to what is here, what is the point of this?
The point of this is to serve people,
and so if Alexi is on fire, then she gets to stay on fire,
and I get to hold space because here’s the thing
that’s tricky about our society:
everybody wants to be the LeBron James,
everybody wants to be Oprah Winfrey, right?
But there’s a way to do that by just holding space,
just being your loving self.
It’s not about words, ya know?
We get it so confused, we think it’s do, have, be,
but the truth is it’s be, do, have.
And so, in the being-ness, I can still be a space
for transformation, personal development,
and for people to see that when you amplify your love,
you automatically amplify your life
without saying a damn word.
– Yeah, and that’s real leadership.
We have a leadership “test” in our program,
where people don’t even know what’s happening,
and it’s awesome.
And what happens is, for us we’re kind of
sitting on the sidelines and waiting to see what happens,
’cause chaos always ensues,
and then leadership starts to emerge.
And we start to watch the different types of leadership,
there’s always the bull-headed leader who’s like,
“I’ve got the loudest voice, listen to me,
“I’m going to control this situation.”
And then there’s the leader who’s the quiet one,
who’s actually empowering others to lead,
and to do what needs to be done
to get the job done as a team.
And that, in our definition, is what true leadership is,
is allowing others to rise into their leadership.
In terms of the two of us,
I definitely have some strengths,
he definitely has some strengths,
our brains think a lot differently,
however it comes out very similarly:
we’re both extremely passionate,
we both put everything into our work and–
– And we’re around each other all the damn time.
– And that. (Evan and Preston laughing)
And we’re studying the same stuff,
and reading the same books, and we have the same mentors,
so for us the container’s the same,
but the way we show up in the container,
can be very different.
And the way we think is very different,
and it complements each other,
and I think that’s why we work so well together,
’cause I can be very structured, and organized,
and rational, and I can take something
that’s really big out here, and I can bring it down,
and synthesize it, and chunk it down,
and make it deliverable.
Preston is really big vision, and can take it out here,
and has me outside of the box.
It’s really cool, because that complements each other,
and our weaknesses, where I’m weak, he’s strong;
where’s he’s weak, I’m strong;
and where we’re weak,
we’re working on developing and bringing those up.
So it really is, like he said, it’s always flowing,
and it’s constantly in practice.
But at the end of the day,
our leadership is about empowering others to rise,
and if he’s wizened in a moment,
and he’s disturbed in that moment,
then I’m just here holding space, and that’s my leadership.
– I like it, that could be your next book, or a workshop,
or event, or couples trying to be entrepreneurs.
It’s a huge challenge,
how to work with your wife, or your husband in a business,
and it just leads to a lot of issues.
So, if you launch that program,
we might have some clients for you.
– [Alexia] Perfect!
– And what’s step number five, the fifth habit is what?
– Whoo, have a blast!
The fifth habit is have fun.
We’ve gotten so caught up thinking that
this thing needs to be so damn serious,
but for us it’s like, you get to have fun.
You get to have fun, the more fun you have in this process,
the more of service you are to the planet.
And to us, it’s a crime against humanity every day,
every moment, every minute that you hoard your gift,
and think that you need to be all damn serious.
It’s the process,
it’s the process and the product.
Every mountain you climb,
and get to the top of that mountain and make that million,
or make that six figures, or whatever the hell you want to do,
every time you get to the top,
all you’re going to do is celebrate for a minute,
and then set out for the next mountain.
– Yes. – So, if we know that,
if we know that every,
the human spirit is always going to have new desires.
– Always. – And so,
if you are not having fun in that process,
then you’ve missed 90% of life.
– Yeah, and that’s the thing.
I think most people are struggling to get there,
and subconsciously it’s in an attempt
to kind of “beat death”, well if I become worthy,
if I become significant in my lifetime,
then I’ll leave a legacy so that I “don’t truly die”.
Now, this is getting really philosophical,
but most people are dead right now,
they’re literally dead inside,
they’re death before death happens,
That is the ultimate death, is to be dead while you’re here.
We see so many people, especially entrepreneurs,
who are sucked into this like
hustle without heart mentality,
and they’re hustling for this thing,
and they’re hating their life.
They’re hating their life!
We remind people we work really hard,
we hustle really hard, but you better believe we play hard,
we play really hard.
We travel to places all over the world,
we’re constantly having a blast, and goofing on each other,
we’re just not taking this whole thing so seriously.
Yes, it’s serious because we’re out to change the world,
and that’s a pretty serious mission,
but it’s not that serious, right?
It’s like the gigantic paradox
and cosmic joke of the universe:
it’s serious, but it’s not that serious.
So, make sure you’re alive in the process.
– ‘Cause you can’t give what you don’t have.
And so, we can’t change the world,
and ask the world to step into joy
if I’m not living from joy.
And so, then our job is to fill our own cups,
and give from the overflow,
the overflow is where all the magic is.
– I like it, I like that.
Okay rapid fire, the five habits, what are they?
– Okay, so you always have a choice, number one,
and that means awareness. – Awareness.
– Step number two is be radically responsible.
Step number three. – Step number three,
is align committed action.
– Step number four is doing it from the totality,
owning who you are.
– And step number five is, whoo-whoo, have a blast!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. – We’re like ’80’s
dancin’ to that right now.
– I like the sharing of responsibilities on the points, too,
that was good guys, that was good.
Cool, listen tons of questions coming in still,
I hogged a lot of them ’cause I was genuinely curious,
and really appreciate the vibe you guys put off,
and all the work you do.
Probably the most common question being asked is,
who are these guys, how do I find out more about them?
So I mean, you’re in Australia now,
but if people want to find your book,
or they want to see your courses, what’s the next step?
Where do you hang out, where can they find you?
– Our book is Now or Never: Your Epic Life in 5 Steps,
and we deep-dive and give you guys
a ton of tools in this book.
But if you want to find us online go to alexiandpreston.com.
You can find Preston @prestonsmiles,
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.
Find me @alexipanos, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Be sure to Google-stalk us, ’cause we are all up
in the social media business. (Evan laughing)
– [Preston] Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo!
– I love it, thank you guys so much for joinin’ us,
have an amazing day in Australia.
Thank you guys which are watching,
continue to believe everyone,
and we’ll see you soon! – Yes!
– [Preston] Whoo!
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