Identity Creates Reality

We break down why your identity quietly runs your results and how “quantum leaps” happen when your nervous system adopts a new standard. We share stories from a retreat, basketball training, and a 25-foot pole climb to show what it looks like to stop negotiating with comfort and start living as your future self. 
• identity defined as what we repeatedly accept as true 
• how childhood programming becomes adult reality 
• E1 and E2 as current self and future self 
• 90-day letter exercise to embody the next version 
• why the nervous system responds to imagined experience 
• acclimation period after a big leap and why day two feels worse 
• doing hard things repeatedly to expand capacity 
• reframing “hard” as “unfamiliar” in real time 
• the pole climb metaphor: climb, balance, then jump 
• borrowing energy from supportive people and becoming support for others 
• climbing your own pole instead of comparing progress 

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Transcript

Why Quantum Leaps Feel Impossible

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Once you see what you actually are, that you're an infinite, limitless being, you'll see that nothing exists outside of you. I'm your host, Derek Grant, and this is the Pathway to Your Results Podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pathway to Results Podcast. It is your brethren, DG. Oh boy, we are here. We're here. I tell you what, I got some exciting uh, not I guess, not maybe not news, but stories. You know, I always like to tell stories. I like to share my life with you and share my experiences with you in hopes that it will help you along your journey, and you may see the parallels in my life to help you uh with your life. But um I've been on this kick lately. I've been on this kick lately of figuring out on a deeper level how do we how do we manifest and create our reality consciously? Right? Now we've done enough podcasts on it, done enough, enough episode on manifestation and everything, but you know me, I like to I like to simplify things. I like to break things down and make them simple. You know what I mean? I like to I like to taste the food and tell you how much how much salt they put in, how much garlic they put in, how much pepper, you know what I mean? I like to I like to find each ingredient because I realize if I know the ingredients now, I can cook that month. I can cook it myself now. You see what I'm saying? So uh I this probably isn't the best way to say it, but I have to say it like this. I've been looking and reflecting back on my life, how I've done things, and then I'm applying it now, and then I experiment on my children. I experiment with my children, see, because a child, a child is very malleable, far more malleable than a human, I mean than an adult is. So I've been uh I've been consciously spending a lot of time with uh my son, right? He's getting into age, I know I talk about Hudson a lot. He's 13, but 13 going on, 14, 14, maybe 13 going on, 28. I don't know. But I'm starting to realize how it is we really do this thing that we call life and how we can make these quantum leaps. Good God almighty, we're gonna get started. We can make these quantum leaps, these big jumps. I'm talking about you went from A to Z. You didn't go from A to B to C to D. And it's like, how in the world did we do this? So I started to kind of dissect my own life. Um, and then I had a retreat. And the name of the retreat, ironically, was the quantum leap retreat. Now, I haven't done a quote unquote regular retreat here in about a year and a half. Every retreat I've done has been using plant medicine. And I said to myself, plant medicine helps, but how does it help? It helps you heal up wounds, old narratives, old programs within you. But then also what it helps you to do is to basically restructure and reprogram your nervous system in those four, five, six hours. And then you obviously got to do the integration when you leave and you go back home, and you still have to keep acclimating yourself to the new, to the new uh uh nervous system. But I started to do this and I wanted to figure out how to do this without needing plant medicine and then using plant medicine as a supplement. So this retreat that I had in Arizona, um, it was first time ever going to this place. We went to the uh resort called Miraville Resort, all-inclusive resort, absolutely amazing. If you don't know about it, I highly suggest you've learned about it. I look, I while I was there, I went ahead and booked a uh vacation for me and Carly to come back here in a couple months because it was it was everything and then some. You know, it was it was a spa. Now, I mean, look, I like to be pampered, I like to be, but I'm I'm very, you know, I'm also I'm also a guy, so I'm not really all in the spa. When I hear spa, spa don't sound like something like, ooh, I want to go to the spa. That sounds fun. It ain't nothing like that with me. Spa don't really tickle my fancy that much. But let me tell you something. While I was there, you best believe Derek got three massages. And I said, oh my goodness, I like this. I like this. Oh, deep tissue. They were telling me about the lymphatic, facial, no, I don't know about all that. I don't know if I'm gonna let somebody touch on my face and all that. But look, I'm taking steps, okay? But here's my point. This retreat was so transformative, transformational because over the course of these four days, these participants, I was teaching them how to take this leap. And I and really what I was teaching them is what I've done in my own

Identity Is Your Reality Engine

SPEAKER_00 4:40

life unconsciously, but then what I started to do in my son's life consciously with him in basketball. So here's the first thing we gotta realize good God almighty, if y'all don't understand anything, I don't teach you all day, you ain't never gonna understand nothing. Please know that you will always be creating your reality based on your identity. But see, we don't ever get told what an identity it is. Your identity is what you repeatedly accept as true about yourself. So what you accept yourself to be will be your identity. So when I tell you that children are malleable or more malleable than adults, they're far more impressionable of who they accept themselves to be. This is why we still got that that we're dealing with in our lives as adults, because we accepted things to be true about ourselves because someone else told us when we were children that that was true about us. Somebody made you think that you were less than because of the color of your skin, or because you were a woman, or because of your weight, or because of where you came from. Somebody made you think for some reason that this was true about you. And here's what we did we unconsciously accepted that. And this became our identity. And now we have manifested and created our reality around that identity. So this retreat, while it was so powerful, was we I was actually teaching them things, but then at the end of it, we had a physical challenge. I wanted to do something that forced people, uh, it it it was a physical challenge as an athlete. Like I like things that are difficult physically, whether it's an endurance event, whether it's uh uh weightlifting, whatever it is, I like doing hard things physically, right? This is kind of just this is an identity that I have. This is what I'm used to. But this retreat, people had to climb up this 25-foot pole. Now you had to climb up this 25-foot pole by yourself. Yes, you were, you you had a harness on, and you had uh I learned something they called uh belayers, right? The people who would hold the rope to make sure that you were good, right? But you had to climb this. And everything that we did that whole weekend was leading up to uh uh having to climb this pole. Now, we're walking down to the event or to the to the to the obstacle course, and they're telling me, the lady's telling me, she's like, we have a 25-foot pole, we have a 40-foot pole. And I'm like, dang, why didn't we do the 40-foot pole? 25 ain't nothing. We should have done a 40. That's the way my mind works, ready? I'm ready for the more challenging thing. Man, let me tell you something. When I saw that 20 foot, 25-foot pole, I'm like, you ain't got a 15-foot, you ain't got a 10-foot or something. Damn, 25 feet looks high. But I said to myself, I can do this. I can do this. This ain't gonna be nothing. Now let's take a pause right there, okay? Over

E1 Versus E2 Future Self

SPEAKER_00 7:30

the course of this weekend, I was teaching everybody that you gotta have an E1 and an E2. The E1 is who you are today, the energetic frequency of who you are today, the identity that you are carrying today. But you gotta make sure you have an E2. And E2 is the energetic frequency of the version of you that you have not become yet. You hear what I'm saying? So the E2, the E2 is who you are looking to become, quote unquote, the future you. You gotta know what your E2 is. You gotta have clarity on that. So here's what we did a really powerful exercise. You can take it or leave it, do it if you want to. Let me tell you something. I told the participants, I said, you write a letter to yourself 90 days, because I take my life 90 days at a time. And this, see, this is unbeknownst to me. See, here's the thing about the this this physical game. You over here playing the game as Super Mario, but you don't realize that you got a uh a version of you, the higher self, the spirit, whatever you refer to it as, the, the, the, the infinite you that's playing the actual game, that's sitting outside of the game, and it has a bird's eye view. So my spirit already knew what it was before I even consciously knew what it was in the game. And I take my life 90 minutes, 90 days at a time. And I told the participants, I said, write a letter to yourself from 90 days out. And you tell yourself everything, you write it as E2, and you're telling E1 everything that you've accomplished. Man, I bought this car. My life looks like this. I make this much money, I got this much in account in my account. And you write this letter as the E2. So I had everybody write the letter, right? And it was super powerful because now here's what you're doing: you are channeling this future version of you. And this is the thing that they never told us in school, and I'm pissed off they didn't. They didn't tell us that every version of us already existed inside of us. They didn't tell us that the past versions of us are what are haunting us today, and who we are today is determining who we will be tomorrow. So every version of you, the past, the present, and the future is all wound up right here in the quote unquote now. So everybody's writing writing their letters, right? And then when everybody was done that night, I sat and wrote a letter to myself. Let me tell you something tears, goosebumps, whatever you want for. It was so unbelievably powerful because I was writing this letter and I was getting excited. I could literally, I wasn't, I wasn't in 2025, uh, April of 2025 any 2026 anymore. I was in July of 2026. But here's the thing that was more powerful my nervous system was getting excited. My body was experiencing as if we were already there. More importantly, I started to adopt the identity. See, here's the beauty about your nervous system. Your nervous system doesn't know the difference between what you're imagining now versus what's being imagined two, three, four, five months out, four or five years out. It doesn't know the difference. So as I'm writing this letter, I'm realizing I'm not just writing this letter, I'm channeling myself, channeling the future me, the E2, into right now. See, this is what they didn't tell you that you had to do. We've talked about how you had to uh uh you had to believe it before you see it. No, you're gonna have to be it before you see it, you're gonna have to actually adopt the nervous system of the version of you of who you're looking to become. So it's funny when we got to dinner and the whole week and everybody was talking about, they were talking about their life from the E2. Everybody kept saying E2, E2. Somebody would have been listening, they weren't a part of the retreat, they would have been like, who is this E2? What's this E2? What are they talking about? So I told everybody if you're gonna climb this pole, you can't do it as E1. You're gonna have to become somebody that you ain't never been before. And here's the whole part, here's the beauty of a quantum leap. A quantum leap isn't incremental. I don't have to go from zero to one. I can go from zero to a million. I can go from a million to a hundred million. Y'all ain't trying to hear nothing I'm saying right now. I know, I know good and well you are not trying to hear nothing I'm saying. You don't need to do it incrementally. But hear me when I say this. There is going to be an acclamation

Training Through The Dark Place

SPEAKER_00 11:50

period. So I told you I started taking my son to the gym. I told him, I said, we're gonna hit new levels. We're gonna have to, we're gonna have to do stuff that we ain't never done before. So I told him, I said, here's the rule. We're gonna work out and we're gonna go 45 minutes hard. But I'm just telling you, you ain't gonna be walking. You ain't gonna be chilling. You ain't gonna get water breaks like you normally do. It ain't gonna be no break. And he was like, okay, cool. And I saw his face, I saw Hutchins' face, I know his face. I know him because he's me. He got this glazed look on his face, and he kind of like like puckers his lips like he's mad, right? And I already know what it's gonna be. And I told him, I said, look, here's the deal. Ain't no negotiating with yourself, ain't no negotiating with me. This is what it is. And I'm just warning you right now, I'm gonna take you to a really dark place. I'm gonna take you to a place where you're gonna wonder if you're gonna be able to do it. I'm sorry I gotta do it in advance, but I'm just letting you know right now, I'm not gonna go back and forth with you. There's gonna be no negotiating. So he starts going through the workout, probably about five minutes in, he's already starting to negotiate. He's trying to act like he don't know what I'm telling him to do. You know how it is. When something's really hard. You ever been trained by anybody? I used to have a trainer, shout out Aaron. He used to train me in boxing, right? It would get so hard, I try to act like I didn't know what he was talking about. So I could buy some time, buy a break, buy an oxygen break. Wait, you you want me to wait? I don't understand. Like, what you want, nah, stop all them questions and just do what I'm telling you to do. So I know my son, because he's me. And he's starting to do the same thing. I said, nah, brother, you ain't gonna do this. Just do it. I don't care if you're messing up, just do it. Because I know what you're really trying to do. So anyway, he gets about 40 minutes into the workout, and I have something that I call the exit ticket. Now, the exit ticket is the hardest thing. Some you can call it a finish or whatever you refer to it as. You ain't getting out of this workout until you do this exit ticket. And if you don't do the exit ticket, guess what? The whole workout starts over again, and you got another 45 minutes. And I said, I'm sorry I gotta do this, but this is what it is. Man, when I tell you this exit ticket was so hard. And I'm wondering, I'm like, is he even gonna ride in the car home with me? He's gonna hate his dad. He's gonna hate me. And he got done. And he had tears in his eyes, and he was mad at me. But I looked down and said, good job, you did it. You made it through day one. Now he got back home, he was empowered, he was happy, he felt good about himself. Now let me fast forward. I told him, I said, we're gonna do this for two weeks because your next tournament is two weeks. I said, now this is the acclamation period. I'm just warning you. Tomorrow's gonna be harder than it was today because you're gonna be sore. You're gonna know, you're gonna remember what it was yesterday. And if you can push through day two and get to day three, the reason why I'm saying this to you all, because this is a metaphor for you and your life. And you can just take the first step. That was day one. It don't mean day two is gonna be easier. Day two is actually gonna be harder than day one, but you gotta push forward through that. And see, here's the beauty, this is the way I live my life. Each step, the path will illuminate, meaning it will become more familiar, more comfortable, but you gotta take the next step. You gotta push through today to get through tomorrow. So we do day two, a little harder. Day three. It's harder to get him up. Now you don't want to get up now. His alarm set for 6:30. School starts at nine. I say, you know what it is when we get there. We ain't shucking and jiving. You gotta get in there and get yourself stressed out, get yourself stretched out. And I start to see a pattern or something with him. I start to see a little shift. He realized on day four the battle wasn't against me. It wasn't me. You over here uh uh uh mad at me. Don't be mad at me. You really just facing yourself. And I told him the day before, I said, listen, let me tell you what I'm doing. The reason why I'm taking you to a dark place, good God almighty. The reason why life took you to a dark place because you had a version of you that couldn't go where you were destined to go. I don't think you hear what I'm saying. You had a version of you that just wasn't equipped to go where you're capable of going. See, you got greatness inside of you. You got greatness inside of you. But I'm here to warn you, you got also a version of you who likes to stay comfortable. It doesn't want to go to that next level, it doesn't want to go to that place that's unfamiliar, it doesn't want to go to a place that it doesn't know. But hear me when I say this, you're gonna have to go to that dark place, you're gonna have to be in that space that's uncomfortable in order for you to get to that greatness. So I told him, I said, here's this, here's the deal. Ready? All we're doing is trading identities. That's all we're doing. And every day that I push you, every day that it gets harder, please hear me when I say this. All it is, is because there's an identity, a version of you that you no longer need. And there's a new version of who needs to come in and replace it. And that's what's uncomfortable to your ego. That's what's uncomfortable to your mind. I always tell them, let the little boy out of you, let it out. Let it out. If you gotta yell, if you gotta cry, whatever you need to do, but no, he's gotta go. So fast forward two weeks, right? And I do certain things, I do little things, right?

The Hill And Cold Plunge Lesson

SPEAKER_00 16:55

I I so I had a client who plays uh major division one basketball, right? He's gonna go, he'll be in the NBA here in the next couple months. But he came home from school. I said, All right, let's get in the gym. Now let me experiment on you. Let me do the same thing with you. I told him, I said, look, I just need three hours of your life. Meet me at my house at 7 o'clock in the morning. And kids were on spring break. I said, Hudson, you coming with me. Oh, Hudson thought he was coming to help rebound. Uh-uh. You coming to be a part of the workout, brother, because I want to see where you're at in relation to somebody who's 23 years old. And I want to see the 23-year-old and see where you're at. So anyway, I told, I told, I told my client, I said, look, here's the deal. We're gonna go for an hour. You're gonna hate me. You're gonna hate yourself, you're gonna wonder why you're even playing basketball. But let me tell you why we're doing this. So I want to explain everything. When I tell you he went to a dark place, he went to a dark place. He ain't never worked out like this. Hudson, though, had been doing this. He had been uh he had been assumed the new identity that was needed to uh uh to do this at this level. So for him, Hudson, he was just this was nothing. This is what we mean and dad do every day. But for my client, he was like, man, what the what is this? He's like, I didn't know I was training with David Goggins. I thought I was coming here to uh do basketball workout. He's like, man, you are crazy. I said, we done with basketball, now we gotta go to the hill. So we went to this big old hill. Now I live in Indiana. Hills are relative. We don't have mountains like we have in Arizona and Colorado and all these other places, but the hill will do. I don't know. Maybe the hills, maybe, maybe 150 feet, 200 feet above sea level. I don't know. But it's pretty steep for Indiana. So I told him, I said, we're going to the hill after that. He's like, okay, bet. Okay, cool. Little did he know this was going to be more challenging than the basketball workout. So we got to the hill. I said, look, here's the deal. You got to go six running up the hill, and you got to go six going backwards. Anybody who's ever gone backwards up a hill, those quads are going to be on fire. I said, he's like, okay, I got to do 12. I said, yep, you got to do 12. Hudson, you got to do 12 too. But here's the deal. You got to get all of them done in 18 minutes. And if you don't get it done in 18 minutes, guess what? You got to do it again. And I ain't got nothing else to do all day, so we can be here all day if we need to. And I'm probably just warning you, it ain't gonna get no easier if you gotta do it again. Now, thankfully there was nobody else on that side of that hill that day. But the noises that these guys were saying, the making, the words that were coming out of their mouth. I said, Huston, you lucky your mama ain't here. I'll let it slide. Are you lucky, you lucky your mama ain't here, hearing these words that you and I told them both. I said, here's what you gotta tell yourself in the minute. Here's what you got to tell yourself in the moment. And this I'm telling you right now, life's gonna get hard. You're gonna be on the side of a hill and you're gonna be going up backwards and it's gonna be burning, it's gonna be hurting. But reframe when you say it's hard. The only reason why it's hard is because it's unfamiliar. Do you hear what I'm saying? I told Hudson two weeks out, two weeks ago, it was going to be hard. Two weeks later, he was handled like a champ. So now what was hard at one point became familiar. And the reason why it became familiar is because the identity had been adopted that was needed for what was going to be accomplished. So I told him on this hill, I said, here's the deal. As much as it hurts, as hard as it is, it ain't never gonna be harder than what it is right now. And that's what you got to tell yourself. As dark as it is right now, it ain't never gonna be darker than this. You see, now you're looking at it from a place of I can do this. You're looking at this from a place of uh uh uh abundance. You're looking not from a place of scarcity or lack anymore. This is hard. How am I going to do this? I don't know if I go. No, this is what it is, and it ain't gonna be no harder than this. So what am I gonna do? So they get done with the workout. We done. You did it barely, but you did it. I said, okay, we ain't done yet. Let's go to the house now. He didn't know. He didn't know what we were doing. I said, we're going to the house, we're gonna go down to the basement, and I got a cold plunge that's uh 52 degrees. Wait before you down there. I said, You ever done a cold plunge? He's like, Well, I done like an ice bath. I said, Oh, you'll be good then. Now, Hudson, I started with him back about two months ago. He got in that cold plunge the first couple of times. He was hollering. Carly came running downstairs. What's going on? She thought something was happening. I said, Ain't nothing wrong with him. He's fine over here. He ain't never been in no cold water before. Listen to me. I'm acting like a champ now. And I too hated cold water at some point, too. You see, let me get off my hot horse real quick. Anyway, we go down there. I said, okay, here's the deal. I only have one rule: no yelling, no screaming, and you can't gradually get yourself in. When you put the first part in, the toe, everything else has to be within within five seconds. That's my only rule. Now he's big, he's like 6'8, 220. Hudson ain't that big. So Hudson, the first couple of times, I To push him down. Like he's over here tiptoeing. I said, Nope, go and get down there. This big joker, I couldn't do that with him. So I'm like, well, if he's gonna tiptoe in, ain't nothing I can do about it anyway. I ain't gonna be able to push him down there. But anyway, he got right in. He just sat there. I said, now here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna close our eyes, we're just gonna breathe. We're gonna just focus on it right now. And I said, You have to remind yourself that this temperature isn't going to get any colder. 52 degrees. This is what it is. This is as hard as it's gonna be. If you can come to terms with this, you will be just fine. And he sat in there for three minutes. He said, Man, he got done. He said, man, he said, man, I feel more confident. I ain't never felt like this before. Yes, because you took three hours out of your day. You took three hours out of your day to do difficult things repeatedly. See, here's why I'm telling you this. Because if you could do things that are difficult repeatedly, things that are unfamiliar, you know what you're doing? You're expanding your capacity. You're expanding your capacity, and with capacity comes identity. See, now I don't look at myself who could only do X, Y, and Z. I look at myself who could do this, this, and this now because I have stretched my limits. I have expanded my bubble of what's comfortable. And now those things that were uncomfortable, I can do them. So Hudson got in there, he did it. Did it like a champ, right? So me and Hudson had a talk later. And I told him, I said, look, do you see now why I was doing all of those things for the last two weeks? He's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it now. So

Winning With No Subs

SPEAKER_00 23:30

this weekend, he had it, this past weekend, he had games. Now, anybody knows anything about AAU. AAU is a grind. It's a it is a grind. You play in two, three games. Sometimes you'll play four games in a matter of like 36 hours. Okay. So we have a tournament. And it's during spring break. And we only have five people. Five. Oh. And they're playing up. So they're playing, they're seventh graders playing against eighth graders. If you have children, the difference between a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old is like the difference between a cat and a dog. I'm like, how in the world at 13, you're 5'10, 120 pounds, and then in eighth grade, at 14, you're somehow 6'1 ⁇ , 180. How does that happen in a matter of months? My point of this is you wouldn't believe the difference in size and speed between a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old. And we don't have any subs. I looked at boys and I told him, I said, hey, it is what it is. You're going to have to become somebody that you ain't never been. Oh, and there's no subs. So if you get tired, don't nobody care. Called a timeout, they came over. Some of them looked like they was cross-side, they were exhausted. I said, Raise your hand if you're tired. They couldn't even raise their hand barely. I said, go ahead and put your hand down. Don't nobody care. Nobody cares. Nobody cares that you're tired. You know why nobody cares that you're tired? Because you're still gonna have to play the game. So the reason why I'm saying to this, saying to you, saying this to you, life doesn't care about if you're tired or if you're uncomfortable. You know what life says? I want to see you become who you are capable of being. I don't want to keep experiencing life through you as the version of you uh last year. I want to see, can you become this version of you? So I'm gonna have to put you through some stuff. I'm gonna have to have you run up this hill. I'm gonna have to have you get into the uh the metaphorical uh cold tubs of life. I'm gonna have to have you play four games with no subs. So I'm not gonna give you the details of the weekend because we gotta get back to the retreat. But weekend's over, we end up winning the whole thing. Now these boys were tired, but the amount of pride they had, the amount of self-belief, the confidence. I said, do you all know how hard it was what y'all did? Y'all want a tournament playing up with only five people. Where do they do that at? That is nuts. It was so crazy. People were coming over to our bench and they were like, Y'all only got five people? And we're like, Yep. These boys are a little different. See, we have been preparing them mentally to face anything that they have to go through. So yeah, we'll be good. So anyway, we're riding back home. We had about an hour and a half ride home. And I told Hudson, I said, Look, do you see now why for the last two weeks I did what I did? He played arguably the best I've seen him play in a lot, like maybe in his life. I said, Do you see why? He goes, Yeah, I felt like I was like, I was so much more confident, like I was unstoppable. Ah, you were unstoppable. Yes. Because you pushed through things that were really difficult for the last two weeks. And now look at it. Your capacity, your self-belief, your self-acceptance, the way you view yourself has expanded extra uh uh uh drastically. So I said, this is why I'm doing all this stuff. I said, Now here's the hard part, ready? You had a little bit of success. What your egos want to do is stay right where it is right now. How many times do we do this? We hit that mark, we're successful, we hit that benchmark, that goal, and then things plateau. Do you not realize that just because you are successful, that doesn't mean that we stop. You still gonna have to keep doing hard things. So he is, he knows, he knows the deal, right? Sunday. Sunday, we uh we're we're we get done. Monday, you always have the day off. Tuesday, we right back to the grindstone. We right back at it. I had to go out of town Monday, got back home Tuesday, he got off the bus, I said, get your homework, we're down in the basement. The reason why I'm telling you this is because that's that's uh I've been doing this with my own life, unconsciously most of it, but then I started doing it consciously with his

Climbing The Pole And Taking The Leap

SPEAKER_00 28:10

life. And now here I'm on this retreat. And I have these beautiful souls, these wonderful souls on this retreat, and I got to know them over the weekend and got to hear everything, all their identities, the way they view themselves, their E1s, their E2s, and we all had to read our E2s in front of everybody. And that was scary for some of us. You know how scary it is to talk about your goals, your dreams that you keep to yourself and then say them in front of quote unquote strangers? It's scary. Because there's a part of you that questions or wonders, can I actually do this? So we had to go up and climb this this pole, right? Now, here's what was really interesting. Everybody had a different relationship to the pole. Everybody had a different relationship to only 25 feet. We all climbed the same pole. And I went second. And after the first person who went, my videographer Ben, I was like, dang, that looks really difficult. It looks way harder than what I thought it was gonna be. So I get up there and I didn't realize, unbeknownst to me, I thought I was just gonna climb it, get on it, and jump off. No, no, no, no, no, no. I took it in three phases. There were three parts of this. Climbing up it was no problem at all. And I looked at the metaphor of life of we do this in life. We climbing, we're climbing up towards our goals, we're working towards it, right? We could see our goal at the top. And the lady who was in charge of the obstacle course, she told us, when you get up there, keep it to yourself because you may get up there, and there may be parts of it that you didn't take into account. And I didn't know what she meant when she said that, but when I got up there, I knew what she meant when she said that. I got to the top. And there was a plate up there. It looked like it was about the size of a uh a personal pizza from Papa John's. I don't know, cheese or pepperoni, whichever one you want. It was about the size of a personal pepper, uh, a personal pizza. And this plate was the top of it. But see what she didn't say was that this plate was wobbly. And that plate was what we were gonna have to stand on. But that plate was wobbly, there was no stability. And I got up here and the last, all the steps going up were staggered, but the last two steps were even, they were parallel with each other, and they were only at probably about eight inches from the plate. And I'm saying to myself, how in the world am I gonna get up on this plate when this plate is wobbly? How am I gonna? And I got up there and I got video of it. I got up there and I just sat there for about 45 seconds to a minute. Oh my goodness. All of the thoughts that started to go through my head, right? You know how it is. When they say it gets darkest, it's darkest right before dawn. You start to question your abilities when you you're almost there. You are almost there. And then all of a sudden, this mother, this ego came in. Oh, this is your retreat. You're not even gonna be able to do this. You're not gonna, you're gonna, you're not even, what is everybody gonna think about you? All this stuff, and I'm like, oh my god. So I just sat there. And I had to get my bearings. And I keep looking down at the ground. I keep looking down at the ground. I'm looking down, I was like, man, this is 25 feet, is man, I can't even imagine doing 40. I'm over here talking about 40 feet. This is crazy. And then I realized what I had to do. I had to break this down into another part. Climbing it was no issue. Now I'm going to have to find a way to get balance, to get structure, uh stability. And I heard, God bless her soul, my sister Maria Fru. Maria told me she said, you gotta look off in the horizon. You gotta look off in the horizon. So the reason why I'm telling you this, I was so focused on looking down that I forgot to look forward, to look out. And the reason why I'm saying this is because sometimes we get so caught up in the day-to-day, you're grinding, you're grinding, you're grinding, and we lose sight of what's in front of us. But what's in front of you is what gave you the anchor, gave you clarity to keep moving forward. So I remembered what the vision was. And see, before we sat down, uh uh the young lady uh who asked, who's leading the obstacle course, she said, What's your why? And my why was basically I want to do hard things. I want to constantly push the limits. But when I got up there, I heard her say, You got to remember your why. And my why changed. My why wasn't I want to push these limits. My why was my children. If Hudson and Ruby were here right now, what would they say? What would they say? They say, Come on, dad, finish it out. Come on, dad, you up there now. More importantly, what would you say to your children? I say, Come on, you can't come all this way just to come all this way. Finish it out. Even if you fail, finish it. So I got up there and I'm wobbling. I mean, I'm wobbling. But at that moment, I got up. And see, I took time to celebrate myself while I was up there. If you've seen the video, I don't know, I put on my story. Arms are out, my arms, I'm just low. Somebody said, Is that Jesus? I said, No, it ain't Jesus. That's me up on top of this pole right here. Arms stretched out. I'm like, I did, I did. But I didn't realize that this is a thing I didn't take into account. You still didn't take the leap. You still didn't finish it. You see, you climbed up there, you got up there, but you're gonna have to jump off. And my brain could not wrap its head around it. It couldn't understand. Wait, we have safety now, we have stability, things are predictable. You mean now I gotta take a leap? The reason why I'm saying this to you, because this is the same for you in your life. You got to where you wanted to be, and you're right there. But guess what? You're gonna have to take the leap of faith so that you submit yourself into that new identity, so that it's not just, oh, I've done it once. No, it's this is who I am now. So as I'm sitting there, I'm like, dang, I gotta jump. I gotta jump. I gotta jump. Dang, I gotta jump. I'm gonna have to jump. Now, there were three people that were belaying. There were three people that were holding the rope, and I don't remember who they were because I was in my own world. And I thought to myself, these people better catch me. They better, they better make sure this rope. Please don't let me hit this ground. So I took the jump. I took the jump. And they caught me. And nothing happened. And I made it. And I realized all of this was a microcosm of life. We all are climbing towards something. And I had people clapping, they were all clapping for me and everything. They don't realize what that did. They don't realize it. Because I was really worried. Was I gonna be able to get up to the top? Was I even gonna be able to jump? But I was borrowing their energy. And then I

Support Shows Up After You Jump

SPEAKER_00 34:55

jumped. And they were there to hold me. And the reason why I'm saying this is because the universe will always provide support. Every time that you take that leap, good God almighty, I don't think you hear anything that I'm trying to say to you right now. If you would just take the jump, the support will be there. It may come in the form of a relationship. It may come in the force uh uh the form of an opportunity, it may come in the form of money, it may come in the form of time. But hear me when I say this. If you can just take the leap of faith, the support will be provided. And I looked at this and I'm sitting here now. I'm like, they're slowly letting me down. And I'm just thinking to myself, like, look at the microcosm of life. Look at this. And then here's the deal. You ready? You ready? I was so unbelievably grateful. I was so thankful for them who was all those people who were belaying, that now I wanted to belay. I wanted to belay. I wanted to be the one to provide support for somebody else. And here's the reason why I say this: because how many times have you done this? You've done something, you accomplished the goal, you succeeded, you got to see how people help you, opportunities show themselves, and now here you are, you're ready to help somebody else. You're ready to lend your energy so you can help somebody, and now you see how the universe, well, what the the saying, life begets life. Life will give more life. Support provides more support. But here's the first thing we got to do, we got to take that leap. And there are some people who didn't make it all the way to the top. But they made it as high as they could. You hear me when I say it? They made it as high as they could. And they were a little discouraged, like, oh, I failed. I said, well, hold on now. You didn't fail. You didn't fail because you did something that you hadn't done before. But the issue is that you're comparing it to other people, but you don't know what other people have been doing in their lives to prepare themselves to be able to get to the top of that pole. And it seemed like we were all climbing that same pole, but we didn't all have the same uh capabilities. We didn't all have the same capacities. Our nervous systems were in different places, our nervous system had different trauma that we were still holding on to. So the reason why I'm saying this, we all got to uh we hear the saying we gotta run our own race. Nah, you got to climb your own pole. You got to climb your own pole of life, and however high you make it, you jump. And don't compare and look at what somebody else has done or what they haven't done. Here's the beauty of it. You did it. You did it. You pushed the limits, you pushed the boundaries. There was a version of you who didn't even think that this was possible. So one of the ladies, I had a conversation with her. I said, look at what you've done. Look at what you've done. Don't uh uh uh uh uh stop stop it right now. Stop it. Don't you look at what you didn't do. I want you to just look at what you've done. The power, the confidence, the empowerment that you feel. And she said, Oh my goodness, I did. Yeah, okay, you climbed 23 feet instead of 25. The universe isn't like, oh, well, yeah, she only did two feet last. She's not good enough. No, you're doing that. So the reason why I'm saying this is because no matter what it may look like, sometimes we gotta just admire what we have accomplished. We gotta be proud of what we have done. We gotta be proud of who we become. So this retreat, the quantum late retreat, it was far more than what I thought it was going to be, to be honest with you. I'm talking about in my own life.

The 90-Day Letter Countdown

SPEAKER_00 38:20

Because now here's the beauty of it, ready? That letter that I had everybody write. This resort had given us uh uh uh a packet, and in the packet there was an envelope, and inside of the envelope was two pieces of paper. One piece of paper is blank, one piece of paper had instructions, and the instructions said write a letter to yourself, and we will mail it to you in 90 days. I said, Oh my goodness, if this ain't a synchronicity, boy, I don't know what it is. I said, let me see this piece of paper. Now I don't have the best handwriting. So my lines are a little crooked, but you best believe I filled that paper up. And now I took it to the front desk, I handed it to him, and it was it was almost like the stop clock. Uh, what do they call it? A clock watch, what they call it, stopwatch, what it, whatever they call it. You know what they didn't use a track and field. The universe said, go. Go. You know this letter's coming in 90 days, and you know what you wrote. And that letter was written from the version of you 90 days out. You better get the going. You better get the going because here's the deal. That letter's gonna come to your house. You gonna get that letter. Here's what you don't want to be. You don't want to open that letter up and be like, dang, I ain't do none of this stuff that he said that we did. This mother, he over here lying. And I wrote it as the E2 90 days out. I said, We doing this, we did this, life is great, it feels like this. Here's what we did, and now here I am as E1 saying, Come on now, come on now, you're gonna have to do what's uncomfortable because you know E2 is coming. He told you, and you probably got about 80 more days left, and he's gonna be here. So, what you gonna do? And here's what it has done: it has forced me to step in places that are uncomfortable. It had forced me to ring my bell just a little bit more because I need all the energy I need to keep stepping into these identities. And I said to myself, I probably, I probably got about four or five identities that I gotta shed to get to this version of me. But I said, let's get to cracking because the clock is the clock is ticking. He's coming. So here's my advice to you write a letter to yourself. You can do it 90 days, you can do a year, you can do 10 years, whatever. Write a letter to yourself and tell yourself everything that you've accomplished. Tell yourself everything that you've accomplished and spare no details. Now, I don't know how you're gonna figure out how you're gonna mail it to yourself, but figure out a way. Have you wrote it two years out? Chuck on that letter in two years and see how much you've accomplished. And I realize what it's done. It has forced me. Me. It's forced me. I have forced myself. See, it's me. It's not that you know, it's not anything outside, it's me. Say, here's what we've done. And now you can measure. Are you moving in that direction right now? From moment to moment, from day to day. And this is how we make a quantum leap. And I'm here to tell you, them 90 days coming, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm not gonna tell you what I did. Well, I matter of fact, after I do it, I will tell you. I'm gonna do it. That's one, I, that, I, that's one thing. I know one thing about me. When I write it down, I'm gonna do it. I not only did I write it down, I got to actually feel and see him 90 days out. And then here's the beauty of life. You ready? These things that we call synchronicities and all that, and you you get to see it all around you. You get to see, oh my goodness, look how this is happening. Dang, this look at how this is happening. And here's why I tell you this. When I say look how it's happening, it's not quote unquote positive. It's things that are challenging, that's hard, that's forcing you to step into this new version of you that moves you one step closer to who it is that you said you wanted to be. So it was unbelievably transformative. I I don't know. I got one more retreat here coming up here in a couple weeks to Tulume, but uh I'm probably going to make retreats now, a little bit more private, a little bit more intimate,

Embodied Leadership Collective Invitation

SPEAKER_00 42:30

because I got to see the power of it.

unknown 42:31

Right?

SPEAKER_00 42:32

Got to see the power in building a container. I told you all about the embodied leadership collective. This is for individuals who are founders, business owners, uh, coaches, healers. You got you, if you are an entrepreneur, then this is for you. It doesn't matter where you are in your business, because I'm I'm I'm I'm going to literally take you on a six-month journey and teach you how we do this. Here's how you do this. And at the end of it, and it's optional if you want to, you don't have to be a part of it, but we're gonna go back probably to Miraval, and we're gonna have a retreat. We go climb that pole. So um this is probably how I'm gonna start doing retreats now, because I'm I'm I'm I'm uh I'm on a I'm on a different mission now. I I'm starting to see now. So you know, you know, it's like when you you start doing something, you start to get your you start to get the hang of them, you start to say, okay, we're starting to get, as my daddy would say, starting to get lathered up a little bit. We're starting to get lathered, and I'm starting to see now this is the space, this is it. You figure out now how to take people in three, four days and change the trajectory of their life, put them in a container. I want to help leaders become leaders of themselves. Become a leader of yourself. If you can lead yourself, everything else becomes so much easier. So um, you guys can click on the link here in this podcast and you'll see get yourself applied. I'm only taking 23 individuals, so um it's gonna be a it's gonna be 2025, it's gonna be a 2026, excuse me, it's gonna be a beautiful, beautiful year to prepare for 2027. We're gonna Make some quantum leaps. But as always, you know I wish you nothing but the best on the pathway to your results.